Butterflies

He had thanked her on several occasions for a number of reasons, not the least of which her influence which drove him into the forest these days. Her influence and encouragement to forego those other boy's taunts and teases that he was a sissy for doing what he did.

Watching and cataloging Butterflies were not exactly a masculine past time for a boy, and John paid dearly for that when he first mentioned it in passing to his friend. "You're doing what?" Was the last thing one of his friends had said to him.

John would someday be an Lepidopterists like Ms. Everett. An entomologist with a specialty. A person who studies insects, but who specializes in the collection and study of butterflies, and moths, or, as that friend confirmed in a slightly disgusted tone that day, "you're actually collecting butterflies!"

Meanwhile that small dot of liquid that the male Swallowtail had left for the sake of his species, as it might on a female's egg, slowly infused itself into John's skin. It was as easily absorbed into John's upper epidermal, or top layer of skin as it might that egg if there had been an egg.

What was different were those chemicals that John's body began assimilating almost instantly. Those chemicals and a half dozen powerful proteins were very new to this world and John might have had cause for concern had John known that, but he didn't.

Fortunately what John didn't know wouldn't kill him, but it most definitely was going to change him. There were going to be changes and not too unlike the changes that had caused that Swallowtail to grow as big as it had. It would be a remarkable event given that John's DNA was involved or soon would be.

DNA, the instructions behind that book of life, had changed just before that butterfly had hatched. It nearly killed those first few butterflies within their cocoon, because two more inches of growth was almost too much, and that wasn't too long ago. Actually this change was born of a chain of events beginning only a few months ago.