The Fate of The Butterfly

One Summer day; a long, long time ago, a butterfly burst free from its cocoon and fluttered about happily in the Summer Sun, showing off its beautiful rainbow coloured silken wings with pride but then, tired, it decided to sit down upon a tree branch.

To the butterfly’s dismay, however, when it tried to take off again it realised that it was stuck to the tree by the sticky resin that oozed from its bark.

“Oh, how cruel”, thought the butterfly weeping little butterfly tears, “My wings are so beautiful and yet, though I have been a butterfly for less than a day now I must die”.

What the butterfly did not know, however, was that, over many millions of years the tree resin in which it had got itself trapped would become fossilised, turning into the orangey golden semi-precious gemstone known as amber and that within the amber its beauty would be preserved forever.