Chrysalis

She hugged me. 

Tightly.

What..what is this feeling I'm having right now? Wait, this is completely different than how I normally feel around her. No anxiety, no stress.

Just..relief.

After a few long, pleasant minutes of silence and comfort, she disengaged herself from assuaging affection (to my obvious disappointment).

"Ahem-" I cleared my throat, in hopes to pick up on where we left off our previous conversation.

"So..what do you think-or-where should we start with the..with..uh..the project..?" I self corrected (by a blatantly numerous amount of times as you can tell. Even to the very end, I still flub up my sentences like a buffoon, dang it!)

"Oh, yes..the project" she replied aloofly, sort of like she was reeling with her own thoughts. Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say that she was stewing with them, just from my peripheral observation.

She discreetly shifted slightly on the comforter before placing one hand over her mouth, the other in her lap as she closed her eyes. I guess she's thinking about where to start with it (I mean you could figure that much), though maybe there's something more to it?

Thinking about it more prudently, it wouldn't really make sense if that wasn't the case. I mean, she certainly wouldn't have hugged me so sympathetically if she didn't harbor any particularly strong emotions towards either me or the specific topic we were discussing. Unless she's that sort of girl, I suppose. But from what I know about her (which I'm just now realizing isn't that much despite how in love with her I am, which is extremely odd from a logical perspective. Not that I really care, of course. She is the perfect being after all!), I don't think she'd just hold a boy she was vapidly impartial to for several minutes (in her room on her bed mind you) and caress his back along with whispering sweet nothings into his ear.

Okay, maybe not sweet nothings, it was a bit more touching and sentimental than that. But let me just have this for once, alright?! How am I not supposed to take an embrace like that from the most faultless woman in existence who I'm helplessly (and honestly a bit pathetically) in love with, alone on her bed, in a romantic kinda way?! What sort of puritan do you take me for?!

Like-you can't blame me for recalling her soft, sultry fingertips tenderly stroking their way across my body..her modest chest pushing against me as her alluringly intoxicating breath skimmed along my earlobes. Her captivating, irresistible scent breezing from those palatial stranded locks that filled my nostrils with overwhelming temptation...her hazel eyes burning brightly with utter benevolent altruism. All of it, every last integrant of her be-speckled flawless essence comprising her existence is too much for any human who is beholden to this nature dare resist.

Well...you get my point. Sorry for uh, going overboard again.

"Let's just start at the first stage. I think that'll be easiest" she logically concluded.

Since she's the expert and all, I guess I don't really have much of a choice but to placate her judgement, do I?

"Alright, so listen here Greg! This part is really important, so pay attention!" she redoubted staunchly, with a nonplus valor that bordered on just plain bipolar.

When did Mrs.Hyde enter the room? What the heck is up with this character shift?

"Uh..okay?" I replied, completely bewildered.

Where exactly is she about to go with this? Sure the project is important and all, but it certainly can't be that serious of a topic.

At least, I don't think it should be. But what do I know? We did go from talking about the life cycle of a simple insect to divulging critical details about very disheartening emotions that drastically affected our perspectives on our loved ones and the core philosophical ideas we held on the idea of family in general, so really this conversation could go anywhere with that in mind.

"I know what I said before, about there being four big stages. I'll tell you a little more about them now" she stated concretely, with no hint of her earlier blithe glamour showing even remotely on her face.

Instead, it was replaced with a careworn frown (though not a full frown, it was certainly somewhat noticeable).

Immediately after this statement, she  flipped open the pages of the black notebook and swiftly landed on a particular page, showing it to me while holding both ends of journal up to her nose.

Right, this must be her diagram. One that she probably made, considering how flowery its design is.

Judging from the cyclical features of the comprised figures in the artwork, it seems to be a life cycle illustration of the butterfly. It's a bit different looking than I expected something like this to be, but I guess that's why she reemphasized constantly that I should focus up.

Alright, time for the explanation. I'm honestly a little excited to hear this because of how rarely (if at all..no..definitely not at all) I get to see this side of her. I'm getting giddy just thinking about it!

"The eggs are placed on plants by fully grown female butterflies, as seen here" she noted, pointing her left finger on the egg illustration drawn directly under the "first stage" label.

"The females do this so that when the baby caterpillars hatch, they'll have plenty to eat" 

I nodded.

"Sounds basic enough. So what comes after?" I added.

She miffed playfully, before giving me a small smirk.

"I know right? The eggs can be laid anywhere between the spring and fall, depending on the species. The eggs can also be pretty small, so females lay lots of them at once to make sure some can live" she continued.

"Interesting..so that's how it works. That explains why I don't ever see butterfly eggs, but it also might be an advantage because of that, right? Their size might make them less noticeable for some predators" I hypothesized.

She nodded, grinning.

"That's true! It helps them with their camouflage on host plants, making it harder for them to get noticed and snatched up"

I see, I see..so I was right then! Woo-hoo!

I smiled to myself silently, as she kept explaining:

"After this happens, when the eggs hatch, the caterpillars eat and eat until they find a nice place to form a shell around themselves to hibernate"

Before she could continue, I swiftly interjected as she took a momentary breath.

"So-wait, how are the shells made? What are they?"

I felt like I threw her off or something, because she just stopped for a second and gave me a strange look

No-no-no-crap! Did I completely blow my chances out the window?! Of course I would mess up, it's just like me, the dimwit-incompetent fool I am-to mess up something this simple (albeit admittedly difficult task)! All I had to do was stay on her good side and not mess up any of my dialogue options (what is this, a video game?), but of course I just HAD to pick the worst choice!

She fidgeted with her fingers, before responding slowly.

"Um..I actually don't really remember..let me check" she replied before briskly picking up her notebook and flipping through the pages.

Soon after, she landed on one particular sheet of paper and opened the book wide, gazing at its contents.

"Ah, here it is! According to the chrysalis section I wrote a while ago, the caterpillar makes a silk pad under a branch or a twig, then uses a hook-covered appendage called a cremaster to attach itself to the pad" she brusquely recapitulated, summarizing a mix of old and previous points.

You know, a sudden realization just occurred to me, right at this very moment. Or no, perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that I had an epiphany of sorts.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't at all expecting to discuss caterpillars, butterflies, and eggs or the like today, let alone come over to Penny's house to engage in said conversation, looking back on it. It's..interesting..in a way. It's normal, but..sort of promising, in a sense.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that ultimately, from a more comprehensive perspective, this small moment of intimacy between the two of us is pretty unimportant. The insignificance of it all, despite all of Penny's brilliance, cannot be understated.

I get that now. I was blind to my own desires and lionized worship of her benign perfection, obscured by my own goals and ambitions driving me to seek fulfillment in a supposed "grand" purpose. But I was wrong.

Instead, I should have been focusing on the little moments. The simplicity of it all, is the beauty of it. She's just another human being, just like me. A cut above the rest she may be, a goddess in the skin of a mortal she may seem, regardless, she's just a girl.

Just as I am, a mere boy.

I had such high expectations and made this scenario of grandeur up in my head, this delusional fantasy that made the situation much more complicated than it actually was. Why didn't I realize this before? Fundamentally, this event is unimportant to even those who remain close to our cherished hearts. Our family, our friends, even other acquaintances or strangers who we might know and care for...it doesn't affect them. It doesn't change or alter their livelihood in any significant manner, if at all for that matter. At best, they might think: 'oh, I'm glad you two got along so well' (or something along those lines I guess).

Hah hah..heh..funny, how life works, You expect one thing, but get the other. When you anticipate lemons, it instead offers apple juice (wait, was that how the phrase went? Did that even make any sense? Whatever, you get my point).

I chuckled quietly to myself, pondering this philosophical articulation, its divulgence weighing surprisingly little on my conscience. It was as if a foggy mist had corroded from my mind, leaving me with a clear, fresh perspective outlook.

"Heh..funny.." I muttered to myself.

"?..What is?" Penny asked, tilting her head slightly.

"Huh? Oh, nothing important. Just thinking out loud, I guess" I said, smiling calmly as I looked back at her with growing confidence.

"Ah-I did have another question, though. What exactly is a cremaster?" I posed.

"It's just like a tail appendage for the caterpillar. They use it to help keep them in place while they spin their silk cocoon, and they do that by using their specialized organs called spinnerets, which are their modified salivary glands located on their lower jaw. This helps them  secrete a liquid silk that hardens upon contact with the air, forming strands of fibroin protein. This silk is used for various purposes, including building cocoons and creating silken slings for attachment to leaves, like I said before" she illuminated.

"It's pretty impressive how you know all of this info offhand. So-wait, is there anything that happens afterwords? I-I mean, what happens after?" I questioned inquisitively (dang it, the stuttering started again! And I was doing so good too..ugh! I hate myself! Do I have Down syndrome or something? Why do I keep making the same stupid mistakes?! I'm never gonna get some at this rate..w-wait, no that's not what I mean-)

"Oh, yes..after the cremaster attaches to the pad, it twists around and embeds the cremaster in the silk. Then, it sheds its skin and the chrysalis is formed. Apparently to some of my research, the chrysalis is made of.." she paused, looking down at her notes before continuing "ah..a hardened layer of skin that the caterpillar forms under its top layer"

She carried on more after this explanation, going into further and further detail on the particular functions and processes of this formative stage of caterpillar...sort of. 

Uh, how do I put this? She didn't really address any explicitly important information here per se...just like the last time she went on a tangent. Mainly, she just covered different kinds of environments caterpillars may find themselves in  and the different sorts of colors they might possess, and that was about it.

And that's exactly how I thought things were going to go for the rest of my brief stay at the Chindelin household, absorbing the intricate and captivating details of her interests while also sorting out a game plan for the project, as per typical of two middle schoolers.

But I was wrong.

Remember what I said earlier about life not always handing you what you'd expect it to? Well..this would turn out to be one of those times.

To a shockingly foreseeable outcome, came a palpably vicious score of emotional impacts. 

The conclusion to this tale draws near.

Its contents, forever changing both me, and Penny.