I wasn’t expecting any visitors. I was busy watering the plants, checking new growth, noticing small surprises—like the little gardenia I had recently bought, now unexpectedly flowering. Perhaps attracted by these new additions to the garden, a pair of Zebra longwing butterflies arrived, moving slowly around me in that quiet, floating way they have, as if they belonged there more than I did. They were not afraid. They circled near the mandevilla, hovered by the flowers, and came close enough that I almost felt invited to speak to them. For a moment, the garden seemed to pause. They were not merely butterflies then, but small emissaries of that other world—the fair folk of the air—reminding me that a refuge is not built only with plants, but with the lives that choose to visit it.

They came like small pieces of moving fire, circling the Petrea vine as if inspecting their own reflection among the purple blossoms. Quick, restless, impossible to fully follow with the eye, they hovered, vanished, returned, and then were gone again. Was it a Gulf fritillary, bright and wild, or a Monarch butterfly, more regal and deliberate? I am still not certain. Butterflies do not seem concerned with human classification; they arrive on their own terms and leave before proper introductions can be made. I will wait for the next visit, and perhaps then the mystery will decide to reveal its name.