This is a two-part shorty story, written in response to a challenge by a friend. It's also my first foray into writing anything vaguely autobiographical, although the details are prettied up for the sake of drama.

The torn label of the jar bore remnants of the banner: Crosse & Blackwell Tangy Mayonnaise in gold and red and green, though its contents were no longer mayonnaise. Inside the glass, lumps of a yellowish-brown substance began to bubble in the heat, pock-marked with black and swollen raisins.

"That smells disgusting,'' the little girl's pigtails shook as she pointed at the jar, startling an agama lizard that was basking on the paving stones in the midday heat. The koggelmander scuttled back to feast on termites in the relative shade of the rockery beside the precast concrete table where the girl's brother sat.

He was deep in concentration, carefully positioning the wings of a dead butterfly open onto dual tracks of chipboard and pinning them down to set in place under strips of book-plastic. Next to him on the table, a dotted border flipped its wing disconsolately inside a poison bottle; only a sheet of perforated card separating it from the mothballs below. Sleep would come soon.

''That is butterfly bait,'' the boy told her, not shifting his eyes from his painstaking task. ''Fermented banana mostly. Dad gave me a dash of rum too.'' This last was a smug reassertion of superiority, the accident of chronology that inflicts a pernicious chokehold between an elder sibling and a younger. But it was also a nod towards parental buy-in, a reminder that it was family-sanctioned murder in which he was engaged.

Their father had been an avid collector of butterflies once and had famously nearly fallen over the Umgeni falls giving chase as a child. No one remembered now what butterfly it was that he had almost killed himself over. He still kept an ancient, black-leather album that shed occasional faded wings from between its fusty pages. For his son, he had made a much more ostentatious showcase out of glass and wood.

''I want it for the picnic tomorrow,'' her brother continued. ''There are the best butterflies at Oribi Gorge. If I am really lucky, I might even find a Foxy Charaxes.'' He tapped the butterfly book lying by his leg on the crescent-shaped bench.

The image showed a gorgeous butterfly. Deep brick and black velvet bands decorated generous wings, and a regular row of orange scallops stippled their edgings. But most exceptional were the tiny, unexpected eyes of cobalt blue, peeping from just above delicate tails.

There was a familiar lurch in the girl's stomach. It was how she always felt when she saw her brother working with the lifeless bodies of beautiful insects, or when she heard the sick crunch as he pressed a thorax between two fingers to stun them into submission.

She had protested and complained and begged him to stop. But always to no avail. So she walked away, into the cool darkness of the house where her parents and grandparents were taking an afternoon nap.

Her mother's handbag was on the dining table and the girl rifled through, extracting a crumpled five Rand note. She pocketed the money and slipped out of the yard through the gap in the acalypha hedging. She shouldn't be walking around the village alone, but holidays felt like wildness and freedom and she loved the secrecy of being completely alone.

Natal in 1988 was full of inconspicuous dangers: mambas slithering through the banana plantations, sharks out beyond the nets on the bathing beaches, asbestos-roofed fishing cottages and toxic abrin lacing the deceptively cheerful lucky-beans that scattered the ground below the coral trees. And in the hills only a few kilometers inland, Zulu warriors inhabited marshmallow-colored mud rondavels, plotting the downfall of the government.

The girl loved it all. She loved the smell of tropical vegetation rotting in the humid sea air and the tanker ships that appeared stationary on the horizon but somehow managed to cross from left to right within a half-hour. She loved the spindly-trunked papaya trees and the foreboding dark avocados. She loved the cuttlefish skeletons found along the waterline as a treat for the budgerigar. And she loved the butterflies that were everywhere.

Her toes began to burn on the half-paved road as she made her way around the block to Mr. Chetty's corner café. Even this was a curiosity to her city-self. The shops she knew in Johannesburg were in glossy malls. They sold high-heeled shoes and tiny crystal swan figurines. Mr. Chetty sold fresh samoosas and chewy apricot sweets from a large canister on the counter and he kept a freezer full of fishing bait in in the back.

She bought sterilized milk in a glass bottle and two Chappies bubblegum pieces for 5 cents. Then she sat on the front steps of the shop to ponder her brother's cruelty.

It made no sense to her. He was the nature-lover in the family not she, and yet he could not see that what he was doing expressed no love. How could capturing an animal and pinning it in place be any other than sadism? It didn't even contribute to science or conservation as none of these specimens were undiscovered and dead butterflies produced no offspring.

The buttery-sweet fragrance of the frangipane tree over the shop entrance wafted down to her. The canopy was laden with white-and-yellow flowers like a bridal bouquet and the hot tar beneath the tree was covered in a confetti of windfall blooms. She picked one up, wincing at the brown creases along the waxy petals. It was amazing how quickly they discolored. This was why it was much better not to pick them. If you left them on the tree they were always perfect.

That night she lay in bed with the curtain open. The windows were screened from mosquitoes, and she watched the upside-down pantomime of pale-throated geckos on the glass as they dined on muggies drawn by the interior lights. They chewed with such thick-tongued savagery, their hips and shoulders drawn in on the act of consumption. This was killing for the sake of life, and it fascinated her.

A train rattled past along the track between the bottom of the garden and milkwood and aloe thicket along the beach. It blew its horn as it disappeared into the unknown darkness, leaving only the sound of sifting waves, the chorus of insects and the quiet drone of her mother talking in the kitchen.

There are a few South-Africanisms and weird technical things in there. 

Koggelmander is the Afrikaans name for the rock agama lizard that can be seen in hot, rocky places, lounging in the sun. The male's head turns blue in the mating season. 

A dotted border is a pretty white, yellow and orange butterfly with dots around the edges of the wings.

Rondavels are circular houses. In the province of KwaZulu-Natal you will find these built of mud and thatch scattered through the hills.

Muggies is a generic term for a cloud of tiny bugs. It has to be said with the g like you are clearing your throat. Almost like the Spanish pronunciation of "J" in Jalapeno. Same goes for the gg in Koggelmander.