She was born in a flower pot at the city. Too much noise, too few flowers.

So, off she flew, away from the city.

But all she found was a desert.

Big red rocks, dangerous looking lizards, spiders, scorpions, snakes…. Not much water… Only a few low woody bushes….

She felt hungry, thirsty and afraid, and started to regret leaving the comfortable city.

Then, she sees a flowering succulent bush. She goes for it and finds the most delicious, thirst-quenching and satisfying meal.

She also finds cover, amongst leaves as pale as her wings.

Her own private Butterfly Heaven!

This post was originally written with 143 words, for a Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers almost a year ago, and inspired by a picture of a pale winged butterfly on a succulent bush, by TJ Paris.

Then earlier this week, as I saw the Flash Fiction Challenge of the Carrot Ranch, with a prompt of a desert surprise, I couldn’t help remembering my little butterfly.

So instead of creating a new story, I took the extra challende proposed by Charli to try and reduce the size of my original story to 99 words, so it would fit the Flash Fiction Challenge requirements.

So this now it the results of this reducing effort.