Three Butterflies, Two Magpies and a Squirrel
— for those who once searched too hard for love
Pavel Ivanovich lived above a bakery that never truly slept.
In the village of Kroshechnyye Domiki — where shutters blinked like sleepy eyes and bread rose before the sun — the scent of warm poppyseed rolls, cherry-glazed buns, and raisin twists floated up through the floorboards like gossip.
Pavel was a man of routine and detailed preparation. Every morning at precisely eight-fifteen, his question-mark shaped moustache was combed and starched and his brown knee length coat with polished buttons ironed with military precision.
He would descend the creaking stairs from his flat above the bakery and begin his walk to the tram, which always alerted the keen ears of the baker below.
“Cinnamon buns singing your name today, Pavel!” bellowed Emil the baker, arms floury, smile thunderous with excitement.
Pavel would press one hand against his plump round stomach and the other over his heart. “Today, Emil, I must be extra cautious.”
His stomach always moaned in protest.
Emil always laughed.
“I’ll come up for that haircut today, I swear!” the baker called. He never did. Not once.
Pavel was a barber of no great fame, but of insane great care. His shop sat next to the apothecary and smelled faintly of lemon balm, shaving cream, and hopes and dreams too modest to mention.
His clients adored him. Not because he made them fashionable — he did not — but because he made them symmetrical and listened with both ears and a full heart. He could trim your fringe and soften your sorrows in the same twenty minutes. And some would take their secrets to him, knowing confessional to the Barber was a clear conscience for the day.
Still, beneath the smiles and cinnamon refusals, Pavel was lonely. Not bitterly. Not tragically. Just quietly. Like a house with one light always left on in case someone returned.
Over the years, his brown barbers coat — once dignified and practical — had suffered from overloaded scissor storage and accidental snips. The original pockets had frayed, collapsed. Madame Tilda, the retired circus haberdasher who lived two doors down, with a deaf cat named Horace and a hundred towers of buttons, took one look and declared, “No good story starts in beige, darling. You will never find true love with pockets like fishing nets.”
This never made sense to Pavel. Nor to the author. Maybe it resonates with the reader? Maybe its just a way to increase the word count of an otherwise short story.
Madame Tilda replaced the pockets with bold swatches of fabric: one polka-dotted, one wild hallucinogenic paisley, one embroidered with tiny marching scissors. “To hold more than tools,” she told him cryptically. “To hold signs.”
In Kroshechnyye Domiki, signs were taken seriously. The villagers believed in symbols, coincidences, and the way gossip curled like smoke through the birch trees. Children were taught to read tea leaves before they learned to write. If a spoon fell from the table, a guest was coming. If two spoons clinked mid-air — a romance.
One day, a black cat crossed Pavel’s path on his way to the tram. He frowned — until three butterflies appeared near the lilac bush by the florist’s. One even landed on his coat pocket and rode along for half a block. Moments later, he found a coin on the pavement. Shiny. Silver. Impossible to ignore this moment of good fortune and very unusual creature behaviour?
The next day, the pattern repeated with new additions. Two magpies stared boldly at him from the chestnut tree near the apothecary. Three butterflies fluttered. A squirrel darted across the bench by the old well, tail high and scandalously proud. A woman in a navy coat sat nearby, studious and scribbling in a notebook.
By Wednesday, he was expecting them.
Three butterflies. Two magpies. One squirrel.
‘Hmm’ the barber sighed, ‘what could all these strange things that happen to me possibly mean?’
His favourite combs — the shiny ones — had started to vanish a few weeks earlier. One, then two, then a small glossy pink one with a tiny crack he’d owned since barber school. Gone.
He had searched the shop high and low, inspected the tram on each journey, even his shoes (he did always keep an emergency backup comb in his right boot. Just in case of a bad hair day). But nothing.
Meanwhile, each morning, the woman with the navy coat and notebook appeared again — same bench, same spot. Glasses slipping down her nose. Hair a little wild, like a theory in progress.
Her name was Vera Popova.
Once a librarian, now a hunter of mysterious phenomena.
She too, as Pavel, had given up on ever finding true love. Too many unsuccessful blind dates- a poet with too many vowels for his awkward lisp and a dentist with too many toothless opinions just two who had left her feeling like a book returned with a coffee stain.
She had moved to Kroshechnyye Domiki thinking it might be a quiet and anonymous life where she could hide away in peace. Instead, she discovered a village where the locals hunted and gathered together with feasts shared in the village square, and Old Man Bogdan blew up the forest once a month in pursuit of his secret but very illegal vodka recipe — always emerging with soot-black cheeks and nothing in his bottle but smoke and shame.
Vera noticed the butterflies first. Then the magpies. Then the squirrel.
She began tracking them in her notebook. “Same place. Same time. Always him there too — the barber in the coat of crazy pockets.”
And strangest of all, she started finding combs on her doorstep. Shiny ones. Familiar ones. She found five by Thursday, each with the initials “P.I.” scratched into the side. One a very ugly little pink thing which looked like it was a billion years old.
She suspected the magpies.
She suspected fate.
She suspected herself of dreaming too brightly.
Still, she followed the latest comb, placed delicately beside a stone rabbit in her garden. She walked its imaginary trail backwards — past the grocer’s, over the bridge, to the lamppost near the apothecary.
And there he was.
Pavel Ivanovich. Brown coat and crazy pockets. Moustache like a curled promise or at very least an awkward query. He looked up, as though expecting the butterflies — and saw her instead.
“I think,” she said, clearing her throat and holding up the comb, “this belongs to you.”
He blinked. “How did you…?”
“I’ve been… following patterns,” she said.
“The butterflies?” he whispered.
“And the magpies. And the squirrel. Though it appears to me the squirrel just nosy and along for the ride.”
Pavel stared. “They’ve been stealing from me.”
“They’ve been delivering to me.”
They both laughed, suddenly feeling like children who’d discovered they’d drawn the same dream. Pavel awkwardly tangled his wiry moustache and hoped his bloated and pastry desiring belly would not give him away so loudly.
Behind them, as if with divine intervention a butterfly landed on Vera’s shoulder. The magpies squawked. The squirrel peeked from the branches holding acorns in each cheek.
Then — chaos.
The magpies swooped. One snagged the earring from Vera’s left ear and darted toward the florist’s roof. The butterflies exploded in a flurry. The squirrel, not to be outdone, charged across the cobblestones directly under Vera’s feet.
She slipped.
Pavel caught her.
They stood tangled, her coat against his pockets, his breath full of fresh mint. Her glasses askew. One butterfly still clinging to her sleeve like it had something to say.
“I think,” Vera said, eyes wide, “they’ve been trying to introduce us.”
“I think,” said Pavel, helping her upright, “they’re quite dramatic.”
They sat on the bench by the florist’s. She showed him her notebook — full of notes, tiny diagrams, silly guesses, and one page titled Modern Cupids: Birds, Bugs, and Rodents.
He showed her his remaining combs — and told her the ones she hadn’t yet received.
They talked for hours, stopping only when Madame Tilda passed by with her cat in a wheelbarrow and muttered, “About time. I was beginning to think I had wasted my magic pockets on you old barber.”
In Kroshechnyye Domiki, word spread fast. By supper, the villagers had already planned a “just friends for now” feast. By morning, Old Man Bogdan had offered to distill them a wedding vodka (they politely declined as they would prefer to stay alive.) The baker, Emil, had made tiny cup cakes in the shape of butterflies and squirrels. He had made some shaped as magpies with shiny icing but some one had stolen them from the widow as they cooled.
But none of that mattered.
Because for once, Pavel had someone to walk with to the tram.
And Vera had someone to chase butterflies beside.
And the squirrel — that nosy little matchmaker — had taken to sitting on Pavel’s shoulder like a best man with a tail.
The magpies still stole shiny things. The butterflies still fluttered exactly where they pleased. But in the small, wooden-laced village where everyone knew your coat size and your favourite tea, two people who had once searched too hard finally let love find them.
No fuss.
No fanfare.
Just three butterflies, two magpies, a squirrel…
