The Butterfly's Tale

A glasswing butterfly

This is homework for my writing group. I had to write something incorporating these seven words - we each chose one at random from the dictionary:

chance, butterfly, responsible, drab, firefly, tube, fastidious

The Butterfly’s Tale


(A very short story)

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you"

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Along with the hordes, an unusual butterfly flew in the just-opened carriage door of the London tube. A very rare irridescent glasswing butterfly that shone like sunlight on stained glass in colours of blue, green, rusty gold and white. Its effect amongst we travellers was like that of a rainbow on a dullish day.

Enlightened onlookers in the carriage suspected it to be a just-passed soul fluttering by, as they do, to comfort a grieving loved one.

(I knew better).

One lucky lady found a seat. If I was kind I would say she was nondescript but if I was honest I would say she was prim and proper looking, glasses perched on the edge of her nose, sad-eyed and clothes far too drab (a librarian?).

A man stood near to her and looked around with the air of someone who thought himself a wee bit superior. If I was kind I would say he was clean and smartly turned out but if I am to be honest he seemed to me dull and far too fastidious for his own good (an accountant?).

The atmosphere, which had previously been cheerless and dark, grew brighter as glowing sparks from the butterfly started to burn as it landed on the windowpane between the dull accountant and the sad librarian. Their eyes were drawn to it and then to each other and, as they say in books, a smile passed between them.

(We psychic ones call it energy).

I knew a passion was ignited in that moment and perhaps (as I have the Gift) only I saw it, but the butterfly was slowly undergoing a metamorphosis and its sparks became flames.

The creature had become a firefly.

(My spell had worked).

And then I too had a flash, a flash of the fortune teller, the true sign of a witch,

(It happens a lot).

In their future lives together as man and wife the dull but now happy accountant and the sad but now fulfilled librarian would describe how they met as pure Chance and Chance alone was responsible.

(But as I told you, I know better).