Blissful Mornings - Where the Flower First Bloomed

Long before the Circle.

Long before the fabric of Salud was ever stitched or remembered,

there was a night—still and fragrant—when two young souls sat beneath a canopy of stars.

Julia, not yet an elder, still wore her hair long and unbound.

She carried stories even then, though few were ready to hear them.

Lorenzo, visiting from another coast, was quiet and observant,

his hands always shaping something, as if trying to understand what

could not be spoken aloud.

They had met just days before—

after Julia had told a story about a woman named Salud who fed an

island during a time of great illness.

Lorenzo listened.

Not just with his ears, but with something deeper.

That evening, under a sky dusted with stars,

Julia sat tracing the sand with her fingers.

Her voice was soft, not woven for performance,

but offered in the rhythm of memory.

She made soup from what was left.

Leaves, water, bone.

And hope, she said.

She didn’t speak much, but the children lived.

Lorenzo said nothing at first.

Then, almost absentmindedly, he placed a piece of driftwood beside them.

“I found this on the rocks after the tide went out”; he said.

“I think it wants to be a boat!”

And so he began to carve.

With care. With reverence.

Later that week, he returned—

hands stained from salt and shaping.

The driftwood had become a small, sturdy vessel,

its hull smoothed by both tool and tenderness.

“I don’t know what to name it.” ; he admitted.

Julia took a brush.

She didn’t write a word.

She painted a single flower on the sail.

A quiet offering.

A beginning.

They didn’t speak of it again.

They didn’t need to.

But when the boat returned many seasons later,

carried by a boy with golden hair and gentle silence,

Julia remembered—

And the flower bloomed again.

-Bliss Chains Authors