Blissful Mornings - Eliah and the Cottage of Quiet Things

In the quiet hills where the mist never fully lifts, there stood a stone cottage wrapped in ivy

and memory. It belonged to Eliah, a woman who had chosen solitude not out of sorrow, but

reverence. Within the walls of her small home, time softened. Teacups held warmth longer.

Footsteps echoed with purpose.

Each morning, Eliah walked the moor with a wicker basket in hand. She gathered one

bloom—never more—and pressed it between the worn pages of her memory book.

Lavender for patience. Chamomile for gentleness. Even the occasional wild rose, thorns

intact.

She learned not to avoid the thorns. They reminded her of the years that tested her—times

when she was cracked open by loss, but never broken. Thorns taught her presence,

grounding her in the fullness of the moment. Pain, beauty, and the pause between.

This ritual, quiet as breath, carried her through the seasons.

But now it was Spring, and something within her stirred. As she opened her book to press a

fresh bloom, a note fluttered from its folds. The ink was faded, the paper worn—but the

words were familiar. Not recently written, yet undeniably hers:

*“You are never alone in your silence. You are being sculpted by stillness into something

sacred.”*

She had written that once during a winter of weeping. Forgotten it. Yet here it was, returned

to her by the very pages she had once filled. She pressed a crocus beside it—a flower of first

bloom, of quiet beginnings—and closed the book with both hands.

In the silence, Eliah smiled. The gift she didn’t know she needed had always been waiting

within her.

-Bliss Chains Authors