Butterfly, Being the seventh entry Options

[Alexander]

"Butter flies aaaand swoons like butterflies
Atop the sills from whence I tote my mind
And spill it out in candid ways unwise
That tend to bring proceedings to a grind
In steadfast looms of woozy clusters kept
By fingers that were born from colored naught,
But whereupon I dowsed myself then leapt
Away from all the nothings they had taught."

"What?"

Drifting windy silence, solace to the words and words a solace.

"It's me," he said, liveliness in his musty voice.

"Who?"

"Tell me a story."

"I can't think of one."

"You can."

"Yes?"

"Of lots of them."

He was right. Lots of them, golden pretty-smelling paper pages in my mind.

"Maybe. I'll try. Tell me why I can't open my eyes?"

"Nothing to see."

"Nothing interesting?"

"It's dark."

Nevermind. I felt relaxed all the same.

"I don't assume you're out to harm me or anything," I said.

"That's good. It means you're not naive."

Tick tock. Mild clock noise feet away.

"I was naive in thinking there was nothing to be naive about, then again, now wasn't I?"

"Not so much."

"You mean?"

But he hadn't an answer.

"I don't get excited easily," I said.

"Tell me a story," he asked.

"What kind of a story?"

"Not histrionic, but with cats."

My back hurt now from how it laid on the stone.

"There were once four cats."

"Whose cats?"

"The Emperor's," I said.

"Right."

"Very cute cats. One was in love with a cat in love with another cat avidly in love with the cat in love with the first one."

"What colors?"

"White, blackwhite, silver, whiteblack, that order."

"Genders?"

"No, they were in love with each other. Like, really in love."

"I don't understand."

"They were genderless cats. Gender wasn't a factor the way it is."

Nodded for effect.

"Sometimes you have love squares instead of triangles."

"What happened?"

"Well."

I bended forwards apologetically.

"Sometimes you're too busy with the one you love to notice anyone loving you."

I wasn't hungry.

"Should I probably tell you how you got here?" he said.

"I didn't know there was anyone here."

"Yes, exactly."

"No one lives in ruins and places like these."

"So you're not naive then, or do you think you are?"

"I might as well be," I decided.

"I cursed you."

"Why?" I said.

Nothing said, until he said it.

"I'm just a person, and sometimes we are lonely. Tell me a story."

"You like poetry."

"I do."

"Oh. Words to croon to Deep Elves." I recalled. "And all the sighs you bring yourself to dream away
Won't let their beauty take you by the hand
When lovelessness consumes your heart
Because it's made you safe to never love."

I opened my eyes, and it wasn't so dark. There was an old Elf staring at me. I was a girl.

"Why did you curse me?"

"I came here to be alone not wanting to be alone. I wanted to listen to a silent story without the noise."

"Will you let me go?"

"Indeed."

***

He wanted someone to listen to. But now I'd woken up, and was back to my old self, the self like other people's selves, that judges by who people are and not

by what they feel.

With that old saying that you know is true, that anyone can feel something, yet only few are something.

"What are your aspirations?" he asked.

"I don't have them. I have certainties."

"Which ones?"

"Architecture."

"What do you dream of?"

"Dying young and successful."

"Why would you want to die young?"

"I don't want to inspire pity."

"Do you think every straight road goes down?"

"Every road goes down."

"Can't you get off the road and head into the woods and flowers?"

"Still pity."

"Go up on a hill somewhere? And stare and those who go down."

"Not interesting."

"Pity is relative, thus universal, so what does it matter to you?"

"Well, if you want, you can keep the one meant for me."

***

You'd think the gods would make life nicer, but they're as clueless as the lot of us, if not moreso.

No, actually, the gods are petty like little brat boys. Boys, they pick on you and act superior, and then, once they grow up, they start touching you without your permission and you're disgusted by whatever thoughts are floating in their stupid minds. But at least they don't kill. At worst, they find an expression of their need for superiority in torturing animals. But they don't kill, even though they would if they could. The gods are pettier than them.

"Take care, and remember what you told me when you were dreaming. They were your words."

There shouldn't be anyone living in an abandoned ruin, and it had better not be someone who came there to read poetry and prey on a little bit of someone else. Had there really had to be something there, fate should at least have had the decency to provide a creature to hack me to pieces meaninglessly, like they are said to tend to, because then my death, albeit inconspicuous, would be vaguely interesting to myself. Though it would really mean nothing to no one, because everyone dies in the end, and everyone has died since the dawn of time, and those who don't or take longer to die - they bring injury to insult. And magic is an exclusive club and a joke.

Fate proclaimed, though, that a few weeks later an adventurer had to come and kill the Elf. He's excused, because that's what adventurers do. They kill people, on command or out of fun, and every now and then they kill someone who really deserves it, and are hence proclaimed heroes.

[guest]

Someone has been reading too much Neil Gaiman. This is interesting. The writer is a poet, not a story teller, but there is a story in there.

I think it's very Zen, but I'm not sure if I get it all – I'm not stupid, but some of this went far over my head. I liked the mood it created, but then certain bits didn't follow on from the line of questioning. I understand what the writer was trying to achieve because I've written like this before – I did almost an entire book with just the dialogue first, no description, just two people bouncing lots of questions off each other. It's like a game of questions (like from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead or Waiting for Godot). Is the writer a drama student? Too many non sequiturs to be able to follow everything that is going on.

It didn't bother me that there wasn't too much description, because I don't think the story was about that, but a little could have helped make the tale more accessible to others.

I did like this – I liked the story of the cats, but I didn't like how some of it was worded. Many of the sentences didn't make sense, poet again. The cat story could have been extended so that it made more sense. Perhaps I was waiting for the story to really start – like the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, who remembers the bit at the beginning? I thought the poem at the start didn't lead onto the rest of the story.

The title only seems to refer to the beginning and not the overall story, which I thought was about an elf that liked stories.

I think the ending lost it and because the situation became more solid, and past tense, it stopped the prose dead for me. I understand what was supposed to happen at the end to round it off, but that part was too rushed and in a different style from the rest which spoilt it for me. To sum up, beautiful dialogue, but lacking in description and ending a let down. 3rd place for me.