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The grueling wait was over. 4 weeks after I released Heather into the wild, her signal on the tracker stopped moving after it had moved erratically for a few days. We traced her flight pattern, seeing many more butterfly bushes along the way, until we came to a mostly familiar scene.
There was a beach Heather always loved playing at as a human, because there was a small gathering of milkweed plants nearby that many monarchs visited frequently. The tracker picked up residual signals coming from one plant, and we found something interesting.
There were around a dozen tiny eggs gathered on one of the leaves that had transformed material sprinkled throughout, which meant they had come from Heather. As her mind had undoubtedly matured to near-adulthood by this time, Mom and I realized she had indeed mated with another monarch, continuing her new lineage to the next generation. We knew then that Heather had to be nearby. We combed the shoreline, shouting her name, hoping she would respond. Then I saw the saddest thing imaginable.
Heather's tiny, battered body was laying motionless on the sand. She must have been caught in a storm and couldn't get to safety soon enough, because her wings were tattered, littered with holes, and one of her antennae had broken off. All I felt coming from her lifeless body was a vague feeling...
...of contentment. She had done her duty, accomplished her purpose in the world. She had pollinated flowers she fed from, and reproduced to assure the survival of her new species. Her body died while protecting her eggs, and she knew they were safe. She thought the last thing she would ever see would be her favorite place in the world. However, there was also a lingering sadness. She would never again see the ones who cared for her in her short childhood, or play in the sand at the beach, or prance around the yard in her favorite costume.
She didn't know we would come for her. Once she realized we were present, her mood lifted. Her body may have been dead, but her mind lived on, and we were going to be in her life again.
I gently slipped a sheet of paper underneath her, then carefully lifted her broken body off the ground. Making sure she wouldn't fall off, I carried her to the car. From there, Mom brought us home.
Once we were there, I laid the paper down onto the table, and thought about the sight in front of me. There, resting on top of a sheet of printer paper, was not just a dead butterfly. It was my little sister, going along for the ride with whatever happened to her unliving form, and she was still happy. I brought her to her old bedroom, sliding her gently onto her desk. This is where she stayed for 4 days, sheltered from the elements inside her home.
4 days later is when Dad showed up. He had learned what happened to Heather days after the machine malfunctioned, and had been working on a secret project ever since. Although Mom made it clear she was furious with him for indirectly causing this, he assured her that this project would make caring for Heather significantly easier. We all entered her old room, where Heather still rested on her desk. He started to explain what he had made.
A soul container. He had created a way to transfer her consciousness into something else, with the condition that it could only ever be used once. It had to contain material from her current body, and it had to be an inanimate object, as he found it didn't work either way on living material. Finally, Dad unveiled the container itself.
A small charm that could have something flat be placed inside it, with a glass window on the front, meant to be attached to a necklace or bracelet. If we took a small piece of Heather's most complete wing, we could make the device work. We showed everything to Heather, waiting for the emotional response that would decide her fate.
From the tiny body on the little pink desk, we felt...happiness. She would agree to have a piece of her wing cut off, placed inside the charm, and become the charm itself. Instead of slowly disintegrating in the wilderness, she would become nearly immune to time itself. So, we commenced the operation that would do a few things.
First, Heather's mind would be transferred into its new vessel. Second, her newfound maturity would be stripped away, as her mind no longer needed to be adult. This was an unavoidable side-effect of the process that would end up making her more interested in things around her, so it turned out for the better in the long run anyway. Third, her mind would begin to age normally, until she fades from existence around a century from now, saving her from a torturous and boring eternity.
We all knew this was the best way for her to continue existing. Heather was happy, and that's all we cared about.
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