Triton's Destiny

Part Thirty-Six

Bellies full, with the sun warming their skin, Maki and Tristan walked around town with their fingers laced together, completely wrapped up in each other. It felt different to be wandering the streets with nowhere in particular to go, just letting their whim take them wherever it wanted. Tristan had always had deliveries to make, so Maki had seen many of Vollendale's businesses but not a lot else.

Today was different. People didn't seem to mind that Tristan was taking some time for himself. In fact, most of the proprietors were quite supportive of it, telling him that their messages could wait until the next day and encouraging him to enjoy his time off with Maki. So he did. He showed Maki the parts of town he hadn't seen yet and took the time to linger in private places to kiss him. Maki thought it was perfect.

Tristan took him to the park on the east side of town where they spent a lot of time exploring. Maki was particularly interested in the beautiful flower gardens, since the gardens he was used to seeing consisted primarily of kelp, sea grass, and colorful but unfriendly anemones. In Vollendale's gardens, he could actually touch the plants, get close to them... smell them. All the varieties of flowers fascinated him and he spent a long time investigating them all.

"You know," Tristan said with a smile from where he sat on a bench watching Maki explore, "I don't think anyone in Vollendale has appreciated these gardens as much as you have. Not even the people who plant and tend them."

"It's such a shame! They're beautiful!" Maki leaned down to look at a bush covered in small white flowers. Inhaling deeply, he smiled and sighed happily. "Have you smelled these flowers? What are these?"

"Honeysuckle. And yes, I can smell them from here. They're rather potent. Honeysuckle is great for attracting pollinators, like bees and butterflies."

Maki's eyes widened. "What's a butterfly?"

Chuckling softly, Tristan got up and slowly approached another flowering plant. Waving Maki over, he pointed at something that almost looked like another flower. It had an intricate, colorful pattern and Maki couldn't stop staring at it. He gasped when it suddenly moved, the two sides slowly flapping like a pair of wings. Tristan laughed. "That's a butterfly. It's an insect that feeds off the nectar of flowers and carries pollen to help more plants grow in different places. They like honeysuckle a lot."

Leaning in close, Maki stared at the butterfly, captivated by its blue, brown, and white markings. "So pretty..." He startled backward when the insect suddenly fluttered its wings and took off, gliding over to another flower and settling there.

Tristan smiled and rubbed Maki's shoulder. "They don't tend to hang around for long. But now that you know what you're looking for..."

Standing, Maki looked around the garden. And the fluttering he thought was nothing more than flowers and leaves dancing in the breeze turned out to actually be the wings of countless butterflies drifting from plant to plant. "Oh, so many..."

He went over to another cluster of red flowers and crouched down, watching the butterflies do their work. Now that he knew what they were and could see them up close, he smiled at their fuzzy, segmented bodies, their spindly legs, and the curly appendages they used to drink from the flowers. He was amazed that such a small creature could fulfill such a large purpose and more amazed still that humans shared their outdoor spaces with them. There were so many facets to life on the surface that he still needed to learn about.

As he reached out to touch one of the red flowers, a butterfly lifted off a nearby bloom and landed on his outstretched finger. He bit his lip and held his breath, not wanting to frighten it. "Tristan!" he hissed in a whisper. Six tiny feet gripped onto his skin and the butterfly's wings flapped slowly, its yellow, black, and red striped pattern brilliantly vibrant in the sunshine. "Tristan!"