High on a mountain slope, where the air grew thin and cold, an edelweiss flower bloomed between two rocks.
Its white petals seemed to hold the starlight even during the day.
A butterfly with bright wings visited the flower each morning. "What a marvel you are," she would say, and simply rest beside the edelweiss, feeling the warmth of the sun they shared. She asked no questions. She sought no explanations. She only knew that near the flower, the world felt complete.
One day, a moth arrived—a creature of dusk and inquiry. He observed the butterfly's devotion and found it perplexing.
"Why do you waste your time here?" the moth asked the butterfly. "This flower is merely a collection of cellulose and protein.
Its white color is simply the absence of pigment, a trick of reflected light. The warmth you feel is thermal radiation, nothing more."
The butterfly tilted her head. "Perhaps. But when I am here, I am happy."
"Happiness," the moth scoffed, "is merely a chemical response—dopamine and serotonin interacting with neural receptors.
What you call beauty is just evolutionary programming designed to guide you toward nectar."
Day after day, the moth continued. He measured the edelweiss, calculated the angle of its petals, analyzed the composition of its scent.
He explained to the butterfly how her eyes processed color, how her brain constructed meaning from meaningless stimuli,
how everything she experienced was reducible to mechanics and molecules.
Slowly, the butterfly began to see the edelweiss through the moth's words. The petals became cellular structures. The starlight became photons.
Her joy became chemistry. Each explanation was like a shadow cast across her heart.
One morning, she arrived at the flower and felt... nothing. Where wonder had lived, now only definitions remained.
She understood everything and experienced nothing at all.
"Now you see clearly," said the moth, pleased with his work.
"No," whispered the butterfly, and she flew away, searching for something she had lost— though she could no longer remember what to call it.
The moth remained by the edelweiss, surrounded by all his knowledge, cataloguing and explaining.
And though he lived in the full light of the sun, he never understood why everything had become so dark.
The edelweiss, for its part, went on blooming—untouched by explanation, radiant with a truth that neither questioned nor answered, but simply was.
Art : Villus Ardickas
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