Bethel was the envy of everyone, considered the healthiest, smartest, most athletic and certainly the most beautiful, for she was by far the fattest – and in caterpillar world, when it comes to beauty, the plumper the better. In every way, Bethel’s life was perfect: she had admiring friends, supportive family, and spent all day feasting to her heart’s content upon an endless all-you-can-eat buffet of succulent foliage.
And yet – Bethel was not content. Something was missing from her life, from her heart. She knew not what she was missing, only that she longed for some deeper sense of fulfilment, authenticity, meaning and purpose. At first, she ignored this vague feeling, trying to shut it out by working on her beauty, eating voraciously for hours at a stretch till she positively bulged. Though outwardly full, she still felt inwardly incomplete, this gnawing void in her heart only growing deeper, the silent call more insistent.
The fateful moment arrived. Bethel stopped eating. Her friends and her whole community were aghast. No one could figure out what had happened to her. They called her sick, ungrateful, even insane. Then to make matters worse, Bethel completely withdrew, spinning a kind of sleeping bag into which she could fully retreat. Without a word she was gone. Her family and friends went back to chomping and gorging themselves, managing to ignore the odd sleeping bag slumped in the corner where she was last seen.
In caterpillar time, a week is beyond calculation. Then it happened. The sleeping bag started to twitch; something was struggling to emerge from within. Everyone stopped what they were doing and watched wonderstruck, as new Bethel slowly appeared. Standing poised for a moment, she carefully spread her dazzling wings and again without a word, gracefully ascended into the sky.