Blissful Mornings - The Swatch and the Story

Later that afternoon, after Marcus had gone and Luna had gently stirred the blankets with

her dreaming, the unnamed child sat quietly with her pouch of fabrics.

She felt something.

Not a call. Not a voice.

Just… a pull.

She reached for a small swatch—undyed, unstitched, but aged by touch. It was once part of

a sail, Sonia had said. Or perhaps an apron pocket—no one remembered.

But it had journeyed.

She folded it gently and wrapped it in soft netting, then placed it aside.

“It’s for him,” Julia said from across the room.

The child looked up.

Julia was not smiling, but her face was warm.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” she asked.

The child nodded.

Julia reached for her own bundle—one wrapped in banana leaves, tied with string. She

hadn’t touched it in years.

“There was once a boy,” she began.

The women gathered closer, not urgently, but with the knowing that something was ready

to be remembered.

“He came to the island with his parents. Traders. Or maybe travelers. They stayed near the

harbor.”

Julia paused.

“He carved small boats out of driftwood and always waved when I passed by. One day, he

gave me one… and I painted a flower on its sail.”

There was a softness in her voice now.

“That boat floated to sea the same day they left. No goodbye. No promise. Just… gone.”

She looked at the unnamed child, then at the swatch meant for Marcus.

“Sometimes we give without knowing if it will return. But the giving still matters. Especially

when the land brings them back.”

That evening, the unnamed child stitched a single wave into the corner of the cloth. No

name. No design.

Just a beginning.

The next morning, Marcus returned. He didn’t say much—just gave a small nod to the circle

and sat where he had sat before.

The swatch lay beside him, wrapped in netting. He held it with both hands, gently, like it

was something living.

For a while, no one spoke.

Then the child offered him a needle.

It had been her instinct—not prompted, not explained.

He took it without hesitation.

Over the next days, Marcus returned each morning. Sometimes Luna came with him.

Sometimes not.

He didn’t try to join the conversation. Instead, he stitched. Small, unsure lines at first…

waves, like the one stitched by the child. Then lines like vines. Then, a tiny bloom—not a

perfect frangipani, but close.

And then—something else.

A house. Not a cottage. Not a hut. But a kind of dwelling—structured, unfamiliar, yet

softened by the vines.

One afternoon, while the others were tending tea and gathering herbs, Julia stood behind

him.

She saw the stitch.

“That’s not from here,” she said gently.

Marcus looked up, thoughtful.

“It’s my grandfather’s house. The one they left behind when they came here.”

There was a pause.

“They came for business,” he added. “But I think they stayed because something here felt

like home.”

The next day, Sonia whispered to Julia and Lani that she’d seen the governor walking with

Marcus’s parents near the coastal bluff. Their posture was dignified, but distant—as if they

were always preparing to leave again.

“Do you think they know?” Sonia asked quietly.

Julia looked toward the cottage, where Marcus now sat with the unnamed child, both

stitching in companionable silence.

“Maybe not yet,” she replied. “But the boy… he’s starting to remember something none of

them have said aloud.”

Later that evening, under the hush of a twilight sky, the unnamed child asked Marcus, “Was

your mother always quiet?”

Marcus nodded. “She’s mute. But I understand her fine. She tells me everything with her

hands… and her eyes.”

The child smiled, suddenly understanding him even more.

“That’s why you knew how to listen,” she said.

Marcus looked at her, then back at the swatch now blooming with new threads.

The red thread stitched a gentle arc between the vines.

And Julia, watching from the doorway, felt something in her chest release—

not regret… but recognition.

-Bliss Chains Authors