This was originally posted to my Live Journal.

Butterflies I have known...

Saradoc smiled and puffed on his pipe as he watched Primula play with her little lad in the field of wild flowers that covered the far side of the garden. Saradoc could see Primula holding her little one on her lap. He could hear her laughing as little Frodo pointed to something just ahead and smiled, his large, blue eyes filled with the wonder that only a very small child can feel.

Suddenly Frodo stood and took three slow steps away from the safety of his mother’s lap and held out his hands toward something. The dark-haired five-year-old stood very quiet as if playing at statues and waited. Behind him, Primula watched and waited also. Her musical laughter had stilled and she was watching her dear lad intently. Then, without warning, there it was, landing gently on the child’s hand and flexing its brightly colored wings; a butterfly. The little lad stood transfixed and watched as the beautiful fan-like insect moved about on his hand. Most children would have become too excited and would have cried out or attempted to ensnare the little winged creature but not Frodo Baggins. This one had a gentle spirit and was possessed of the gift of wonder for all living things about him.

Even now at barely five years of age he knew that the butterfly was something delicate and fragile. As Saradoc watched, three more butterflies landed on the child and sat there decorating him with their colors. Primula smiled the smile of a mother who can see great things in her child and all the while more butterflies continued to come to the lad, landing for a time and then flying away.

***

“Mine!” Merry said, furrowing his tiny brow and frowning at his father.

Saradoc bent down level with his four-year-old and looked at the glass canning jar in the child’s sturdy grip. Merry had one rather dirty hand over the top of the jar’s lid and inside of the jar was a single butterfly flapping its wings and bumping against the glass. “Merry, you know that you aren’t supposed to take your mother’s canning jars outside,” Saradoc said. “You might cut yourself.”

“No, I not,” Merry argued stubbornly. “Mine.” He looked at the tiny winged insect in the jar and said, “Fly-fly.”

“Son, the little fly-fly won’t live if you try to keep it in that jar,” Saradoc said gently. “It needs to be out in the garden with the other fly-flys.”

Merry frowned deeper and shook his blond curls. “Keep it!”

Saradoc sighed. “Then it will die.”

“Not die,” Merry insisted.

“Yes, it will, Merry,” Saradoc said patiently. “Besides, how would you like to be trapped inside of a jar? Don’t you think you’d get hungry or want to come out and play?”

Merry’s face relaxed a bit and he peered into the jar at the butterfly. “I feed ‘him lots,” he said but he sounded less convinced now.

“Do you know what he eats?” Saradoc asked tapping the jar with a finger as he spoke.

Merry bit his lower lip and frowned. He shook his head.

“Let’s you and I go and set it free among the flowers and then we’ll get something to eat ourselves. How would that be, my lad?” Saradoc suggested.

“Can’t keep ‘him?” Merry frowned again and held the jar up in front of his dirty face so that Saradoc could see Merry’s eyes magnified through the glass as he looked at the butterfly. “I got ‘him. I catched ‘him my own self,” Merry bragged.

“Did you?” Saradoc smiled standing. “He is a beauty, Merry-lad but if he has to stay in that jar for very long then he really will die.”

Merry considered this and then reached out to take his father’s hand. “Let the fly-fly go then. Catch more after I eat, Papa.” And together they took the butterfly out to the wildflowers and set it free.

*****

“What’s he doing?” Saradoc asked looking out at the field of wild flowers and watching as his tiny nephew ran about in circles with his arms over his head chattering and laughing.

Merry shrugged. “Just playing. He’ll do that for ages if I let him.”

Saradoc listened as the tiny Took’s voice babbled on in some sort of childish gibberish that only the small lad himself knew for words. The little one jumped and spun and laughed as he ran about among the flowers. Then he began to sing in a high, childish lilt. Only some of the words were recognizable. Saradoc heard, eat and fly and go, go, go, and me, but little else that made sense. “What is he trying to sing?” he asked his son.

Merry shrugged again. “Who knows? He just makes it up as he thinks of it. It doesn’t mean anything at all. He’s only four and he’s silly.”

“That isn’t very nice, Meriadoc,” Saradoc frowned.

“Well, he is silly,” Merry reasoned with the assurance of a twelve-year-old. “Look at him flapping his arms about like that. All day long he’s been doing that.”

Saradoc cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted to his nephew. “Pippin! What are you doing out there?”

Pippin, dizzy from all of his spinning and running stopped suddenly and weaved like a tiny drunk for a minute while trying to see who might be calling him. Then regaining his balance he yelled some more nonsense and began to run toward his Uncle and his older cousin with his arms flapping up and down at his sides.

Saradoc scratched his head and watched as Pippin approached and collided with Merry knocking him to the ground. Merry let out a groan and lifted the child off of his chest, sitting up as he did so. “You got to watch where you’re going, Pip Squeak!” Merry complained.

“No Squeak!” Pippin said firmly pulling away from Merry and encircling his Uncle and his annoyed cousin while flapping his arms and singing.

“Pippin, what are you doing?” Saradoc asked again.

“No Pip!” the child giggled, his bright green eyes twinkling and the tiny freckles on his nose blending with the smears of dirt on his face.

“Then who are you?” Merry demanded.

“Bug fly!” Pippin said and then flapped his way back into the flowers amid the startled butterflies that took wing just head of the energetic, imaginative child.

*****

“They help make more flowers,” the serious looking six-year-old said pointing to a butterfly seated atop a rose bud in Bilbo’s garden.

“How do they do that?” Saradoc asked his small garden guide.

“They carry the seeds on their feet when they fly off,” the child announced. He leaned closer to the tiny insect and pointed a chubby finger at it. “See his feet?”

Saradoc knelt on the grass carefully beside of the child and looked. “Why I believe I do,” he said.

“The seeds stick to ‘em and off he flies and them seeds goes off with him and they fall off somewhere’s else and go in the ground and then the rain comes and they grow up and be flowers too,” the child explained turning his sunburned face up to look into Saradoc’s.

“So that’s why the Shire is filled with so many lovely flowers,” Saradoc smiled ruffling the little gardener’s curls.

“No, the flowers is because ‘o my Gaffer,” the little one said. “He plants ‘em. That butterfly just tosses ‘em around a bit and some ‘o them grow but not as good as the ones my Gaffer grows.”

“I see,” Saradoc grinned.

Just then a rough-sounding voice called out, “Sammy! You come over here and stop pesterin’ Mr. Baggins’s company!”

“Comin!” the lad called out in a voice that seemed too deep for a six-year-old. “Gotta go now, Mister. That’s my Gaffer callin’ and we got work to do!” As the child hurried off, the butterfly left the rose behind and sailed off into the afternoon sky.

The End

GW 09/26/2006