Short Stories

Pride: Soul of a Butterfly

In which a Butterfly, goes to Mardi Gras

With the wind beneath their wings Farfella flew through the city skyline, with its tall buildings and monochromatic colours. They loved being up so high. Seeing some bright coloured things down below they decided to take a look. Swan diving to the ground, they felt the rush of the wind. They got to the ground and straightened out. Flapping their wings, they went into the crowded colourful street. Flying through the parade, of reds, blues, and yellows, Farfella was loving every minute of it. The alien like beings had always fascinated Farfella, even more so now as they danced and paraded through the streets.

They zoomed through them and tried to land on one, but they were moving too quickly, and they scared them. So instead of landing on one of the alien beings, Farfella just flew around them, some of them were holding big poles with soft colourful things hanging from them. Others were holding bits of hard things with colourful lines on it. As they zoomed through the tall aliens Farfella could not help but think that they all looked so colourful and as the sun set and the alien -like being dispersed, Farrell wished that the fun they had had during the day could last a lifetime.

Night fell and the neon and luminescent yellow lights, that made up the city flickered on in every building. Farfella loved when this happened for, she felt that she was taken to an entirely different world, one that was only ever seen in dreams, while all their friends sleep in trees and on the underside of leaves, Farfella roamed the skies and found peace within themselves. Whilst all Farfella's friends and family were asleep, the streets of the aliens were buzzing with life.

The beings were moving from place to place, some wandering aimlessly, other using their limbs to walk quickly through the crowded streets, stricken with purpose, to get home. They were all the same, and this bored the curious little butterfly. The greys of the alien beings were dull and repetitive, so Farfella took their orange and black wings and flew away. With the wind beneath their wings, they thought they could go anywhere. The freedom of flying alone always enthralled them and they did it often.

Leaving behind the dull colours, they went off in search for something more exciting, like what they had seen earlier that day.

At last, they found it.

Beautiful, vibrant colours like earlier.

Pinks, purples, greens,

all mixing with one another,

It was pure paradise for the small insect. The bounced around the colours trying to take it all in. They flew low to take the colours in and had to avoid the trampling log-like things as they hit the ground. Even though this was a bit of a challenge for Farfella, they loved the rush of the couple of close encounters they got with the log things. For awhile all the Monarch butterfly would do was fly around of the alien-like beings with their fancy colours on as they march in the streets, hundreds of them all together, with their colours in the night-time.

It happened so fast,

one moment beauty

the next, destruction

The grey ones came and ruined poor Farfella's fun. They came with flashing lights of blue and red. The lights hurt the butterflies' eyes. The grey ones were hurting the colourful ones and pushing and shoving, Farfella did not think it was right. Some of the colourful ones kept moving, marching down the illuminated street, others tried to help. Farfella flew to the front of the colourful ones hoping for some peace from the grey, mean aliens, but none came. At the front of the march the grey ones were their trying to take the big thing on wheels along with the small grey box that sound came out of. When the grey aliens finally succeed, the colourful ones, with some of their greens and blues stained in red, dispersed a bit. But most stood tall and continued to march.

Farfella flew ahead of the group towards the luscious greens they knew to be their home, they then circled back hoping that the colourful ones could see them and rush forward with them, to escape the harsh world of grey aliens and towards the safe haven of green trees and soft grass. The colourful aliens-like beings unfortunately did not see the desperate orange and black butterfly, instead they were focused on the oncoming storm that was the grey ones of their species, those who did not see that being colourful, was not bad. Those who were using brute force to hurt and put away the colourful ones. They, in Farfella's eyes were the bad ones, the ones that were not kind, the ones that should not be there.

Farfella did not understand why they were being so mean, why did the grey alien like beings have to hurt the colourful ones? Why couldn't the colourful one's march in peace? they were not hurting anyone, they were just marching.

They flew back into the thick of the fight. And skilfully dodged all the beings, grey and colourful alike, Farfella could not help but ponder about why this has happened. No one did anything wrong that they could think of, but they were just a butterfly, so what did they know right? They wished that even though, she did not like the grey beings, that they could both get along. Flying higher now, so they were above all the commotion. They got a better picture of what was happening. The grey ones with there red and blue flashing lights were getting people into their boxes on wheels and the colourful ones were either fighting back or fleeing the scene. There was an audience now though. More of the boring people were there, looking in on the scene like a bunch of peeping toms.

Seeing one of the colourful people getting pushed into a box, they raced over to them, flying above the crowd to get there faster Farfella could not even enjoy the wind in their wings, only focusing on the being of magnificent, pinks and purples, with orange splattered in between.

As Farfella got there

Time seemed to slow.

Bit by bit

They could feel it.

The swinging in the air

And the last thing

The little thing heard.

Was the thud.