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.

[guest2]

Heh. Yeah, I wrote this one...

I'm sorry I made it so ambiguous. It's the kind of story where even reading too much into things won't be enough, so I'll guess I'll explain it a bit.

Every person in the story is a part of myself, and of people from real life. Some bits of dialogue are actually taken verbatim from real life. Also, I made every line mean something, even if it doesn't seem like it does.

It's a sad story, though. Much like real life.

Butter flies aaaand swoons like butterflies

This is the most important line. It's inspired by the one I used to love so very much, who said I was going to be her butterfly forever, and I said she was my flower who'd never let me fade away, and that it was the other way around too! (I was her flower too. )

But in the end it wasn't to be. The promise of butterflies turned into flying butter that went splat.

The old Elf in the story is the part of me that was once so full of dreams and hopes, but that was pushed into a cellar somewhere in the end. To just stay somewhere in the darkness and cling onto memories. He's what remains of childish dreams when they are swept up by the world.

The girl in the story is a distant memory of the person I loved. Let me explain.

It's been a while, but I still think of my love all of the time... I often find myself in bed alone just saying words like "my pretty bunny... the prettiest bunny in the world," because that's another thing that I used to call her. To her, though, I am a stranger now, a stranger she "doesn't like at all," and all the beautiful words she used to say, like "I would rather die than ever stop loving you," and so on. They're just nothing now. Like she said herself, "love is just dust in the wind."

So as the girl in the story is an amalgamation of different aspects of different times of that person, it would not have been fair for her not to be distant towards the Elf.

And what the girl says is just what comes into her mind. She says little, but what she says is "just never, ever, ever forget about love."

The real person taught me how to dream and love. But that random poem directed to the Dwemer is the only figment of the lingers of the hopes she breathed in me. Just a few elusive words not even directed to the Elf himself, but... they mean something.

Does this make sense? I hope it does.

The Elf agreeing with her is like holding her hand in the darkness. Like the real person was going to hold my hand through whatever darkness there was going to be, the darker the tighter.

"Why did you curse me?". That means, in real life terms... "Why did you bring back a piece of me? Why do you remember me?".

"I came here to be alone not wanting to be alone. I wanted to listen to a silent story without the noise." Those words are him talking to himself. They sound strange, but that's what he wants. He still has his dreams, he knows they'll never come true, but he brings them back sometimes so he's not alone.

I would have described the place he lives in, but it didn't feel like it... mattered so much.

When the girl wakes up is when no one is holding my hand any longer. And that total shift of attitude is just what happens when "only the strong survive"... And you ask yourself, "wait, how did this happen?". And it just did.

The girl in the story, besides being an echo of a memory, is also a reflection of the others who grow cold because it is the only route you can take.

And then I have to ask myself: do I become like that? Do I forget that self of mine that's broken and renew myself and disbelieve all of the things that make up my beliefs?

Or do I just stay there, and wait? And die? Die inside.

In real life, I did tell her. "I've been walking around the city. I've been looking for a building to jump off of, because I just can't live without you."

And to her, I had somehow become a stranger by that point. But she said she would die too if I died.

She wouldn't.

The adventurer that comes around and kills the Elf embodies life, and the natural way of things. Why? Because life doesn't wait for you or your dreams.

Being an adventurer is the typical role that you, the player, assume in the TES world, and an analogy to whatever role is typically assumed by people in life.

I said she wouldn't die if I died, but she would feel sorry. And that's what the ending is about, after all.

Ultimately, the girl herself is a self of mine, too. The adventurer is a self of mine too.

And there are other bits that... I haven't explained. Little things like "Tick tock. Mild clock noise feet away," which signifies not so much the presence of a clock as the passage of time that is still not yet so far away, because it's "mild."

And I didn't mean to waste time with "Nothing said, until he said it," like a former poster said. Those words, redundant as they are, were meant to show a realization of sorts of the Elf's.

There would be more to explain... but it's probably not worth it.

I'm sorry if you didn't like it. I'm not a good writer. If you liked it, thank you. If you did not... Thank you still.