She is up before the sun.
As early as five every morning, before flowers open and birds call. A time of suspended life, when the earth is still asleep and prepares to wake, to give birth to more plants and warmth to wildlife. A time outside the realm of the harvest, that she follows.
But this is how it should be. It is a time of rest and purification, for her as for the world. A time when she is alone and can expose her skin to the chilling air, empty her mind, and slide into the water.
She has never seen the Goddess herself. One day, maybe. One day, when she has made herself worthy of the love that has surrounded her ever since childhood (the love that made her feel alive, that gave her belief in better days, that taught her to love work, that pushed away the loneliness) the Goddess will come to her. Or maybe she's already there, in the caress of the water against her skin, in the blankness of her mind – blank like the whiteness of the fog that covers their island so early in the morning. Her body slowly grows numb in the cold water, and she shivers, cloud of breath shudering and undulating. It isn't pain. Her body weakens from the cold and sensation, but that in itself if strength, exaltation. A kind of communion, her body and mind abandoned, yielding to the water like the flowers she sees Mark throw into the pond every day. They float until they break apart and the stems sink to the bottom, leaving only petals at the surface. And like a flower she lets herself be taken, lets her consciousness fly and her body sink, until she reunites and finds herself floating, drifting in the calm water. The sky is slowly turning pink, and the breeze makes her chest sting, slides across her face like a wake-up caress.
Like the sun, she rises.
Steps out of the water and lets the water drip down before wiping herself with a cotton cloth-not long, just enough to slide her dress on without it sticking to her skin and showing her body through it. Birds start chirping and she looks up, smiles at the world slowly coming awake.
A new day is budding, and in honor of the Goddess she will help people make it bloom.