Hello, and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast, the listening resource for intermediate to advanced level English learners. My name is Anna and today we are learning English through story because learning English through story is one of the most effective ways to learn and enjoy language learning. Now you can get more out of your experience by becoming a Plus Member. Through Plus Membership, you get access to transcripts, bonus episodes, and vocabulary lists. I will leave a link to Plus Membership in the show notes. So without further ado, Let me introduce to you the butterfly and the octopus. Caterpillars, as we know, turn into butterflies. All caterpillars know this too. And one particular caterpillar had already foreseen that no matter how precious it would be to come into wings, it would be even more special to be able to see something worth flying for. He had heard about the sea from his quiet friends the snails, who had relatives there. So he trod through the days and rippled through the nights until he came to a port. Caterpillars have marvellous eyesight, though you might not think it. And he soon found a rope which was mooring a ship to the land. He legged his way up almost interminably, until he found himself unnoticed onboard. He hid out in a big box of something dark and waited. One night during the voyage, he was awoken by a sound. Something unfamiliar, yet not entirely. He crept out and looked below with his marvellous eyesight over the edge of the boat at the water. Creatures were flying there. That was what was so familiar. But they also landed back in the water. That was what was different. Although the caterpillar didn't know what the joyful, white-skinned creatures were called, we do. They were dolphins. The snails hadn't mentioned such lively animals. The caterpillar was so entranced that, crawling out on his rope, he suddenly lost his footing and dropped down, down towards the shimmering creatures and the dark waters below. He didn't really understand what happened next. Instead of the creatures and the water getting closer and closer, they just stayed where they were. The dolphins, who have terrific hearing, despite what you might think, turned their smiles up to face a sound, something familiar, yet not entirely. As the moon passed overhead at just the right moment the caterpillar was illuminated, and his silhouette stood out on the forehead of the nearest dolphin. The caterpillar swang round to see what it was behind him casting that shape. But of course, there was nothing there. The shape above the sea mammal's eyebrows was his own, new wings and all. The caterpillar had transformed and took his delight out for all the creatures to see, clambering over moonbeams and straining to keep up with the fast moving dolphins below. But they were so swift across and over the water that the butterfly was soon tired out. He was only small. And very new to this too. So the dolphins turned back and took turns to take the butterfly on their noses, flipping him as each in turn dived and rose. They carried him all the way to their archipelago, and when he had a little of his strength back, he fluttered across the shallowest part of the water and slept the night away in what we would call a butterfly cave. Exhausted but sheltered and wishing to wake up and see what was all around him. He was by the sea where he wanted to be. He should see water and fish and boats and sand maybe, or stones and strange new trees and insects. But the first thing he saw when he woke up was his reflection in a pool of water outside his butterfly cave. He was seeing himself for the first time like this. He was golden in patches, blue in tips, but most of all silver and green in spirals. He was happy with these new colours and as he looked he didn't immediately notice that something else was appearing in the reflecting pool. There were fish in it and the fish were mighty surprised to see the butterfly. They soon got over it though and waved their fins, beckoning the butterfly to the water's edge behind him. Now was a good time to start exploring. Any time is good of course, but especially when you've just got your wings. And so the butterfly, who was used to walking, started off on his old legs. He soon shook his new silver and green head a little, chuckled into his new chin and rose into the air. Every day, as he got his strength and found his confidence, he went out to watch the fish swirling and darting around in huge clusters. Butterflies have marvellous eyesight, despite what you might think. One day feeling especially confident, he went out further still to watch the fish and his marvellous eyesight meant it was very surprising indeed for the butterfly when he turned around to fly back to the archipelago but couldn't see it. Going through first 180 degrees, then 360, then 540, 720, and round and round the butterfly saw nothing but water, and in the water swirling and darting fish, but also an octopus, who the butterfly had noticed before every day gliding around the water on the most graceful of legs. Whatever could be happening? The octopus was very active and sensitive and sometimes got so confused and overwhelmed that her long legs got quite tangled up and she had to use them like a great big oar and shoot away from wherever she was. One day she had shot away and gone to the surface of the water. Quite by accident or guided by some other force, she will not tell, but, there she felt the strangeness of the air on her skin, and saw a small creature flying. A creature throwing patterns in the air and making beautiful sounds with his wings. The like of which the octopus, long, long used to the muted depths, had never heard before. The octopus was short of breath up there at the surface, but was so captivated by what she saw that she waited until she was quite blue before sinking back down into the security she knew. But every day she wanted to return and every day she rose to the surface to watch and be with the butterfly as he fascinated her with his actions and his sounds. On this particular day, the octopus got quite a pain in her stomach from hearing the panicked sounds of the butterfly's wings. The octopus became afraid and started to shoot over to the butterfly. She had to pass through the darting and swirling fish, and as she shot across towards the butterfly, they moved aside respectfully, because they all had, for a long time, loved and admired her. At this, the butterfly, rather distracted by now spinning round and round, and almost giving up the idea that he would ever see land again, saw land. Where was it? Round and round, but trying to slow down, the butterfly saw sometimes land and sometimes approaching octopus, sometimes land, sometimes octopus, until the butterfly saw no more and simply passed out. Landing on the most outstretched tentacle of the octopus, who had just made it there in time. The butterfly came to quickly, and saw the fish once again swirling and darting. The octopus understood the question in the butterfly's eyes. She eased herself off on seven of her legs, with not quite the grace of before, as one was taken up holding the butterfly aloft, knowing that it was unlucky for an octopus to use an odd number. The fish again stopped and moved aside for the beautiful octopus, and the octopus held up the holding tentacle and turned the butterfly to face the land. There it was, as it should be. The butterfly looked at the octopus and saw her as the keeper of the secrets of the ocean, as something he could never misunderstand, and immediately loved her as much, if not more, than one could love the beauty of another living day. They were together all days. The butterfly somehow soothed the octopus, ridding the busy, passionate creature of her anxieties. He soothed the octopus with the music of his wings through the air, he drew the octopus closer and nearer with the inspiration of his markings. The octopus responded lovingly to the butterfly, and with her eight arms was able to do unimaginable tricks which astonished and inspired the butterfly in turn. The octopus grew more and more adept at breathing the oxygen from above the water, above the depths that she had known. And the butterfly's touch had become so light that he was able to sit on the surface of the water with the octopus, though, they would still have to spend their nights apart. The butterfly was only small though, and soon became so overwhelmed by everything that he had to sleep. One night he just lay down on the back of a turtle and slept and slept and slept. The octopus came to the surface the next day, but the butterfly was not there. For days and days the octopus surfaced, but the butterfly never showed. The octopus searched with all her three hearts, but she heard nothing back from the sleeping butterfly, and returned eventually to the depths, deciding to never look up from them again. After the butterfly had come around, he felt such a weight in his tiny heart that he almost could not fly. He asked the turtle to help him to take off, and although the turtle had his own things to do and had been extremely kind and patient already, he said that yes, he could spare a couple of hours before lunch that day. The butterfly tried out his not so new anymore wings, and the patient turtle let him land time and time again until the butterfly could safely take to the air, albeit with not quite the music of before. He returned to the places that he and the octopus had once been. But of course, when he arrived, there was no octopus. He waited, and hovered, and found strange places to land and look, but no octopus came. The butterfly wanted to break through the surface and search, but he couldn't, for fear of damaging his wings and dying. The butterfly wanted the dolphins to take him down quickly into the depths, safely breathing inside their mouths. But they only wanted to play at the surface and wouldn't let him in. The butterfly knew that the octopus would never come up, and that he could go with the dolphins anywhere they would take him. Life with them would be endlessly entertaining. But the butterfly could not leave his tiny, sorrowing heart untended. He could not stay, but would not live among the dolphins. The butterfly had to do the last thing he wanted to do. He had to go home, so he rode back with the dolphins, sick this time, all the way, with his tiny, heavy, lumpen heart crashing around inside him all the time. He arrived back at the land and was ready to go back to the places he had known and had longed to leave. Here he could fly and fly and start again to look only at new things from above, and when he was exhausted he would sink down and remember the times with the octopus, as if they were dreams, happy dreams to watch before again taking to the sky to fill his marvellous eyes with even newer things. But before he could start, a collector on the shore trapped the butterfly in his net and snapped him shut into a glass case. He knew what to expect, as all butterflies have an inherent knowledge of what people, the word creatures, are capable of. He was almost helpless, with stilled wings, no matter how golden blue and silvery green. Before a butterfly dies though, before it folds its wings together in peace, it beats them one last time and sends a vibration of beauty through the world. If the butterfly's feelings are very strong, if it has lived a life worthy of its beauty, then it can send that vibration wherever it desires. This, then, was the butterfly's chance to contact the octopus. The butterfly had known this all along, and has been prepared to do whatever it took in order to say goodbye. The butterfly could feel the air running out. It prepared itself to send one last ripple out into the world, powerful enough to shatter the glass and travel, passing through the surface of the ocean to the depths inhabited by the graceful octopus. It had been a beautiful and meaningful life. The caterpillar had made it so for the butterfly to have the chance to find an octopus. The butterfly drew its last breath, drew up its wings to their highest point, almost bent beyond their capability. And paused, watching the face of the collector as he released the box, taken out of his hands by the several slippery arms suddenly around him, as eyes, eyes that had taken the butterfly to the secret of the ocean, came smiling out of the water, and caught the butterfly's gaze long enough for him to still his last beat, and wait for the glass box to strike the floor and shatter. The butterfly used his marvellous eyesight to help him bow like a violinist's elbow around the shattering shards, making his escape to the kind of music the octopus had longed to hear again. For the octopus had never truly given up. She had, like the butterfly, taken a journey far away in order to surface and practice breathing to be able to live on the land and find the butterfly. The octopus had had to journey far away from the archipelago. For she could not bear that the butterfly was not there, and, vowing never to look up, had got her legs tangled and shot off to the edge of the sea at the end of the world. She had put her head to where there was no water, no land, and no air, and held her breath and looked out at the vastness of everything in space, looked out with eyes so full of questioning and curiosity that the stars themselves were moved to answer her. They moved to mark out the dolphins in the sky, and moved to draw up a map for the octopus of the land the butterfly had come from. No one knows more than the stars, after all. They were there that night, as the butterfly and the octopus were reunited, and they shone brighter than ever before. Now, I hope you enjoyed that little story. If you did enjoy this or any other episode, then please do take a moment to leave a like, a rating or review, and always feel free to share The English Like A Native Podcast with any of your English-learning friends. 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