Camellia

Her name was Camellia Sinensis, she lived inside a modest hut in Eastern India, the Darjiling. Once a great hunting ground with fossil bones on barren fields bleached by the ravages of time. Saber-toothed cats had roamed and ruled these latitudes, their restless ghosts live on as proud reminders of long-ended battles and of the tragedy of sacrifices for unknown dreams of feudal lords who laughed in unison at their spilled blood. Oh, yes, the sea, a thousand dimples from half-hearted drizzle, Darjiling rain, home to so many of the great survivors not ready for the afterlife back then and stuck in memories of agelessness, a fate of frank infinity and frightened presence. It welcomed her, when she at last had reached the end of one brief journey, the boulder that marked the trail's last step for saddened souls, and as the Spirit of the Skeleton, teeth bared in that inimitable smile of one who time forgot, a mermaid goddess, Camellia of the Sea.