Username: Flatterina
Cat Name: Delilah
Gender: Female
Rank: Authority
Clan: The Choir Age: Six
Prompt: “One butterfly’s wingbeat can lead to a hurricane on the other side of the world,” her mother had always told Delilah, reminding her to think about the consequences of her actions. About how they would impact others’ lives around her, and how she should always be mindful about the things her behaviour caused in the long run. Delilah had laughed and rolled her eyes. Her mother liked to tell the same stories again and again, while Delilah did not see much use in that. She preferred going out to play, spending time with her siblings, hunting and eating the butterflies without paying much attention to their wings other than thinking about how pretty they would look when she brought them back to her den to decorate it. If any of those wings had caused anything spectacular, she had not noticed it.
That was all in the past, now, though. She had not harmed one of the beautiful creatures in a long time, and she did not think she ever would again. One had saved her life, and maybe doomed it, and if she ever had kits one day, she would tell them to mind the butterflies, for one beat of their iridescent wings could alter the course of a life.
It had been a beautiful day in summer, one of many, one like those where you looked back when you were grown up and could not tell where one day ended and the next began, because the sun and the grass and the blue skies blurred into one another and together formed a beautiful childhood. Delilah and her siblings, her sister Rose and her brother Alzor, had been outside to play, as they always did when the weather was good and their mother did not mind. A gentle breeze had been blowing, and birds were chirping in the air. To this day, though many seasons had passed, Delilah remembered that day better than any other, and in her dreams frequently relived it vividly, as if not a single heartbeat had passed.
“I hear a bird!” Alzor meowed, his voice high with excitement. Delilah tilted her head and listened for a second. “Yes! Let us hunt it down and bring it to mom!” she agreed, jumping to her paws.
“I even know what bird it is,” Rose drawled lazily from where she lay in the shadows of the birch they all were resting beneath. “Mom told us a few days ago, remember?”
“You’re right! Let me see… A raven?” their brother guessed.
Rose purred. “Close, actually! It’s a crow. And mom said they can get quite big, actually. Imagine how impressed she would be if we could get it for her!”
Delilah nodded, her eyes wide. She would be impressed! “Come on, guys, it will be gone if you keep sitting around here like this!”
Her siblings rolled their eyes as they, too, got up and pawed over to her. “Your ears are the best, why do you not lead us?” she asked Alzor, and his eyes lit up. “Yeah, I will!”
Rose shot her a look and smiled. Delilah always won their play fights and Rose was the smartest, and while Alzor was not the envious type, both of them could tell he appreciated being told he was better at something than the two of them sometimes.
With his chin up and an air of importance surrounding him, he strode forward, leading them deeper into the trees.
The air in the woods was colder, but still pleasant. The crow’s calls had gotten closer as they steadily moved closer and soon they were at the base of a thick and tall spruce, needles littering the floor around them.
“It’s up there,” Alzor whispered. “We know,” Rose answered dryly. “It’s sitting on that branch there.”
Delilah purred as her brother folded his ears back and shot a glare at his sister.
“So, who’s going up there to catch it?” she interrupted her siblings’ bickering.
“Why don’t you go?” Rose suggested. “You are the most agile.”
It was true, and after receiving a shrug and a nod from Alzor she crouched down and launched herself into the air, her claws digging into the bark, sending wood chips raining on Rose and Alzor below.
“Hey!” her brother growled and she heard him shake beneath her.
“Oops,” she meowed, pretending to slip and catch herself again, loosing more pieces of the bark. With a smirk she climbed higher until she reached the first big branch. With some effort Delilah pulled herself up and looked down to the other two. They looked so small from here!
Her eyes narrowed, she looked around until she spied the branch where the crow was sitting. It was not far from her now, still staring somewhere and crying out from time to time. As she stealthily crept closer, she wondered what it was thinking. Were crows capable of thought?
Thinking about that unsettled her, and she focussed on getting closer again. The bird was now only one leap above her. One leap and she would be able to kill it and drop it into the waiting paws of her siblings, so that all of them could carry it back to their mother in pride.
Looking for purchase, she repositioned her hind paws and brought her body low. She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and pushed off, her claws unsheathed and lunging for the crow.
Delilah got close, so close to touching it.
Then, with a caw and a flutter of its black wings, it was gone.
“Damn it,” she swore, frustrated with herself. It probably had been the positioning of her paws, her mother always criticized that. Sighing, she made her way back down, her tail lashing wildly, threatening more than once to make her fall. She managed to suppress it until she had arrived back down at the roots, though, and only then did she allow herself to hiss loudly and bury her claws deep in the forest floor.
Rose stepped up to her and licked her forehead. “Don’t be angry. You did your best, I’m sure.”
Delilah snarled and shook her head. “I can be as angry as I want to be!”
Alzor took a step back and Delilah breathed in deeply. “I’m sorry. Let us head back and see if we can find anything else on the way back, alright? We don’t need to tell mom about this.”
Rose smiled and nodded, and with Alzor she took the lead, pawing leisurely into the direction they had come from.
Delilah hung back a few steps, looking around her to see if she found anything to distract herself with.
There! A flash of blue between some leaves behind the ferns lining the path they were following.
Her claws started to itch. A butterfly? A grin spread across her face as she slowed to a halt.
“I will be right behind you, alright? You can tell mom I had to do something!”
Rose rolled her eyes. Her sister knew her liking for butterfly wings. Delilah could not help that their wings were so pretty, nor that their mother liked them so much for her den.
“Try not to take too long, though, alright?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Delilah agreed absentmindedly, already stepping off the path to get closer to the fluttering insect she had spotted. With half an ear she heard her siblings’ steps recede until they were gone entirely.
She pushed through the ferns with her shoulder, her eyes narrowed as she looked for the butterfly again.
There it was! It had flown a few steps further now and was resting on the petals of a wildly growing tulip. She had seen the plant in the humans’ gardens near her home before, and supposed that the wind had carried one of the seeds into the woods. As she approached, the butterfly rose into the air again, moving forward with big sweeps of its beautiful blue wings, moving lazily in the breeze. With a purr in her throat she pressed herself to the ground, her eyes fixed to the animal as it came to rest on another flower again, this time a wild strawberry. Wiggling a bit, she repositioned her paws and pushed off, trying to bat at it with a paw, but it was too fast and was circling above her in the air again. Hissing at it, she rose up to her hind legs, trying to reach it with her extended claws, tail lashing.
“Come down here, you!” she threatened, but the butterfly seemed decidedly unimpressed. Instead, it moved farther away from the path. Delilah knew that her sister had warned her not to stay behind for too long, and that her mother would be waiting for her, but right now she didn’t care much. Today it was her duty to go looking for food in the human’s settlement, but hopefully, if she stayed gone for too long, her mother would send Rose or Alzor instead.
She didn’t much like the humans, she pondered, as she followed the insect, her head lifted to keep it in her eyes. They smelled weird, they couldn’t talk, and they were really ugly. Where was their fur? Why had they such weirdly shaped paws? And why were they hiding their bodies with their strange, colourful fabrics?
They weren’t rational beings, that was for sure. Not nearly as intelligent as cats, anyway.
Not that Delilah felt very intelligent, walking in circles and staring at a butterfly as she was right now. She shook her head.
Anyway.
Narrowing her eyes at the butterfly in the air above her, she turned to walk back to the path. She had been gone long enough, and Alzor would surely make fun for her for spending so much time and not ending up catching the butterfly either after she had already failed with the crow. She hoped the others wouldn’t tell their mother about it. She would surely be disappointed, and though she always hid it with a smile and kind words, Delilah could always see her true emotions in her eyes.
She cast a last look behind her, but the butterfly was nowhere to be seen now. She stopped briefly, looking more closely, but it seemed to be entirely gone. Strange.
Still, she wasn’t too eager to get back to her family, so she chose a leisurely pace, taking her time to watch the flowers and grasses growing next to the path.
It had gotten quiet in the forest, she noticed. Very quiet in fact. Had it been this quiet when they had started their way to the crow? Their way back home? Delilah didn’t think so.
Unease grew in her chest and she sped up a bit, then accelerated to a steady jog.
Suddenly, she wanted to be home quickly, just to check if everything was alright, to calm the unsettling feeling in her heart.
A short while later, she emerged from between the trees, and sprinted up the hill behind which their den was built between the roots of an old tree stump. It was still too quiet.
But surely, surely they would all be waiting for her behind the hill? Surely they would be sitting in front of the tree stump, their eyes stern and hard, telling her that she had to go find food?
Their den was gone.
That was the first thing she noticed.
Where the stump had been, now there only was a hole in the earth, and mounds of dirt strewn wildly about.
There was the stink of humans in the air.
How had she not scented it before? And there was another smell, pungent, intense, a smell she connected with the humans’ loud, monstrous machines that wreaked havoc wherever they went.
Her family was nowhere to be seen.
That was the thing she noticed next.
Even when she sped down the hill, digging through the remains of their home.
Even when she cried out their names.
Even when she scoured the humans’ settlement for days, half-starving and half gone crazy-
The butterfly was with her.
This was what she noticed last.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw it.
Now, years later, she believed that it had saved her. Saved her on that day, and saved her from going crazy from the grief by its steady presence.
When the waves of sadness threatened to overwhelm her, it fluttered close to her.
When she didn’t find the motivation to eat, it would lead her to scraps.
And when she felt ready to move on, it was the butterfly that lead her to another place, a new place full of cats and happiness and a new life, if she wanted it.
The butterfly had saved her, and she would never harm another of its kind again, for while her butterfly hadn’t caused a hurricane on the other side of the world, it had changed her life entirely.
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