This is reallllly pushing it as far as drabble length goes... oh well. I can't claim full credit for writing this one; I was pretty heavily inspired by the Weezer song "Butterfly", which is infinitely better than this drabble could ever be.

I should probably say, just for good measure... NOT a songfic.


I guess you're as real as me; maybe I can live with that. Maybe I need fantasy... life of chasing butterfly.


4. Butterfly

It had been years since he'd seen a butterfly, so he couldn't help but marvel at the way it sifted delicately through the light summer zephyr, the reds, yellows, golds of its wings speckling the field like a brush on faded tapestries.

The creature rested on a branch near his arm. It almost mirrored the one he recalled catching when he was a child. Riku remembered grabbing a jar from the highest shelf of the kitchen cupboards, balancing himself precariously on the counter just to accomplish the task.

He had captured it in the same field in which he now sat… only now his thoughts lingered on fallen souls and shattered reveries, not childish imaginings and dreams so intangible that his tainted mind could no longer recall them.

The butterfly though. That he remembered. He remembered capping the jar, ripping out pieces of his lawn so it would have a place to sleep. He'd even given it a brittle twig as a perch. Riku had set it next to his bed that night, the fluttering of wings against glass lulling him to sleep. It quieted after a couple of hours, but he didn't notice.

When he woke up the next morning, he thought it was sleeping, that it had found comfort in the bed of blades he had lain out so thoughtfully.

When Riku tapped the glass, it refused to rise. Its wings remained still in the stale air of the jar. He dumped the poor creature onto his nightstand, his heart leaping in hope as a light breeze from his open window moved the wings. But its body remained stiff, rigid.

It was the first thing he had ever killed.

Riku had never known death before. The islands were an isolating place where the inhabitants liked to pretend such nuisances as death and tragedy and misfortune didn't exist. When he showed Sora and Kairi, they didn't understand why he was upset. It would wake in a few hours, surely.

But sleeping butterflies didn't wither.

He had buried it in the sand by the Secret Place, remembered thinking it would stay there forever, that the small rock he had placed over its grave would stand in memoriam despite the threat of erosion from the wind and sand.

That had been years ago. Surely the body had decayed. Certainly the rock had been tossed back into the ocean by a child trying to make it skip across the water, only to have it swallowed mercilessly by a few droning waves.

But when he thought about it, looked at the free creature that flew through the field…

He was still sorry.