The Girl with the Pearl

A story of a girl who finds pleasure in the smallest things, and of a mother who cares.

The raven black hair swooshed as she bends down to pick up a smooth, round, glistening, and sparkling in the light of the day pearl.  Her jet-blue eyes carefully and gently look and lock onto the beauty of this treasure of the ocean.  Her gentle and caressing hands turn this gem over and over scrutinizing the amazing detail.  The wave’s crash and fall, making the days seem endless.  The sun, burning her back, makes its journey across the sapphire sea.  The sand slowly goes away as the girl is whisked into a paradise dreamland of her own creation.  Her thoughts are those of a magnificent, noble falcon, “King of the Sky”, soaring over luscious, green treetops, and through the diamonds that dot the never-ending sea of blue.  Her wings soar up and away and suddenly a great marble castle looms into view.  Her eyes blink, second-guessing, and she wakes up from a dreamland filled with adventures of the unimaginable.  As she snaps to reality, she suddenly realizes the gem is still in her hand.  Turning to head back to her quaint home, her footsteps, soft, pattering, and slow, eventually fade away as a new day of adventure starts.  This new day, a day with a bright, new confidence, emerges from its shadowy realm of night.  As the days pass, the sun still confidently shines and the moon still mysteriously darkens everything around it, the girl returns every day.  Every day she combs the beach, the beach with the white, cocky pelicans searching for food, for new treasures to behold.  After finding a treasure that she can call wonderful, she lies on the beach, watching and waiting for the sun to finally come down, after a days’ worth of hard work.  The seals sometimes come up and drag themselves up onto the rocks, bathing in the warm, comforting sunlight.  The waves crash onto them, and they look for slimy oysters or clams to eat.  Seals pound them ferociously on the hard, gray rocks and they finally surrender to a tasty meal within.  The seagulls caw and laugh in the sky, sometimes a deep sapphire blue and sometimes a baby blue.  The pelicans dip their slender, long beaks into the clear blue water and emerge with a struggling fish held firmly in its beak.  As night approaches, all the birds give last goodbye caw and thousands of thousands rise into the never-ending blue sky to return to their lairs.  Only then and only then, the girl will slowly rise to her feet, after coming to reality, and realize that dinner is here, and she must, must, go home now.  She quietly walks to her comforting home, and tells her mom, a widow, about her adventures.  Dinner is a hearty meal, with many neighbors coming in to shout a hello, and the patter-patter of footsteps outside their door.  For if you didn’t know, this girl’s mother was the best clothes maker in town.  Because of this, they had money in their kettle, and it would rattle now and then, they had food in their stomachs, and they had a life that many people were envious of because of that.  Every day, at the break of dawn, the girl would go to the sandy beach and the mother would go to the loom, starting to weave cloth that was both delicate and pretty at the same time.  You’ve heard about how the girl spent her days, but the mother would spend her days quite busily.  Hurrying around the house, finishing the laborious household tasks that many mothers hate, but she took pleasure in doing them.  She always told herself that if it weren’t for her doing the household tasks, they wouldn’t have food and money, which always seemed plentiful in their house, at least.  After doing all the tasks she behold herself to do, she would go down to the bustling market that seemed to always be open, no matter the time or weather, and sell the cloths she made.  If people wanted cloth, she had it, and if people wanted clothes, she had them as well.  You might think the mother never dreamt of a new life, but she did.  She wanted to explore mighty mountains, to swim the deep seas, to explore the world and all the wonders it held for her.  But, there was one problem, how could she leave the place she held so dear to her heart, a daughter who cared and loved her, and finally, all the people she had been living with in a close-knit community?  She couldn’t let them see the adventurous side of her, which was inspired by her parents, great explorers themselves.  People knew her as someone who was shy and knit clothes, which was all, she had honor as a clothes maker, but did she want more, need more?  It would greatly disappoint her daughter if she were to go traveling alone, but maybe she could bring her along… But what about her neighbors, who honored her, who were in one way her family outside of home?  She snapped out of her thoughts when a rich lady who seemed impervious to everyone else walked briskly towards her.  She was so surprised when the lady asked to see the finest cloth, so she showed her, the very one cloth she had made a long time ago, the one the her parents of proud of, the one thing that brought back terrible, more than terrible memories.  She was very young and carefree when she had made this cloth, a cloth so delicate that it was almost invisible, but also pretty and delicate at the same time.  The king, a very arrogant person, wanted this cloth for his own, he wanted everything of course.  His soldiers raided the house, killing her parents, but not getting the cloth.  The king tortured her parents to tell where the cloth was hidden, but they refused.  So… she still had that cloth today and almost never brought it out.  Doing so, brought a wave of memories… the praise from her parents… the beauty it had… and of course, the terrible events that had happened that day.  She could bear to leave it, but doing so, she gave away the one last connection to her parents.  The girl’s mother hated herself for bringing her the courage to sell it, but what good was a cloth that was made but never sold?  The mother cried at home, when she was alone, and told her daughter when she asked.  That was the end… Everything continued in their life because both didn’t want to think of that memory of the moms’ parents.