Kinda pointless, but I'm in that kind of mood today. I own nothing.
Orihime, Rukia realizes one day, likes to make paper butterflies. She stops by her friend's apartment and finds a few strewn out on Orihime's bed, blank white shapes with the cuttings all nearby, scattered on the floor and blowing lazily in the wind creeping in through the window.
"Do you like them?" Orihime asks earnestly, and Rukia can only nod.
"Do you want one?"
Finding it impossible to say no to her (a trait Rukia knows full well she shares with others; no one likes to disappoint Orihime), Rukia finds herself nodding again. "Sure."
That's how Rukia finds herself sitting on a roadside bench, holding a blank white cut-out of a swallowtail butterfly and turning it over in her hands. She doesn't know why, but she keeps turning it over and over as though she expects words to materialize on the hidden side.
What's a simple gift between friends? The hazy image of Orihime's bright smile and guileless eyes still lingers in Rukia's mind like a smoke-fume mirage, and Rukia frowns as she remembers her pressing the butterfly into her hands.
So pristine.
So simple.
So pure.
So completely without artifice of any kind.
Kind of like Orihime, when Rukia stops to think about it.
Rukia decides the butterfly's a self-portrait of some sort.
Yeah, that's probably it. Rukia tucks the butterfly down the front of her kosode and goes on her way.
She'll keep it. After all, what's a simple gift between friends?