"There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." -The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

"God's fingers can touch nothing but that they mould it into loveliness." -George MacDonald

"Whatever are you looking at, Eustace?"

Eustace jumped. He had been so intent he hadn't even heard Lucy walk up behind him.

"Nothing," he said quickly. He looked back to the great house. "D'you suppose it's time for dinner?"

Lucy laughed. "Eustace, it's barely past tea! Now truly, what were you studying out here all alone?"

Eustace reddened. "Them," he mumbled, gesturing vaguely at the Magician's garden.

Lucy wrinkled her sunburnt nose in puzzlement. "The flowers?"

Eustace shook his head. "The butterflies," even lower and more embarrassedly.

Great enormous butterflies swooped around the flowers, looking more magical than anything in the Magician's house. Their wings were coloured like living jewels, and as they fluttered about the blossoms, their radiance was almost overwhelming.

Lucy sighed in content and, to Eustace's surprise, slipped her hand inside of his, squeezing it chummily. "You never see butterflies like this in England."

"I wouldn't have seen them even if they were there," Eustace stumbled. He saw Lucy's amused puzzlement over his statement, and tried to explain. "I never—never really looked at anything before. Back home, if I saw a butterfly like this, I would have caught it, killed it, and tried to categorize it."

Lucy's face shadowed. "Why?"

Eustace shrugged unhappily. "So I could boast to all my schoolmates about it. So I could show off how much I knew."

"But Eustace—they're so beautiful. You can't reduce this kind of beauty—this living beauty—to a dead thing pinned a card."

"I never cared about beauty before. I just thought it was something girls like Susan thought about."

Lucy bit her lip. "I don't think that's the right kind of beauty," she said hesitantly. "I've always been jealous of Su," she blurted out in a rush. "But I think I'm finally starting to learn—or Aslan is teaching me, I should say—that beauty is more than just a pretty face."

Eustace nodded. "I think I'm starting to realize that, too." He wondered if this was something Aslan was teaching him, or if it was presumption on his part to think the Lion would teach him anything. "I was hideous when I was a dragon, you know. But it wasn't just the ugly outside that bothered me. What bothered me most—once I realized how it happened—was that I had turned myself into a dragon by being that ugly on the inside."

Lucy's face lit up again, and Eustace privately thought she looked prettier than Susan ever had. "Yes, that's it exactly," she said eagerly. "Aslan changed you from a dragon—he made you beautiful from the inside out."

Eustace laughed. "I say, Lu, that's a bit thick. I mean, I'm not exactly beautiful."

Lucy looked at him with a serious face. "Compared to what you used to be, you certainly are." Her blue eyes warmed into merriment. "As the Dufflepuds would say, Aslan is 'beautifying' you. He is all of us."

As there didn't seem to be anything he could say in response to that, Eustace said nothing. He and Lucy turned back to watch the butterflies darting about.

"Do you want to pin them on a card now?" Lucy asked him softly.

Eustace shook his head. "No," he replied simply. And though he couldn't see it, his plain schoolboy face looked almost beautiful as he spoke.

Author's Note: This was supposed to be a simple snippet of Eustace discovering he could like bugs, even if they weren't "dead and pinned on a card." Then Lucy started talking about beauty, and the conversation got away from me, and got a good bit more philosophical than I had expected. Darn kids ... Oh well. Hope you like it!