The butterfly that couldn’t fly by Indie (age 10)

I’m wriggling around in this little see-through tub. Something is shaking me around but I stick to the side of the tub like the four other caterpillars. I remember lying in the grass, my stomach full of leaf... Now I'm here, but I don’t mind because there’s some kind of brown food-mush at the bottom. I try to talk with my roommates but they just munch on the brown stuff. That stuff is AMAZING. So for a bit, I just lie on the floor, looking at the walls.

Suddenly a giant is staring right at me and babbling on! I don’t speak giant so I wriggle to the other side. It gets quite cold so the giant wraps a soft thing around our tub. It’s a bit loud too - I can hear some weird up-down music. Still, I keep munching and after a while I notice how fat I’ve become! I decide it is time to wrap myself in a cosy cocoon, and I feel safe and secure. But one day it breaks and I am sitting (yes I am sitting - I have legs!) on a paper thing, with a mesh wall towering above me. 

The giant comes along and makes more noise, pointing it’s long pink fingers at me. That’s when I feel something odd on my back, so I squirm around, noticing I can move them! Eventually, I realise if I wriggle hard enough I fly! I go up to the top of the mesh!

By now two other caterpillar mates have come out and boy they look different - like me I guess! Suddenly I'm out in the world! I can see grass and flowers. A giant puts one of his fingers next to me and I climb on. It lifts me onto the grass. I see my two mates fly away. 

Wow! I am all alone because the grass has a tall wood thing around it that I’m just not strong enough to fly over. Wait for me! I flap but nothing much happens. Instead I’m put back in the mesh thing and my freedom is over. The other two cocoons hatch and fly away. I find I want to climb onto that pink finger thing again - it’s fun. I move house into a big tub with sticks and rocks and flowers, and every so often I get a finger-ride out to the grass. I fly onto different flowers, but I can’t fly over the big wood thing!  

One day the giant took me from my tub, on her finger, down a road, to a different grass area that had other giants and was very, very big. As we explored I managed to fly off, but only down, and I landed in the grass. I sensed giants (with their huge feet!) all around me. I couldn’t see my special finger, I couldn’t fly off. I felt really uneasy down there. I suppose it was my fault, I should have stayed put. I heard giants talking - my giant and a new one. I’m here! Then suddenly they sounded excited. At last I was rescued from the huge green world and scooped up and taken home. 

So I stay in my tub, climbing on my friendly giant occasionally, and although my flying skills are quite deplorable, life is good.