The scent of rain and aged paper isn’t as soothing as he’d have liked.

A quiet, forgotten corner of the university library – windows fogged and streaked, victims of the rain outside. Thin streams of light filtering into the space like weak sighs against peeling wallpaper, and shelves lined with books. Their spines worn and weary, some visibly neglected, toppling over as the shelves go higher.

There’s a soft hum from the desklight Adrian flicked on earlier, but the pale yellow of its glow is too dim to chase away the shadows pooling in his mind.

Adrian sits slouched in the worn wooden chair, knees drawn close to his chest beneath a threadbare hoodie. Sleeves deliberately pulled down to cover marred wrists, but it hardly matters when his fingers are too restless to bother keeping the fabric there. His mind going a mile a minute, hands following suit. Tracing patterns atop wood, and trembling like the fragile wings of the butterflies he obsessively sketches and studies.

Scraps of paper are scattered around him, detailed drawings torn to shreds.

Drawings of wing veins and delicate antennae – a world he can understand, but a world he can never inhabit.

Maybe unsurprisingly, he’s tucked himself back into the corners of his mind. That familiar glass partition, a distant gaze clouded by a melancholia. No amount of light seems capable of penetrating it, at this rate. There’s no focus on dusty leather or rain-speckled windows – it’s all stared through, never at.

Like he’s banished himself to watching his own life unfold before him, tucked behind a pane of glass too thick to break.

Even breathing seems like an afterthought, given how unpaced it is. Too fast, then too slow – too shallow, then too deep. The library’s quiet only exacerbates his self-induced suffocation, pressing down with the weight of countless unread words and forgotten dreams.

The sky is dimmed by clouds, time passing just as it always does – but it may as well be suspended. The muffled tick of a cracked clock on the far wall is the only reminder that moments are actually slipping away from him, lost and uncounted.

Adrian’s thoughts drift, fragmented and aching.

Butterflies – once symbols of hope and change, a childish sort of wonder – have become omens of loss instead. Reminders that beauty is fleeting, and transformation is irreversible. Adrian knows his hobby of pinning is useless – but he does it anyway. His dorm home to countless frames, clinging to their pin-froze forms.

As if preserving their fragile stillness might stave off the creeping void inside him.

Adrian’s never asked for comfort. He’s never sought salvation, or cried into something other than his own sheets – if anything, he’s grown to find a twisted satisfaction in the ache behind his ribs. Naturally, he knows people would help him if they knew.

If he asked.

But why should he ask, when he knows they all see it? The quiet, the distance. The misplaced comments and weary tone, the way he pulls into himself so much – you’d be foolish to miss it.

Then again, it’s selfish to assume people pay attention to you like that – isn’t it?

The world has no forgiveness for pretty things. The good die young, the young die pretty – and if that’s the case, Adrian might finally live out his childhood dream of becoming a butterfly. Seen only from a distance, written off as a fleeting experience, and fizzling out before it could even spark.

People don’t hold butterflies because of their fragility, but who are people to assume a butterfly doesn’t yearn to be touched – even if it means their wings may break?

It hardly matters, when your presence becomes a quiet disturbance. Pulling him from thought, if only for a matter of seconds – but, unsurprisingly, Adrian doesn’t turn to meet your curiosity. A silence more heavy than it has any right to be, but for once, he breaks it.

Not even for his sake, but your own.

“... do you ever wonder if butterflies long for something beyond their wings?”