vignette ~ Butterfly Tree

She lay on her back under the wispy tree, watching the butterflies as they wandered from branch to branch. The butterflies seemed to love the tree -- they spent time in other trees, but always returned to this one. She knew they did, because the butterflies all had slight differences in their coloring which allowed her, or any others who wished to take the time to observe, to note which was which and so to keep track of them.

She liked one of them in particular, a small green one with lavender and blue spots. At times it was iridescent, but usually it was a muted swirl of soft colors which blended in nicely with the flowers in and near the tree. Mentally she had named the butterfly Pal, a shortened version of palette, since the colors which ran across the surface of its wings were a mixture of some of her favorites.

Oh Pal, what do you play, and where do you go, at the end of the day. The little ditty she had thought up drifted through her mind. It was something she always wondered about: the butterflies would be there and then, without a person even being aware it was happening, they would simply disappear. No matter how many times she watched for it and regardless of the season or the weather, it was always the same. They just disappeared. Sort of like what happened to me, she thought.

Almost a year had gone by since that afternoon ... It had been a beautiful spring day with lots of sunshine, fluffy little clouds, and friendly noises -- a tractor, a barking dog, a coal train going through the tunnel a mile away. She took a break from studying for her botany final to hang the clothes out to dry while her mom went to the store.

She loved botany, but Dodsen was the worst teacher she’d ever had. He was boring, egotistical, and graded like his class was the only one the students had to study for. And it seemed so wrong, since students PAID to go to the university and should be able to FIRE someone who wasn’t doing a good job. But it didn’t work that way and even though botany was her major, she actually had to force herself to study for that class. It didn’t take much to pry her away, and hanging clothes was her favorite thing to do -- right now anyhow.

She loved their small farm in the country -- there was no place else like it in the whole world. Not that she’d traveled the whole world, but she loved her home so much she had no desire to go anywhere else. After her dad died, she and her mom made some changes. The fields were rented out to old man Halley, the orchard was maintained by people from the coop, and the forest was left undisturbed so as to provide a buffer around the house and keep outsiders at bay.

A light breeze drifted through the yard that day, just enough to fan the sheets she was hanging and to ruffle the kitchen curtains. She remembered hearing her window chimes softly tinkling to each other. Donut, her faithful German Shepard, was lounging under the elm tree with his tongue out, watching the world go by.

No matter how often she thought about it, she couldn’t quite put together the events that led up to her... well, her journey. There she was hanging clothes and just being. Then she noticed her chimes. Then things got a little blurry and Donut barked twice. She had closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, but when she opened her eyes again her whole world was different.

With a gasp, she noticed several things in quick succession: the sky was deep blue overhead but pinkish-red near the horizon -- in all directions; her farm was gone; she was trying to run and scream maniacally at the same time. In pure panic mode she wildly girl-ran about 30 yards across the short field-grass before she tripped over a rock and fell.

She lay there whimpering, trying to catch her breath and make sense of what she was seeing. The sky was just not right. And not only was her farm gone, but there were no trees. She sat up and saw there were no phone lines, no roads, nothing which indicated people were nearby. There were no cell phone towers, no contrails, no noises ... where could she possibly be?

Slowly fear gave a little ground to fascination, and as her heart rate slowed she took a deep breath, stood up, and looked around. She almost felt like she needed to duck her head, what with the sky not being quite right, but it wasn’t hurting her so she tried to figure out if there was some place and something she could make into a shelter. Scanning the horizon, she slowly turned 360°, intent on finding something besides the grassy ground. There was only a stream.

Well, at least there’s water. She thought for a minute about what was happening and tried to come up with something logical. Or at least reasonable. I’m hallucinating. I hit my head. I had a stroke and I’m dying. I’ve traveled back in time. Oh god, I’ve traveled forward in time and the whole world has killed itself.

She finally stopped thinking and just stood still for about 5 minutes. When nothing happened she decided that night would come sooner or later and maybe she should figure out how to handle that -- where to sleep, what to eat, what to beware of. At least she wasn’t going to run out of things to think about and be bored like Dodsen’s class. This is better than Dodsen anyday ... probably ... maybe.