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Diane hadn't noticed when Mouse and Vishnee-Set had sneaked Niko off somewhere, so she was a bit surprised that he was absent when she awoke. She hoped he was feeling better. Mouse sat down cross-legged and looked at the Talespinner as she slowly came back to consciousness. She sat up, her tail swishing across the floor. "What's wrong, Mouse?"
Mouse shook her head slightly. It was the wrong question. "Look," she said to Diane, holding the butterfly closer. "Yellow. Pretty. Story?"
"Huh?" said Diane, sleepy and confused. She heard a chittering sound and saw the rat perched on Mouse's shoulder. "Yes, it's a pretty butterfly, Mouse."
The rat chittered again, and Mouse smiled. "Rat says, talk like people, she no hear wolf talk."
Diane whuffed softly and said, in clear English, "Okay. So, what's the story about this butterfly, then?"
"You tell," said Mouse.
Affinity's lavender eyes widened at the human-sounding voice coming from the wolf's mouth. How incredibly weird, but cool.
Diane nodded, then stretched, and returned to her sitting position. "So you want me to tell you a story? About a butterfly?" Mouse nodded, smiling. Diane continued, "Sure." She thought for a minute, recalling a story she'd heard once. She could easily alter it to contain butterflies.
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Once upon a time, there was a woman who was very lonely. She had not always been so alone, but one day she had discovered a vast treasure in her basement, and become rich. There were stacks of gold coins that rivalled those in the greatest treasuries and fortunes of all time. At first, the discovery had made her happy. She no longer had to fear poverty, or starvation, or any deprivation at all: she could and did buy anything she wanted.
After a while, though, she began to believe that every friend she had wanted her gold. It started with little things, she would offer to buy them whenever she noticed they were in need or want of something she could so easily get for them. They asked for more and more, and she began to believe they did not care for her, but only for her wealth. So she cut them off one by one and soon was alone.
The only friends she had left, of a sort, were butterflies. She loved butterflies, and they could not possibly be after her gold coins, because they were so light that they could not even lift a single coin. She planted flowers that attracted the colorful creatures, and spent hours in her garden watching them flit from one flower to another. She was still very lonely, because butterflies could not converse, could not embrace, in fact she could barely even touch them for fear of destroying their delicate wings. She could watch them though, and she did. They brought her the only pleasure left in her life.
One day she was down in her basement, reassuring herself that her hoard of gold coins had not been disturbed. The stacks on stacks shone with a brilliance almost as beautiful as that of the butterflies. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she was sure she saw the flutter of wings. She turned, and a golden butterfly was there, in her basement. Its color matched her coins. It was so beautiful her heart ached to see it.
Then, startling her again, it spoke. "Hello, Friend."
"I must be hearing things," she said aloud. "Butterflies can't talk."
"I am here to grant you one wish," said the butterfly. There was no point in it arguing that it could too talk, beyond simply continuing to do so.
"Oh!" the woman said. "A magic butterfly?"
"What is your wish?" said the butterfly again.
The woman felt the wish well up from her heart, bringing tears to her eyes. "I wish I had a friend, someone I could talk to, and we could share our joys and sorrows with one another, and I would always know this friend loved me for myself, and not for my gold."
"Your wish is granted," said the butterfly, and golden sparkling dust slowly expanded from its wings to fill the entire basement. As the dust settled onto the gold coins, pairs of them rose into the air and became the two wings of a butterfly. At first slowly, then gaining momentum, the coins transformed into golden butterflies. The woman soon could not make out the original talking butterfly in the swarms.
"No!" she cried, watching her gold vanish in a flurry of wings. "My gold!" But there was no taking back the wish.
Soon the basement was full of the butterflies that had been coins. They landed in her hair, on her clothes, and flew in waves and ellipses around the cold walls. She felt intensely that it was wrong to keep the butterflies all trapped in here, so she opened the door to the upstairs for them, then the door to the outside. A golden cloud of butterflies followed her, as she went out into her front yard amid them. She watched, smiling through tears, as they flew into the sky, though quite a few did not go so far, but visited the flowers in her yard instead.
A neighbor came out and saw all the butterflies, then hurried over to the woman. She had an awed expression. "That was amazing," she said, "They are so delicate and beautiful." She smiled at the woman then. "It's nice to meet you. I just moved in down the road." She gestured toward her house. "What's your name?"
The woman told her name, then hugged her neighbor, who returned the hug. "I don't know how they got inside," she told the neighbor, "but I couldn't keep them in there. They had to be free." The neighbor agreed, and they talked back and forth for hours after that, sitting in the woman's yard and watching the golden butterflies feast on the flowers.
They became very good friends. The wish had been granted in full.