~A Blue Heart~

A young girl, barely fifteen, walked through the meadows. Soft green grass brushed against her bare feet. Her white skirts flew about her. Her eyes were in a pale blue, like cold ice, cool, sharp and deadly. Her silver hair fell lightly around her like quick silver. Her skin was in the palest shade of white and as flawless as cream milk. Her body was that of a young goddess. She had a pretty face with big baby-like blue eyes and a sweet, candy-like smile. They called her Pilane, butterfly.

Pilane lived in a small but prosperous village near the far mountains. The people of the village were shepherds and goatherds. The villagers made wool, the softest imaginable. It was so light, like as if you are holding on to clouds. It was warm as well as light. The stitches were fine and neat, making the cloth as smooth as silk. But it was the quality of it that made the village prosper. The cloth would never wear out, no matter what.

The village was located in a valley within the far mountains. On either side of the village, great snow capped mountains stood. Soft green meadows, and small creeks surrounded the village. There were not many trees in the valley, only bushes and small shrubs. There was no winter in the valley; it never snowed.

The people of the village treated Pilane like she was their goddess. She belonged to nobody. She was the daughter of all in the village. When she was happy, the people of the village smiled at her joy. When she was sad, the people of the village cried for her tears.

Now, as all stories go, there was a man. A cruel wealthy merchant who often traded with the village for their wool. But this wasn’t a successful year for the village and wool were few. The village tried to explain this to the merchant but he did not believe them. Instead he decided to send spies to the village to see if they were cheating him of his money.

When the spies came back they told the merchant of a beautiful girl, with child-like innocence and a beauty no other woman could match. The merchant was greedy and wanted nothing more than to make her belong to him.

He went to the village with many soldiers asking for the girl. But the villagers claimed that they knew no such child. The merchant grew angry for he knew that the villagers were lying. So at night, he sent out the soldiers to find Pilane, and kill anyone that tried to protect her.

And so they came, killing as they went. Blood! It was everywhere. She could not run away from them, she could not bare it. How dare they? How dare they do this to innocent people? She grew angry and began to shake. Tears flowed freely. The screams wont stop, they echoed though the valley, they could not find an escape. She crutched at her white dress, which were not so white anymore. They were dirty with tears and blood. She stared into the darkness and took long deep breaths and spoke, “Mother, ruler of us all, help them, save them, kill this man who is causing all this pain, kill this man who makes me burn with agony!”



And the Goddess answered, “Yes my child, but there must be a price.”

Out in the village, soft white pellets began to fall. They were so small and so pretty. They were cold and wet. What were they? The villagers watched them fall with wonder. They came slowly at first but then, more and more of them fell from the sky. Soon there was a blizzard. No one would see anything. More and more of them fell. The ground was covered in a white blanket. Snow. It was snow. They fell down and as they melted, they washed away the blood. It wasn’t until after the storm stopped that they found out that the soldiers were all dead. When they found the merchant’s body, his dead eyes were staring into the darkness, as if he had seen something that he could not understand.

But Pilane was gone, without a trace.

They never found her.

There was never a real ending to this story. Some say that the goddess came for her to become her daughter. But others say that there was a powerful mage who silently loved her and protected her. Another version was that Pilane was not dead, but had escaped her fate and went elsewhere.

But the one thing that all three legends agreed on, it was said that they created a butterfly to take her place. It was to remind those who loved her: of her beauty, her goodness, and her own sacrifice to save them. They call it the “Blue Heart” and it is a butterfly, they say, that lives only in early winter, after the first snow and only during the full moon. And they say this was done so that the memory of Pilane and all she was would never be lost to the mountains.

In the dark night, under the bright of the full moon, a snow butterfly was seen. A butterfly with wings the size of a thumbnail. The wings were the colour of molten silver, with an oblong blue spot on either side of the creature’s slender body. Those marks, when seen with the wings fully opened as they were displayed, made the shape of a heart.

A heart as blue as the finest sapphire, or the colour of the clear winter sky.