#russian folklore

The story itself is very interesting, Solovey is a half bird half man creature, that whenever it whistles, people drop dead in mass, earning it the rightful placement of ALEPH. The only one to survive its song is Ilya Muromets, a folk hero, who shot an arrow through its eye and brought it back to Vladimir, the prince of Kiev. The prince wished to hear Solovey sing, but it claimed to be too wounded to sing. After giving it some wine, Solovey whistled, and brought death to the entire castle. In the end, Ilya had taken it out into a field and beheaded it.

This abnormality represents a kind of helplessness to cause destruction and death, despite its beauty. The only person who can stand to be near it is also the one who has to put it down. Still, it desires to live, so it tricked the prince while knowing it would condemn everyone to die if it sang. Is it self defense? Perhaps it was, when the prince could have kept it in a cage forever for his amusement. That's why I feel like the EGO name is double sided, like the butterfly I depict it as.

Design wise, I wanted to keep the nightingale parts for Shou, who also resonates with this Abnormality. Why this butterfly in particular? It's identified as Azerbaijani blue (Polyommatus aserbeidschanus). I looked up Russian butterflies and found them with the article that quoted "...when the scientists looked at them under a microscope, it became clear that they had 46 chromosomes – a very unusual number for this group of the blue butterflies and exactly the same count as in humans."

LIKE ??? A butterfly that has the same chromosomes as humans? That sound so oddly fucked up. And it's so pretty to boot. One side is azure blue while the other is mint and gold... I decided that it has to represent the dualism of this abnormality. Also the flower that grows on the tree is based on the astralagus species, which their larvae are known to feed on.

I made an alternate version where red butterflies are swarming him.... I broke my hand drawing this but it didn't look good to me so I scrapped it. That's life....... The butterfly here is Aglais Io. It took so much precision to get right... But I fear that's why it's a huge distraction.