Chrysalis

With a vague smile Vanessa plucked the cocoon from the shrub. She rolled it around in her fingers fascinated buy the thought of a slimy bug undergoing a complete metamorphosis.
                                 
“A chrysalis, that’s what you are you know. Nothing more than an average worthless insect, but soon you’ll emerge complete. If you live.”

Vanessa pinched the end of the cocoon, “I don’t think you deserve to live. What have you ever done? Crawled around, living your bug life...and for what? So you could spend one glorious day as a butterfly? That’s all you’ll live you know; one day, maybe a week. I can’t remember.”

The cocoon split slightly on the end where Vanessa  pinched it. Intrigued, she peeled the protective shell open a bit exposing the transforming larva. 

“My father says death is like a cocoon. He says that the grave is a place where you transform and then somehow you emerge perfect and in heaven. It seems kind of silly to me. It is silly isn’t it?” Vanessa sat crying, looking at the writhing insect, “Well Mr. Caterpillar, there’ll be no heaven for you. You wont ever be anything other than an ugly old bug.”

“Vanessa, put that down. Please stay with me, this will be over soon.” Vanessa’s aunt tugged the young girl away from the bush, away from the doomed larva, and back into the crowed of mourners.

Vanessa’s eyes drifted from the bush to pile of dirt beside the grave side. The square edges and long shape of the coffin looked oddly familiar.  Her eyes looked to the broken cocoon on the ground and the now dead caterpillar. Her mind raced thinking of her mother inside of her black and brass cocoon.

She could hear the priest’s words. “We commend this woman...” 

Just silly, she thought. 

*word count 299