Chains of Butterflies

Chains of Butterflies: Chapter 2

I looked out the window to the meadow where the real Silvers was grazing. She looked up, her white blaze shining gold in the morning sunrise. I waved and she dipped her head and resumed grazing. I laughed to myself. On her to-do list in the morning, greeting old friends was not very high compared to eating. Not quite a bad custom I thought as my stomach growled.

I worked my way out of the dorm, careful not to disturb any the other sleeping girls and padded out onto the landing and down the wooden steps to the study. The door was firmly shut and creaked slightly as I opened it. I peered in side. The missus was slumped on her desk, yellow papers scattered and a smashed earthenware jug next to her on the ground. The room stank suspiciously of ale. I sniffed the air delicately. It was definitely ale.

I walked out of the odorous study and down to the broom cupboard in the laundry. There I found a dustpan and brush which I promptly took upstairs to clean up the mess. I knelt on the hard, uneven, wooden floor and began sweeping at the roughly broken pieces of jug. Surveying the room, I noted in dismay that it would take years to finish collecting all the bits and pieces of cups and bottles of ale that had been dropped unwillingly by their holder who was drunk senseless. 

Soft footsteps on the stairs told me that Laera was now out of bed also. A head of flame-coloured curls with their sleepy eyes peeked into the study.

"The missus was at it again?” she sighed, "but since when has she ever been sober in the past years." She smiled at me in between rubbing her brilliant green eyes to get rid of the sleep. She was still waking up. I picked up the dust pan that contained the broken pieces of the bottles and walked out of the study, shutting the door firmly behind me. The others don't need to see it. I thought.

I walked, with Laera, down the stairs to the kitchen. Laera immediately began getting out the pots and pans and cooking breakfast. She knew the routine so well and had so many recipes in her head she could do it while sleeping. This was lucky considering that she looked like she hadn't totally woken up yet.

I picked up the wicker basket that had been resting on the bench and walked out the bottle-green side door. The first thing that I noticed and always noticed in spring was the colour. The colours and sounds of the garden, of birds chirping, singing, whistling, of the soft fall of blossoms onto the pool around the cherry blossom tree. Then there was the soft pat of my bare feet against the pavers, the hum of the bees busily collecting the nectar from the flowers, all in harmony with each other around me. I strolled down the meandering path of stones that were, like my body, beginning to feel the warmth of the glorious morning sun. I closed my eyes and continued to walk, unafraid of straying from the path, after travelling down it so many times that the memory was engraved into my muscles. 

Pat, pat, pat, pat... splash.

I opened my eyes in delight and glanced down at where my feet stood in the pink blanketed water around the cherry blossom tree. The water felt cool and calm in comparison to the warmth of the clay pavers and the pink blossoms, which had seemed bright at first, but then had paled next to the lavish colours of the surrounding garden. I splashed through the water to the stone bench that encircled the tree. I sat down, relaxed up against the trunk and closed my eye. Even this early in the morning, the birds had already begun to sing, the flowers were opening and the insects were humming.

All in perfect harmony… I could see the threads of dream magic in the blackness through my other eye. The dreams were all fading as the sun rose higher, banishing the dreams of the sleepers...

I let my thought wander back to the dream that I had experienced… Poor Laera… If it had just been a dream than it would be better. But so many things about her that I had always questioned fitted perfectly into place. The reason she had a woven basket that she never used or had in fact, ever opened, why she had Silvers, her horse that we all had learned to love and respect...