🔵 By Thomas Riffenburg. Photo by lauragrafie.
“Red or black?”, she just couldn’t decide, and they say being a woman is easy, ha, “they” obviously never understood the complexity involved in true fashion, and if Lily knew anything, it was fashion, pure sexy fashion, “they” were probably men, Lily chose the red earrings, they did after all match the red trim of her wings. (I suppose now would be good time to mention that Lily is a butterfly, seems kind of important if you ask me, though Lily would probably say Ladies Gucci was more important. Underneath it all, Lily is quite a beautiful person, she’s just very, how should we say, stylish.) She was receiving an award tonight for best dressed woman in Treeville, her home town. The award was called, “the Princess Award”, and who says that little girls don’t have their dreams come true, oh she could kiss fate right about now, well she was looking fantastic. “Perfect” she said, time to be off. Flying over Treeville was always such a treat, butterflies really know how to build their cities. Such beauty, (and order as well, butterflies couldn’t stand disorder) butterflies always made sure their cities didn’t clutter out the sunlight, for it was sunlight that reflected off their wings and gave the impression of a million diamonds glittering about everywhere, a common phrase amongst butterflies was that “they were descendants of the stars themselves.” Lily had always believed that butterflies, particularly the women, were the favored of fate, (diamonds? Stars? Hello, everybody knows a girls best friend always glitters and sparkles), she couldn’t imagine any other life, she was truly happy… (Or so she believed, but sometimes life has its own plans, who can say why, yet if a person believes as Lily does, that fate governs all things, then surely there are reasons, but as Lily was soon to discover, sometimes we must look with more than just our eyes to see, for sometimes the things that sparkle most are invisible to the eyes…)
Lost in her own thoughts, Lily never saw what she flew in to that knocked her out of the sky, and sent her crashing into the flower grave, so far below her home of Treeville… Lily awoke in pain, in a place that was not her own, an average place if she had ever heard of one. She noticed the bandages here and there, then she noticed the ones upon her broken wings. Tears seemed to evade her at the moment, and yet she knew they’d be plentiful later. Just when she’d begun to actually grasp on to the reality of her, for lack of a better word, “new” life, in walked Early the worm…
(Now much has not been written about the relationships of these two similar, yet unsimilar cousins of the family tree, simply because they have no relations with one another. Worms are on the bottom (literally) in every aspect of life. Worms lived atop the dirt soil, had no real sense of style (none actually, except for the tiny bowtie thy wore, scarfs for women) and most importantly, couldn’t fly. Meanwhile butterflies lived atop the trees, they were the bonafide fashion gurus of nature (their own words), and unlike worms, they always and only, spoke and socialized with other beautiful butterflies…)
Lily couldn’t believe the cruel act fallen upon her, for weeks she cried and said nothing, her life was over completely, and yet she had little time to truly wallow in her grief, for the always showing Earl kept attempting to pamper her, and weirdly tried to get her to laugh, the only thing she might have considered funny was the bow-tie, really?!…
As weeks turned to months , Lily couldn’t help but smile at Early, secretly at first, but then openly as well. The kindness she received continually was sweet in its own way, and while his attempts at comedy wasn’t something he’d ever find success at as a career, she came to enjoy them more and more… Unknown to Lily was the truth of what she was experiencing, she always claimed to love Gucci the most of all things ,and yet it seemed it was all but forgotten. Earl occupied her thoughts these days, the sensation and majesty she once found in flying, was replaced with wonder and sparkle of her new life. Never had she felt this amount of contentment. It seems when love is in the air, ordinary turns to simply amazing, can you believe she and Earl were married?! Right at the local onion church, which she swears to this day is the most beautiful of buildings…
Fate took her wings, yet it eventually gave her and Earl a family, what’s that you say, red or black? Well, she never did wonder such questions anymore…