The Monarch Chronicles
An Allegory

"It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgrows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting–everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering 'whitewash' he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens." –Wind and Willows








The season had become late – she didn't have much time to think about this, not really. That air through which she jigged and jagged did not seem particularly the way she thought it was supposed to be, at least not since the leaves of the very milkweed she intuitively knew to be her delight and living quarters, was brittle to the touch now, large and eaten holes all over the place. Her brief life was not much in the way of planning, but more of an intense sense for doing some-thing, some-thing, all the time, to find that one-thing that would be ultimately soothing.  And oh the energy of these new found wings! If there was a sense of appreciation built into the body and mind of the Monarch butterfly, well, she most certainly had it, and latched for only seconds at a time at this particular milkweed that sat out in front of this particular home all alone, yet as useful as life itself.  As she bounded around the flow of the heat that came off the walls of the great yellow box of the house, there were the variety of smells that she detected and couldn't help herself to wonder why every single thing that she passed as she flitted about the green growth, how was not everything else flitting about in the same joy of aromas? This particular warm yellow box of a house had circled around a wooden wall that, at its very top ends offered what seemed a thousand smells, a thousand little samples. Over the past three sun cycles she had come to feel a sense of claim over this little area of the side river and cavorted around its edges as a sort of protective dance and begin to take pride in the way geranium and petunias sprung upward in their fountains of purple and pink, really little rides of color that had within them their own motion and feeling that nothing likely other than the Monarch could fully
understand, or so she thought. Her pride reached unusual heights at some hours, as the sun blaze hit her wings as if to lay comfort; a slight breeze cooled them back, and she fanned herself easily against the heat.  Food, shelter, warmth, water, what else could there be?