Hi! I'm italian so sorry in advance for the mistakes.
BUTTERFLY DUST
The man was immobile, his eyes shut tightly. He is sitting on the ground and he can see the sunshine through his closed eyelids. He breaths in the humid and sweet smelling air: it smells like summer, wheat and flowers. He can hear the cicadas chirruping. Where is he? Who is he? What is he doing there? Then, suddenly.
- DADDY!
A high pitched, childish voice perforates his right eardrum and small, persistent hands pull him.
Oh, yes, of course.
Kozmotis opens his eyes and turns to smile, showing all his teeth, to his daughter who is standing up at his right and pulling at his jacket with all her strength.
- Butterflies! You promised!
You uncross your legs and stand up in fluid movement. You are standing under the shadow of a massive oak, lonely guardian of the border between a green meadow dotted with red poppies and a field of golden ripe corn. A gentle breeze moves the grass and the poppies' scarlet corollas.
Your wife sits behind you. She is reading a book, her back against the massive oak bark. The picnic leftovers are abandoned on the tablecloth: spoils of war that the winning ants are taking back to their nest a crumble at a time. You look at her with amused exasperation. She answers with a smile full of love, her dark eyes shining with joy.
- Daddyyyyyyy!
Roaring you catch your daughter by her waist and lift her on your shoulder, dangling her upside down. She laughs and screams, thrilled. You feel her long black hair whips your back while her short legs, left uncovered by her light summer dress, hit you on the stomach.
- Daddy! Put me down!
You do a twirl and she stretchs out her arms as if she on the verge of taking flight.
You let her back on her feet. She staggers a little then she sinks her barefoot toes in the grass as she removes her black hair from her face, revealing penetrating green eyes and a long hooked nose just like yours. Her smile is radiant. She is missing a tooth and that window on her teeth fills you with melancholy because it wasn't there the last time you were home.
You knee and bent your head to look her in the eyes.
- Well. Where were we, Sera?
- Butterflies!
She shrieks.
You draw near your daughter, bending further, and whisper aloud to her conspiratorially.
- You circumvent the enemy and then I'll attack head on, pushing them in your direction.
She nods, smothering her laughs with the hands.
Your wife's voice reachs you.
- Be careful Sera, remember not to touch them. If you touch their wings, these poor creatures will be unable to fly again!
- I swear I won't mum! I'll be careful!
You place your index on your lips, commanding her to be silent, then you weave your hand and rise your eyebrow to tell her to get into position. She runs bent in half, giggling.
You straighten up, waiting for her to go around the meadow. This moment is the reason you choose that place to spend the day. You promised your little girl a butterfly sea and that day the field is swarming with them: scores of unaware yellow butterflies are flitting about the flowers and the grass blades.
- Now Sera!
The child gets up from where she was crouching down as you sprint around the meadow, creating a disturbance and ruining the quiet day of these poor flying insects, forcing them to rise in a golden cloud in which your adored little girl dives with her mouth and arms open.
You stop and stare at her. She jumps and whirls around her arms like wings and she looks like one of the butterfly with her grass-spotted yellow dress.
You hear your wife laugh and turn around to share a quick look of love and happiness before giving again all of your attention to the greatest love of your life who is running playfully inside a whirl of fragile golden wings.
It is a moment of perfect happiness, the war you will have to go back to is far away. You have a fleeting thought: that instant is wonderful and you want to remember it always, for all your life, never to forget it. The sun, the summer smelling air and the laughs of the two persons who are more important to you than your own life: this is the happy dream you will always carry in your heart.
The guardians went away, without turning to spare a last look to Pitch's sleeping form. Only Sandman looked back, once. He watched with a sad and remorseful expression on his sweet childish face those yellow butterflies brushing gently the grey features of the shadow-possessed husk of a man who once upon a time had been kind and dearly beloved.
Dormi sepolto in un campo di grano
(You sleep buried in a field corn)
Non è la rosa non è il tulipano
(Neither the rose nor the tulip)
Che ti fan veglia dall'ombra dei fossi
(Keep you vigil from the trenches shadows)
Ma sono mille papaveri rossi
(But a hundred red poppies)
NOTES
The song is "La guerra di Piero (Piero's war)" and is about a soldier killed while he is going back home.