He gazed at his frayed wings. Each broken, scattered feather lay as if carrying a narrative known only to himself and to the wind.
A narrative richer than a mere cycle of repeated flights.
He, that day just like now, had felt his antennae quiver at that scent.
A scent that resurrected the dust of childhood pollen in his lungs, while simultaneously illuminating the image of his present self beneath his feet.
While all the other butterflies fixed their gaze upon the path drawn by the sun, he had become aware of a current scratching beneath his left wing, tugging him downward.
The scent of milkweeds reached him from afar. There was no reason for it, yet his wings carried him involuntarily toward that very fragrance, as if the entire meaning of his existence was tethered to it.
His wings rippled, and descending for him was simply surrendering to that invisible pull.
The milkweeds glistened in his eyes from a distance, as if they were about to reveal to him an ancient, unspoken secret.
Now he had arrived. He brushed his legs across their leaves. At the very touch, a tremor ran from the tips of his antennae to the edges of his wings. Here, exactly here, on this leaf.
He drew the milkweed nectar into himself, and the veins of his wings grew dark, as if reclaiming a lost lifetime.
But the more he drank, the colder and emptier the hollowest place in his heart became, as if the nectar only breathed life into his wings and nothing more.
From plant to plant he went, pressing the curve of his body downward. A contraction coiled in the depths of his being, but nothing was released, as if his very tension was preparing for a deliverance that would never come.
Exhausted, he collapsed onto a large milkweed. This weariness was not from flying, but from the futile waiting for something whose shape he could not even name.
He stared at the sky. The sun still shone as before, endlessly speaking of its own cycle of giving and taking.
He felt the wind upon his wings. Its breath whispered the murmur of the butterfly swarm in his ears.
In harmony with the wind, he flapped and rose, circling the milkweeds one last time, as if he wished to imprison each one beneath his wings.
He flapped his wings a few sharp, swift times and flew toward the sun.
He gazed at his frayed wings, at the fading of their colors, as if they carried a narrative that must be written down so it would never be forgotten.
He was perched on the very milkweed his aging antennae had once pointed him toward. He pressed his abdomen onto the leaf. The contraction that had coiled so emptily before, this time traveled deeper and released. One, two, three. The eggs, one after another, separated from the core of his being and rolled onto the leaf. Lighter than the years of waiting he had endured, yet heavier than all the nectar he had ever tasted.
These eggs were destined to become butterflies with aged antennae, antennae that knew where to break away and where to belong. Butterflies who would carry a richer experience than others in this repetitive cycle. He knew all of this, not through certainty, but through a hope that had sprouted in that same cold, hollow emptiness.
It was then that the feeling of release and creation twisted through him so deeply that he lost the boundary between himself and the world.
Now the cycle was complete. A cycle that had begun with the dust of childhood pollen and was fulfilled by the creation of butterflies with aged antennae.
He closed his eyes to see all that the eyes cannot see.
He spread his wings over the eggs, and the scent of milkweed, this time not from without but from beneath his very own wings, reached him. As if that entire long, distant journey was meant only for this moment, for the fragrance to flow from within himself rather than from anywhere outside of him.