THE CROW AND MARIPOSA

As funerary practices were evolving the world over, the crow, coated in

glossy, pitch black plumage, was going about his business doing...crow stuff

...that crows usually do, when suddenly, he laid his chestnut eyes upon

a significant animal. This creature was much smaller than he, bearing two

pairs, on either side of her body, of multicolored wings, now in its most

evolved form, gliding through the air.

The insect is regarded by society as holy, having a connection between

the human realm and the realm of the Jolían gods, starting off as

a minute worm-like creature that could only move by crawling slowly

along the barky surface of a tree branch, then engulfing itself in a

silk covering and emerging as a creature of the air, landing only on flowers

in order to ingest the nectar and pollen that the plants birth.

The crow sat on the branch of a laurel tree close to the butterfly.

“Hello there, holy creature,” he spoke to the insect. “By what

name do your own kind call you?” “I am known as Mariposa,”

the insect answered. The two animals became instant friends.

For a few minutes, they got to know more about one another's lives.

The glorious black crow mentioned how he was responsible for saving

all the animals from the incredible wrath of frosty Snö, daughter of

Reîn and Còd. This tale impressed Mariposa greatly.

The two enjoyed their few minutes together. When suddenly, out of nowhere,

a Boeing 747 flew by and, while sparing the crow, mowed Mariposa into

tiny, minute little shredded pieces of butterfly, gently falling to earth.

The crow was horrified at this sudden change in events. The beautiful,

godly, mighty butterfly that he had known for barely a few minutes

had departed the world of the living. Sullenly, the crow flew back

to the branch where he had first met Mariposa.

Waiting until the middle of the night, halfway after the wheel-hoofed

horses pull all-encompassing Ürt towards the dark domain of sane Mun

yet intermediate of the time when the rosy-fingered dawn would make her

presence obvious in her father the sky, the crow painted the branch where

he had first encountered Mariposa black, as dark and glossy as he.

That way, he knew that the day that the butterfly died came to an end.

On the branch, he had removed photographs of him and Mariposa from the

extremely short time they had known one another from the branch, covering

them in discarded newspaper sheets, and placing them in a nearby drawer.

Although it wasn't very long, it felt like a lifetime since evil Slìp, brother of

evil Dët, son of rayless Naít, came to relieve the crow of his gloom, even briefly.

The crow remained haunted by the small memory of Mariposa; he couldn't

do anything he liked or anything he needed to even survive. At long last,

the despondent and amort crow lost all hope and was drained of all happiness,

before finally wilting away, dissolving into minutes pieces of ash, freely

blowing and flowing through the cold, windy air, doomed to be forgotten.

This was the fib that the crow planned to tell the next passerby he encountered.