The Mermaid in Love with Coastal Flowers

The Flora Deva from the sea.

She awoke from her life as a mermaid to discover that she had transformed into a young girl. She spent most of her waking time at the beach, swimming in the water, playing with the waves lapping upon the shore, searching for shells, admiring the colors of the pebbles along the shoreline, collecting driftwood and placing the long green strands of seaweed in her long beautiful blonde hair.

She discovered the area just beyond the sandy beaches where shrubs and coastal plants and flowers grew. She adored the thick succulents that bloomed in pink and yellows. She wondered at the massive blooms of bright yellow mustard flowers in the springtime. She collected the seashore daisy (Encelia) that stayed in bloom for the spring into the summer months. She paid close attention and discovered a white coastal dandelion that bloomed only for a few weeks in mid summer. She wondered at the little flowers that grew on the shrubs that were only around for a few days.

She would spend as much time as she could at the seashore. She loved to see the changes from the high tides and the exposed hidden structure of the rocks under the extreme low tide. She watched the moon and marked the occurrence of the moon and the tides interacting and influencing each other. She wondered if the plants and animals were also affected by the moon and sun.

She noticed that the flowers bloomed and opened under a full bright sun, but some stayed closed under a grey, cloudy sky. She wrote notes to herself and wrote poetry about the flowers and the ocean she loved and called grandmother.

She imagined that each plant had a unique spirit of it’s own. This spirit she called a fairy or deva, after the tales from the mermaid tribe. She drew sketches of the plant fairies patterned after the plants colors and structures and made little dolls to represent these little flower fairies, or ‘flora devas’ as she called them.

She learned that by working with the spirit of the plant, she was able to capture the essence of the flower and preserve it in water. She drank this water with the flower spirit to revive herself in times of distress, upheaval, and change or for celebrations and ceremony. She waited until the sun and moon were in their joyful times and she carefully prepared flower essences from these coastal plants over the course of many, many moons.

She developed these into plant spirit medicines that would help herself and her friends in times of need or occasion, to remember their own spirit connection and help repair their souls, so that one day, they too could find their gifts and connect to the planet in a way that was meaningful and filled with grace and wonder.