After a light dinner, Alyanna transferred to the living room and gravitated to the couch. Grandma Violeta followed behind her while lulling the same aged cradlesong she used to sing to Alyanna.

Alyanna instantly recognized the lullaby. The melody of it sent a spark in her heart. Suddenly, she wanted to be a child again. Suddenly, she wanted to return to the time when the only problem she had was guessing the names of the butterflies and going to places in search of them. Those good old days. Those good old memories.

She stapled her hands together over her left knee. She waited for her grandmother to slouch beside her. "When was the last time Mom and Dad visited here?" she asked as soon as her grandmother sat down.

Grandma Violeta grunted. "I couldn't even remember." Before taking the plunge, she looked up at the ceiling as if the answers were there. "But I remember your father sending me some goods last month. It came with a letter saying they've been attentive lately and I understand why. He promised to visit me when all their hustles in school were over."

On the wall in front of them dangled frames of various shapes, colors, and sizes. They contained preserved butterfly specimens. As soon as Alyanna caught a glimpse of them, her eyes grew big. She recognized them well. Those poor, alluring butterflies she and her grandma found dead in the garden. Those dead butterflies they dried out and kept for display.

Alyanna could name them all— identify their characteristics, recite their scientific names, and guess where they could be lurking. That was how obsessed she was with them.

But instead of doing what she could've done, she only prolonged her gaze on them until her grandmother noticed her.

"Do you still remember them?" Grandma Violeta asked, her lips forming into a genuine smile.

"Yes. Especially the tale you always told me before bedtime," Alyanna answered, looking up to the old woman beside her. "That's the first one you introduced to me, right?"

"Ah! Indeed," her Grandma Violeta agreed.

And all of a sudden, a flashback suddenly visited her.

↭

"Grandma, quick! Come over! Look at what's in the garden! It's a dead butterfly!" Twelve years old Alyanna hollered at the top of her lungs as she frantically meandered over the puddles and into the house to fetch her Grandma Violeta.

She pulled her grandmother out of the living room, thrilled to show her the dead butterfly stowed on her cooking set toys beneath the flowering shrubbery.

"What's with the hurry, Alyanna?" her grandmother asked, clueless about her granddaughter talking gibberish due to overpowering excitement.

"I told you, I just found an enormously big brown butterfly! It's dead!" Alyanna answered. The engaging pitch of her voice intrigued the animals on the farm by the ongoing fuss.

When they arrived at the garden, Alyanna crouched down to reach for the butterfly. While having it on her draggled little palms, she expressed, "I just can't believe it! It is so huge! I don't think this is still a butterfly at all! I believe this one's already a fairy!"

Grandma Violeta couldn't help herself but just smile. With her lips like a boat on a sail, she went down on bended knees and hugged her precious, tiny angel. She transferred the winged creature to her gnarled, wrinkled hands and let it sit there for a while.

"This is called a Melanitis Leda. Also known as the common evening brown," she said. "But you could be right, sweetheart. This one is possibly a fairy," she concluded as she stared at the butterfly's brown, extensive wings, intricately decorated with dark circles and white linings.

"What should we do with this one? Do you think it's too late to revive her?" Alyanna's rising intonation could tell so much about how concerned she was with the winged creature in her grandmother's hands. "Fairies don't die, do they?" Her eyes gleamed with empathy.

"I don't know about that, little one. But based on what I know from folklores, fairies die once they complete their mission." With all carefulness, Grandma Violeta stood up and walked away from the shrubbery.

"Mission?" The teeny, tiny girl wondered.

Her grandmother nodded. "According to the age-old tale, the colors of their wings signify the mission they need to accomplish here on earth," Grandma Violeta said while looking down at the insect. "The common evening brown symbolizes wealth. My ancestors believed that when you bury a dead common evening brown, it soon turns into money. That is their sole mission. To provide wealth to people who are kind enough to give them a peaceful interment," she explained.

Alyanna's jaw dropped upon hearing such words. "If we bury it now, do you think it will turn into money?"

"We can give it a try."

Without uttering a word, Alyanna suddenly ran away and dashed straight into the barn where her Grandpa Gerald milked the cows. Grandma Violeta remained on her spot; an invisible question mark blossomed on her face. She did not go anywhere yet. She knew her granddaughter was up for something, so she waited for her to return.

And she did.

On her arrival, she carried a trowel with her and some twigs.

"What's that for?" Grandma Violeta asked though she might have known the answer already.

"I want the money!" She went down on fours and started digging the moisture-laden soil using the trowel of her grandfather. "I'm going to give the fairy a peaceful interment."

Grandma Violeta stifled a laugh. She found her daughter adorable for living up to such innocence. She knew that none of those tales were true. They were never true. They were nothing but mere legends told to children to make them believe that the world was magical– even though it was not.

She looked at her granddaughter with gleaming eyes– like she was the most beautiful thing to ever exist in the universe– because she was. At least in her universe.

"This would be a lot easier if you help me, Grandma." Alyanna pouted her lips as she eyed her grandmother.

Grandma Violeta snapped out of her daydreams. "Okay, okay. I'll pluck some flowers to put on your fairy's grave."

"Awesome!" She grinned. "And please don't forget to choose the best ones!"

↭

"Oh, goodness gracious! I still couldn't believe that was my first time seeing a giant butterfly." Alyanna sighed. "But what's even more unbelievable is it actually turned into money!"

Grandma Violeta couldn't stop herself from stretching her lips ear to ear. She was enjoying it. Years and years had passed but her twenty-year-old Alyanna was still as adorable as her twelve-year-old one. Her innocence never faded. Her adoration towards the winged creatures she believed were fairies never grew dull.

"Which among those bedtime stories do you like the most?" Grandma Violeta asked her, but she heard so many bedtime stories about butterflies that she had a hard time choosing which one stood out from the rest.

She heard about the common evening brown turning into money– she even had the chance to witness it herself.

She also heard about the cloudless sulphur butterfly– one that had a pair of pure yellow wings– that brought happiness to a once gloomy and hopeless kingdom.

Even the tale about how a monarch butterfly encouraged a depressed widow, she heard about it, too.

Heck, and so were the nightmares brought by the black swallowtails every time she attempted to finish listening about its tale– on how it scared the wits out of the children who did not sleep after noontime.

She knew the tales of all of those butterflies, of those fairies. However, there was still one tale about one kind of butterfly that she was yet to hear. The one that her Grandma Violeta would never tell her.

"The bedtime story that I like the most is the one that you never got to tell," Alyanna softly answered as she looked away from the frames on the wall.

"I told you before that it is not a bedtime story, Alyanna."

"Then what is it?"

"It is a phenomenon," Grandma Violeta answered. She took a series of three heavy breaths before she continued, "It is something that you will only be able to understand someday when I turn into one."