A story about how a world can be changed forver by something new. Written and illustrated by Krishna Bala Shenoi. www.artisticscrapyard.wordpress.com

3. The way the story goes depends on who is telling it.

4. But all the renditions begin the same.

5. Long ago, in the space between spaces, there was a world.

6. A world of Dancers.

7. The Dancers danced and danced the same steps again and again in synchronization for
thousands of years. The few who have seen it say that it was a beautiful sight.
The Dance, it was called.

8. There was nothing more Orderly.

9. The Dance went on and on… until one day, a lost Butterfly emerged into that world
and flew past the Dancers.

10. And this is where the renditions of the story begin to differ. This is the point where
everyone seems to disagree about what happened. I, not wanting to pass on the wrong
story, will relate to you all the versions I know.

11. Some say that the Dancers, never having had seen such a creature before,
were horrified by it. They panicked and jumped and dodged and soon lost the Flow of
the Dance.
Chaos reigned.

12. And then they all simply died, for they were here to Dance, and when they could not
do that anymore, they could do nothing.

13. Then there is the most popular rendition of the story, the one that I was told.
The tellers of this tale agree that the Butterfly mystified and scared the Dancers into
losing the Flow, but they say that over time, a New Flow emerged out of the panicked
moves of the Dancers.

14. The thrusting and jumping about transformed into a whole new set of steps, and,
over time, the Dancers danced a New Dance. And they danced it for all the years until
it was too challenged, just like the Dance before it.

15. Others believe that the Butterfly intrigued the Dancers more than it terrified them.
Curious about what else lay hidden in their world, or maybe even desiring a new one,
the Dancers stopped dancing and went about the land, exploring, discovering,
and inventing, in the pursuit of the new and unknown.

16. Many years later, this version goes, the Dancers had created a new world for them-
selves, one in which they had Order and a sense of Purpose without the need to
partake in the Dance

17. There is yet another rendition of the tale that I find terrifying:
the Butterfly flew through the Dancers… but they, after all those years of dancing
simply for the Dance’s sake, did not notice it. They just kept dancing.

18. And then there is the version that I tell, the one I’d like to believe.

19. I’d like to think that all the renditions are, in part, true.

20. I’d like to think that some of the Dancers lost the Flow and stopped dancing,
while others didn’t.

21. That some continued the Dance, while others came up with the New Dance.

22. That some of those who lost the Flow went about the land in pursuit of
the delights of discovery.

23. I’d like to think the little lost Butterfly ushered in a new age for the Dancers. Perhaps
they were on the path to just dancing for the Dance’s sake.
Perhaps that Butterfly, in some ways, saved them. Perhaps their world was in need of
change.

24. Perhaps the Dancers needed the Butterfly to fly by.

25. And so things were different.
Was the New Dance a better Dance than the first? Was the new world the exploring
Dancers created a superior one to what once was? Did that Butterfly destroy what was
so strongly established over all those years? Or did it simply change it for the better?
Which was the better world for the Dancers to occupy?

26. Who can say? All I can say is that I believe the Dancers carried on.