And Dragonfly Whispered

By Vienne Rey Didier

Ayume is the universal woman who has been abandoned by her birth mother, victimized by racist adoptive parents, scarred by the mean girls of the world, and hurt by the love of her life...yet she triumphs. These are all sacred gifts whose lesson Ayume alchemizes into positive energy to ultimately heal and save herself. She is the quintessential phoenix who rises from the ash. Lessons in unconditional love, forgiveness, compassion, and letting go abound on Ayume's journey and set a backdrop for a story of female empowerment through the freeing of self and the power to heal generational wounds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639855865

Book preview

And Dragonfly Whispered

VIENNE REY DIDIER

Copyright © 2022 Vienne Rey Didier

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2022

ISBN 978-1-63985-585-8 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63985-586-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

For all the little girls who have ever felt invisible, muffled into muteness, or believed they were only fringe, you are heard. You are seen. You are love and infinitely loved. You are your own savior.

CONTENTS

Gift 1: The Vessels

Gift 2: The Teachers

Gift 3: The Mean Girls

Gift 4: Apollo, the Twin Flame

Gift 5: Dragonfly Whispers

Gratitude for Gift 1

Gratitude for Gift 2

Gratitude for Gift 3

Gratitude for Gift 4

Gratitude for Gift 5

She was birthed with Dragonfly into the bowels of Gaia, a strangely beautiful mix of stardust, moonbeam, heavy soot, molten embers, wind song, and the watery vowel of life on her tongue. Ayume knew there was a secret…its language would one day become her vocabulary. But not quite yet. It would be written into being through the maelstrom of life’s unfolding. It was all happening…gifts just for her.

GIFT 1

The Vessels

Good girls don’t whore around and get themselves into a fix like this, Lilia! What in the ever-lovin’ hell were you thinking? Lilia’s mother, Georgina, paced frenetically around the kitchen, wringing her hands into her apron. Swollen with child and only a child of fifteen years yourself. Why, the shame and ruin you are bringing down upon this family…makes me sick!

Her mother’s words stung and hung like a pungent, putrid moss suffocating her senses. Lilia ran to her bedroom and crashed into her welcoming bed.

As she pulled herself up, Lilia leaned her inflamed cheek against the cool pane of her window, the late October harvest moonlight befriending her hot skin. Lilia gathered up her threadbare blue blanket, her lifelong friend who had always been there for her from the beginning. Boo Bankey, as she had fondly called him as a child, rested lovingly at the foot of Lilia’s bed and was a kind, gentle soul who listened without judgment and absorbed her tears, helping to soothe and ease her pain. This time was no different. Lilia had plenty of brothers and sisters and a handful of friends to turn to in times of need or distress or just to pass the time with and play, but she never did.

Lilia was an observer, a wallflower watcher of life. Every day at school, she would notice little dramas pop up all the time at lunch, in study hall, on the playing fields, and in the classroom. And parallel dramas at home too. Jealousy, competition, comparison, vanity, violence, fear, anger, lack, insecurity. All these and more became central players in the dramas of school and home life.

Lilia always felt so out of place and uncomfortable, bewildered by it all really. Others would often try to pull Lilia into the tide pool of chaos, but she resisted. Girls at school would goad Lilia into joining their clique. Their olive branch offering was a fat, juicy hunk of gossip and hearsay about a scandal or dirty little secret about someone that they would chew on until their jaws fatigued. The histrionics would continue at home as well…and usually centered around a deep sense of lack and rules or, rather, Lilia’s reluctance to follow those rules.

Money problems plagued Lilia’s family. So many mouths to feed and clothe and never enough money no matter how many sermons her father, Theoden, delivered at their local church or kids Georgina babysat, clothes she mended and altered for people, or homemade jams she made and sold. Georgina worked in the home raising Lilia and her five older siblings and gardened solely out of necessity. There was little to no pleasure in those creative pursuits. Georgina sewed and had a natural sensibility for fixing mechanical things. In matters of the heart, however, Georgina was uncomfortable and lacked any finesse, grace, charm, or just plain tact. She loved her family but was overwrought most days with a sense of urgency and fight-or-flight impulse about everything.

Georgina and Theoden married young. Georgina was raised in a strict, religious Christian household where she was taught never to question the rule of God as transcribed in the Bible or her mother’s word, which those two things were basically the same in Georgina’s mind. Freedom to think and to live independently was not a part of the vocabulary Georgina acquired from her parents. She left their insular nest barely more than a child of eighteen years only to jump straight into another one built by Theoden with the same quill and seed of Christian principles.

Georgina was pregnant with their first child within her and Theoden’s first year of marriage. Georgina had become her mother. And her mother before her, and her mother before her, and so on up the ancestral ladder, every rung of rule hammered into place. Go to church every Sunday without fail because that’s what good Christians do. Wear your hair coiffed and tamed into a reserved, civilized, polite shape so you don’t look like a crazy, wild animal. Don only modest clothes that don’t reveal too much skin or show too much of your femininity lest people think shameful thoughts about you. Go to school and never miss a day so you can make something of yourself, get a degree, make money, and succeed. Marry someone who is Christian only and never consider sharing your life with someone outside your religion who doesn’t think exactly like you do even if you are in love with him. Do not swear for it is not proper or befitting of ladies even if it is your honest thought or emotion. And do not have sex before marriage or get pregnant out of wedlock—that one bore repetition until faces turned blue for that was the mother of all sins.

Of all Georgina’s children, Lilia was an anomaly. She was a dreamer wont to fanciful thoughts of a rich life as a painter and dancer and sculptor and well…anything having to do with the arts and surrounded by lots of trees, flowers, and greens in nature and somehow involving animals too. Lilia fantasized about a beautiful life doing everything she loved. She loved to wear her hair free and wild, her curls minding a life of their own, even coiling into matted dreadlocks from time to time. Going without a bra or even panties delighted Lilia and felt natural to her in the same primitive, instinctual way a sunflower proudly unfurls her petals to reach for the sun. Words like fuck or damn or shit belonged just the same as words of refinement in Lilia’s vocabulary for they all carried weight and purpose and meaning…and honesty.

She was highly intuitive and excelled in most subjects in school, but pursuing a degree for the sole sake of earning money and title and prestige, she found repugnant. Lilia trusted her gut in all things—the soft, gentle, familiar voice who whispered truths into her soul, reminding her that love is all there is. That’s why all the rules whether from scripture or Georgina felt somehow inherently wrong for love was so often lost in translation or not present at all. Lilia often wondered, if church is so inclusive and universally accepting of everyone, then why do most people who attend church feel so guilty, ashamed, or steeped in regret for just being. Love cannot live where guilt, shame, or regret resides, she observed.

Lilia’s disregard for rules infuriated Georgina. Rules made sense to Georgina. They provided order, stability, security, assuredness, consistency, predictability, uniformity, and conformity. Living in the known meant everything to Georgina, and every instinct in her drove her to defend and preserve her precious rule-based system at all costs…even at the cost of irreparably damaging her own daughter in her greatest time of need for unconditional love, understanding, support, and compassion.

Heavy footsteps echoed in the stairwell as Georgina made her way to Lilia’s bedroom upstairs. "Lilia? Are you in there? Listen, honey, I don’t know what you’re feeling, I really don’t. And I am sorry that you and we are all in this…situation. It is just so very…sad…and well…shameful. We just can’t have this getting out in the community, you know?"

No. Lilia didn’t know what her mother spoke of for the only thing Lilia knew was that she loved this tiny soul that had chosen her as her vessel, her mother, a bringer of life into the world. As a budding artist, Lilia felt that this situation was her greatest work of art. The truth of that realization burrowed into the very marrow of her bone. Like all of Lilia’s art, the tiny soul inside her was conceived in love.

No one must ever find out, you hear me, girl? The family would be ruined! Your father would lose his pastoral job at our church. A disgrace for him, the entire family. We would lose everything. And no money to support us!

Lilia’s mind went numb as the scalding words kept gushing from her mother’s mouth, heaping mountains of contempt and disdain and guilt upon her. The sound of Georgina’s righteously indignant voice finally faded to a distant hiss. Nighttime extinguished the fury, swallowing them all whole and gifting Lilia with the moon and the much-needed healing balm in her luminescent ray and beam casting in upon her through her window.

Lilia cuddled Boo, feeling safe in his blanket arms. The shadow of the weeping willow branches outside her window softly danced across her bare outstretched legs on her bed, and the ravens peered in at her from their perch atop the clothesline. She slightly opened the window just a sliver so she could feel the pulse of beauty and kindness in the electricity from outside. Symphony of birdsong, frog, and cicada overtures lullabied Lilia into a deep, restful, beautiful sleep where all felt right with the world and where she believed in love and magic again.

As the months passed, Lilia’s belly grew softer and rounder with life reverberating inside her. Lilia was small-boned and slight of frame, tall for her age of fifteen…a statuesque five feet ten, unassuming beauty with long, slow-aged whiskey-hued hair with natural bends and curl to it. Her eyes were warm, earthy amber irises with shifting sands of mossy azure that were kind and innocent.

It’s just you and me, love. Mmm…ahhh, you and me. Ahhh, you and me. You and me. You and me, Lilia whispered over and over to her burgeoning belly. She felt a profound connection to this beautiful soul she carried and would joyfully share all that was wondrous and magical about life with her.

Lilia intuitively knew she carried a girl-child. That truth had come to her in a dream…a whisper on the wings of dragonflies dancing to ancient rhythms over marsh and meadow. She knew it to be just so as the sun rose every morning in the eastern wildflower grove overlooking their rickety barn. Just as she knew her mother would never change…or forgive her…or truly accept and unconditionally love her.

Lilia shared everything with her baby girl as Lilia was now homebound. Just you and me…you and me…you and me, Lilia repeatedly thought. Georgina forced Lilia to withdraw immediately from her high school for personal reasons and begrudgingly taught Lilia lessons at home herself. Connecting with her peers at school was never Lilia’s strong suit anyway, so this home quarantine of sorts was not so terribly bothersome. Lilia’s favorite subjects involved practical things where hands-on learning was required. Sewing, cooking, gardening, building things, or making art always ignited her joy and interest. Her mother’s instruction of these subjects was clinical and mechanical though, almost robotic. Georgina’s practicality and pragmatism reigned and left little to no room to stretch or breathe into the fanciful delights of creativity and wonder and beauty that were collateral to all these things.

As winter began to unfurl his numbing embrace, Lilia and Georgina found themselves in the kitchen or hearth room more often than not leaning into the heat like an embrace from a most beloved ancestor. The reverie did not last long though at any given moment.

No, Lilia, that’s not the correct way! Follow the recipe verbatim! It’s a rule like any other and exists for a reason. Why can’t you be like everyone else, child? Just fall in line? Good Lord, you try my every patience.

Lilia quietly nodded, trying desperately to grasp what tendrils of joy were left hanging in the ether of the kitchen. Everything was beauty and art to Lilia, and cooking and baking were no exception. A recipe was only someone else’s suggestion of saying well, this is what I like to do, and this is what worked for me this one time. It’s not that Lilia disrespected other people’s opinions or experiences, she just didn’t understand why there seemed to be no more room at the table for her or her opinions, thoughts, ideas, or intuition to even matter.

I don’t understand why there is no room for me…ever. Even at my own family’s table, Lilia said out loud in her bedroom as she stroked Boo’s long, tattered, and frayed blanket edges. "I don’t mean to disrespect my mother or my father and their beliefs. If they find comfort at our church and all its strictures and rules and with all the rules that my mother has written into being from where…I have no fucking idea, well then that’s great. For them. That’s wonderful for them. I love them and am okay with them believing the ways that they do…why is it so hard for them to just love me and be okay with me believing in ways that are different from theirs. Why can’t they just love me, Boo? Am I that hard to just fucking love?" Lilia wept.

Boo enfolded his lifelong companion deep into his soft, consoling caverns of weathered, beaten-up old cotton that had been loved into beauty from all of life’s maelstrom. Boo smiled upon his beloved Lilia and the tiny girl-child soul that lived beneath her broken heart. I love you, Lilia. Know that you are love and loved…in the most profound of ways for all eternity. This whisper found its way to her and settled upon her heart, calming her tears and restoring her breaths to peace again.

Oh, Theoden, that girl is going to be the death of me, I swear, Georgina sighed heavily as she was wont to vent to her husband nearly every evening when Theoden came home from work.

Lilia sometimes would hover just at the precipice of the balcony overlooking the hearth room leaning into her parents’ hushed conversations.

Everything Lilia does is…well…wrong. She’s a mistake waiting to happen. Did we fail her somehow? Her other five older siblings fell right into line and followed everything we said. She refuses to follow order and rule. It just makes no damn sense! Forgive me, God.

Wringing her hands into the folds of her apron and pacing in front of the fireplace, Georgina continued, You know as well as I do that this family will be ruined because of her and her sinful behavior. I won’t stand for the shame and dishonor she’ll bring upon us all. Not to mention the cost! We already have six kids to raise, feed, clothe, and educate. I’m not about to raise a grandchild on top of all that! Especially a bastard child conceived out of wedlock! We didn’t ask for this, and we certainly don’t deserve it! And where is the piece of shit that got our Lilia pregnant in the first place? God, please forgive me for I am so angry I could rip her from limb to limb.

Theoden barely had an opportunity to ever participate in any kind of exchange with Georgina. Georgina dominated everything and everyone she encountered, including her husband. She had a bad habit of interrupting other people and finishing their sentences or cutting off their words just so she could begin saying what she wanted to say. It suggested an overbearing pomposity and arrogance in that whatever was on Georgina’s mind was far superior to the subject matter that someone else had been speaking about at that moment. Georgina also had a nasty proclivity of pointing out qualities in others that were sensitive to them or embarrassing in some way…and she would usually say these things out loud in mixed company, which made the embarrassment factor a hundred times worse. Like Lilia, go put on a bra, for God’s sake, you look like a harlot! or Get out of the sun this instant…your skin looks fried, and I don’t like it! or your hair is too bushy, wild, and messy! or Put on a dress that reaches at least your knees or a pair of pants that aren’t so ripped up or hug your bottom so…provocatively. It’s trashy…

Lilia was often perplexed at how easily her mother found flaws in others, yet her own rudeness and dismissive, hurtful behavior completely escaped her. Theoden would simply nod in placid resignation and surrender, agreeing with everything Georgina said, giving her the affirmation she so hungrily sought.

Being right was more important than breathing to Georgina, Lilia sadly observed about her mother. Lilia was a curious soul who observed most of life. So much of what she saw and heard from her mother and their church did not make sense. Messages of love, light, and truth delivered to her soul from voices she heard whispered in the wind were the things Lilia trusted most. It was quite funny actually being chastised and reprimanded by Georgina for not being a good Christian when Lilia had absolute faith and complete trust in this unknown force who had been visiting and delivering loving messages to her since as far back as she could remember. And those intuitive lessons governed most, if not all, of Lilia’s life choices. Wasn’t this unwavering faith in a mysterious force known as God as good as Georgina’s version of good Christian faith? Lilia supposed not. Her mother’s version of Christian faith was supreme, superior, and the only one that mattered or had value.

Everything struck Lilia as being quite like an earth school and theatrical display of sorts. Dramas unfolded everywhere equally as among relatives as strangers. Georgina saw conflict in everything, it’s like she went