Blood Red Butterfly
Rena's eyes flickered slowly open as she felt the gentle breeze caressing her cheeks. Hovering inches over her face was the most beautiful blood-red butterfly. She lay very still so as not to disturb it as it gently lowered itself towards the soft, white skin of her face, but she almost giggled out loud when its tiny legs landed on the tip of her nose, and tickled like the touch of the finest goose feather. She stared hard at it, and laughed softly as one butterfly became two when her eyes crossed and then back to one again as she uncrossed them, and then she tried to touch it with her tongue, but despite stretching it as far as it would go, she couldn't manage to reach.
After a short while it fluttered gently from her nose and landed on the stone sill of the old castle arrow slit, and she struggled awkwardly from the stone crypt where she had slept away the day on this last stage of her long journey before she could start the long trek to Utopia.
The soft light of the moon dribbled through the crumbling arrow slit and made weird shadows with the broken masonry that lay strewn across the slate of the floor and she stumbled two or three times as she sleepily joined the butterfly at the opening.
Stretching endlessly behind her was the hard and stony road that was the last stage of the first part of her long journey, ahead lay the road to Utopia which ran straight until it disappeared in the distance. It was a road that she had to follow alone, and she had left everyone behind on one still and moonless night and secretly begun her long trek into her future.
With a sad sigh she waved her hands, the air shimmered and suddenly she disappeared, replaced first by a cloud of gray smoke and then by a small, delicate bat. The ancient Chinese style, silken gown she had borrowed from one of the uninterested inhabitants of the broken tombs the night before fluttered softly to the ground, and she thought, "Drats! I liked that gown too, why can't I change the clothes as well, just like they used to in the old movies?" She sighed deeply, “I might be going to live forever, but it gets damned cold wandering around stark naked, and that gown made me look so slim and sexy too."
With a slight twist of her body, she spun around and flapped out of the tight arrow slit, startling the sleeping butterfly as she passed, and flapped lopsided, weaving from side to side down towards the road. "It is so hard to fly just after you wake up” She grumbled to herself. She was glad there was no one around to see because her early morning flying had always made her feel embarrassed. "Especially with a certain man bat around,” she thought with a blush.
Suddenly her thoughts were shattered as from out of nowhere a large, slightly gray male bat came hurtling towards her. He flew around her in circles and did perfectly executed loop-the-loops in front of her, flew on his back for a short while and then landed beside her with a perfect two point landing as her own feet stumbled to a stop on the dirt of the road.
"You, you, you show-off!" She screeched at him in her high pitched bat voice, and then the air flashed and sparked as she changed back to human form, her finger waving in the air wildly as he back pedaled quickly to keep out of her way.
She was so angry that her whole body glowed a deep shade of red from head to toe, and he quickly changed to human form to save his over sensitive bat ears from her angry yelling, and then stood there with his head hanging sheepishly and shuffling from foot to foot, desperately wishing he had not shown off.
"How 'dare' you follow me." she screamed in anger, her fangs flashing white in the moonlight. "Just who do you think you are?" But he looked so sad and sorry for himself that she soon began to calm down, and span around so that her back was towards him and he could not see the grin that was creeping over her face. She listened to his mumbled apologies as the large blood-red butterfly again caught up with her and landed on her arm.
Finally, she relented, and with a barely hidden grin, she took his arm and said, "Well, as long as you're here you might as well come along. A road worth traveling is worth traveling with a friend." He smiled, still shyly, fearing that she had not yet finished berating him, and nodded his acceptance, and she was glad he had followed her, she had missed him every day, but she wasn't going to admit it.
Two vampires and a blood-red butterfly, at the beginning of the long road to Utopia, neither knew what tomorrow might hold, but they would face it together.
