Bug Defines Herself and Names a Buttercup Boy

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Sometimes I find myself trapped within an hourglass like a grain of sand, only I am much larger than a grain of sand. I climb the walls unsuccessfully not to avoid falling through the hole, but for the fear of stopping the sand and pausing time in its tracks. There was a moment in which I learned that time stops for no one, not even a girl named Bug trapped within an hourglass.

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I live alongside the riverbeds that have never been touched by human hands. In lives past I have belonged to a man with no ears and a child with no dreams. I have been taken in by a snake with one tooth and an owl with three thoughts. I have an abundance of days but a drought of wishes.

I will die inside a poppy seed, in every life, for I am Bug.

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On my sixteenth day, I met Rabbit. He was a bit larger than me, with hair the color of buttercups, and eyes the color of delphinium blooms. I was on a rock that had been warmed by the sun, feeling my skin dry out like leaves in October, and had seen a boy walking towards me. He looked a bit lonesome, so I hopped off of my rock and went to see if he needed a companion.

“How are you?” I thought I was being amiable, since it seemed that he had not spoken to anyone for quite a long time. His eyes were downcast and he seemed to be concentrating on stepping on the flattest pebbles as he went along the riverbed.

He did not answer, and I patiently said nothing, but continued to follow in his footsteps. Every now and then he would glance at me, a look of distress on his face, and would quickly turn back around to take another step. His hair swayed with every jerky step like a field of flowers in a light wind, and I found it to be rather amusing to watch.

For awhile I was content following the buttercup boy.

All too soon the end came, as it always does when one is finally content; he turned around, looked me square in the eyes, and said, “Stop following me.”

I was taken aback at his demand. His little fists were clenched dreadfully, and for a moment I thought he might hit me. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to ask if you needed a friend.”

His fingers slackened, and he narrowed his gaze, peering at me from behind a wall of thick black lashes. “Who are you? Why do you want to be my friend?”

“I’m Bug. Are you not allowed to have friends? I would be a good friend.” I twirled around, hands splayed like my blue skirt. “I always have time to play, and I am always ready for dinner, or to make lunch, and I never get tired of talking, no matter how late it is!” A giddy feeling rose in me; I hadn’t talked to anyone in all of sixteen days. To think that I might make a friend in this lifetime was almost too much to handle.

But the boy said nothing. Most of his weight was on his left leg, which stood on a pebble slightly lower than the one his right leg was on, so he leaned, reminding me of a twig. He was definitely thin enough to be a twig.

“I can have friends,” he mumbled. I stopped twirling as his eyes went down again. “I like to play. I like having lunch.” He looked at me again, determination spread across his face. “But I don’t like to stay up late talking!”

I laughed and hopped up onto a rock. “What’s your name?”

The determination faded away and was replaced by nervousness. “I... I don’t have one. My mother never gave me a name.”

“Well, who was your mother?” I held out my hand, and when he took it, I pulled him onto the rock with me. He stumbled, his foot catching on the underside of the rock, and fell, taking me down with him. We both erupted into fits of giggles that made it hard to untangle ourselves and brush the dirt off our clothes, but somehow we managed.

“My mother was a sea nymph.” He plucked a seed from my hair. “I was born a long, long way away from here.” A sort of silence fell over us like a curtain of fog. He looked wistfully off in the distance, through the trees, past the animals, to a place I had never been before and desperately wanted to visit.

I thought back to my first day, wondering who my mother was. Perhaps she was a wood nymph, or a fairy; maybe she was a cricket, the missing vertebrae of a deer skeleton, or a clump of grass. I’d had many first days, too many to count but not enough to forget, yet I could not find a mother’s face.

“I will name you Rabbit.”

“That has nothing to do with the sea, Bug.”

Smiling, I patted him on his buttercup head. “I like you, and I like rabbits. So you will be Rabbit, and you will be mine.”

We walked to the very edge of the river and dipped our toes in. Rabbit had to take his shoes and socks off, but I had never had shoes, let alone socks, and for a little while I tried to think of how it would be like to have a mother who made you shoes and socks. Or made you anything. All I had was a blue skirt and a white shirt, and I had woken up with both on my body.

Eventually, we stripped off our clothes and ran into the water, shouting at the sudden chill and the rushing torrents of water that threatened to carry us away. We splashed water at each other and held competitions to see who could hold their breath the longest. Rabbit always won, but I suppose that it was because he was born from the sea.

When night started to creep in on the forest, I pushed him onto the pebbles by the river and made him put his clothes on so he wouldn’t catch a cold. I’d caught a cold once, a very long time ago, and it had not been very fun. I didn’t eat for days and had laid in a hole at the base of a tree so long my legs started to hurt. Once we were both properly dressed, I went to search for berries and left Rabbit to start a fire.

Late in the night, Rabbit woke me up. “Bug, have you ever had a friend before?”

I squirmed around to face him. “Not in all my sixteen days.” I didn’t want to tell him about the other days, the other friends; I knew it would upset him. So I told him the truth as he would understand.

“Me neither. Thank you for naming me.” He smiled, and his delphinium eyes sparkled for a moment before closing. I nestled in close to him, waiting for the sleep to take me.