When A Flower Blooms

Silky russet hair falls into opaque eyes. Dark calloused hands work fertile, brown soil, of a matching color, up against a moss green stem. A honey scent flows downwind, blowing in from the meadow. Nasmi raises her hand above her eyes and shields them from the glow of the sun.

Like the wind, her presence is fleeting in and out of existence. A woman who was once ever-present in the world with a cheerful smile, and eyes full of hope, now looked at nothing in front of her and cared not to remember anything behind her.

The villagers carry on around her, holding light conversations filled with the excitement of the blooming season. They could already smell the budding of the first flowers and anxiously waited for the midday sun to commence the blooming process.

Children ran around laughing and playing, carrying soft blankets to protect the newborns from the harsh sands that swept through the village during this season. Regardless, the lands are fertile and ripe for the birthing of new Lumen, people of the sun.

It was not a good time to be outside unprotected. And while the older children’s skin had grown accustomed to the dry air and hot sand, a newborn child would not handle the dry season well.

But Nasmi did not walk around with the other adults and parents. She was not gathering water in her painted vessel or pulling the hand-sewn blanket from the lockbox in her room. She did not place lanterns around the rim of her home or pluck the weeds from the rocky walkway up to the door.

No, she tended to the beautiful black tulips she had planted in her garden.

Even when the winds picked up and stole her breath; or knocked her off-kilter and into the ground, she never did stop to raise from her place in the garden and make her way to the meadow.

It was not until the sun had raised so high, and burned so hot, and her vision danced before her, that she stood from her spot poised above the tulips and headed inside.

“I’ve gathered our things.” Mumbled the man at the sink. His hands had been freshly scrubbed clean of the dirt that ringed them. His face clean-shaven exposing the square and sculpted jaw, Nasmi had fallen in love with.

His brown eyes swirled with love and worry. This was the fifth blooming season. They would wander into the meadow, water their little seedling, and wish, and pray, and hope that today would be the day it bloomed.

Cyrus had managed to not cry after the first unsuccessful blooming season. Their budding flower was the only one left in a meadow of blooms. The second and the third time, however, had made him sob until his teeth drew blood to his lips, and his throat was raw and filled with sand. By the fourth time a feeling of sadness, numbness, confusion, anger, and disappointment sunk in his stomach and he hung his head until the sun had risen again the next morning.

Now, a year later, and at the fifth blooming season, he was ready. Today would be the day if he had to force the petals open himself.

Nasmi’s hands shake when she picks up the white blanket. She could still feel the way the needle pricked her every time she messed up or got to cocky sewing. She could hear the jovial tune she’d hummed day and night pulling stitch after stitch together. After a year, the fabric had gone smooth but was still taut and thick enough to block the sand.

Nasmi looks into Cyrus’ eyes. If today was not the day…she did not have to say. He knew all too well what his wife had been thinking. If today was not the day, then that seedling would wilt, and disappear back into the very soil it sprouted from.

The two depart hand and hand. Nasmi clutches tightly to the cloth in her hand like a first-time parent. But she was a first-time parent. Or at least she hoped to be. 

This was not her first blooming season, and it would not be her last. So, she could not explain the swirling feeling happening in her gut or the dull throb of pain in between her russet-colored brows.

She could not explain how she leaned into her husband for support or why her feet stumbled, and her legs wobbled. Cyrus holds the waist of his wife and keeps his face impassive. She was breaking, right before him. And deep in his heart, he was breaking too.

The couple stops walking at the edge of the meadow. Where the sand goes dark and disappears into the line of the soil, and where deep green sprouts and blades lick up the length of their shin’s.

“There it is,” Cyrus mumbles and waits until Nasmi takes the first step into the land of colorful flowers, to guide them to their own.

They had walked this path many times before. The first time was when they chose where to plant their seedling, Cyrus having the honor of digging the hole and covering it back up.

They walked this path every day until the first blooming season, and then every day thereafter.

But now it felt final. This would be the day, or it would not. But neither wanted to say, at all.

Nasmi sits down in front of the flower and takes the vessel from her husband. It had been decorated with small painted tulips by the innocent hands of the past her. But she refused to remember.

Remember the way her breath caught in the back of her throat, and how she used her right hand to balance the left one so that she would draw as expertly on the watering vessel as she did on papyrus.

Her husband watches her steadily pour water at the base of the flower’s stem. It had grown large, larger than the thousand flowers that swayed in the rough wind. When Nasmi places her vessel back down she waits.

They wait.

Cyrus shifts causing Nasmi to break her stare and glare at him.

“Sorry, the grass is poking me.” He mumbles. Nasmi’s glare breaks and she smiles.

“You should have brought our blanket, ana behibak,” Cyrus hums looking around them at the blooming flowers.

Some were white, yellow, pink, or blue, some still a healthy shade of green. One was a deep red like the fiery color of his wife’s hair, with petals that turned yellow at the ends. Its stem was thick, holding what looked to be a heavy blossom, maybe twins if they were lucky.

Some parents had already managed to pluck their bundles of joy from the center of their flower homes and wrap them tightly in their blankets. 

Many parents stayed, waiting to celebrate this life of their new one with their family and friends who would wait for their own seedling or gather around someone else’s.

The elders sat in front of flowers with their hands clasped together praying and stroking the soft but gamey petals.

When a flower blooms the petals open slow, the flower tilts against the wind, and small hands reach up towards the sky. Most often the new Lumen will give out a cry and be scooped proudly into the waiting parent’s arms. But what did he know, he had only seen it happen a million times, but never experienced it for himself.

Nasmi also looks around, and then above them. The sun had already moved across the sky ready to make its descent and end their fifth and final blooming season. Nasmi swallows dryly. Squeezing her eyes shut.

Her sniffles alert Cyrus to her tears. His large hands grab hold of her arms and he kneels, pulling her into a tight embrace. Nasmi throws her arms around her husband’s shoulders and gives a powerful wail, one much like a child. But with so much power, emotion, and sadness it draws neighboring eyes to them.

The last couple, again, in a field of bloomed flowers.

The sun starts to dip below the tree line, and the moon starts to glow, and grow, and brighten against the sky. The wind gives its final gusts, and Nasmi lets the tears slip from her eyes. Down unto golden petals.

And for a moment those petals remain still.

Then they sway and move against the wind. Unseen by its sobbing mother and comforting father.

Within the last sliver of light, their flower blooms into the night. And their child with hair the color of starlight and eyes just as bright gives a loud shout.

Signaling that their flower blooms.