I sat on the top of the mountain, gazing down at the butterfly fields. Jay ran up and sat down next to me. I started before he could speak.
“Don’t you think that it’s weird the sun never sets?” I asked.
He squinted into the blue sky.
“No not really. I’ve gotten used to it I guess,” he admitted.
“I’ve always thought of this as some sort of limbo,” I said.
I watched as the breeze tore a flower off of its stem. It blew up to us.
“Some place where we sit and think about what we’ve done,” I continued.
The flower flew into my lap.
“What’s the point? Sure, I guess you can say it’s fun. But come on,” I murmured.
I touched the bulbous pink petals. The flower broke under my touch and the petals whisked away in the wind.
Jay nudged me. I turned and looked at him.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” he asked. He brushed my shoulder.
“Yeah...” I murmured. “I guess...I guess I’m just looking forwards to the part where we’re not there. Because...then something will change. Things will be different. Exciting. New.”
I looked into his green eyes.
“Don’t you want that?” I whispered.
He froze and stared at me. I turned back and looked over the fields to the garden of clouds.
We sat in silence, listening to the laughter of children passing underneath us.
“Well...I think you should give it a chance,” he said.
“Hm?”
“Things will be different. You’ve just got to wait a bit longer. Something, someone will come. Probably. Most likely. They always come,” he said. “It’s always different, you’ll see.”
“Well,” I sighed, laying back in the grass. “I’m not the type to just aimlessly stand still. I want to do something.”
“I get that,” Jay said, looking at me. “So you can search for the thing, whatever it is. What’s life without some risks? Besides.”
He caught another flower and threw it at me. It landed on my hair. “What’s the worst that could happen? You can’t always expect everything,”
I thought about that for a while.
I thought about it until I realized that no one was sitting next to me anymore.
I picked up the flower from my hair and sat up. I twisted it in my hands. This one wasn’t fully opened yet, still a bulb. I pried open the flower and from within emerged a shining, golden butterfly. It fluttered away and I gazed at it.
“What’s the worst that could happen? You can’t always expect everything,”