OWOH The Last Breath

Here we are for another year of sharing our hearts and our gifts. I love this event sooo much and am sad to say this is the last, but lets not dwell for surely there are gifts to be found.....

click on this link for a list of all the other people joining in this year

http://awhimsicalbohemian.typepad.com/

and thankyou to Lisa who has put on this event which must be an immense effort.
She has helped the blogging world make the biggest web of connections with her event.  Spinning life long friendships, artistic meetings and a support chain so huge we all feel the love of each other, who knows...maybe blogging will save the world, I know it has saved thousands of womans sanity!

anywhoo! my story this year.....

Its time to brush your cobwebs away, or do you save your cleaning for another day????

Ohhh once upon a time a girl cleaned her house furiously, she collected alot of things, always from her adventures she took at the beach, shells, rope, bottles, sea glass, grasses and bones.  It was during one of her cleaning frenzies that she made a fated mistake....

or maybe it was her displaying that was the fated mistake, for who teeters bottles at the edge of a dresser???

the beach collected bottle fell and before the girl could catch it, it had smashed....

too busy looking up so she could moan at her clumsiness the girl looked down and saw that it contained something, paper rolled ever so tightly...

she carefully sat down and unrolled it.....it was a map...a map of where she lived, only this was a mermaid map???  mermaids??

along with the map were some pages of writing, the diary of a girl named Sophia. The girl read the sad pages as the story of Sophia's life unfolded....

"October 1897

I am on my way across the sea, being delivered to my new life, a life I do not want to live, a man I do not want to marry, a wife I do not want to be.  We have sheltered in this bay until the weather is better and my journey continues.  I am spending my days walking the shores......gazing to the horizon and seeing that the land that will become my home is much further than I can understand...

it seems all I can do is cry, day and night, how can my family do this to me.   Pin all the hopes on one person, I carry the burden of my families happiness on my weary shoulders...I must right their wrong....

I have had a strange encounter that I must record, for surely the best story I will ever have to tell my promised children.  While I walk all day along the shores, I hear a sweet song wherever I go, it raises from the depths in the bubbles of the surf......and yesterday I met her....a mermaid...

she swims the shore line following me as I go, comforting me and watching my every move......

I watch her swim freely and wish for the life of flowing grace and freedom she has...

I met her on the shore where her tail had dried and she was able to walk.  She showed me to her cave, a collector of things, she is always finding the beauty in everyday treasures.....

she loved to show me her treasures, so proud of her lifes work, this is all she has to do, see beauty and collect it....

Ohh how I wish for something so simple.... what a difference our life purposes are....

moulded by my history I have no idea who I could possibly be, I only who Ive been told to be...until I met her I had no yearning to know..

and as I sat once again on the rocks crying to myself, I saw a hand emerge from the foam of the sea....

it was her again....telling me that i could join her, that I could swim forever in freedom and collect all the beauty I see along the way.....

Ohh she makes it sound so amazing but....my family, I am doing this for my family, they need me....
I cannot go with her, I have so many relying on me...

I sit alone in my cabin, how my sadness has now tangled with anger and frustration, why must I fix anothers mess, why me, this dowry of beautiful clothes, an offering of everything we are not....

I tear at my dowry, shredding the dresses that will adorn my new married life...

I spend my nights sewing bits of fabric together to try and stop my aching inside to run to my mermaid and be set free....a tribute to the life that could be....while I sew I make a wish to be set free....

Today a storm is brewing, the wind has turned and our shelter has been broken...I quickly pack my things safetly for we are abandoning ship, if we are not too late.....

I will put this diary and my map in a bottle so as not to get wet, incase the ship goes down...... .. .. . .what am I saying, incase the ship goes down?? surely if the ship is in trouble this is my chance, I could leave without a trace and join my mermaid, a blessing from the sea, this is my chance to finally be free...If you find this diary, it is no longer in my posession, so the storm has taken my boat"

the pages pushed into the bottle and safetly sealed, she fled....

out the cabin door, past the frantic men on deck and into the raging sea....

calling for her mermaid to come and take thee...

the mermaid arrived and reassured her that she had nothing to be afraid of, soon her old life would be nothing but a memory, floating in the foam.....

and they were both now free to collect beauty in the sea....

The girl sat on her floor feeling perplexed but elated....What a truly crazy story, could this possibly be true???

The girl had a map, so she might as well take a look....

she took her Kayak and went searching on the sea, first to the Island where the mermaid cave had been....

she searched the shore line for any kind of cave but they were all empty, what was she thinking, this was over 100 years ago!...

but there it was, tucked up in the shore line, trinkets and treasures galore, she couldnt help but look around, she found a pair of shell earings and decided to take them, she left her own earings as an offering...

the girl made her way back to her Kayak and set off to find a ship wreck, surely this wouldnt have happened, she had no way of knowing if the ship really did go down, apart from the fact that she had the bottle...

and there it was, just as Sophia had predicted, the reamains of what once would have been a great ship....

the girl approached once again not sure what she would find, if anything....

she searched and searched, broken glass, bottles, metal fittings, all wonderful finds but not quite wonderful enough....

then under some boards, over grown with tree roots, she spied a tin, kept sheltered for a hundred years....

the girl tore at the roots to free the tin, getting more frantic and excited the closer she got...

she took the tin to the back of the ship and sat down to open it....

after 100 years the boat was growing into a forest... she pulled and pulled at the tin, desperate to see what was inside...

and then it opened....its contents looked perfect......

weary, almost like in a dream she pulled up the brittle paper to reveal something so beautiful.....

it was a fabric embroidery piece, it had to be the one that Sophia had written about....

the girl sat in awe....what had she found, does this mean that the story is true, the mermaid cave, the hanging, the boat???....the fabric was beautiful and she could see the hours of work Sophia had put into the fabric....hours of sadness and yearning.  The girl was overwhelmed with what she held, someones secret, a secret so huge, she may be the only person who knows what happened to Sophia.....

I must do something special with this, she thought and she searched the shore line thru broken wreckage for a perfect piece of wood....

thin, long and a little bit straight....

the girl left the ship satisfied with what she had found, she returned home with her glass jar, tin and stick and memories of a day that started out so mundane with cleaning and ended in a journey to a world which was made of fairy tale stuff...

the girl, who was ever so crafty sewed the fabric to the stick and made it into a hanging for her to hang on her wall. 

It will always remind her to

live her life as if she is always free 

and to

collect the beautiful things along the way...

THE END

and this is what she had made.

Hmmmm maybe you would like it???
We are in a giving mood!

this hanging is my first prize for OWOH

a fabric hanging of the mermaid kind, hanging from a specially selected stick from a tree growing in Sophia's ship wreck.

handstitched...

this prize will be drawn randomly from all who enter, so please leave a comment..

This is a blog event so you must have a linkable blog to your id to be able to enter...

and on Feb 18th I will have a drawing and reveal the winner.....

so thankyou for your comments, I love them...

so much so that this year I am giving away two prizes, remember those shell earings from the mermaid cave?? well we will give those away too...

The earings will go to my personal favorite comment, because I know some of you put alot of thought into what you say, and this seperates you from the 'copy n paste' crew.

So a pair of mermaid earings for you.....

good luck and thakyou for reading


all my meramid wishes especially for you
xxx
Sheree