‘I see with my little eye,’ Bucky began their game, leaning back within the shell of the blackwell with his hands folded neatly before him upon the black sludge that housed him, ‘something blue.’
‘Well, it has to be me, surely!’
The boy and the blackwell had been rather hesitant with one another- neither quite figuring out how to speak to their new companion properly. Bucky was much too frightful for Clawfoots’ taste, and Clawfoot was terribly inconsiderate in regards to the boys’ plight. It was the afternoon, after a single night with one another, that the tub suggested they play a game to pass the time. Though Bucky was concerned about focusing on where they were heading- it was he who suggested they play ‘I See’ as he could only look up at the birds in the trees for so long.
‘No,’ the fair child shook his head, ‘it is not you.’
Clawfoot continued to guess, huffing, ‘Is it that flower?’
‘No.’
‘That Rock!’
‘Mmh-mmh.’
‘It is not a bird, is it?’
‘No, but a good guess.’ Bucky noted.
Growling in frustration the blackwell whined, ‘You do not make this easy, do you? We are surrounded by everything but blue!’
The small boy said nothing, sat pleased with himself for flustering the poor tub to annoyance. The face upon the shell sunk into itself, and appeared within the black sludge inside the bathtub to face the child placed within it. Clawfoot, as Bucky guessed, did not look happy. His mouth in a frown and eyes furrowed, the blackwell watched the child look away from him, up towards the sky as to keep from looking him in the eyes.
Before he could complain about the childs’ silly choice- he too looked up, and paused as his expression changed from that of defeat to revelation.
‘The sky!’
‘Oh!’ Bucky jumped at the sudden exclamation, peering down to see Clawfoots’ cheeky smile greeting him in the muck. The tub swayed with his laughter making Bucky hang onto the sides.
‘Do not think you can fool me so easily, I am much too wise.’
‘…Right,’ Bucky only nodded his head, ‘it is your turn.’
Silent in his thoughts, Clawfoots’ eyes shot left and right as they returned to their proper place at the front of the bathtub. All was silent save for the soft chirps in the branches above them and, of course, the shuffling of the dirt below. A quiet ‘ah-ha!’ told Bucky the blackwell made his choice.
‘I see with my little eye something small.’
‘‘Something small’ is hardly fair!’
‘You never said I could not pick something small, so you better get to guessing.’ Clawfoot argued rather smugly.
The boy moved from one end of the bathtub to the other, resting just above where the tubs’ face was. Brass arms and hind legs sailed smoothly through the waves of leaves. Trees around them had lost most of their dressing, baring themselves naked in the autumn sun which brightened their path. It was as if everything fluttered around them, the leaves falling from their place above the tangle of twigs- to the butterfly that wobbled in the air around them, which was getting too close for Clawfoots’ comfort.
‘Is it a leaf?’
‘No, too boring.’
The butterfly, much to the tubs’ dismay, landed itself on the edge of the bathtub near which Bucky sat. It was a beautiful monarch, vivid orange battling with the dark black that lined its wings in a stunning pattern. Then another one joined it, a swallowtail greeting its sister with a gentle opening of its wings and a brush of the antennae.
‘Is it a butterfly?’
‘No, never. I would never choose a bug.’
‘What?’ Bucky puzzled, ‘Why?’
‘They are too small. And much too weird.’ His companion grimaced as a third butterfly flew close to him, attempting to kiss his cheek- however he blew it away with a shining claw and watched it tumble through the air like a feather.
The boy continued to guess: A flower, a rock, maybe not a beetle. All the while, more butterflies joined their small parade. It was a curious sight, though beautiful as Bucky was mesmerized and forgot all about guessing. He lifted a paw up into the sky and watched as many little legs tickled his fingers when they landed upon them. The fair child lowered them to his face to look at them more closely, and they kissed him with their long antennae on his cheeks. The dark mud inside the bathtub moved away, as to avoid being anywhere near the little bugs.
Clawfoot attempted to walk a little faster to outrun the growing swarm of wings that flew alongside them, but the butterflies only followed him more closely. Some even flew before him as if to guide him along the unseen path he was wandering. He would turn one way, and the bugs would flap their colorful wings in the same direction.
‘Where do you think they are headed? We must be heading south, it is getting to be winter.’
‘Clearly they are here to bother us, I can barely see through them!’ Clawfoot fussed as he tried to look where he was going. But alas, only butterflies he saw before him.
‘Not to mention we are heading west, last I knew.’
‘You mean to tell me you do not know where we are going?’ Bucky blurted over the edge of the bathtub, ‘I thought you said you knew exactly where we were going!’
‘I did! And… I did!’ Clawfoot argued back, ‘but these wretched things have us surrounded, how am I to tell where we are headed in this swarm?’
Nothing but the cacophony of batting wings filled the air around the two, swarming them as if they were a fog of brilliant colors blowing about in the wind. The only proper views they had were of the sky above them, cloudless and ever blue, and the dirt road that had sneaked its way underneath them whilst they had been occupied with the army of fluttering bugs flapping about them. Neither one knew about the trees around them holding whimsical glass ornaments among their bare branches, or how the sun shone through their colored panes casting rays of rainbow across the forest floor in bright beams. Slowly and slowly the flock of butterflies dissipated as they began gliding up into those same trees, cluttering limbs as if they were the same as the ornaments that dangled each time a passing wind blew through.
The view around Bucky and Clawfoot returned once each any every butterfly found its place above them, replacing the leaves the trees so solemnly lost to the autumn season- all but the original monarch, who flew in front of them towards the porch of a cluttered home.
It was a dark, wooden shack elevated by the uneven stump that had belonged to a severed oak that had grown higher and higher than its neighbors until it had hit the glowing sun above. Ramshackle steps blanketed by mis-matched musty rugs followed up towards the open porch which the monarch floated down onto the twisting and bending railing covered in the same glass ornaments that hung in the surrounding trees. The hovel itself was pieced together with crooked stained glass windows placed oddly all along the walls, with panes even on the wooden, cone roof shining into the inside.
The windows had all sorts of stories being told within them- a rose blooming from a red mound, with a window holding many different square panes all decorated with their own pattern like patchwork placed right next to it. There was a window that held a still, black sea and floating above was the blinding moon full of its many craters. Higher up was a window showing many butterflies soaring up into the sky, becoming nothing but dots on the horizon, and beside it was the sun encircled by little hands of shadow reaching out to grab at its rays.
Finally, highest of all, was a window that held nothing but the outline of a little vase.
Looking out behind the weird railing to the porch, sitting in a plain rocking chair and smoking a long oak pipe was a woman. She could have been mistaken as a beggar, as the cloth that made up her skirts were spotted with splotches of color from when they had been dyed their mustard and dusty greens. Her figure was tall and slender, with two of her four arms at rest across her lap as a third held her pipe before her lips. The fourth was laid across the arm of the chair as she rocked back and forth, the creaking of the chair on the wooden boards of the porch mimicking the calls of the birds far away. Legs crossed, they were thin like the legs of the butterflies that surrounded the entire area. In fact, looking at the woman closer revealed she was no different than the bugs around them. She, with her faceted eyes, looked over the two travelers who unknowingly were led to her very home.
Standing up from her chair, she greeted them with a puff of her pipe and a flap of her wings as they spread out behind her, glittering their many colors across the forest once the light of the sun broke through their panes, as they were the same as the glass that hung in the stained windows, and on the ornaments in the trees. She spoke through the smoke from her mouth to the monarch that fluttered onto her outstretched finger from one of her many hands,
‘What curious company you have brought with you, you sly thing. I was not expecting visitors.’