The sun is so bright, so warm. It's brilliant rays shine down through the white poofy balls of cold that are clouds. Clouds are bad. Clouds mean that the sun will go away.
I like the sun.
I also like the wide blue sky. It never ends, so I can explore as much as I want.
I spread my wings wide as I float towards the distant ground. Not really distant, but far enought to seem small.
The ground is good, too. So colorful. I like colors. Colors mean flowers. I like flowers.
I swoop low to the green waves below. The warm breeze pushes me towards the open field of swirling colors. I don't fight it. I like colors.
I fly about, looking for a color that looks good. I find one, yellow and white. A daisy.
I float down to it, the soft breeze swirling around. The daisy dances when it sees me. I am happy to see it, too.
I land as delicately as I can on the soft white pedals. The daisy dances about, and the breeze joins. Soon, all three of us are dancing together. The breeze, the daisy, and me.
I un-spiral my tounge, reaching to the sweet center of the daisy. The sweet, sticky goodness flows as I drink it in, the daisy and the breeze still dancing. Tiny, soft balls of pollen stick to my legs and belly as I move my wings once more, making my way to the big blue sky and the bright warm sun again.
Movement catches my eye. Down below, in the field. A swirling mass of colors. Blues, reds, yellows, greens, all the colors of the field.
I make my way to the swirling colors, the breeze helping me along the way. The colorful mass is joined by another as I move closer. Now there are sounds. The colors make strange, yet intrigingly beautiful sounds at each other.
"Mommy, mommy, look! A butterfly!"
I fly closer to the first swirl of color. It changes shape, and I land softly on part of it that extends toward me.
"Look! Look! It landed on my hand!"
I smell the strange thing under my feet, and it makes more sounds. There is no sweet necar, though, so I fly away.
Suddenly, there is a strange thing around me. The world looks warped, distorted. The colors are wrong. And there is no breeze, no warm sunlight. I bump into a cold, hard thing. I turn, and hit it again.
There is no way out.
"Poke some holes in the lid so it can breathe."
The sounds, earlier so beautiful, now sound hollow and sinister.
I shutter as several loud bangs from above assault me.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
I open my wings as wide as I can. My colors scare most dangers. Colors on my wings don't mean warnings and danger, not flowers and sunlight.
The strange prison moves, the distorted, unnatural colors scaring me.
An eternity passes. Colors die down. No color means night. Night means no sun.
No sun scares me. I like the sun.
Another eternity passes. The colors come back gradually, but they don't move. Colors are supposed to move, to swirl, to dance. Like the daisy.
My cold, warped prison doesn't change. Nothing changes.
I'm so hungry. I miss the flowers, the sky, the sun, even the clouds. The clouds that chase away the sun, even though it always comes back.
I miss being free.
I miss the colors.
I like colors.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
140,799 Literary Works • 673,688 Reviews
Hi Questio! Here to review your story~
I guess the thing I love the most about this is really the concept and theme behind it all. And then when I take the time to think about it more it proves to actually be rather sad! It really does make me think more about bugs even though I personally find them really grim. I don't exactly catch bugs myself but it really does make me sympathise with them.
What I wasn't too keen on about this was the child-like way you wrote this. Just because it's from a bug's perspective, it doesn't mean it has to be written like this. I mean, there are quite a lot of short sentences in here which break up the flow and don't really leave much space for description. And there's another thing which I thought was missing here was some more vivid descriptions. Although now that I think about it butterflies probably wouldn't be able to see that well anyways, but still. A bit more imagery would be nice!
The other thing I wanted to mention was that I noticed there were a lot of really short paragraphs in here, or rather new paragraphs started where there didn't need to be! You only really need to start a new paragraphs if you're mentioning something new really, and a lot of the time that wasn't the case. This wouldn't be too much of a problem it's just it makes it quite broken up to read.
Overall, I really like this! The subject is really cool and makes me think loads more about butterflies and other bugs! Next steps would be to include more descriptions are work a bit on your paragraphing. I hope this review helped, feel free to PM me with any questions you have or if you'd like another review on anything.
Keep writing!
~ArcticMonkey x
Gosh it really brings you into the insight of bugs when we catch them. I say this a lot but it was great and romantic. I can't really put this right but... it's nice to see the world through the eyes of someone or in this case something else. Especially a butterfly who's lives are so short that everyday is a new bright experience full of color. The story fills you with the curiosity of a child but the title makes you wonder what sort of prison this is and get's you sad because you start to feel for the main character. It's a nice story ;>
Hello
I think you did a really good job in conveying the feelings of entrapment and fear.
I just wanted to chime in on the scientific facts of butterflies. Did you know that butterflies can perceive more colors than us? The most in nature second only to the mantis shrimp. That's one thing I would have liked to see reference to.
Another thing I would have liked to see reference to was the fact that butterflies taste with their feet. Maybe you could have described what the little girl tasted like.
These are just two things that could add to the poem, other than that, great job.
Hi this is great and I would like to write a review but could you ever check out my story 'An Unexpected Reunion' and give me some feedback. If you do, I will for sure write a review for you. You are a great writer!
ED here to review!
First of all, I liked this. You did a great job with such an interesting and atypical premise. It has color. (;) )
That being said, there are a few areas that need a little help:
I didn't really like this section here. The use of "poofy" detracts from the pace amd imagery of the rest of the paragraph. Especially having this in here so soon. I would reccomend choosing a different phrase or something.
Even though you repeat the pattern of "I like" here, beware of repeating the word "colors." I know it's the theme of this piece, but try and be a bit more creative in sentence structure and such to eliminate as much repitition as possible. Repitition is a good technique, but as I said, you're already using the "I like" pattern. Adding more repitition is... repetitive. And slightly overdone. Just beware.
This sort of jarred me out of the prose. Try to avoid the use of "sound effects" as much as possible in narrative.
This needs to be reworded. I read it over and over again and I still don't quite grasp what you were trying to say. I'm pretty sure this is just a technical, un-edited error.
Nice way to end. It's sort of "mirrored" with the rest of the piece.
Final two cents:
Try to explain what the butterfly is feeling a bit more. We see what she's seeing and experiencing, but we don't know how she reacts emotionally. This may have been your intention, but I think this would be stronger with more characterization added to it.
Be careful of the voice. It starts out as very simplistic and pure, but you sometimes slip into a more "authorial" tone. Just watch out for those spots.
Overall, I thought that this was very well done. It needs some refining to make this truly shine, but I loved the innocence of it all. Such a tiny tradegy. Beautifully done.
Keep working at this, great work.
~ED