The Butterfly Effect

Prologue

As breath came back the same way the water had left she opened her eyes and looked at me.

It had been a suspiciously eventful night; suspicious because a little girl decided to drown herself in a remote lake situated deep into the woods at the fringes of the kingdom on the same night I decided to sneak out in the cover of the dark and run away only to be lured near this very same lake by a glowing butterfly.

Call it coincidence or call it fate, but tonight I saved a life.

The life of a royal, as I soon realized that the familiar emblem embossed on her clothes was of the family of Ceylon. 'Would it be greedy of me to claim a reward for this?'

I was patiently sitting next to her while she tried to get up.

She had put up quite a fight, whether it was against the water or me, I still didn't know.

'Are you alright?' it only seemed natural to ask this.

'Asks the woman drenched in water.' she said without skipping a beat.

She was out of breath and fatigued.

The redness in her eyes was only more evident because of their bright green color.

The innocence in a young child's face, I searched for it but to no avail.

Instead there was fear, as one would expect but, she didn't show it.

I would find it not on her face but, in her feet as they thanked the firm solid ground, in her breath as she drew in more deeply, in her eyes avoiding the water, in her arms refusing to unravel themselves from around her.

'Are you cold?'

'Aren't you?' she said as she sat down in front of me, her gaze trained at mine, somehow telling me I was an idiot for even asking that question.

It must seem like I'm making all of this up, as if there is no way a child like this exists whose gaze would be so powerful, whose fear would be so tame, who could say so much and talk so little, who could be this ungrateful to a grown woman, albeit a stranger, but a stranger who saved her life. But it is all true and she sat in front of me that night, increasingly getting annoyed at me for not being able to light a fire.

'It's not like I camp out in the woods every day.' I said, grasping for an excuse.

She just sighed.

'How old are you?'

'What are you doing here?'

'Where are you parents or bodyguards?'

It was as if I was talking to the wind and it replied back with a cold breeze that prickled every hair on my body.

'Do you not know how to swim?'

'WHY IS EVERYONE SO OBSESSED WITH SWIMMING, IT'S NOT EVEN THAT GREAT.'

This shook me to my core and I jumped back. I had no idea how a little girl like her could make sounds so loud that even the beasts of the wild would shrink back in fear. What her voice lacked in command, it made up for in volume.

'What's so hard about it anyway.' says the girl who nearly drowned.

The fire finally struck and as it grew it's warmth drew us in like moths to a light.

'What are you doing out here alone?' I asked after I saw her jaw unclench and her shoulders relax.

I was amused how circumstances could change someone's behavior towards others. If  it had been any other fateful uneventful night and had I talked to a royal this frankly, I would've been shown the gates of heaven. I hope.