New World

By Alanna

There we sat, like flickers of rust on the branches of pines, our stained-glass-window wings staining the khaki view. Since we eclosed, we have lived in this forest, gliding between the umber trunks of amber maples, skimming the sawdust forest floor and the glistening river face. And now we are going to leave it all. To abandon our home in the search of a new horizon.

Mexico: so different. I have heard from whispers on the winds of its beauty; every tree trooping with cicadas, whistling with forest song, lime green leaves like velvet cushions and the sunny faces of the pink dahlia. And in a final lust of adventure, a fleeting pang of sentimentality, I spread my marmalade wings and took flight.

Summer:
Every day we swoop through another thicket of verdant greenery, like an ocean of tangerine crashing onto rocks of lush sage. We ease the sweet nectar from the purple coneflower for fuel. We skip and frolic by the foaming edge of the great azure waterfalls. It’s like a whole new world.

Spring:
I’d never imagined so many vibrant colours before; even on the infinite, flat prairies, the fertile soil cultivates the most beautiful blossoms. Violet, coral, mustard, maroon... colours I could never even imagined existed, yet so obviously do; it’s so different to my forest, where the same racing green and chocolate brown exists all year, and only the fireweed blooms. We whip wildly through, and are treated so indifferently, because the grassland sees colour every day.

Autumn:
I feel invisible now. You couldn’t tell whether a flutter of monarch butterflies flocked past, or a flock of autumnal leaves. Coming from a world of eternal evergreen, it was like nothing I had seen before. But the trees were sparser now, as we neared closer and closer to the equator, the heat weighing heavier on us every day in all its thick humidity.

Winter:
Winters back where we came from were wrapped in fluffy, cake-icing snow and shimmering ice-rink sleet. The trees did not change. But here, it seemed, there was no winter; only wet and dry and suffocating sultriness. Cold was unheard of — the only flicker of a hint of ice that there was was the eerie glint in the lace spider’s web. The only whisper of white was the ivory shine of a jaguar’s fang. And there was snow. It flew like an eagle’s feather in the form of vicious biting midges; it was clear that we were in Mexico now.

In a matter of weeks, we reached the monarch butterflies’ natural breeding grounds — where we rest on the trunks of the Oyamel Fir. And even today, when our migration is completed, and we grow older and older, we tell our youngest caterpillars stories. That one day, when they eclose, they will explore a continent that is not a new world, but a multiverse of mythical worlds to explore. That one day, they will travel, and my home will feel like a new world.