“Alright then,” said the little white butterfly, “but not for too long.”
Bambi stood in front of him. “You’re so beautiful,” he said in enchantment, “so beautiful! Like a flower!”
“What?” The butterfly clapped his wings. “Like a flower? Well, everyone I know agrees that we’re much more beautiful than flowers.”
Bambi was confused at that. “Y..yes, certainly,” he stuttered, “much more beautiful ... please forgive me ... I just wanted to say ...”
“I don’t really care what you wanted to say,” the butterfly retorted. He started to show off by curving his narrow body and playing idly with his sensitive antennae.
Bambi was enthralled and continued to watch him. “You’re so elegant,” he said, “so fine and so elegant! And those white wings of yours, they’re so majestic!”
The butterfly lay his wings wide open, then he put them together above him where they looked like the taut sail of a yacht.
“Oh,” Bambi exclaimed, “now I understand how you’re more beautiful than the flowers. And you can fly as well, flowers can’t do that. They have to stay where they’re growing, that’s how.”
The butterfly raised himself up. “That’s enough now,” he said. “I can fly!” And he lifted himself into the air with such ease that it could not be seen and it could not be understood. His white wings moved gently and full of grace, and he was already drifting there in the air and the sunshine. “It was only for your sake that I remained sitting there for so long,” he said, and he jiggled up and down in front of Bambi, “but now, I will fly away.”
That was the meadow.