TITLE: THE UNCAPTURED 

She leaves the house just after sunrise, when the forest is quiet and the air still carries the coolness of night. The path is narrow and soft beneath her boots. She walks without hurry, though there is purpose in her steps. Her camera rests steady in her hands, already prepared. The trees rise tall around her, their leaves shifting gently in the early breeze, shadows stretching long across the ground.

She has come for something she has never seen here herself; only heard about in passing, described as brief and almost unreal. It appears, they say, for seconds. No more.

At the lake she lowers herself carefully into the reeds. The water lies wide and calm, holding the pale sky inside it. Early light stretches across the surface in long ribbons of silver and soft gold. She adjusts her lens, checks her settings once more, and settles into stillness.

Time moves differently when you are waiting.

Birds pass overhead while a dragonfly traces the surface of the lake. The sun rises steadily, warmth settling across her shoulders. Her legs stiffen, yet she remains still. One careless shift would be enough. In her mind, she repeats the sequence — lift, focus, press.

An hour passes.

Then she sees it; not clearly, not fully but just a tremor of orange against the green near the water’s edge. Her breath tightens. The camera rises slowly to her eye.

Through the viewfinder, the world narrows. Reeds. Light. Reflection.

The flicker gathers itself and lifts.

The butterfly rises from the reeds as though drawn upward by the sun. Its wings unfold in a slow, deliberate arc; deep amber edged in black, crafted so finely they seem etched in glass. It drifts low across the surface of the lake, so close that its reflection burns beneath it, orange trembling against silver. Light passes through the thin membrane of its wings and sets them glowing from within.

Everything aligns; water smooth as glass, wings fully open, the sun striking just right, and her finger rests against the shutter after hours of waiting.

Then, quietly and deliberately, she lowers the camera.

The butterfly skims the water freely, uncontained. Its wings beat slowly, luminous against the pale morning. It brushes the surface lightly, and the lake answers with widening rings that scatter the reflection outward. Orange flares against blue, flame against silver, then steadies again.

She does not move.

Up close, it is impossibly delicate. The wings seem dusted with fine powder, each dark vein branching with precision. When they open fully, they catch the sun and glow with a soft, living warmth; a small ember lifted into the air.

It drifts higher, clearing the reeds, rising into open space. The colour shifts as it tilts; flame to gold to something almost translucent as the light passes through it. For a moment it hangs against the brightening sky, suspended between water and air.

Then it climbs higher still, growing smaller against the widening blue, until the orange softens and dissolves into the light above the trees.

The lake settles and the reeds begin to sway again, the forest slipping back into its quiet, unchanged rhythm.

Her camera hangs at her side, untouched.

She has no photograph to carry home; no proof of the hours she waited.

Only the memory.

She stands there a tad longer, still transfixed, trying to understand what made the moment so beautiful.