Blissful Mornings - The First Thread

The cottage door creaked only slightly as it opened—soft enough not to wake the spirits.

She stepped in barefoot. Alone.

The scent of old fabric, salt, and flowers welcomed her like an elder’s hand. No one told her

to come. No one told her she couldn’t.

The others were away—Sonia tending to the sea garden, Julia resting, the town hushed in

mid-afternoon heat.

But something in her hands wanted to move. So she came.

She carried a piece of cloth—threadbare and blue, frayed at the edges. It once lined a basket

her mother used for picking herbs. She had found it folded inside the pocket of a worn dress

meant for donation.

She didn’t know why she had kept it.

She only knew it asked to be stitched.

Unrolling it gently, she sat on the floor beside the low table where fabrics were sorted. The

silence in the cottage felt curious, almost watchful. The very air held a hush of anticipation.

As she began to sew—one stitch, then another—a soft breeze curled beneath the cottage

door and brushed her ankles. Cool against the summer heat, it made her flinch. She paused,

startled, and looked beneath the table.

There, half-buried in the sand floor, was a pearl.

Small. Luminous. Perhaps once sewn onto a swaddle or hem… now lost to time.

She picked it up carefully before the sand could swallow it again. Its surface caught the light

and reflected it back like a wink. Like a smile from the Unknown.

Without overthinking, she stitched it into the center of her fabric—letting its pearlescence

anchor her design. Her thread moved instinctively. No patterns taught. No approval needed.

It was as though her fingers were remembering something her soul already knew.

Outside, Lani approached with a basket of marigold petals for dyeing. But when she saw the

child inside, sewing alone—quiet, present, true—she did not enter.

She stood still, watching. Cradling the marigolds to her chest.

And for a moment, she saw not a girl, but a future elder.

One stitch at a time, the child was weaving her place into the lineage.

-Bliss Chains Authors