Wisdomful had been very busy when the boy came to visit him. The tall man, with his strong arms and the Pendant of Knowledge around his neck, had been, for once, separated from the women who often hung on his every word. As leader, he needed to know where all the people of his tribe were at all times.

He took little notice when the boy said he was leaving the tribe for a time. He was given an old knife and told 'best of luck' before the chief resumed inspecting the marrings of the rock by the dragons from the previous night.

No one had been stupid enough to challenge three dragons in the darkness, when any number of other creatures could be prowling. And as such, everyone seemed to be too worried about it for words.

None of his concern.

He left the tribe's territory.

He left the city.

Armed with his knife and given some warm blankets from the teacher and a pack of food from Envisionment, the boy hiked into the hills around the city. There, he sat down, built a fire, and listened.

He closed his eyes.

And he waited.

Five days he had been waiting. Every day he would wake up, hunt for food if he could see something stupid enough to get close. Otherwise, he would forrage for nuts and berries and water. The city stretched out before him and the stand of trees he had chosen as his home until this sorted itself out.

He had decided, after a lengthy amount of thought, that he could not completely disbelieve the gods. Such a thing was unthinkable, considering he still obeyed the decrees Tyler had set out for the children. Considering he still strove daily to please the gods and spirits.

Even if he couldn't tell exactly which one it was that he was trying to please.

He didn't know if he had felt like this days ago, before Envisionment suggested it to him. But he knew it was how he felt now. Deep in his heart, he knew he wasn't alone. He knew someone, not Tyler but someone, was looking out for him.

He waited.

He listened.

On the twelfth day, he heard a sound that seemed somehow alien to the other sounds he knew from the stand of trees.

He opened his eyes.

On his knee crawled a butterfly of brilliant orange and black with tattered wings. He stared at it.

The butterfly crawled along his knee, slowly, calmly. He held his breath. It flexed its wings. Once. Twice.

On the third time, the boy felt a prickle run down his neck, felt a cold hand run around his neck along the rough bruise from the rope all those weeks ago.

He felt his breath dry up in his lungs, and he choked for air.

The butterfly flexed its wings again, walked along his leg, up his chest. It flicked a coiled object out at his chest, and the russet stains on his shirt were drank up. The orange in its wings became more brilliant, almost akin to the fire before him.

It considered him for a long moment in his breathlessness, and it flew away.

Immediately, he could breathe again. He fell to his side, gasping, shuddering, shaking.

That had not been the first time he saw the butterfly while seeking his duties. He knew, deep within him, that it would definitely not be the last. His hand went to his throat, and it rubbed at the rough bruise from the rope.

His hand came away wet with blood. The pain swelled through his neck.

He didn't move except to close his eyes.

And that was when the first vision in twelve days came to him.

He was not to return to the city for a good length of time. He knew that, and he could feel that deep in his blood. It coursed and pumped around him, reminding him time and again of the truth of the statement.

His head was swimming, screaming with words and noises he couldn't differentiate. He tried to open his eyes, but every time he did, light stabbed into his skull. His breathing came in shallow gasps, more from the pace of his heart than from any tightening fists or nooses around his throat. He convulsed, arcing his back so that he was balanced for an instant on his head and his toes.

He could feel his body thrashing, and he tried, he tried so hard, to keep control.

But then he heard the sound again, and he tried so hard to listen to it. He tried so hard to hear it. He lost control.

He couldn't feel his body. He couldn't hear the world around him. He felt the vision swallow him up fully, rather than simply giving him glimpses and tells.

There was a metal box, made of the bones of the towers, and in it he stood, knowing instantaneously exactly what every little lever did. He stood perched inside the machine on a cliff, and he pulled the lever he had known to pull. Then, everything went black and cold. He felt nothing. He heard nothing.

He came to, staring around, his ears still buzzing from the vision. It was night suddenly, and he wondered how long he had been out. He heard a flapping noise, and he looked up into the trees to see the leaves a good deal oranger and browner than they had seemed in the morning. And they were filled with butterflies.

The boy stoked the fire.

The sun was setting, and he could hear the scream of a dragon. The moon was much less full than it had been just the other night.

He did not like the feeling that he had been out for days. He rose, and a butterfly flew into the stand of trees, perched on his arm.

His arm went numb immediately.

He couldn't raise his other arm to strike it away, and he heard a whisper run through the wings of the insects above him.

He swore, on the edge of his hearing, there had been a word in it.

He took a step to retrieve the blankets from where they had been by the fire. He wondered, if he had been out long, how the fire had stayed alight.

The rustling above him caused him to stop, to stare.

He felt the numbness spread through his arm. He stared at the butterfly. It stared at him.

"What?" he wanted to know, feeling absurd for asking that of an insect.

The butterfly flexed its wings. Once. Twice.

It flew away, and the feeling returned to his arm.

He grabbed the blankets, curled up beneath them.

He still didn't know who he was seeking, who would call him. The butterflies followed him everywhere he went. One or two would light on him from time to time, or brush against him, and portions of his body would spasm in pain or fall dead and weighted and numb.

He was no shaman.

Envisionment had said shamans earned their powers afterwards. But he'd said nothing about woodland creatures abusing him. He was no shaman.

Still, he was compelled to follow the vision he had received the other night. And so, he was looking for a cliff similar to the one he had seen. He was constructing the machine as best he could with a few scraps of metal he had litterally stumbled upon that morning, branches of limber wood, coils of rope he found.

And he kept an eye on the moon.

As the moon shrank, disappeared, and returned to the sky, the days grew colder and the leaves grew brighter shades of colors. He saw rodents acting in bizarre, almost manic manners. Rodents which the monument lions and subway bears would have devoured immediately. Patiently he gathered the pieces for his machine. Patiently he assembled them. Patiently he tried to call forth the vision, time and again, to double-check every little detail.

Patiently, he sat through it, not really certain what he was doing, what the purpose was. Only that he had to do it, only that he had to complete it. His future depended on it, ironically enough.

By the end of the month, when the moon had returned to its shade of luminosity, that waxing gibbous, that he had seen in his dream, he knew it was time. Followed by the butterflies, he hiked towards the machine. He entered. They perched around it.

He stared up at the sky, felt the whispering in the insects' wings grow, grow, grow. Louder, louder, but still too faint for him to know what words they were chanting, whispering, breathing, beating out of their tiny bodies so that he alone could hear them.

They reached the same level of incomprehensible chatter that he had heard in his first vision. He threw the lever he knew as the right one, and darkness descended upon him almost immediately.