The flower has been in this sweet wet meadow for many seasons, its roots creeping slowly deeper into the cool moist ground. Its petals reaching upward, higher and higher each day. Every night, the flower lowers its head to keep the dew out of its eyes. And every morning, it stretches and twists in the wind and waits eagerly for the sun to warm each little petal and stem. The flower remembers when it was not so tall, when it was not so strong, in the days of spring when it was young and the fields were buzzing with life. This was the time when it first met the butterfly. It was a day, like most days for the flower, sunny and not too complicated. There was the conversation with the ant that morning, and a small but inconsequential argument with an earthworm in the afternoon, and then it happened....

Just before dusk in the last moments of the sunset a small blue-winged butterfly tipped the edge of the flower with her wing, tripped into the air, and landed uncertainly on the flower's wide flatness. Strangely enough, in all the days the flower had been in that field, which had been forever as far as the flower was concerned, he had never met a single butterfly. The butterfly found the wide flatness of the flower to be very solid and comforting. All her life she had been flying willy nilly and everything she had landed on up until now had either bent or broken or a was pushed over by a beetle or was eaten right out from under her by a grasshopper. Once in her desperation, she even tried landing on the back of a dragonfly sleeping at the edge of a pond. But as soon as she touched down, the dragonfly woke up and the two of them flittered and divebombed across the pond until the little blue-winged butterfly fell off.

The butterfly was so pleasantly surprised by the calm flower that she danced around and around with her little legs and her flickering proboscis and her waggling antennae trying to kiss every tiny petal she could find. The flower was shocked at being touched so completely that he shuddered in ticklish fear, trying his best to stay still enough that the butterfly would not fly away. It was in this way that the two fell in love.

The butterfly stayed with the flower for several months and the two of them learned how to drink dew together and sway in the wind together and make interesting patterns together that amused the blackbirds flying overhead. The flower introduced the butterfly to the ant and the earthworm, and the butterfly showed the flower the scary dragonfly she once met. When the sun got too hot the butterfly would spread her wings to shade the flower. And when the butterfly was hungry the flower gave up all the sweetness he had for her. And they lived like this for several more months and they were very happy.

When Autumn came, the butterfly felt strange inside. She had been looking up into the sky for several days now and began to recognize a number of other creatures like herself. They were tumbling and bumbling across the sky, flitting from flower to flower, fluttering among the leaves of grass. She moved across the top of her beloved flower, stretching her wings slowly apart and then back together, and then a little faster until she lifted herself ever so slightly into the air. The flower was immediately aware of the momentary absence of the butterfly and it frightened him because he knew it meant she would leave him one day. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to fly, to be rootless and tossed about by the breeze. He knew it wasn't for him. He needed to feel the ground between his roots and would miss the ant and the earthworm. But she, she came to him from the sky, and he knew one day she'd have to return to it.

Since meeting the flower, the butterfly had not thought much about flying. She was warm and fed and loved and she was still resting from a very long trip. But lately she couldn't get the creatures in the air out of her mind and her little wings began to ache with a desire for movement. With increasing frequency, she would take small flights - just a few flaps up into the air, really, but the flower would sense her absence every time. And each time she returned, he would ask her hesitantly where she had been. She didn't know how to respond because she hadn't really gone anywhere, she was only stretching her wings. She wanted to tell the flower about her need to fly but she was afraid he wouldn't understand.

And then one day at the threshold of winter, a giant shiny green butterfly came down out of the sky and landed on the flower next to the blue-winged butterfly. It had been so long since the blue-winged butterfly had seen another butterfly face to face that for a long time she just stared at it. While she was staring, the shiny green butterfly reached out his antennae and wrapped them around her, then he flapped his wings a bit and rose into the air. At that moment, all the little blue butterfly could think about was how much she wanted to fly. So without hesitation she kissed the flower good bye and flew off into winter with the shiny green butterfly. The flower barely had time to wrap his petals one more time around her legs before she was gone. Suddenly the world seemed very cold.

As time went by, the flower came to meet a lot of other flowers in his field. When he was with the butterfly he tended not to socialize, but now that she was gone he was delighted to see how many flowers there were in the field with him. Everyone was getting ready for winter and there was a certain amount of excitement mixed with fear on that first morning the dew turned to frost. The flower too was excited, even though frost reminded him of dew which reminded him of the butterfly and how they used to drink in the mornings together. The ant and earthworm both told him to cheer up and forget her because one thing's for certain about butterflies - they never stay in the same place for long. The flower looked up into the air and he didn't see any butterflies at all and he began to think maybe the ant and the earthworm were right. Anyway, it didn't matter because pretty soon he would be going to sleep and he wouldn't have to think about anything for the rest of the winter.

The blue-winged butterfly followed the shiny green butterfly all over the meadow. They tumbled over sunflowers and bumped into june bugs and drank out of overripe blueberries. They flew from one meadow to the next without stopping because the blue-winged butterfly was so eager to see all the things she had missed while sitting on the flower. She flew around with the shiny green butterfly like this for nearly two months and was having a great time until she got hungry. When she told the shiny green butterfly she was hungry, he apologized for being an idiot and promptly landed on a lily that was loaded with sweetness. When the blue-winged butterfly touched down next to him, her wings got caught in his, and then the lily started to bend and they both would have fallen if she hadn't jumped off immediately. She told the shiny green butterfly she was tired and frightened and still very hungry. He apologized again for being an idiot and then he flew up into the air to let her have the little lily to herself.

The two butterflies went on like this for another month, hustling and bustling around each other, trading time on flowers and in general feeling very sad about having to work so hard for sweetness, which as it turned out just made flying a drag. The blue-winged butterfly was getting really tired now, but it seemed like anywhere she tried to land would just bend under her weight. One day when the shiny green butterfly was flying a little bit below her she thought she might try to land on him - knowing it would send both of them tumbling to the ground, maybe tearing both their wings. But she was so tired of this hustling and bustling and trading time on flowers that she couldn't think straight. And suddenly it occurred to her that she should go out on her own where she wouldn't have to hustle bustle anymore. And so she told the shiny green butterfly that she was going to the desert to see what kind of sweetness she could squeeze out of a cactus. The shiny green butterfly was just as relieved as she was since he wasn't too happy about having to hustle and bustle either. They were glad for the time they had spent together in the meadows drinking blueberries, but they agreed they would both rather be alone. So the next day the blue-winged butterfly wrapped her antennae around the shiny green butterfly, then flapped her wings very quickly and was off.

The end of winter was a very quiet time for everyone. The flower lay dormant beneath the ground with all the other flowers and the ant and the earthworm. The shiny green butterfly flew back to the warm wet meadows along the pacific coast. And the blue-winged butterfly made her way out to the dry and desolate desert. Half-way there, she found that she was surrounded only by rocks and dust and scrub and she couldn't find a flower at all. She began to worry she might starve to death. But as time went by, she learned to live in the desert. And as more time went by her wings became quite strong. When spring pushed the crocuses up through the snow, she decided to make the long trip back to the meadow to visit her flower. She missed him very much.

As she flew from meadow to meadow she became less sure of her journey. She began to think the flower would not want to see her, and that he would hate her for leaving him on such short notice, and that he would not understand why she had to fly off like that in the first place. In short, she began to think the flower would hate her for being a butterfly. She got so heavy with the weight of being a butterfly that she fell out of the sky and landed on a wooden fence post. She stayed on the fence post for several days trying to decide whether she should go on or not. She was terribly afraid that her beloved flower would reject her, but she was also terribly aware that it was she who had left her flower without so much as an explanation - and so it would be terribly unfair of her to expect anything at all from the flower. She sat on the fence post for several more days trying to figure out what to do.

While the blue-winged butterfly was sitting on the fence post, a fine spring mist laid itself across the meadow. After a few hours, the mist became so thick that it beaded up on the fence post and soaked into her wings. The butterfly was so heavy with the weight of her wings that she thought she might just stop breathing. She heaved a big long sigh and sank down in the little puddle forming around her. She was about to close her eyes and go to sleep when she happened to catch site of herself in one of the big beads of mist on the fence post. What she saw was a very wet blue-winged butterfly. Not a particularly shocking revelation, but something she had almost forgotten in her fretful flight back to the flower. She was indeed a butterfly and for better or for worse there wasn't much she could do about it except be the best butterfly she could be.

After the sun came out and dried her wings, she decided leave the fence post and continue her journey back to the flower. Along the flight she thought of all the ways a butterfly could love a flower. She thought about how they could wake up and drink in the mornings together and then she could spend all day flying through the fields while he twisted and swayed in the wind and grew his roots down even further. At night she could search through the darkness until she found her beloved flower, then she could land on his wide flatness and tell him stories about other butterflies and also flying beetles and ants with wings. She could bring him little presents and news from other flowers in other field. She could dance around and around with her little legs and her flickering proboscis and her waggling antennae trying to kiss every tiny petal he would show her. And if one day the flower decided he wanted to try flying, she could wrap her legs around him very tight and flap as hard as she could until she pulled him up and they fluttered through the sky together. She could not deny that she would always have to fly - because that is what being a butterfly is all about. But she also knew now that she didn't need other butterflies to do this. And that in fact, it was much more comfortable and productive flying alone.

And so the blue-winged butterfly resolved that she would offer herself to the flower as nothing more than the butterfly she was. She knew it might take some time for him to open up to her again. And she knew it might be many hard flights before he would trust her to come back every time. And she knew there might be times when he would want to be just a flower, or she would want to be just a butterfly. But she wanted to go back anyway just to see, because she realized there is nothing so special, so sweet, and so strange as the love between a flower and a butterfly.