STAMP COLLECTION

Butterflies

Gillian Cathcart

“Did you see that guy earlier?”

“When earlier, Ality? You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“Fine.” Ality sighs, drawing out the word dramatically. She flicks her auburn hair from her shoulder. “Did you see the guy that would not stop staring at us at the campus earlier. Like, at 10 a.m. or so. Tell me you at least looked at him, Lyne.”

Lyne smiled a bit at her friend’s antics, earning a glare in return. “Was he the one with the butterflies?”

Ality quirked a brow.

“What butterflies? Lyne, are you an idiot–”

“Hey–” She tried to interrupt, but Ality continued.

“It was still raining when we saw him. You didn’t even notice the rain?”

Lyne crosses her arms and leans back in her chair a bit. “I noticed the rain.” she says indignantly. “And I definitely saw the butterflies.”

Her friend gives her a weird look, but soon enough the conversation is changed and the butterflies in the rain quickly forgotten.

Until of course, she sees them again.

This time she’s alone; Ality has already gone to work after class, and though they agreed to get together for drinks later–being a perfect Friday and all – Lyne still has nearly five hours until then. She’s finished her work for the day, and she works mornings, so with not a cloud in the sky she sits her and her journal on the damp lawn of the campus square. It’s comfortable, nice even, to be able to sit for a little while and write. She finds inspiration she hasn’t had in a while in the slightly faster pace of the creek beside her. Lyne watches the small water bugs flit across the surface and recalls the crimson color that once stained its crystalline surface. Then, elegantly and gently, a butterfly landed on her outstretched knee.

Shaking herself out of her memory, she turns to the beautiful creature. It is large, well fed it seems; its wings a glossy shade of orange and yellow, with veins of black and spots of white, marking it with the that guy’s back.” She whispers, pointing with her pinky as she raises her glass to her lips.

Lyne sputters for a moment, eyes nervously flitting about. Ality gives her a weird look over the rim. “You good?”

“Y-Yeah,” she replies. “It’s just– I thought I saw…”

“Saw what?”

Ality watches her friend take a shaky breath. “There’s a butterfly.”

The red head cocks her head, trying so very hard to not say anything offensive.

“Um… Where is it?” she finds the man staring right at her. But, no. Not her, she realizes, but at Lyne. title of monarch. Its wings flutter in the slight breeze, and for a moment Lyne hears something. It’s a soft melody almost, every time the creature’s wings flutter back and forth and back and forth. She blinks. There are two butterflies now. The first one seems frozen in place, and the second is writhing in pain…?

The man is shrouded in shadow, and none of the other patrons seem to notice him. It’s raining, she didn’t realize that before now. It must have just started, even though there’s no sound of water trickling off of the roof and pelting onto the windows. The only thing she can hear is music. More of a soft melody though, sort of cryptic. It’s clashing with the rock tune playing through the bars’ speakers.

And then Lyne is choking. Ality jerks out of her stare, as if waking from a dream, as her friend falls out of her chair. Ality doesn’t know what’s going on, and neither does Lyne. Ality doesn’t hold back her sobs as Lyne stops moving, eyes blank and glossy as they stare blankly at the ceiling.

Ality calls an ambulance. They arrive in record time. There’s nothing they can do.

They take the body of her friend away. They pull her in for questioning.

This butterfly is thin and weak looking. It’s a violet ombre to black; one-fourth of the left wing is all black with dots and a strip of white. Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it stops moving. Lyne blinks again and both the insects are gone. The melody ceases as well. Lyne can no longer feel the breeze that rustled her notebooks’ pages, that caused a sway in her coiled curls.

At the bar towards the end of her night out, Ality sees a man outside the business.

“Hey, Lyne. Don’t be weird about it, but

Lyne looks more scared than she’s ever seen her, dark eyes wide and unblinking. “It’s in my drink.”

Ality looks down. There’s nothing in the glass beside the fruity drink ordered nearly an hour ago. The glass isn’t even half empty yet. Ality looks back towards the front of the pub, startling a bit when

Though her eyes don’t stray from the man outside in the rain, she sees something else. A dark, feathering thing, flying down and landing on the shoulder of the man. Then another on the crown of his head. And another on his hand, slowly stretching out to point into the building. He’s pointing at her, at the–

There’s a butterfly in Lyne’s drink. It’s purple with an ombre that fades to black towards the base of the wings. One-fourth of the left wing is completely black, with white spots and a strip in the center and edges. It’s dead.

Ality sits with a styrofoam cup of disgusting coffee in hand in a blank room with too bright lights.

The lights are almost too bright for her to notice the large and full orange and black butterfly sneak through the crack in the door.

To have another language is to possess a second soul. –Charlemagne