The Green Butterfly, Chapter Two

It was apparently afternoon on this overgrown world, and a sky which had been dazzling when the duo dropped in was starting to shade. Nor was this solely down to the onset of evening, for Flashbee’s senses had also detected a weather-system moving in. Thus with two more good reasons to find shelter, he and 4-H-N hiked doughtily, taking few rest-stops and ever alert to the twitches and flicks from the former’s brow.

That one’s talk of those antennae and his stinger had piqued 4-H-N’s curiosity, if the pun be permitted, as to the differences between his way of life and hers.

“Flashbee, what will happen to you?” she asked as they tramped along. “Will you have to pupate into an adult Flash? I’m used to you the way you are. Am I going to get to the flight-simulator one morning and find a big cocoon waiting for me?”

The other admitted that even if he explained his growth-process to 4-H-N, she’d still struggle to put herself in his place.

“I already do,” she declared. “I mean, I’ve never had a stinger either. Doesn’t it get in the way, Flashbee? Or if you’ve always had one, do you forget it’s there?”

“You’re always aware of it,” Flashbee replied evasively.

Funny how often there was an Earth-correlative. Even back home, 4-H-N had concluded more than once she was lucky to be just as she was, and they could keep their alternatives.

“I’ve seen you trip over it in gym,” she couldn’t help pointing out, though she was mindful now probably wasn’t the time to tease.

“Girls sometimes trip over their own feet,” Flashbee reminded her. “I’ve seen you do that.”

4-H-N contracted her little nose, thinking this over.

“So you learn to put up with it? I don’t think I ever could,” said she, skipping lightly over a twig which lay like a tree-trunk in their path. “It’d drive me out of my pants, always bumping and knocking around down there. Surely there are times you feel like that?”

“Sometimes,” agreed Flashbee. “When girls won’t stop talking about it, for instance.”

They walked on in silence for a while.

A storm was on the way alright. 4-H-N had been a little stormy lately, and in fact that seemed to be the climate she carried round with her these days. She wondered whether others could read the signs from her, as she could the garden-planet’s heavy scented ambience with its unmistakable tingle of thunder, not to mention the damp clinging heat which flattened her fringe and fretted at the armpits of her tunic. Maybe she’d turn out like the Special Program, and you’d be able to tell how she was feeling by sense of smell alone. Flashbee’s growth-process wasn’t the only one that had been leading 4-H-N to bewildering terrain, and nor was today the first time it had struck her what a jungle it was out there.

When sharp shadows and the vivid and lush were starting to blend to a universal deep green, 4-H-N and Flashbee pushed upon a glade encircled by stems. Within this circumference these were flattened to a floor which resembled rush-matting, atop which lolled numerous cherries each the hugeness of an aerobics ball. All 4-H-N had thought for the last hour was how thirstily hot the hike was making her, and these gargantuan blobs of black all but quivered like dark dewdrops in the dusk.

“Yay,” breathed 4-H-N.

Next second was a sprint, and the second after that a thud to her knees. She cracked through the cherry’s skin with her teeth and didn’t stop to chew, but thrust her cheeks in the moist pulp beneath and glugged mouthfuls down. Ooh, tastebud-crippling cherriness. Juice enough to pack out a king-sized carton, before you even came to the semisolid fibres that might be sucked on gleefully to sluice yet more fluid the same way.

Mindful not to forget Flashbee, 4-H-N scooped out a big helping of cherry-flesh and turned to him to offer. He was by the clearing’s boundary, standing guard, and of course he had to stay upright anyway on account of his stinger.

She caught him smiling.

Her face by now must have been quite a sight, but Flashbee, as if an explanation were needed, uttered something else which 4-H-N didn’t catch. Something about how nice it was.

She swallowed, then pointed out he hadn’t had any yet.

“I don’t mean that,” said Flashbee. “You, I mean. It’s nice seeing you like this.”

If he didn’t leave that stinger alone. He’d complained for the last time about 4-H-N’s fidgets, she was going to make sure of that.

“It’s how I knew,” Flashbee started again, apparently aware he wasn’t doing this very well. “The real reason. Because if you’d asked me before Intelligentsor Day, I’d have honestly said you were thinking of quitting. It seemed to me you’d had enough of being in The Flash Club. But since then…it’s been like you’re driven. Like you’ve got something to prove. This is the first I’ve seen of the old you in quite a while now.”

Flashbee hesitated, then went on:

“The rest of it I figured out later. But it didn’t take brains to notice something was wrong. That’s what a friend does. Someone who cares about you.”

4-H-N was suddenly grateful for her slathering of scarlet syrup, as it covered up the onrush of such shyness as she’d never known around Flashbee. And on a related note, he was getting some of this cherry down him if it killed her. She rose and walked over with her cupped hand full of goo, then as an afterthought dabbed a free thumb and daubed Flashbee’s nose.

“Like you need to be any sweeter,” grinned 4-H-N.

There was a movement from the forest.

No more warning than that, and the terror was begun.

TO BE CONTINUED