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On the day after the 5101 Butterfly Festival, I located the jar of butterflies that I'd caught over the weekend and looked inside only to find that the creatures had died and turned to no more than dust.  It was a shock to me; I regretted catching them at the same time that I was glad to have seen their beauty close-up.  Others about me captured twenty, thirty, one hundred, two hundred.  One woman with thirty-six butterflies in her jar on the evening of the Day of the Huntress proudly told me that they would be released at her wedding.  I would hate to think of her reaction when she saw that they had died.

The moments of our lives are fleeting and strange.  Every moment we remain awake and alert to the world around is another quiet miracle.  Every month, every week, perhaps every day, we see people we've long known inside or outside Elanthia vanish-- perhaps they have too little time, perhaps they're busy with a new job, perhaps their finances are in trouble... perhaps they're in trouble, and we never know.  The truth about those around us is stranger than any tale we weave in Elanthia.  Perhaps tomorrow it will be you vanishing, for whatever reason-- the future can never be truly predicted.

Live your life with intensity, inside and outside Elanthia.  This isn't advice to live your life foolishly-- while you might vanish tomorrow, hopefully you will not.  This is advice to live your life in such a way that you leave a mark on the world around you-- a mark that will be remembered, and a mark that will be missed, if you too vanish into the night.  The mindless zombies of Elanthia contribute nothing to the world around them save perhaps annoyance.  Let yourself be alive.  Live your life with the drama of cymbals and trumpets-- or live it with the simplicity of a single flute playing alone in the wind or a tambourine's beat somewhere off in the distant night.  No matter what your character feels, you should exist with confidence, without fear, and with the knowledge that you are enjoying Elanthia and adding to others' enjoyment of the world.  When you're free of other responsibility, don't do the things you do because you have nothing else to do-- do it because whatever you are doing is the single thing among all the options open to you that you most want to be doing.

When you slip into the night, whether briefly or permanently, leave people behind that remember you, and you will live forever.  We are not alone in the world, inside or outside Elanthia, and it would be foolish to live as if we were.  Live your life with intensity, and fight to the last moment for what you hold dear; don't drown yourself in depression, or let yourself die before your time for lack of the energy to open your eyes.  Inside or outside Elanthia, refuse to subcumb to apathy or darkness: live as if life were too beautiful to fade.

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