A Child's Metamorphosis

Chapter 1: The Tragedy

My little sister, Heather, is completely obsessed with butterflies. It's an interesting little quirk that happens to be adorable when combined with an 8-year-old. Like the little entomologist she'd like to be, she wants to know what it would be like to actually become a butterfly. She recently managed to convince our mother to allow it. We happen to have a near-mad scientist for a father, and he left a body morphing machine behind when he and Mom got divorced. Heather decided she wanted to start from the beginning, going from caterpillar to butterfly so she could write about her experience later.

What I've neglected to mention is that this all happened 2 months ago, not long after the last picture ever taken of her human body. Just days after her butterfly-themed 8th birthday party is when this story begins.

Mom and I left Heather to put in all the necessary information for her transformation. She chose to become a monarch caterpillar midway between hatching and forming a chrysalis. As we waited for the signal from the basement so we could push the button, we heard an odd sizzling noise. We rushed downstairs to see that she had already pushed the button and ran into the transformation pod to start, closing the door behind her. "I'm gonna be a pretty butterfly soon!" she yelled, muffled from the metal door.

Telling her to stop was useless, as the process had already started. We watched as her head disappeared from the window in the door, and a light on the machine turned green, signalling that it was finished.

Then the fire started, destroying the machine beyond repair. Dad would never come to fix it, as he had lost the blueprints long ago. Thus dooming Heather to the new life she chose for herself...permanently.




Chapter 2: Why We Allowed It to Happen

After the body morphing machine fried itself, I opened the pod door, bending down to retrieve my sister. As she slowly inched her way up my index finger, getting used to her tiny new body, I thought of the past and all the fun we had with the machine.

The reason we allowed her to turn into a caterpillar in the first place was because the machine was made to be as safe as possible. We had a device that tracked any transformed matter in case the transformee got lost. It had a fail-safe in case someone transformed ended up injured in some way, so that if destroyed, the consciousness would remain so they could be safely returned to their natural form. That last part was rendered moot once the machine was destroyed. After Heather lived her significantly shorter life, she would remain conscious indefinitely..

She was also not afraid of being transformed, as she had been through it before. When she was 4 years old, she was curious about what being a boy was like, so we allowed her to live as one for a month in the summer. She had fun for a while, but she decided she would only use her 'Heath' form when she wanted to play with the neighborhood boys in their rougher fashion. As such, she has a small boy's wardrobe set aside for those times. Since then, she had been other people as well, including turning into a copy of me when she turned 7 and asked why she needed to start wearing training bras soon. Needless to say, she wasn't so cagey about it afterward.

Mom and I weren't strangers to transformation either. We had both been each other, as well as copies of Heather for twin days and whenever she needed an extra playmate. Not only that, but we had transformed into...other things as well. In my case, let's just say you won't find Heather's favorite party dress in her closet anytime soon, and I also make an incredibly comfortable and sexy bra for my mother when she goes on dates. I also spent an entire summer as a pair of shorts for Heather when she went to summer camp for the first time, because she needed to feel comfortable.

The machine allows the transformee to project emotions into other people's minds in case they can't actually talk, so I could tell that Heather wasn't particularly frightened by the fact that she was now completely blind and deaf. After all, she was looking forward to two things in the future: Becoming a butterfly, and writing about her experience. She didn't know anything was wrong with the machine yet. She didn't know that this would be for the rest of her life.

I carefully brought her into the living room, where Heather herself had set up a jar for us to put her in. Everything she would need to grow into her dream was there for her, and she would be completely safe to grow, pupate, and emerge from her chrysalis.

I watched as she slowly descended into her new home, then twisted the cap onto the jar, sealing her away from the rest of the world. Mom and I then left her to eat from the carefully selected plants she had gathered herself, until she matured enough to continue her metamorphosis.




Chapter 3: The Metamorphosis Begins

It was a week later when Heather had doubled the size of her new caterpillar body. Honestly, it was amazing how she let her new instincts guide her blindly around her jar to feed on nothing but milkweed. That said, the next stage was about to begin.

Heather broadcast an excited emotion to let us know to watch her. As she inched her way toward the jar's lid, we knew what was coming. We watched as she attached herself to the lid with a stringy substance, then let her instincts take over to slowly form a green shell around her. A chrysalis.

I thought of how excited she was when she started this project to find out what happened inside a chrysalis. She wondered what it would be like to feel herself transforming without the aid of the body morphing machine. She even play-acted this scene in the weeks of preparation, cocooning herself in her blankets and hanging gently from the side of her bed, staying still for hours until we called her for the next meal. She even wanted a prep transformation, turning into a glass of water so she could get used to the feeling of being liquid. We denied her that request, as we thought it too dangerous for her. Funny how we thought that back then, knowing her fate now.

Mom and I were worried what Heather's reaction to this stage would be. Would she be frightened? Would she panic while her body turned to mush inside a claustrophobic shell only a couple inches long?

As Heather broadcast a simple feeling of contentment while her body liquefied, we realized we had nothing to worry about. My sister would be just fine inside her own self-made, REAL chrysalis, waiting to emerge as a beautiful butterfly. Still blissfully unaware that her life as a butterfly was permanent. Not knowing there was no going back.

We felt Heather's emotions as she slipped into a deep sleep, to dream of flying in a field of flowers until she thought her project was finished. Only to find out the horrible truth.




Chapter 4: The Emergence
Mom and I waited anxiously for Heather to complete her metamorphosis. How would we tell her that she had less than two months to live? How would she react? Only time would tell. The longest ten days of our lives were spent watching the jar and tiny chrysalis that contained my little sister's changing body.

10 days later, we could see through the chrysalis, and we felt Heather waking up. It was finally happening: She would be a butterfly, like she had wanted since she was 3 years old. We watched in awe as she slowly fought her way through the now useless chrysalis separating her from the outside world. She let us know she was happy, then she hung on to what was left to finish the job. I gently picked up the jar that had been her home for the past two weeks, and brought it to the living room window so she could bask in the sun and expand her newly-formed wings. She stayed like that for an entire day, simply enjoying the feeling of the warm sunlight beating down on her.

Eventually, she started gently fluttering, practicing for when she actually started flying. When she finally let go of the jar's lid with her insectoid feet, she flew around her jar excitedly. She was a natural at flying as a butterfly. Landing on the side, she broadcast an emotion that signaled she wanted out. I carefully picked her up, bringing her home outside to the butterfly garden she helped plant as a toddler. Tenderly I unscrewed the lid, removing it and placing it where I could find it later.

Heather took off, finally flying outside to happily experience what no other human could. Mom and I watched as she fed from the plants she knew a monarch would need. As she fluttered excitedly from one flower to the next, we talked quietly about how we would break the news to her.

5 hours later we noticed Heather resting on the patio door, wanting to come back in for the night. I opened the door, stretching out my finger for her to land on. There she rested, happy as could be that she could see and hear the beauty around her again. That happiness, sadly, wouldn't last.

"Heather..." I started, not sure how to start. She twitched her wings to let me know she was listening. "We have a problem with the body morphing machine." She froze for a second, then took off flying toward the basement door. I quickly ran past her to open it for her. She flew past me again, beating me to the sight of what was left of her salvation.

As I rounded the corner, I saw an interesting and heart-breaking sight, of an old, broken-down machine that would never work again, with a solitary little monarch butterfly resting on it with her wings spread open, a feeling of shock reaching my mind. I watched as her wings started drooping slightly, a new feeling of immense sadness flooding the house. Heather knew.

She knew exactly what the sight meant. Her project would never be finished because she would live the remaining few weeks of her life as a butterfly. She would never be a little girl again.

I had to physically force her onto my finger to abandon the machine and bring her to the safety of the butterfly cage she built herself to sleep in. Mom and I watched as she stayed completely still the rest of the day, finally succumbing to sleep hours later.




Chapter 5: Freedom
It took a few days for Heather to feel anything resembling happiness anytime she wasn't basking in the sunlight, and she only fed from the garden for 5 minutes at a time. She finally perked up 5 days later, signalling she had come to terms with her new reality. Mom and I noticed something was still wrong. We noticed her looking outside most of the time, just waiting for the sunlight to come through the window and into her cage. Then the day came when we found out what the problem was.

It was 7 days after she emerged from her chrysalis that we noticed Heather looking outside with the sun beating down on her. At this point, this was highly unusual behavior, not having her wings spread in the sunlight. Mom and I looked outside, and noticed something different about the garden. We finally came to an unbelievably difficult conclusion.

There was a small gathering of monarchs fluttering around the butterfly garden, pollinating and otherwise doing their natural job. Heather was watching them. I finally bent down to her level and got her attention. Heather twitched her wings to let me know she was listening.

"You're watching them, aren't you?" I asked. Heather flapped her wings twice. Yes. That was the mode of communication we had come up with so she could answer basic questions. "They're free out there, in the wild." She lowered her wings, exhibiting a feeling of sadness. I waited for a few seconds, then...

"You want to join them," I continued. "Don't you?" Two slow flaps. Yes. Mom bent down with me.

"You know what that means, right, Heather?" she asked slowly. Two flaps. "You'll be away from us. You won't be taken care of. You might never see us again. You could be eaten. You could be caught. You could end up drowning in the rain. You'll might end up laying eggs. You'll be alone when you..." Every situation was met with two flaps.

"We'll be really sad here without you," I offered. Suddenly, Heather hesitated, only half lowering her wings. Then...two flaps, with an accompanying emotion. Sorrow.

Mom and I looked at each other, then asked Heather to wait a few minuted while we talked it over. Two flaps again. We went into another room so we could come to a decision about Heather's future.

As it stood, Heather wasn't happy staying with us anymore. She wanted to live life as her body was meant to, not cooped up in a cage inside a house, being constantly watched over by two beings hundreds of times larger than her. She wanted to be free. As such, Mom and I made the hardest decision we had ever made, or would ever make in our lives.

We entered the living room again to carry out our decision. I opened the door to Heather's cage, offering my finger for her to climb onto. She was curious about what was happening, so she hesitated. "It's OK, Heather," I offered. Slowly, she crawled onto my outstretched finger. I carefully lifted her out of the cage, turning toward the door into the garden. Mom opened the door for us to go outside. We had decided that I would be the one to release my little sister.

I stepped into the garden, Heather looking around at the monarchs around us. I smiled at her, raising my hand into the air. Then she took off flying.

But not for long. She landed first on Mom's shoulder, lingering for a few seconds, broadcasting her mixture of excitement and deep sorrow. Then she flew over to mew, landing playfully on the tip of my nose. As I went cross-eyed looking at her, I felt something small brush lightly against my skin as Heather touched me with the end of her elegant proboscis. The closest thing to a kiss goodbye that she could manage. With that, she flew off again.

This time, it would be for good. She joined the monarchs in their activity, quickly becoming lost in the bunch. There would be no way to tell her apart from the others, and that's exactly how she wanted it. She was happy now, but still sad.

Mom and I watched her mingle with her favorite animal, then looked on in tears as they all flew off, searching for the next patch of friendly flowers. Within seconds, every last butterfly was gone. Including Heather.

For the next few weeks, Mom and I never left the house, never even going outside. For every storm, we worried for Heather's safety. Every day, we watched out the window, wishing she would return to us. We tracked her every movement with a device Dad had invented long ago that was effectively a GPS for transformed matter. We always knew where she was, but we wanted it to be Heather's decision whether or not she came back. And we both knew the truth.

Heather wouldn't choose to come back. She was smart enough to stay safe during storms, and no predator would dare to try to eat her due to her body's natural coloring signalling, "Get away! I taste horrible!"

We missed her greatly, but we only cared for Heather's happiness. And she was happy now, free in the wild. Where she belonged. With her own kind, the majestic monarch butterfly, she would help to pollinate plants around the area, and eventually contribute her genes through her own offspring as she rapidly matured mentally. She had chosen this life, and she would live it to the fullest right up to the very end.




Chapter 6: A Child's End

The grueling wait was over. 4 weeks after I released Heather into the wild, her signal on the tracker stopped moving after it had moved erratically for a few days. We traced her flight pattern, seeing many more butterfly bushes along the way, until we came to a mostly familiar scene.

There was a beach Heather always loved playing at as a human, because there was a small gathering of milkweed plants nearby that many monarchs visited frequently. The tracker picked up residual signals coming from one plant, and we found something interesting.

There were around a dozen tiny eggs gathered on one of the leaves that had transformed material sprinkled throughout, which meant they had come from Heather. As her mind had undoubtedly matured to near-adulthood by this time, Mom and I realized she had indeed mated with another monarch, continuing her new lineage to the next generation. We knew then that Heather had to be nearby. We combed the shoreline, shouting her name, hoping she would respond. Then I saw the saddest thing imaginable.

Heather's tiny, battered body was laying motionless on the sand. She must have been caught in a storm and couldn't get to safety soon enough, because her wings were tattered, littered with holes, and one of her antennae had broken off. All I felt coming from her lifeless body was a vague feeling...

...of contentment. She had done her duty, accomplished her purpose in the world. She had pollinated flowers she fed from, and reproduced to assure the survival of her new species. Her body died while protecting her eggs, and she knew they were safe. She thought the last thing she would ever see would be her favorite place in the world. However, there was also a lingering sadness. She would never again see the ones who cared for her in her short childhood, or play in the sand at the beach, or prance around the yard in her favorite costume.

She didn't know we would come for her. Once she realized we were present, her mood lifted. Her body may have been dead, but her mind lived on, and we were going to be in her life again.

I gently slipped a sheet of paper underneath her, then carefully lifted her broken body off the ground. Making sure she wouldn't fall off, I carried her to the car. From there, Mom brought us home.

Once we were there, I laid the paper down onto the table, and thought about the sight in front of me. There, resting on top of a sheet of printer paper, was not just a dead butterfly. It was my little sister, going along for the ride with whatever happened to her unliving form, and she was still happy. I brought her to her old bedroom, sliding her gently onto her desk. This is where she stayed for 4 days, sheltered from the elements inside her home.

4 days later is when Dad showed up. He had learned what happened to Heather days after the machine malfunctioned, and had been working on a secret project ever since. Although Mom made it clear she was furious with him for indirectly causing this, he assured her that this project would make caring for Heather significantly easier. We all entered her old room, where Heather still rested on her desk. He started to explain what he had made.

A soul container. He had created a way to transfer her consciousness into something else, with the condition that it could only ever be used once. It had to contain material from her current body, and it had to be an inanimate object, as he found it didn't work either way on living material. Finally, Dad unveiled the container itself.

A small charm that could have something flat be placed inside it, with a glass window on the front, meant to be attached to a necklace or bracelet. If we took a small piece of Heather's most complete wing, we could make the device work. We showed everything to Heather, waiting for the emotional response that would decide her fate.

From the tiny body on the little pink desk, we felt...happiness. She would agree to have a piece of her wing cut off, placed inside the charm, and become the charm itself. Instead of slowly disintegrating in the wilderness, she would become nearly immune to time itself. So, we commenced the operation that would do a few things.

First, Heather's mind would be transferred into its new vessel. Second, her newfound maturity would be stripped away, as her mind no longer needed to be adult. This was an unavoidable side-effect of the process that would end up making her more interested in things around her, so it turned out for the better in the long run anyway. Third, her mind would begin to age normally, until she fades from existence around a century from now, saving her from a torturous and boring eternity.

We all knew this was the best way for her to continue existing. Heather was happy, and that's all we cared about.




Epilogue

As I watch my 5 year-old granddaughter play in the yard with her favorite necklace around her neck, I stop to reminisce of the years that have gone by since Heather became a butterfly.

I wore my new charm on a necklace every day, Heather happily bouncing along with me, dangling above my chest. The soul transference was a resounding success, allowing us to bury her old, battered butterfly body in the sand near the milkweed plant she had laid her eggs on. After Dad left for his new job far away, Mom and I watched Heather's offspring hatch, then eventually become beautiful monarchs in their own right. As her mind had reverted back to childhood, Heather watched from my neckline in awe, not having any realization that they were technically her children.

Heather would be there for every moment of my life, hanging happily from her chain as I went back to school, found a boyfriend, graduated from high school and college, broke up with my boyfriend, found a new one, and eventually got married.

Once I turned 30, I had my first child. We named her Heather Jr., and she grew to love butterflies just as much as Heather had in her childhood. At the mental age of 22 at this point, Heather broadcast a feeling of longing whenever I played with my daughter. 4 years later, I asked her if she wanted to be given to Heather Jr. The feeling of relief said more than words ever could. I passed down the necklace that was my little sister to my first child that day. The unbridled joy I felt from Heather as she hung from the tiny neck of her niece was the best thing I could ever have hoped for. As Heather Jr. grew up, I had one more child, a son I named Heath in honor of the little brother Heather sometimes took the form of so many years ago.

My daughter learned the truth about her aunt who was hanging from her neck when she turned 8. I told her that she should only talk to Heather when she wasn't around other people, but she occasionally slipped up. Those listening just brushed it off as an imaginative little girl talking to her favorite necklace, so our secret was safe.

As a young woman, Heather Jr. married the love of her life. She asked me permission to tell her husband about Heather, which I granted. Soon after, she had a daughter named Vanessa, after the common name of her own favorite butterfly species. Vanessa was brought up to also learn about Heather, whose mind had aged to well over 40 by this point, myself in my 50's. Heather once again requested to be given to the little girl, who never went anywhere without her great-aunt hanging from her neck, dangling around her belly button.

This brought me back to the present. Heather had flown off of Vanessa's neck, falling in the grass nearby. At the mental age of 55, she knew she would be found quickly, but Vanessa was crying. I hopped up as quickly as my 63-year-old form could, found Heather in the grass, and gave her back to Vanessa. She stopped crying, immediately happy again as she placed the living necklace around her neck again, this time tucking it under her shirt. Hugging me around the neck, she ran back out into the yard to pretend to be a butterfly.

I basked in nostalgia, having witnessed this behavior in two other girls before this. Heather Jr. quietly walked out, having returned home from work, watching her daughter playing the same game she had over twenty years ago, wearing the same necklace she had grown up with. Heather herself bounced happily between Vanessa's stomach and pink shirt, not caring in the slightest she could no longer see anything around her. She was comfortable in her tiny metal body, with a piece of her former self tucked safely behind her clasp and window, showing her former wing to the world.

Heather was content in bringing happiness to those around her, and wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world. She was there to comfort me when I gave birth to Heather Jr. She was present when Heather Jr. did the same for Vanessa. Whenever the child wearing her was injured, she would mentally soothe them into happiness again. She would be given to Vanessa's daughter years later, then to her daughter, until finally, once she mentally aged to 120, her consciousness would finally fade, bringing her to whatever comes after death.

I can't wait to see my little sister again.