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This story is © copyrighted to Adrienne Wolter in 2005 and onwards. It was written on December 4th, 2004. Do not take this story.

This story is a work of fiction. It was originally intended as a writing exercise for point of view, back in July of 2004; I gave up midway through, not knowing what to do with the idea. In December I decided I wanted to write at least one thing exclusively for Scholastic Writing Awards 2004-5, and this was the idea that I found and decided to redo. The story itself has several holes and is very obscure; but hopefully I achieved the desired message with it. It won a silver key.

The song mentioned is 'Dream On' by Aerosmith. It's a good song, and I thought the lyrics were particularly fitting.

Crushing the Butterfly

Leaves swirled around me in the autumn, to pass my face and land at my feet, more gently than one would ever expect of them. I watched them in silence, for I never made a sound. My eyes stayed open through wind, rain, snow, and shine. I watched the earth being coated by startling colors of gold and red, orange and brown. And I watched the creatures around me. One saw it as something of a chore to rake the leaves into large piles on one side of the fence, but sang the entire time as she listened to some odd wired thing on her ears. On the other side, two smaller ones did the same, but joyfully bounced into the leaves once they were piled. They laughed; they played; they enjoyed their fun times and soon forgot bad times. I watched with a smile for both sides.
And then the earth turned white. I shivered in the cool weather, a ring of snow circling my feet where the fence wasn’t. On both sides, that peeling red fence stopped inches from my body, only giving me enough room for now. On the first side, the teenager shoveled snow, again into piles, some distance away, to reveal the black stone underneath where they led large colored machines into a larger box; I watched them disappear as a door lowered. The teenager sighed as she worked, and a smile only graced her eyes when another teenager from down the street asked if he could help. On the other side, the two smaller ones packed snow in their hands to throw at one another. I listened to their laughing and wanted to laugh myself.
The snow turned to water and soon a springtime blossomed, and I reached out in joy. Birds returned and sang of their journeys to their neighbors as they settled in around me, in me; small animals occasionally passed below my arms. And the partition between the yards was newly painted on both sides, a job which the teenager did most of, taking over for the little ones who found it too hard to reach. I had listened to her singing, talking to herself, talking to the cat that belonged to neither family who often sat nearby or in my arms, watching her work. I began to wonder why there wasn’t another one with her like the pair across the fence, why she was always alone when she sang in the afternoons, wiping her brow. Sing for me, sing for the years, sing for the laughter, sing for the tears. Sing with me, if it’s just for today.... I swayed along with her voice, unable to form the words myself.
Days were warmest with the coming of summer, and I remembered most the sunsets of those days, the long nights that the little ones spent camping in their yard, roasting things on sticks and laughing. They had a dog one day, and whenever I saw them they were now three little ones. The teenager sometimes climbed onto my limbs those days, a book in hand, just to read in the shade on warm days. She never sang while she read, and though I swayed and tried to get her to understand, she didn’t notice.
Autumn came. The little ones, with their minuscule backpacks and tin lunch boxes, waved to their dog each day as they climbed onto the yellow box called ‘bus’. The teenager did so as well, having done so for years already. She raked the leaves as always, though there was an absence in her actions when doing so that took me several days to realize. I heard only a small amount of singing. Days were long and quiet and much the same as years past. I wished she would sing again, frustrated that I could not ask her to do so.
Chilly weather and rising breath-steam in the air marked the winter, and I rarely heard the teenager sing at all. She was hardly outside anymore but to shovel the snow. She did so with a new kind of ferocity; quickly and sloppily, not at all like previous winters. The children of the other side talked a lot now, and were not always in pairs anymore. I began to wonder if that was where the teenager’s other half was; away.
The birds chirped before I heard her sing again. It was quiet, but grew louder as the sky darkened. My swaying still went unnoticed, but for the time I did not mind.
A summer came, and so did another fall before the numbing winter day when the teenager last shoveled the driveway. Late after finishing this task, she had climbed into my arms to read and sing again. Her beautiful voice, so precious to me, made me sway as it usually did. This time she noticed, there being no wind, and was intrigued until she discovered I wouldn’t let her down. She yelled out, then jumped down into the ice and snow. She hit the fence on her way down, and lay still for a long time.
Her fall was treated until well into the spring, and when she returned, her voice was reduced to nothing. She could no longer sing, and she rarely talked. Her walking was a stumble. I grew angry that she would no longer use her nicer voice, instead using her newer, ugly one. She never came near the fence. For days and days, she did not climb onto the thing called ‘bus’. Then one day her family, dressed in black, with a melancholy atmosphere about them, left the house. She never returned.
Seasons flew by. I never noticed detail anymore. One turn of a leaf and they were gone. The little ones sped through their years, taller and taller until they were the size of their parents. The dog died in the yard on one side of the fence. A wedding filled the yard for a second, and then everything was normal again, if lonely. Carolers disappeared down the frosted sidewalk. Flowers bloomed and faded and I missed it all.
Years were gone. So many days and months and years went by me unnoticed. A white-haired old man walked up the sidewalk with a semicircle of five small children around him, followed by a young woman clutching a little one. I watched with half-lidded eyes, so tired.
“This is where my sister and I grew up,” he said, pointing to the house.
“Can we go inside?” one of the small ones asked eagerly.
“Of course not, Emily, we don’t know who lives there now.” The woman smiled with her words, and her voice brought back memories.
It is the story of the human and the butterfly, I suppose. You must not hold too tightly to the butterfly, or you will crush it between your fingers. If you let it go, you can still enjoy its beauty as it flutters away.
There was a teenage girl. Years ago she lived beside me, and she liked to sing. I treasured her voice even as it became a passing interest of hers. Perhaps too much. Did I kill her? I never intended to kill something so beautiful.
But I did.
And now my branches will watch new generations. I can only hope I learned from a mistake. I can only hope I don’t crush the butterfly.