The butterfly had knives for wings.

Itzpapalotl is not the soft metaphor version of a butterfly. She is obsidian, fire, claws, sacrifice, and the strange tenderness of Tamoanchan, where dead infants nurse from the Suckling Tree before reincarnation.

That is the unnerving power of her myth: the same goddess who could help star demons devour the sun also kept the dead children warm.