Blissful Mornings - The Flower in the Fold

Lani had a quiet habit of walking the island paths before anyone else was awake.

She wasn’t looking for anything. Not really. But when the frangipani trees dropped their

blossoms, she saw them not as fallen—but offered. Small white suns cupped in green.

And so, every morning, she gathered them—gently, without haste.

She placed them in crevices:

— In walls cracked by time.

— In rocks broken open by tide.

— In the spaces between things people had forgotten to love.

Some she stitched into leis and gave to the sick or sorrowed. She never said much.

Just smiled. Then walked away barefoot, already looking for the next broken thing to bless.

One morning, she learned that a woman by the cove—a net weaver named Adela—had

fallen ill. She had long supported her family by turning abaca into strength: into curtains,

mats, and nets that held both fish and stories.

Lani didn’t know her well. But she knew what to do.

She gathered frangipanis, not for a lei this time, but for a cloth offering. Inspired by the

blanket she had once seen Sonia working on in Mar’s cottage, she began to stitch the

blooms—petal by petal—into a worn square of muslin.

Her small hands worked by instinct.

She added a line of yellow thread around the edge and tucked a single shell in the corner.

She carried it down to the cove and left it by Adela’s door.

Sonia happened to be visiting that day and found the cloth before Adela did.

She turned it over in her hands, then looked up—just in time to see Lani’s figure disappearing

back over the ridge.

Later that week, Sonia found her beneath the fig tree again.

“You stitched beauty into something broken,” she said, softly.

Lani just shrugged. “The flowers asked me to.”

-Bliss Chains Authors