Threads of Blooming Time

On the morning of the Blooming Festival, a woman stood alone in the valley where sky kissed a sea of flowers. Her name was Aelra, and though more than a century had passed, her face bore no lines — such was the fate of the Looming Clan, weavers of time.

In her hands, she held a small tunic — soft, faded, but carefully preserved. Once, long ago, it belonged to a boy she had found beneath the starflower tree, swaddled in a basket woven from reeds and hope.

His name was Kael.

He was the first human child she ever saw cry.

Loomfolk were not meant to raise children. They tended the fabric of ages, silent and apart. But when Kael’s tiny fingers curled around hers, when his sobs quieted in her arms, something shifted within her. As though time had chosen her — not as a weaver, but as a mother.

Seasons passed like wind through petals. Kael grew — wild, curious, stubborn. He scraped his knees on garden stones, shouted at the rain, and laughed so hard his breath ran out. He called her “mother,” though she never told him to.

She taught him to plant tulips and read the stars. He taught her how to hold on to fleeting moments.

And then, one day, he left — a young man with dreams beyond the valley.

“I’ll come back,” he promised. “When the flowers bloom again.”

Aelra waited.

The starflowers bloomed and withered, bloomed and withered. The loom in her hands spun memory into thread — each year, each absence, woven into something delicate and endless.

When he returned, snow crowned his head. His steps were slower, his voice softer.

Beside him stood a little girl.

“This is Nella,” he said. “Your granddaughter.”

He knelt at her feet, voice trembling. “I don’t have long.”

And then, like a petal on the breeze, he was gone.

Aelra wept. But only for a moment — for Nella’s small hand had already reached for hers.

So she raised Nella too.

She watched her granddaughter grow — from giggles to questions, from questions to dreams. Time, however, did not spare Nella. Years wrapped gently around her, as they once had Kael. She became a woman, a mother, then a grandmother herself.

Aelra remained — unchanging, ever weaving.

Sometimes, she would find herself whispering to the loom, wondering if her thread would ever run out. But the loom never answered. It only gave her more memories to hold.

Now, on the Blooming Festival, she returned once more to the tree where it all began.

The starflowers danced in the morning wind.

She knelt, laying Kael’s tunic among the blossoms.

A hush fell over the valley, like the pause between heartbeats.

Aelra looked to the sky, her voice soft.

“Thank you,” she whispered, “for letting me be a mother.”

The wind stirred. Somewhere, beyond the veil of time, laughter echoed — a boy’s laughter, carried on petals and memory.

And Aelra smiled.

She lingered a moment longer beneath the tree, watching sunlight ripple across the flowers like waves. Around her, other Loomfolk passed in silence, glancing her way with gentle eyes — they knew. They remembered.

Some said she had broken tradition. That she had let emotion twist the thread of time. But Aelra knew better.

Time was not something to control. It was something to cherish — to feel, to grieve, to love.

She had not just woven time. She had lived within it.

And in doing so, she had created something no loom ever could: a legacy stitched not in threads, but in hearts.

As the bells rang in the distance, announcing the festival’s start, Aelra stood.

She walked slowly through the valley, petals brushing her legs like small hands reaching up, as if Kael and Nella and all their children were walking beside her.

And perhaps they were.