Flash Fiction

In the late Indian summer she, she was called Valentine, ate nothing but butterflies. She ate common and spotted, admiral and peacock. Eating butterflies was not good for her health, her skin turned a shade of blue that is often known as cool. Ironically it was only as the weather cooled that the butterflies became more and more scarce so that her skin warmed to a pleasing hue reminiscent of a charmed flower.

Throughout the long dark winter that often follows upon the heels of war she remained radiant and animated. But come the hint of spring she fled to the gardens, open meadowlands and bombed out wastelands where Scottish blue thistles grew. She chased butterflies to abandon. Eating them voraciously when she caught them, falling forlorn if she failed.

As the summer blossomed her health withered. She ate nothing but butterflies. Her family pleaded for her to commit a change to her diet. She did no such thing. She remained adamant and as the summer was rampant with many variety of butterfly she gorged and she died.

At her funeral the family were shocked by the kaleidoscope of colour that adorned the trees and shrubs of the graveyard. The uneaten butterflies and the soon to be eaten at the side of the diner before the feast.