Turtle Channel!!!

She was now almost at the village gates. She could hear the voices of the villagers coming from a distance. Everyone was waiting for her. The young girl despaired. What was she going to tell them? What would her mother say? Should she tell them about the dead flower? Would she have to shave her hair off when she got to the convent?

The horror of having to shave off her long black hair made her stop in her tracks. Suddenly she felt short of breath. Her head began to pound as she slumped down at the side of the village gates, wondering what to do. It was then that she noticed it.

Something was stuck to the bottom of her shoe. She took her shoe off for the first time in 3 days. And there, at the bottom of her shoe was a tiny, discreet flower that was ivory in colour. Now she understood why her shoe had felt so uneven throughout the entire journey. She had thought it was odd that her shoes felt uncomfortable, and had dismissed it as just slightly torn when she first started hiking up the mountain. Now it is clear that it wasn’t because her shoe was spoilt; it was because there was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe! And although she had trekked all over the mountain, climbed a cliff, swam in the waterfall and walked all the way back to the village, the flower had not died. It was still very much alive, a resilient little thing, and it still emitted the strange fragrance of its own. It smelt very much like the air after a heavy rainfall. She put it closer to her nose and smelt it again. It was indeed a very special fragrance.

She took a closer look at the flower. It looked very normal; it was just a very simple flower with a pale yellow center and tiny ivory petals. Yet it managed to stay alive throughout all the stomping, throughout all the rock climbing and throughout all the water diving. Its resilience for life touched the young girl’s heart.

She carefully carried the flower in her hand and took it into the village. This was a flower, surely, that could save her from life in the Convent. As she approached the villagers, they were excited. The most excited one was her mother, whose voice can be heard from all ends of the village. When she showed them the little ivory flower, the villagers could not believe that any girl would bring back something so simple, particularly this young girl for she was strong, intelligent and beautiful. Her mother could not hide her disappointment, and stopped talking to the girl at all. The only person who was accepting of her choice was her father. But she was saved, she did not have to go to the convent, and that was enough for her. She planted her little flower alongside her mother’s daisies and tended to it earnestly.

In the months that followed, the weather became very dry. Summer that year was a harsh one, all the rivers and lakes dried up and many plants died. The men could no longer work in the fields for their crops were either dead or dying. They could survive only through the sale of their livestock.

All the flowers in the village, and the nearby villages, slowly began to wither and die. All except one.

The young girl’s flower bush remained well and alive despite the lack of water. In fact, it continued flowering through the driest of months. It still emitted the fragrance of the air after rainfall. The fragrance became more and more seductive as the land dried up and the skies remained cloudless. Many people flocked to her village from all parts of the kingdom to buy her flowers. She sold some, and gave many more away, for she wanted to make everyone happy and hopeful for rain. Her village soon became known as the Village of Hope.

Eventually the rain did fall and after many more months, flowers grew again. But because all the flowers in the kingdom had died during the dry spell, the flower-hunting and cultivating tradition had to be stopped. Women were since allowed to make money doing other chores, such as selling handicraft or catering and some even opened bakeries. They had no more time to tend to flowers.

But the young girl continued to take care of her flowers. Her flowers were planted all over the Village of Hope and she tended to every one of the flower bushes.

As days turn to years and she became old, she would tell her grandchildren that she had once come so close to becoming a princess and showing off the most beautiful flower in the world that she got from the bottom of the lake. She told them of the beautiful petals and sweet fragrance of the flower.

And then she would go on to show them the flowers in her garden. She gently spoke to them:

“This may not be the most beautiful flower in the world. But beauty will fade and die away, and a sweet fragrance is just like another perfume you can buy off the street. This flower, on the other hand, will go through the hardest of times with you, and emits the smell of life even during the harshest of seasons. When you grow up in future, remember these words and you will be find all the happiness in your lives.”

THE END.