ilthit: (Default)
Ilthit ([personal profile] ilthit) wrote in [community profile] femslashficlets2019-11-08 01:58 pm

[234] Never Kill a Butterfly (Stand Still Stay Silent)

Title: Never Kill a Butterfly
Fandom: Stand Still Stay Silent
Characters/Pairings: Tuuri Hotakainen/Sigrun Eide
Rating: general
Words: 300
Summary: Butterflies may be the spirits of the dead come to visit us.


She sleeps under the ice, but she also dreams. In her dreams, she is a white cabbage butterfly, flitting through thick wild forest.

The trees are old here, and rot where they have fallen. It is nothing like the built and open plains of Denmark, or the cultivated fecundity of her childhood home at Toivosaari, or even the sheep-island with its grazing grounds and wild berry patches. This is where she always wanted to run, where her heart called out to her, from beyond the spikes they had driven into the rising lake-bottom, beyond the cool and glistening waters.

She passes through the breaking sunlight, pale and shimmery so early in the morning, down into the shadow. Past hanging skulls, leather smeared with dark blood. Down towards her sleeping friends, nestled in protective magic that smells and tastes achingly familiar.

She settles on her cousin's nose for a moment, but he scrunches his nose and turns, and she must move. She finds another nose, shaded by leaves and a fall of red hair.

Sigrun does not move. The butterfly walks along to her forehead, careful to keep her footsteps soft on her faintly tanned skin, and presses her forehead on hers.

"I wish it had gone differently," she whispers, and in the logic of dreams she knows Sigrun has heard her too. "I wish we had had more time. But what happened wasn't your fault."

Sigrun's brow furrows, and Tuuri—that was her name, Tuuri—beats her wings to escape the hand that comes up to wipe her forehead. No, not forehead. Her eyes.

Sigrun sniffs, a gasp escaping her throat. Moisture like dew glistens in the corner of her eye; she sucks in breath, and then lies still, her chest rising and falling evenly.

Under the ice, Tuuri sleeps.