Today has been a strange day. For me; I don't know about you. From the beginning, as soon as I woke up, it seemed pretty obvious to me that the day didn't want me to be entirely happy. Nor did it want me to be crushed with sadness, but perhaps, just slightly melancholy...

Yesterday, I said some things to a dear friend of mine that I really shouldn't have. I didn't find out why I shouldn't have said those things until just now. Again, I wish to apologise to this friend. If you're reading this, you know who you are.

The day began with me waking up trying to remember a dream I'd had. I did, eventually, manage to get hold of the dream - they're slippery things at the best of times, always wriggling away from your grasp the harder you hold on, like eels. I can't recite the contents of that dream here because they're very... personal, but suffice it to say that it left me feeling just a little bit regretful and lonesome.

I got up and went into town to poison both my mind and my body - the mental toxins were ingested at the bank, where all sorts of numbers and legal rigamarole were forced through my ears, and the physical poison was given to me at the Subway down the road, where I forced gods know how many chemicals down my throat. Over these happenings, we shall pass a discreet veil...

Only a few steps away from the shop, in a narrow grey street that looks soul-crushing at the best of times, and in this weather looked as though someone had left the aura of a mausoleum behind in it, I found a butterfly.

It was a rather large one, crawling around over the pedestrian area. It had the most beautiful wings, perfectly shaped and coloured in brilliant patterns of orange bows on a velvet background, like bridges over blackness, with occasional white blotches. However, I knew that cars came down here once in a while, and besides, someone could tread on it. It seemed to me that the creature was in poor shape - I don't know much about the normal behaviour of the butterfly, but it seemed to me to be rather slow. Slow enough, in fact, that it allowed itself to be gently handled onto the book I had with me. I didn't know whether it was just the weather or ill health that was making it so taciturn, but I knew one thing absolutely for certain: it could not remain here.

I didn't know where to go, and for a while walked around holding the butterfly up on my book, shielding it from the bitterly cold wind. Even if it didn't move quickly it hung on for grim life, and seemed to go to whichever side of the book I was holding it, slowly dragging itself toward my hand.

In the end I thought of a place to put it down and went there; a pleasantly grassy area next to the Morrison's where there are a few trees and a children's playground. A river ran by as well, and there was plenty of undergrowth to hide in. It was the only place I could think of to bring the butterfly that wouldn't result in it being run over, crushed or otherwise having its perfectly-patterned, fragile wings trampled in this seemingly grey and inhospitable urban landscape. It had never occurred to me before that there were so few green areas in our downtown, but there it is. If there were more they'd probably be taken away by the council, for reasons of litter and vandalism, no doubt. The playground I dropped off the butterly near to is often littered about with various bits of garbage - and beer cans, strangely enough for a children's play area.

So my trek across the town with the butterfly was come to an end. I stopped in a small clutch of trees and attempted to brush it off onto one of them without hurting it. It seemed to take a dislike to the living leaves I offered it and instead fluttered down to the fallen foliage below, there resting itself on a curling brown leaf.

On my way home it rained lightly, and was still that same bitter cold, blowing in the wind. I wrote an apology to my friend, wrote to another friend about my dream, and then wrote this.

Now it is written, and I can stop writing. For now.