The Origins of the Night Butterflies

The True Story

One of us was doing her French homework (aka not enjoying herself), which happened to be reading a book in French for half an hour. She was only sort of paying attention as she knew there was only a few minutes left in this half hour of torture.

The book was about bats, which in itself is a terrible idea and terribly boring and awful and ew. The main bat, Griffon, was transported through a hole in the ground to a sort of Underworld where he found his dead best friend, Luna.

So, she was reading along, not paying attention, until she came across three very special words. Though she had never seen them before, they immediately struck a chord in her heart.

Papillions de nuit.

Though they only meant moth in English, directly translated the words meant something much more penetrating.

Night butterflies.

Immediately she knew she had to do something with this. Use it for a story title, a poem title -

Then she really knew.

She and her friend had been wanting to make a joint account on Wattpad for weeks. They had procrastinated endlessly with the excuse that they didn't know what to call the account.

Now they did.