De Witte Vlinder

• Luna Hoctin Boes, Grade 8, Collingwood College
• Short Story
• 2017

Excellence Award in the 'Spread The Word 2017' competition

The little girl walked happily through the mystic green woods on her own, counting her small steps with the new numbers she had learned today at the Mary Houston Kindergarten for Young Souls.
‘Five, six, eight, ten and one ten and two ten…’ no further could the little girl, with strawberry blond hair, turquoise eyes and porcelain skin, count. As she continued on her way, a little wobbly on her small feet, she saw a small butterfly flying silently through the air, slowly fluttering across her face.
As young as the little girl was, she then got distracted from her path and followed this little white creature through the grass. But as she was walking, she did not notice her small feet carrying her away from the path that lead home.
After a while of following this beautiful butterfly deeper and deeper into the now dark and gloomy woods, with trees swaying dangerously from side to side and branches slowly tilting and loudly breaking, she suddenly stumbled over a small branch lying on the ground.
Losing sight of her small friend and waking up from the hypnotizing spell she had just been under, the little girl had the realisation of her surroundings slowly morphing into her as she then became scared because of the enormous and intimidating black trees dancing around her. “Mama… mama? I can’t find you!” The lonely girl cried while shielding her eyes so she couldn’t see the intimidating trees anymore.
After a while, when the air felt more calm and serene, the girl opened her eyes to see a completely different landscape around here.
She was in the middle of a beautiful daisy field with colourful flowers growing richly and thousands of white butterflies flying through the clear blue sky, animals jumping and grazing everywhere.
A soft soothing voice whispered over and over again: “It seems so alluring although so dangerous.” While a shimmering river as beautiful as the goddess Aphrodite flew peacefully through the landscape.
The girl’s mouth opened in awe but she quickly closed it when the landscape changed once again. This time when she blinked her eyes she was found herself on the path leading home, with a beautiful branch in her hand that suspiciously looked like the one she had tripped over earlier but now the branch had a friendly snake hugging it with his long green body.
The little girl continued her way home, skipping like nothing had ever happened.
Today the only memory the girl with strawberry blond hair has left of this vision is the sentence:
‘It seems so alluring although so dangerous’
But if you’d look very closely to the girl’s irises, instead of only seeing turquoise you would now also see a green snake slithering around in her left iris and a white butterfly fluttering around in her right iris.
The End.
The title ‘De Witte Vlinder’ means ‘The White Butterfly’ in Dutch.