Butterfly Moth (GxG)

• castniidae •

Castniidae: Commonly callee castniid moths, it is a small family of moths with fewer than 200 species: The majority are Neotropical with some in Australia and a few in south-east Asia. These are medium-sized to very large moths, usually with drab, cryptically-marked forewings and brightly coloured hindwings.
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21

Nyx was beyond impatient, unable to sit still as she waited for Leo to come to her door. There was so much inside of her head, unable to silence it all. What was she meant to do? Her life was all a facade - a perfectly painted portrait to be hung. But Nyx didn't want it on her wall any longer. She wanted to tear the portrait down and let the light inside.

Yet, she didn't want to believe that the only person she had ever known would do something so cruel as to keep her secluded for her own sick and twisted delusions. But that want - that need - to be apart of something more than the quiet yellow house was too great for her mind to handle the burden any longer.

Sixteen long years had been spent there. Sixteen years where she never went under the sun long enough to know if her skin would tan or burn. Sixteen years where her only friends were constellations that she had to create for herself, because she still had yet to learn that other people already created them. Sixteen years of solitude and loneliness.

"Nyx?" The voice of her saving grace echoed against her eardrums, causing her to brace herself for what could potentially come. That was where the end of a nightmare came, and the start of something so much larger than her took over.

"I'm here." She listened closely to her own voice. Even that was a foreign thing, as bizarre as it may seem. She spoke out loud quite often, but not because she wanted to hear her own voice, it was because she needed to hear someone in order to not lose her head after all of those years.

"Have you thought about it all?" Leo asked, which made Nyx want to simultaneously cry and laugh. How could she not think about it? It was a revelation that proved her own mindset. She hardly even knew Leo, and yet Nyx was already a completely different person.

Nyx went from wanting to stay indoors and do as her mother said simply because she thought that it was the right thing to do, to not wanting any of that. She believed everything Diane had told her and was convinced that it would be wrong to go against her. Now there she was, ready to break out of her prison, even though she never used to think of that house as a prison. The scary part was deciding how to do it.

"I'm going to come out now." Nyx said quietly, standing up on shaky legs and approaching the maple wood door. Her white dress fell to her knees, pale feet bare and long black hair in two French braids. She sat on her knees in front of the mail slot, taking in every detail of Hemera Leora Danaus.

Her brown eyes stared back at Nyx, beautiful and round. Incredibly deep with untold stories and filled to the brim with all of the days she spent beneath the hot sun. Her skin was far darker than Nyx could ever possibly be, face pretty and skin clear. She was far enough away from the slot for Nyx to see almost every detail. Even her extremely curly brown hair was showing, untamed and free. Nyx wanted to hug her and thank her for knocking on the door that first day.

She was so beautiful that it hurt Nyx's chest to look at her for too long. To know that something so perfect was right outside of the door, only two houses down, and Nyx never even knew. She never left, and it was going to remain that way until their paths fatefully crossed.

"You're... you're so pale." Leo was the first to speak, eyes wide with wonder as she studied Nyx just as Nyx studied her.

"I've never seen the sun." Nyx reminded her. "I wouldn't know if I could get any darker." Then after a moment, she couldn't stop herself from adding, "You're so dark."