Note: This was an experiment, of sorts. My friend, Arial Dagger, finder of all stories concerning X-Files, wrote the poems just for this story. She can be reached at arial_dagger@hotmail.com
The Sky Has Become a Butterfly
by Magik
~I tried to leave but got nowhere.~
~I wanted to speak but had nothing to say.~
~I looked around to see but everything was gone.~
~I prayed for Death but got Despair.~
---Arial Dagger, 1999
She looks up and all she can see are speckles in the night, little blinking stars that flash in front of her mismatched eyes. One of her eyes is pure blue, as clear and innocent as the summer sky, the other is darker, a green that has seen envy and pride, that has known fear.
If you asked her, she could not tell you the names of the stars her eyes are so riveted upon. She could make up names from the top of head, a smiling resting on her pale face as she did so, one finger twirling a piece of multicolored hair. She could tell you the truth if you stayed to listen to everything she has to say.
Once she was known as Delight. Now she in known as Delirium, youngest of the Endless, lost in the madness that claims the world.
She travels around with the talking dog her brother, Destruction, left her to care for. (Or is it the other way around?) In their time, she has known poets, playwrights, and even the greatest of authors. They wouldn't remember her, though, if you asked. She's like that. People believe she is simply a dream, a nightmare that haunts them while they sit in their little, delusional worlds.
Delirium doesn't control the Dreaming. That's her brother's job. That was her brother's job. He's dead now and a new one has replaced him, a kinder one.
It's strange to think about so she doesn't think about it much. She doesn't think about anything too much. Her mind just can't seem to stay on one thing for that long. It drifts from one subject to another and the next thing Delirium knows, she's turned her fish into big bubbles or frogs into fish.
Sometimes her older sister, Death, comes to sit with her. Death can't spend a lot of time with her because she's so busy. People die everyday.
Delirium is always glad when her sister visits her. It seems that Death comes around more often now that Dream has died.
Del always liked her older brother, Dream. Not as much as she liked Destruction with his red hair and deep laugh, but she liked Dream all the same. And, in her own strange way, she misses him.
Desire pays her a visit. He/She sits on the edge of some great mushroom Del has conjured up and begins to talk in a voice that's slow and soft. Desire is both the sexes and neither, like an angel. "The land is changing, little one. The new Dream has no skeletons. He doesn't even have closets to put one in. And he plays the games so easily, like they're fun, like he doesn't have anything better to do."
"Things change. People change. I like Dream, he's nice," Del whispers, her words turning into rainbow like soap bubbles.
"What did you think of the old Dream, then, child?" Desire asks, taking a drag off its cigarette.
Del looks at her sibling, eyes wide and bright, one shock of multicolored hair hanging over onto her pale skin. "Who?" she asks but Desire is already fled back to its domain and Del can't remember how to call it back.
Instead she sits on the brown edged green grass of her domain and remembers the days when she danced under the moonlight, content to be called Delight. But those memories soon escape her fragile mind and her eyes turns back to the stars with float high above her head and flutter around like neon butterflies.
~I looked up,~
~So high that the world wanted to crash down~
~And I just laughed~
~Because I could tell the stars were scared~
~Of being so high up.~
---Arial Dagger, 1999
