December 4, 2023 • 2,433 words • 12 min read
Butterfly
The sandy trail brings them adjacent to a vast and empty estuary. A mile in front lay wind-sculpted dunes covered in an ashy beachgrass, the sharp kind that cuts when you run through it. Two figures, a man, followed by a woman, trudge towards the distant hills of sand, their outline silhouetted against the setting sun.
As they walk, the woman glances up at him, seeing the back of his hair, which is dark and dashed with grey. She is eager to see his face, she is yearning to know what he is thinking. He knows she is looking, but he does not look back. Today he is lost at sea, and she cannot find him.
He is quiet and tangled in thought. In fact, he is drowning in thought, as he most often is. As always very little can lift him from this slump. To the woman, his quiet is deafening; a noise without sound. His eyes glaze over, and his face becomes passive and stoic, a sight she is familiar with. Behind the glaze, invisible pathways are drawn, crossed out, circled and scrapped until a meshed web of thought envelopes his consciousness, shielding him from connection to reality; to her.
The woman follows a few paces behind, feeling unnerved by the silence that is suspended between them. She asks him again, even though she has already asked him more than twice today.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine honestly, please.”
She pushes, “Just, you seem quiet, I can always tell when something’s up, just like you can with me.”
“Sometimes I’m just quiet and that’s it, there isn’t always something wrong. I can’t be on all the time, I can’t be the way you want me to be all the time, it’s impractical.”
“Stop! I’m trying to help you, I haven’t done anything wrong.” Her eyes widen, he can see the pain on her face but, to him, the words bite.
“I never said you’d done anything wrong. Come on, let’s just keep going. Please.”
It often went like this, if either of them were feeling uneasy in some way, the other would immediately notice. They had an almost twin-like instinct for the other’s mood, to the point where he or she would notice pain in the other’s eyes before they noticed it within themselves. But they are not mind readers, seeing pain is not knowing pain, and this is where the problem lies. Although they understood each other on so many levels, and felt each other’s emotional afflictions, there are times when they feel so misunderstood by the other that it physically hurts.
The atmosphere is tense as they approach the base of the dunes, which rise high and obscure their view of the marshlands running east along the coast. Rain brushes their already flushed faces. Colder now than before, they both want to turn around and head back to the car, but neither of them says.
As they climb the first dune, the space between them grows, the steps are hard and the sand moves under them as they stride upward. The path is long and the summit of the first dune feels no closer after ten minutes of climbing. She follows his footsteps exactly, her eyes are glued to the ground, her thoughts glued to him. With each step, she plants her foot into the outline of his shoe.
Eventually, she is closing in on the top, still following the imprints of his feet; still her eyes pinned to the floor. She breathes quickly, her heart audibly thumping in her chest as she climbs the final steps. “It’s harder than it looks…” she pants. There is no reply. The crest of the dune flattens, raising her head, she sees that she is alone. The man has gone.
He has walked on out of sight, she thinks. She shouts for him across the dunes but is met with nothing but the sea breeze in her ears and the faint rumble of the incoming tide. It seems to her that it’s too early for the tide to be coming in. They had planned to circle back along the beach but it’ll be impassable by the time they reach it. Around her, the dunes undulate, peaks and troughs at shifting heights make the trail hard to see. She scours the ground for his footprints, but the sand is clean and level. The silence lingers, and she decides to move on, walking deeper into the dunes as the sky darkens and her eyes struggle to adjust to the fading light.
It has now been fifteen minutes since she realised she was alone, she shouts louder and harder but her cries are lost among impenetrable hills. The sound waves are sent and just as quickly swallowed by the unforgiving sand. She continues further into the dunes, disquieted. Either the path is difficult to make out, or completely gone, she can no longer tell. Her thumping chest hastens in distress as she seeks out any sign that the man has passed this way, so far finding nothing. She judges she must be around three miles from the car now.
She descends into a basin of sand as the light patter gives way to much heavier rain. It beats loudly on her waxed raincoat and fills her boots, soaking her socks cold. Where could the man be? She thinks. It wasn’t even an argument, nothing like their usual, nothing that would make him take off without a word, no matter how impulsive he is. She aches to be walking next to him again, or better yet to be sitting beside him in the car with the heating on full blast and the seat warmers fired up. She decides to turn back, thinking if he is lost he will wait for her by the car. She stumbles back up the basin, the sky now a dark navy, the faded outline of the Milky Way takes up her vision as she ascends. She reaches the top and weaves her way back through the beachgrass on the other side. She can hardly make out the ground beneath her, as she stumbles in the undergrowth. Her steps become erratic as her increasing doubt grows heavier. Her right foot falls awkwardly on a concealed rock beneath the sand, her ankle twists and her knee drops low, forcing her body downward in one full motion.
She must have been standing on a ridge as her fall evolves into a roll. She tumbles through the grass down the side of the dune and falls into a gloom. She sees no sky, no stars and the rain has ceased. She is covered. She feels around for something to grip, a tree branch or thick chunk of grass, but there’s nothing but sand and blackness around her.
Alone. The familiar feeling washes over her. A dark cloud obfuscating her reality. She is abandoned, a circumstance that is rooted and engraved in her psyche, through distant memory. Her silent screams beneath the thick dark cloud are reminiscent of a louder, more tangible past. The panic she is intimately familiar with sets in. Whenever he leaves her, it is devastatingly dark. Her chest tightens, the rising irrationality inside her is unstoppable. She cries out, her face contorted with adolescent distress, as she cradles herself beneath the sand. Her arms clasped around her, eyes closed.
He’s gone, she thinks. He’s gone, and this time, he’s not coming back. She knows this within herself, even if it may not be reality. Reality is broken for her and she can see only her thoughts. Her greatest deceivers, they are powerful and infinitely creative, with exponential growth. She lays still for a while, sobbing in her cocoon. The situation feels inescapable, as it always does.
As she lays, a numbness develops in her lower body and she looks down, feeling around in the dark. She runs her hands over her legs and feels a large weight, it is rough like bark and spans wide over her. Suddenly there is pain. Sharp and excruciating pain on her upper thighs. Something heavy is pinning her to the ground. She shifts her weight left and right, and pushes at the object but it is immovable. A different kind of desperation sets in. This truly is dangerous, she thinks. A new pragmatism swells with the prospect of real danger. She estimates how long they have been separated for, and gives a guess at the time. Seven? Eight? She can’t be sure. It’s completely dark outside and she could have been in the basin for some time. She reaches into her pockets for her phone but they are empty, she has left it in the car.
She lays for a while in thought. For all her shouts and screams, there has been nothing in return. No reply, no sounds, and the man has not returned. The desperation grows just as a wave of tiredness approaches her body. The tidal lethargy is almost calming. She could sleep, she thinks. She knows that when she feels alone, an easy escape is sleep. Unconsciousness is often her saviour, as she supposes it is for others.
She wakes to a tickling sensation on top of her nose. It is pitch dark as she opens her eyes. She is still lying on her back, and the weight of the object remains, although the pain is dull now. It has been hours, it must have been. Feeling the grogginess and disorientation of a long afternoon nap, she rubs her eyes as they adjust to the darkness. Her vision is void but for something. There is a faint light directly in the centre of her field of view. Her eyes narrow and the light softly brightens as she focuses on it, and then dims again at a consistent luminosity. Softly lit by the light, is a short black line attached to a dark body, about 3 cm long. In the body are two antenna-like lines, with two tiny black spheres staring intently at her. They’re like eyes, she thinks. For some reason, she feels no fear.
A warming sensation from the tip of her nose flows through her head and deep into her body, quelling the pain in her legs and soothing her mind. She is no longer worried about the man, or the object on her legs, or even where she is and how long she’s been there. Her attention is entirely focussed on the dimmed light and the apparent living being on her nose. The light lifts slightly and drifts towards her legs. It settles down on the centre of the object that traps her, glowing brighter again for a second before fading to black.
It’s nudging me, she thinks. Deciding to trust her instinct, and the warm sensations in her body, she once again puts her hands on the object on top of her and pushes hard. This time it moves without much effort, sliding off her legs and in front of her feat. There is no pain. When she runs her hands over her legs she can feel a raised bruise forming, she presses down on it – nothing. The light floats above her, dancing delicately before drifting vertically up and once again out of sight. She looks up to where the light disappeared and reaches out with her hands. Her right hand touches what feels like a thick branch. Taken by surprise, she gasps and grips onto it hard, pulling it towards her. It doesn’t budge. Using both hands now, she pulls herself upwards, positioning herself on her knees. The light glows again above her, dances periodically and again starts drifting. It moves to her right hand-side, and then upwards again, into the distance. It fades once more, but not into darkness. Beyond the position of the light is something even brighter. A more consistent source of illumination. It’s daylight, she smiles to herself.
It’s not too far to the surface. She climbs upwards through the dissipating darkness, reaching the opening above. The small light is gone, replaced unmistakably by a butterfly, with deep navy coloured wings. It flits in front of her as she surfaces from the hole in which she fell, she realises it is slight and only just wide enough for her to fit. As she stands upright, her eyes squint against the light of the day. The butterfly settles itself on her arm, flapping its wings sedately as it calms upon her.
The woman redirects her eyes from the butterfly to her surroundings. The dunes are the same as yesterday, although lit by the morning light, they are soothing, like physical sine waves. The butterfly wakes from its brief rest and once again rises up, just as it did in darkness. She is focussed now, her mind empty with only a subconscious knowledge that the being in front of her is important. The butterfly waves its wings again and moves on down the path beside her. She dutifully follows. As she steps she feels no desire to call out to the man again, and no desire to find him. The anxiety she felt before the hole has been diluted to transparency, her mind clear and present and liquid. She moves with a knowing fluidity along the path, her eyes fixated on the butterfly as it flies on in front, gracefully bouncing up and down, working effortlessly with the light breeze.
It’s not long until she approaches the car park that she left yesterday. The car is there, unmoved and untouched. She does not hesitate as she walks purposefully towards the driver’s door and opens it. She sits herself down onto the soft leather and switches the engine on using the keys from her pocket. The dashboard lights up and the engine rumbles a low growl. On the passenger seat, her phone lies, plugged into the USB port on the dash. It lights up as the car eeks the battery into life.No missed calls.
No unread messages. Just one notification on display. “On this day”. The phone sits in a silent taunt. She taps the screen open and there he is in front of her, beaming up at her from behind the glass. That unflinching smile, a relic of days gone by. She smiles back at the screen, then raises her head in search of her guide. She looks back and forth and behind her but cannot see it. The warmth in her body remains and she closes her eyes. Despite the darkness; she can see now. The light inside is on.