Butterflies: A Short Story

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butterfly
In your seventeen years, you have learned something crucial about your family: there is a curse that looms over each one of you, you are doomed to death, desolation and destruction. (That is why you were born, that is why your mother was floated that is why you were sent to the Earth and that is why Bellamy’s soulmate has a knife to his neck.)

If it were any other person alive, perhaps even yourself, they would be lying in the dirt by now but not her, not the girl who has just shouted the words carved neatly across his back ("Bellamy Blake? They're looking everywhere for you.").

She is not Bellamy's usual type. He likes them timid and pale and weak (delicate, he would correct, smiling lecherously at Fox as she passes) and tiny, …show more content…

"Hello Bellamy."

He slides onto the grass next to you, pauses to admire the sunset and says, without turning, "Do you have a soulmate, Kane?"

(The Earth is your soulmate.)

"No,” You say with a smile (two years ago, the confession would have come with a scowl. Your mother would be proud.) “I was born without one."

"Must be nice." Bellamy snorts, leaning back into the grass.

"You don't mean that." You tell him (no one means that), and Bellamy grunts quietly in confirmation.

"I don’t know what to,” he confesses, eyes fixed on a single cloud, “Raven’s shut me out.”

You want to say something, though, you’re not exactly sure what.

"Sometimes I don't see her for days at a time and she comes back so angry and in so much pain. I don't know how to help her. She can’t even sleep sometimes. I don't know how to help her."

His voice cracks. You pat his shoulder, "Don't cry, Bellamy."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

"What should I do?"

"You're already doing all you can. But I think it would make you both feel better if you went to her." Bellamy grunts and nods. He calms himself and then makes for the canteen as the workers trickle out of their