“We are really sorry,” the anxious teacher blubbered as Mum pushed her way through the surge of babbling kids, the laughing, screaming, pushing and running pounding in her ears.  

What had he done now? Mum wondered.

She found Libron, her on-the-spectrum son, cradling a leaf and dirt-lined plastic container, round eyes fixed on something moving inside. He had proudly taken sole custody of a squirming caterpillar.  

The wee creature had already started encasing itself at the tip of a gum leaf as Mum, mesmerised, watched it spin silk and weave its cocoon before her very eyes.  

Libron pondered over what he would call his caterpillar. Carol or Carlo? He savoured the taste of the names carefully in his mouth. He decided on Carlo. It was a ‘he’, wasn’t it? 

Mum salvaged an old fish tank and Libron helped furnish it with twigs. They positioned it high on his bookshelf as the caterpillar cosied into hibernation.   

Carlo soon became the centre of attention as the family speculated about Libron’s peculiar pet. Would it be a moth or a butterfly? How long would it even take for it to complete its metamorphosis? Libron's support worker claimed, ‘It takes up to two weeks for a caterpillar to emerge from its cocoon’. He had gained his ecological wisdom while reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to his nine-month-old.   

Libron almost never left Carlo alone. Some days he took the cocoon with him to school, placing it in the sun to ensure Carlo stayed warm. Mum supposed the caterpillar was probably dead already and would never reach the pupal transformation stage. The cocoon lay stagnant, camouflaging into the brown leaves and dirt. 

Despite her scepticism, two and a half weeks later, the cocoon began to unravel. Two whisper-thin antennae poked through. Carlo emerged as a butterfly. An exquisitely speckled, ‘pale palm dart’ butterfly, common in the subtropics. The once insipid worm, frozen in its cloistered silk tomb, now symbolised an ethereal creature of beauty, freedom and transformation. 

Libron was ecstatic. 

Carlo spread his amber wings and ventured curiously to the bedroom windowpane, seeking the warmth it had relished as a pupal. Though he was released from the fish tank, Libron liked to keep him close, and the insect remained within the four walls of his bedroom. For days, Carlo gazed out the window and into the garden, longing for the coconut palms and wind-ruffled foliage surrounding the family’s swimming pool. 

Wherever Libron was, Carlo was there too. 

‘Can I take him to school?’ Libron placed the fluttering insect in an empty transparent container with some dry leaves and grass, and Carlo the butterfly spent the day at school. 

Every day after work, Mum found that all her son could talk about was Carlo. Carlo did this, Carlo did that. One day, like a parrot, Carlo had flown onto Libron’s shoulder. Another day, he had even befriended Libron’s case worker, landing on his hat. Libron burst into fits of laughter describing the incident.  

Mum knew she had to prepare her son for the day that Carlo would leave. ‘He might not stay with you forever,’ she counselled him.  

That day soon came. They searched high and low, in all his usual hiding spots: the plastic flower arrangement in the laundry; the magnets on the fridge; the mossy rock collection on Libron’s windowsill. All to no avail. Carlo was gone.  

‘It looks like Carlo has gone to find his own kind,’ Mum offered up, distracted by the morning chaos of trying to get four other kids ready for school. 

Libron fidgeted with a sensory pop toy and whispered philosophically, ‘That's okay’. 

The holidays came and went, the rain clouds dissipated slightly after a humid and heavy Wet. On the first day back at school, as Libron skipped towards his classroom, he stopped suddenly at the burst of amber light against green. There was Carlo, resting delicately among the splendid palm trees.  

Libron squealed: ‘He’s back, he’s back!’ He ran to tell everyone the good news.  

Carlo had indeed returned to be with his own kind.