Butterflies' Wings

“I want to see a butterfly,” shouted a little girl, standing at the park entrance, “Daddy come.”

It was a beautiful summer evening. The time of year when grass was the greenest. Flowers were already blooming, inviting all flying insects. Leira loved looking at them, especially, at swallowtail butterflies. She considered them beautiful and could run with them all day.

“I’m coming, Leira. How do you have so much energy,” said Matthew with a childish tone of voice.

Leira started going into the park, to the place where they usually went. It was a place full of flowers, so butterflies were happily flying there. She ran so quickly that Matthew was wondering when she’d learned to run this fast.

They were walking when they passed a black dog.

“Look, Dad, dog.” She got closer to the dog.

Matthew was about to stop her, but both the dog and Leira were having fun. He decided not to intervene. Matthew chit-chatted with the owner of a dog. It wasn’t a long time until Leira was bored with cuddling.

The field of flowers with the summer evening sun was beautiful. Many children were running there and laughing. What could be seen at first glance were bees flying everywhere. Little yellow dots in the air, trying to get as much they could from the blooming flowers.

But what was exceptional in that place were the butterflies. To be precise, swallowtail ones. Leira just stood in the center of the meadow, and one particularly stubborn butterfly was sitting on her and flying, again and again. Her laugh echoed everywhere. Every childish scream provoked the butterfly to run away, just to sit there a few moments later.

“Oh, this one really liked you, Leira,” Matthew commented, looking at them. In the meantime, he’d thought that he saw a butterfly without a wing, but he was sure that it was his imagination playing tricks on him.

Suddenly, out of the blue, some weird powder started to fall on Leira. Matthew knew about Leira’s allergy, so he approached with a plan to take her away for a moment.

He didn’t make it on time. With every step he took, Leira was becoming smaller. It was like a bad dream, and he couldn’t let her disappear. A few moments later, she was gone. Matthew kneeled and started to sob.

ʚɞ ʚɞ ʚɞ

Leira didn’t know what was happening around her. In a second, she appeared to be in a forest full of trees. These trees were made only from single long leaves. Among them, there were huge rocks as tall as her, looking like mountains. She’d only seen mountains a few times on a trip with Mom and Dad.

“Dad, do you see it?” asked Leira, but she didn’t see Matthew anywhere. Suddenly, she saw a giant, looking exactly like her dad.

“Dad, Dad. Here!”

Matthew didn’t turn in her way, as if her voice couldn’t reach him at all. She tried running to him, but she wasn’t getting any closer. Suddenly, Matthew ran away from Leira’s sight, nervously looking everywhere. Not being able to talk to her dad, Leira felt hopeless and started to sob.

“Hey, little child. I’m glad you’re here.” A distant voice resonated in Leira’s ears, straight from up above her. She looked up and was surprised by a butterfly the size of herself, flying in the sky.

“Who are you?” These were the first words that Leira could mutter. “Are you a butterfly? Why are you so big? Can a butterflies speak?“. Many questions were coming from her mouth, but the butterfly stopped her.

“I’m Sally, I’ll answer all of your questions later. We don’t have a time to lose, and you… You are the help we were looking for.”

“Me? I want only to my dad.” Leira started looking around to find him.

“Don’t worry, you will come back to him safe and sound, soon,” butterfly ensured the girl. “Please think that it’s a play and after it, you will be back.”

“O-okay, so what will we be doing?” asked Leira a bit more convinced. She was still scared, but what could go wrong here? These were butterflies. Cute little creatures that Leira was playing with every day recently.

“First, I want you to meet someone,” Sally said cheerfully.

“Oh, who’s that?”

“You’ll see. Fly with me now.” Sally started flying away.

“Wait! Fly? I can’t fly.” Leira was saddened that Sally would run away, and she would never see Matthew again.

“You were gifted with butterfly magic powder. Think about flying, and it will happen. It’s as easy as it sounds. Try it,” explained Sally.

Leira tensed, thinking about flying. At first, nothing happened. In a few moments, she started levitating a few centimeters above the ground. Slowly, carefully, she flew higher and higher until she floated next to Sally.

“You see, I told you it’s a piece of flower nectar,” laughed Sally. This sentence made Leira laugh too. “Let’s fly now. Follow me.” Sally led their flight through single-leaf trees, and different species of flowers. All were looking familiar to Leira. She was looking at everything with amazement. Between trees and flowers, she saw different animals. Most of them were not recognizable. There was a giant airplane with long, hairy legs, as well as a red truck with black dots. If the size was smaller, Leira would say that these were spiders and ladybirds.

“We’re almost there,” said Sally.

They were reaching a place with the highest amount of flowers that Leira had ever seen in her life. A lot of shapes were dancing around these flowers.

“What are these?” asked Leira.

“That’s my family. I’ll introduce you.”

Leira and Sally flew to the largest blossom, the biggest rose of them all. On top of it sat a butterfly even more beautiful than Sally. It had beautiful golden wings with red dots scattered everywhere.

“Leira, meet Dara, our queen, and mother of us all. My brothers and sisters are flying around you.”

Leira looked at the queen and felt shy in her presence. Something inside was telling her that this beautiful creature was harmless. She felt warmth coming from inside of the butterfly.

“Good morning,” said Leira immediately, just like her parents taught her. In the next moment, she looked around her to see hundreds of flying butterflies. Each one of those wasn’t less beautiful than Sally. She gasped seeing this view.

“Hello, my child,” answered the queen, “I’m Dara and I feel that you can help us with our problem.” She glanced at Leira gently.

“Me? Help?” She couldn’t believe how she could help. “O-okay. What can I do?“.

“In recent times, butterflies have got one more pair of golden magic wings, like mine, that can be worn by any of my kind.” The queen started flapping her wings vigorously and suddenly stopped. “But these bats… They always tried to steal our precious treasure. Unfortunately, they succeeded in doing it finally.” Leira could see the sadness in the queen’s eyes. “Without wings, we are unable to migrate when the nectar ends. Butterflies need two leaders to be led.” Dara made a pause before moving forward. “Please, help Sally retrieve the magic wings. Now, go, be back soon.” With these words, the queen started preparing to go to the nectar. A few butterflies were hurrying her up.

“Let’s move to the core of the park, and I will briefly tell you more,” said Sally when they’d been left alone.

Leira rose from the rose and flew to Sally. “Okay, which way we’re going?”

Sally was leading the way, speaking. “Bats are really vicious creatures. If they want something, they’ll do anything to get it this way or another. And so, they got our wings. We really need them back.” She became silent and they just flew forward.

Leira, with a bit of hesitance, asked, “But why they’re doing this to you? What do they want to achieve with it?”

“There are many reasons for it, but the most likely one is to fix us in one place to attack, just like Dara said.”

Flying, they were passing many places and things that Leira had never seen in her life. Huge wooden mountains shaded their heads occasionally. Many creatures happily hung around on the ground. Leira thought she saw an ant, but it was much larger than normal.