myth for jade plant

The kudzu looked like green clouds over the fields of emmer and Sola wept. She did not want to remember her life before she came to the town, when Sweetie discovered her escaping at night and named her Pearl, a name she liked.

Before she escaped and became Pearl she had another name as the serpent keeper, known only by the job she was chosen. The role was ancient and befitting of her - because she was so very quiet. It was a terrible situation. No one who became the serpent keeper was ever seen again.

As the queen of the grass men, Sola would look back on the time with the serpent in awe. She could not believe how old she was. After she was promised to the serpent, she spent many years in caves and grasslands learning what they needed and how they lived. She came from a lineage of plumbers and architects and learned from them how to connect places to each other. She lived in the city of a benevolent queen with a pink crown and a retinue of red knights and a red king who spent his days in the court and did not show his face in public. It was believed that the queen wanted the best for everyone, but she did not stop the role of the serpent keeper. She wanted to keep the serpent away from the town. There was something about the treaty between the two that felt unsafe. That she was willing to sacrifice one.

Her father severed a branch from a jade plant and explained how all things could be split apart, and when that thing that was split was cared for, it would become something new. “Nothing is as strong as you think it is.” He explained. “Nothing that is broken cannot become something else.”

The separating, the pathmaking. The serpent keeper came up with a plan.

This was how the girl who would become pearl decided what she would do. She would split the shadow from the serpent, and before they had the chance to root again she would escape. So she spent her time making a path with seeds of wheat.

When she became the age to work for the serpent, she spend time in the caves while the serpent spent all of its time in the sun. The moon shone green through the clouds the day she finally separated the snake from the shadow. The crickets sang like they would break the earth. In that moment she didn’t think the shadow would be able to find her. But she thought “I am so quiet. Even when I speak I am quiet. No one knows me.”

But there the shadow came, and now he was gone. She could not hear the crickets as the man pursued her only son to take him away, to be the serpent keeper in her place and live in dirt and huddle through hallways at the worm’s beck and call. She knew the boy was strong. But she could feel herself unwinding.