Post by corruptpudding on Jul 25, 2015 21:05:28 GMT -5
Chasing Butterflies
Briseis had been keeping an eye on a chrysalis for the past week and, to her great dismay, comes across it's torn and empty remains after the butterfly has grown it's wings and flown away. In an attempt to cheer her up, her mother Lilith and little brother Taavi offer to help her look for the butterfly throughout the Summer Fields.
Red, orange, green? Or a yellow one with black stripes as she had seen yesterday? Maybe, the little roan mare thought to herself, the tinniest of smiles tickling the edge of her lips, it would be blue? She loved blue. It was the color of a cloudless sky, a clean lake, and blue jay feathers. It was a safe color. You just couldn't go wrong with blue. Briseis had stumbled across a shiny green and silver cocoon earlier in the week while grazing in the summer fields with her family close by. She eventually found herself beneath the branches of a spindly conifer where the gleaming chrysalis had caught her eye amid it's low branches. Everyday afterward she headed back to the same spot to check its progress and grazed nearby it, determined to see the pretty insect hatch into it's elegant new form.
Maybe- her thoughts were cut off as a sudden rustling began in a nearby shrub. The blue roan froze and ducked her head, ears back and eyes bright with anxious anticipation. Oh for the love of Olde unicorns it was probably a quiver back come to eat her at last! But wait...a quiver back couldn't fit into such a small shrub could it?
OH GREAT. It was probably a baby quiver back which meant the mother had to be close by and then she would be eaten.
Luckily for her, both assumptions proved false as a little brown squirrel leapt from the shrubbery, fled past her hooves, and raced up the trunk of her lone conifer. She trotted cautiously after the creature, keeping a sharp lookout for anymore false alarms. She calmed down as she spotted a few of her siblings scattered close by and her mother grazing only a few yards off. As long as she kept them in sight she would be fine. Just fine.
Reaching the base of the tree, Briseis inspected the cocoon, but the happiness it usually brought her was shattered after only a glance. The once beautiful, shiny chrysalis had dulled in color and luster and a big tear ran down it's middle, revealing it's lack of occupants.
A panic welled in her chest and quickly swam to her throat where it burned and triggered hot, acrid tears that blurred her vision. Her breathing accelerated and any attempt to shove down her disappointment, her sadness, her worry was overridden by a tumultuous wave of loss. When would she ever get the chance to watch another butterfly hatch? Chrysalises were so hard to find! She might die of old age before anything as great as watching a butterfly hatch ever happened to her again. HER LIFE WAS HORRIBLE. At this point the tears overflowed and dripped down her face in a mini-rainstorm, watering the roots of the conifer like a spring shower. It may seem silly, but she'd grown fond of the butterfly too. Even if she couldn't see it, she had known it was there, and felt assured for whatever reason that the pretty insect would wait for the arrival of it's equine friend before hatching and flying away.
A few silent sobs shook her shoulders and she stifled a gasping sort of wail, all that managed to escape her sorrow stricken body were a few miserable squeaks and whimpers.
Her sullen pity-party was interrupted only by the chattering of the squirrel above her as it leapt from branch to branch and the soft sound of her herd mates brushing through the grasses of the summer field, murmuring to one another and oblivious to the dramatic misery unfolding nearby.