Moths on the Moon

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, before humans attempted to rule the earth, before a human was even born in fact, back in the time when the earth was made of blue butterflies, there was a very beautiful blue butterfly Queen, her name was Arion. Her particular skills were sky dancing, and she was admired by all the other butterflies for her grace and her ability to leave a  trail of beautiful patterns in the sky as she danced.  Now it came to pass that her best friend gave birth to another blue butterfly who grew up very strong and  beautiful , graceful and clever. Her name was Asthena. So clever was Asthena she was able to not only imitate Queen Arion and her wonderful dances in the sky, but she was able to turn the trail of patterns into little golden balls of dust. All the other butterflies admired her so much and asked her to dance for them every day. This made Queen Arion jealous and she began to turn green with envy, and one day in a fit of rage and mad fluttering she turned Asthena  white and banished her from the earth. Disagreeing with Queen Arion’s actions, many of the other blue butterflies on earth became agitated and began an uprising, but Queen Arion was having none of it and she turned them all white and banished them all from the earth.
Meanwhile Asthena flew in the dark away from the  blue earth below and became afraid, but when she turned to see her beautiful blue earth one more time she saw lots of white butterflies coming towards her. Together they flew on in the darkness until they became tired and there they formed a new world, we call it the moon.
Back on earth Queen Arion became sorry for what she had done, so she allowed the white butterflies to visit the earth at night, (in that way she wouldn’t have to see them and feel even worse for what she had done) she also gave them a new name – moths. However not being able to see very well the moths rarely visited earth at night, that was until humans invented artificial light …

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Story and art work © Kate Rattray