Butterflies and Songbirds

What would you choose as your last memory? The last thing you would ever see? What small animal would you like to be?

William hated questionnaires, but this would be the last one he ever filled out. His doctors had given him less than a week to live and one last choice to make. One he and his wife had made long ago. Jenna had figured it all out. She’d always been the planner, and he was grateful to be the one she picked to make her dreams come true. The first part of the plan had gone into effect three years, seven months, and a week of tear-blurred days ago, when Jenna had made her final journey. Always leading the way. Some of her students, her kids, had thrown a going-away party. William didn’t have to worry about any of that. Before her, it had always been his plan to disappear from this world without a trace. Jenna had convinced him to leave something in this world, if not this time.

When it comes to end-of-life paths, Butterflies is not the cheapest option. He thought it was a little outlandish when Jenna showed him the bill, but she was so excited by the idea of time travel, no matter how short. The company driver they sent was sweet and solicitous. She advised William to go ahead and start thinking about his final moment and what animal he would like to be. That seemed to help the process, but they made no guarantees on the animal, just the final moment he would be sent to.

William struggled to breathe deeply from the warm winds of his memory. So much had faded since Jenna passed. He had tried to hold this one memory through all the poking and prodding. All the required medications. Closing his eyes, he pretended the shadows cast by passing buildings were the clouds from that day. Towers of fluffy marshmallows that gave Jenna and him brief respites from the sun. Soon, he felt the threadbare beach towel on his fingers, the only thing they could find for a picnic blanket. A pair of reusable bags with their two-day-old leftovers held down the corners. Intertwined, eyes closed, listening to a pair of birds sing an operetta of their love. A perfect day that had anchored them through every rough sea. A simple, quiet moment that signified nothing.

This was not the time he proposed. This was not the time Jenna said she was pregnant. This was not the time she had gotten her dream job. This was not the third time she had lost a baby. This was a moment they would not even sully with attempts to recall what they were thinking about. Not a moment to reflect on, but to live in. A moment of ineffable connection.

The driver broke his reverie as kindly as she could and helped him shuffle into the headquarters of Butterflies. He glanced at the walls of moving pictures depicting the company’s history. The first portals that revolutionized commercial travel across the planet and later the stars. Then, men and women dwarfed by whiteboards covered in math that looked like a child’s first attempt at farm animals. This led to brief views of the past, soon followed by failure after failure as objects sent back in time immediately dissipated in clouds of energy. Until that first apple. Small organic things could be sent back, but send a watermelon, and you might end up with an orange. Terrance, that brave, arthritic monkey, became the first butterfly. Alexander, the aging astronaut, became a goldfinch and gave birth to a whole new funerary industry. Who would want to be burnt to ashes or stuck in the ground when you could afford to be transformed into new life? At least, that’s what Jenna thought. Now, William was on his way to the past, just one more in a long line of dying men, traveling back to the most perfect moment of his past to become a Blue Jay.

The portal swirled with energy waves in otherworldly shades of blue that had driven painters mad in their attempts to match it. The swirls slowed and resolved into the perfect moment that he had struggled to hold in his mind for the last few years. There they were, central to the scene, he and Jenna. While Willaim felt a tear fall at the sight of his love, he had another job. Those lovers had their time, as glorious as it was average. His focus was on a Jaybird, near the edge of the memory. Right where she said she’d be, waiting for him. He could not see her nest because he hadn’t built it yet.

Shedding his robe and the last of his human embarrassment, William stepped over the horizon. All but the most essential bits dissolved away. All that was left was love and a Blue Jay, ready for a new life. The two birds, reunited for the first time, sang an operetta of love that spanned past, present, and future all in one perfect moment.

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Here is the challenge:

and this is another take on this version of time travel: