Swallowtail Butterfly

[The world-shattering great demon lord vs. the Buddhist bamboo spirit] An inconspicuous elecampane flower growing in a patch of wild grass loved the scorching sunshine of summer afternoons and the red-bodied, blue-eyed dragonflies that fluttered around at summer dusk. Perhaps because the elecampane resembled a tiny sun, fate insisted that this wildflower become the Golden Crow, the sun that shines upon all living things.

The heat of the sun was too much for a frail little wildflower to bear. It could only be burned alive, slowly drying out. Then, in the next season, the little wildflower bloomed again. She thought the extraordinarily beautiful dragonfly liked her too, but she never imagined he saw her only as medicine to save his people.

Later, the little wildflower married an ordinary mortal. She thought she could be happy. But the day after their wedding, her new husband disappeared. When she finally found him, she discovered she was still just that medicine.

As it turned out, the dragonfly hadn’t circled the little flower because he liked her. He simply wanted to eat her.

She’d imagined it all. How could a flower blooming among wild grasses ever bloom in a dragonfly’s heart?

In the end, they all told the little wildflower, even the dragonfly who wanted to eat her, that she had always bloomed in their hearts. It was just a pathetic kind of blooming, one they couldn’t speak of. In some dark, forgotten place, she had bloomed in silence, putting down roots too deep to pull free. If a wildfire couldn’t burn her out, then she would spread like a prairie fire and cover the entire wilderness of their hearts.

But she was only a little wildflower, not the sun. She could wither, die, and grow bitter with despair…