Blissful Mornings - The Bloom Beneath the Ashes

In a small village once touched by fire, where the land still carried the scent of smoke and the trees bore silent witness to what had burned, there lived a young girl named Liora. She was known for her quiet nature, the way she walked barefoot on the earth, and how her gaze lingered just a moment longer on the things most people passed by.

One morning, as the village prepared to rebuild a chapel that had been lost to the flames, Liora wandered to the edge of the ruins. She wasn’t looking for anything. She was simply listening.

And there, beneath a charred beam and a patch of scorched soil, she saw it—a single crocus blooming. Not planted, not expected. Just there. A whisper of purple against the black.

She knelt beside it, her hand hovering gently above the petals. “You came anyway,” she whispered. “Even though no one thought you would.”

She returned every morning to sit with the flower, and over the weeks, the village noticed something begin to shift. Children laughed louder. Neighbors shared stories more freely. People lingered in one another’s presence without rushing to the next task. Liora never said a word about the bloom, but somehow, its presence was felt in every conversation, in every shared loaf of bread, in every act of care.

When the new chapel was finally built, Liora brought a handful of soil from where the crocus had grown and placed it beneath the altar. “To remember,” she said, “that beauty comes, even through ashes.”

-Bliss Chains Authors