The wind sifted through the trees creating the familiar, earthly sound that normally would have made Rayne aware of the breath entering his lungs. The sound of the river flowing endlessly over logs and through debris would usually remind him of the water slipping through his toes, helping the fog leave his wakeful mind.

Today, though, the woods did none of those things

There wasn’t just a fog in his mind now, today it was a smog. It came from a factory placed inside his cerebral producing the aimless stream of confusion, just as aimless as the stream in front of him.

His solitary silence was interrupted by a croak. The frog stared at him with its naturally clueless looking eyes, it’s skin shining after having just hopped out of the water. It quickly left the rock it had landed on, it’s strong legs propelling it back into the water.

That frog had once been an egg. Soon it had to have hatched, becoming a tadpole among many others, to then become a frog. It was a process that, while gradual, had clear, physically definite stages.

Rayne wished his stages could be that definite.

He wondered if that frog ever felt like a tadpole. If it ever felt as blind and helpless as it was when it was merely an egg. Or if just the thought would be too much a threat to its livelihood, a constant battle of the most alert.

A butterfly swooped down and landed on his knee. It’s colors were mesmerizing, a combination of blues and greens all outlined in black. It stayed for a moment, it’s wings relaxing and moving steadily in the breeze. But just like the frog, it left as soon as it arrived, fluttering off in all its grace.

Like the frog, the butterfly was once something else. A caterpillar, soon enclosed in a cocoon. Not long after it would escape the chrysalis, newly born with a pair of wings and a world to explore.

Once again, Rayne longed for that definitive change in oneself. That switch that seemed to go off in these creatures mind that went from crawling and swimming to flying and jumping. The time when those creatures were made aware that now it was time to fend for itself. That now it was of age.

Rayne wondered when he would get that feeling that he was a new, fledgling adult. Where he felt he could run instead of walk, speak instead of mumble. He longed for it, but his heart aches when he thought of leaving his innocence behind. To leave behind the moments spent defying his parents’ rules with his friends or the hours wasted sitting by this river would bring him a sorrow he never wanted to face.

Did he have to leave it all behind?

It was then that it occurred to him how the butterfly’s body still resembled that of a caterpillar. That the butterfly still ate the leaves off the trees just as it once had. The frog’s behind had telling structure of the tail it once had. It still swam in the stream where it was born.

Maybe, he wouldn’t have to leave everything behind. It would be different, sure, just like the striking difference of the wings on the butterfly and the legs on the frog, but it would make him stronger. It would allow him to see a new world, but still come back down to his home.

He now truly heard the wind sifting through the leaves, and felt the water run across his feet. Finally, the smog left his mind, the factory having been shut down, leaving a fog easily swept away by the careful breeze. Finally, his mind was clear again.