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The butterfly garden, like the aviary, required waiting for a bit outside, and Morgan was leaning back with his hands in his pockets and his eyes closed, face lifted towards the sun, until someone at the front of the line called his name - called Kay, at least - and he was snapped back into sudden sociability.

He apparently knew this person, who was wearing the polo and nametag of an employee, and while he declined skipping the line - it felt wrong to go in front of children - he made brief introductions between his friend Kalani and his friend Jason (older, avuncular) and maintained a briskly-moving conversation - Morgan casually intent on exhibiting Kalani’s wide-eyed friendliness without seeming like it at all - until they received their recited instructions for How to Behave, rattled through with old habit before the rope was lifted for them.

If Jason had, maybe, been doing a Bro Favor by letting Morgan and Kalani in more or less by themselves as their own group, he found this matchmaking effort thrown away as Morgan hung back under the influence of a sudden idea, cheerfully shooing Kalani in and promising to catch up.

Which he did, only a couple of minutes later, moving gingerly because there was a butterfly even now clinging to his lapel, having mistaken one of his flowers, apparently, for the authentic article.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “I had to talk to him about something. I have collected one of your cousins,” he added. “What’s it saying?”


Kalani was glad for three things, in quick succession: the first was that Morgan’s eyes were closed, which meant she could study him unabashedly, for just a few minutes, the way the sunlight played across the planes of his face, the way his deep-dark hair shimmered faintly in the sun. Human faces were fascinating to Kalani, and none moreso than Morgan’s, which seemed so happy most of the time, until he remembered that he was meant to be sad. Seeing him in that moment made Kalani wish she had developed any sort of artistic skill, though she was sure that whatever she tried to capture would be messy and imperfect. Even a photograph would not have captured the moment, so she just held it in her mind, willing it to be like the ancient remnants of her life on Kua’kua: something that would last.

The second was that Morgan did not seem to need her to speak to the Earthling guarding the butterflies. It felt good and right that there was such a person, but Kalani didn’t have the slightest clue on how to approach them, so she was glad to be allowed to peer beyond them into the enclosure that contained her cousins.

The third was that, while Morgan was busy with the butterfly guard, she had a moment alone with her cousins. Hello, little cousins, Kalani said to them, using a complicated series of hand gestures and slight body movements that may have looked like some kind of muted dance, or perhaps that Kalani was suffering an underwear-related emergency and was too proper to correct the issue publicly.

The butterflies said nothing for a few moments, merely fluttered around her curiously, so she tried again. Do you understand me? I am not from this place. This, at least, got the attention of a few of them, and Kalani smiled as one fluttered down to land on her fingers. It wiggled its antennae at her and flapped its wings slowly, thoughtfully, and Kalani nodded.

Yes, I know, this must be very strange for you. The place I am from was home to your cousins. They were very large, and we cared for them. Are you being treated well here?

Kalani nodded again as the butterfly responded to her, and other butterflies began to flutter around her head, having realized that communication was possible with this one. Two landed in her hair, and Kalani laughed in spite of herself.

It was almost as good as being home.

Morgan ambled up at that point, and Kalani turned to greet him, bedecked in butterflies as she was. “Let me see,” Kalani said, studying the butterfly perched on Morgan’s clothes. She watched it stay there for a moment or two, then chuckled as it fluttered away.

“It did not enjoy the taste of your shirt,” Kalani said with clear mirth in her voice. She held up her hand, where the most communicative butterfly still rested, and gestured to it with her free hand: this is a friend. After a moment and a flap or two of its wings, the butterfly took off from Kalani’s fingers and landed on the tip of Morgan’s nose, spreading its wings out over his cheeks, back and forth, back and forth. Kalani laughed.

“He agrees with me. You are a friend.”