Part XVII | The Magic TimePiece | Delft
Tala spent a few days in Alexandria resting and waiting for a sailing ship to Amsterdam. She remembered the small sea turtle swimming in the turquoise seas and looked at her timepiece. Tala kept her timepiece inside a wooden box covered in pink and purple roses. Her Magic Timepiece contained a small amount of what she had found at the Sacred Spring as well as whatever else it might have already had in it when she first found it near the Temple of Anubis. When she poured a few drops from the Sacred Spring into the box, the roses and everything else inside the timepiece's box had turned multi-hued shades of pink, burgundy, red and purple.
Tala waited until a sailing ship called The Aurora Borealis set sail for Europe and Amsterdam. She was hoping to find lodging at an artist's enclave in Delft and look for Dutch pottery to bring with her to Germany. As Tala unpacked her belongings in the ship's cabin, her fingers curled around the top of the box her Magic TimePiece was in. On the top, a Purple Dragon and purple butterflies twisted around pink and black roses. Tala called the Purple Dragon her Dream Keeper or Dream Guardian because she had big plans for the future and hoped the Purple Dragon would protect her dreams.
Inside the Magic Timepiece box, were the words:
AIR
WATER
FIRE
EARTH
Under the timepiece's lid was a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
"The heart, like the mind has a memory. And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes."
On her voyage, Tala studied the Magic Timepiece late into the evenings, wondering about the small turtle she had seen in Alexandria. She remembered a story she heard while traveling through India on her way to Cairo by train. An elderly Indian ascetic with a long white beard told her a story about a one-eyed turtle and a floating sandalwood log. He described a small turtle in the sea that was seeking a floating sandalwood log to fit into in order to cool its belly in the ocean and warm its back in the sun. The ascetic told Tala that if anyone ever saw or found this small turtle in its floating log, it would be a very rare occurrence indeed. Tala wondered if that was the small turtle she had seen in the ocean that late afternoon stroll in Alexandria.
~
Notes
[1] The One-Eyed Turtle and the Floating Log
[https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Content/130]