We lived among the people with flesh. We loved. We reproduced. We journeyed far and wide with the People. We were one of them. The land was peaceful and all things that inhabited the world were honored. We honored on another. We thrived. Until we came to a high mountain top and gazed down into a beautiful valley that sang an enticing song to us. And so we descended to begin a new life. A life of settlement and contentment. We were no more nomads.

       The years passed. Dissension seeped in and gathered strength. Evil corrupted the souls. The People began to fight with one another. Divisions festered and gained dominance. The killings started. It began with our babies still in the womb. They wanted no more of us to inherit the land. Slaughter the unborn, slaughter the young, slaughter all those who disagree. Eradicate these people, hide them from the face of the Holy One. They glorified in their butchery and in the profits they made. 

       The Holy One who resides in the heavens observed in sorrow. His wrath became fire. The innocent ones called out to Him. He heard their cries and saw their anguish. He sent a loyal servant to gather the bones of all those who had been slaughtered. Millions upon millions. He sent another loyal servant to collect the souls of the crying to bring them to Him. They found rest at His feet.

       The loyal servant who gathered the bones of the butchered carried his precious cargo to the top of the high mountain and there he planted them in the soil, as he was commanded to do. The Holy One breathed a flower into existence to be a forever-memorial to these, the innocent victims whose bones are now buried there. His hand moved and swept the beautiful valley clean with the fire of His fury. It is no more.

     The flower multiplied. Sacred rain fell upon its white petals and when it did, the petals became like glass. In the transparent petals one can see the bones of those lost, the skeletons of my ancestors buried there. I am the only one saved. I am the gardener, the witness, the voice who tells the tale of the those now gone.

 

***The image was sent to me via a text. Immediately, I began to wonder how I could use this in a story. It wasn’t the beauty of the flower but its common name that piqued my interest. Look at the flower. It is beautiful and yet kind of eerie and creepy. I’ll be using it. I just don’t know in what way or in which story.

       Diphylleia Grayi, commonly know as the skeleton flower. Most times its petals are plain white but when it rains, the petals turn transparent and fragile looking. The veins of the flower become prominent and look like white bones.

       Image:  nature-sights.com