ONE THOUSAND NIGHTS WITH MISS BEAUTIFUL CHAPTER 7: WHEN THE RIVERS BLESS

Who knows when a phenomenon will affect a person's life, and how that encounter between the ordinary and the extraordinary will carry future consequences and affect the lives of an entire generation?

Nature brings blessings on its own, establishing itself for the use and benefit of humankind in mutual synchronicity. And even today, we hear calls to protect the ecosystem because of the connection between man and nature, recognizing that damage to the ecosystem harms humanity, as seen in climate change, a universal truth that the population is now understanding.

Changes in the rules of nature affect humankind.

But the reverse is also true; nature blesses, and not everything happens by chance.

Sometimes nature itself knows the hidden secrets beneath the earth and identifies the recipients of valuable things in the world, delivering them to those destined to receive its blessings.

Everything depends on moments and opportunities; like when a car travels at 80 kilometers per hour, has been driving for an hour, and has 80 kilometers left to reach San Antonio, and then arrives in San Antonio.  It can be inferred that an hour passed, 80 kilometers were traveled, and time and opportunity arrived simultaneously as part of a natural process. The same happens with nature, when a phenomenon encounters a person in their life's journey, where time and opportunity arrive and connect at the same moment, in time and space.  And there is something that nature discovers during its rotation around the world, locating a little girl splashing at the banks of the San Antonio River.

The opportunity finds the right person, and nature recognizes something special in that girl. Her teachers said she was unusually perceptive, possessing an ability to understand animals and communicate with them, engaging in natural conversations with them. They seemed to respond to her as well, whether it was the dog barking, the little bird chirping in the tree, or the cat meowing as she passed through the hills. Her mother said she was crazy; "My daughter, you see things that aren't there," Doña Lola would say, and it wasn't that she was crazy, but she didn't believe in her daughter's ability to communicate the way dolphins do with humans, until one day she saw it with her own eyes. She was in the river washing clothes, and unconsciously turned towards her daughter with a protective glance, and spotted a snake about to bite her. She suddenly turned her arm, grabbed the snake by the head, and, unable to move, spun it around in a whirlwind motion and threw it as far away as possible.

She wondered in her heart how she knew without even looking back, with a 360-degree peripheral vision and great attention to the sounds and movements of animals in her surroundings, which required keen hearing, like a man in the jungle who needs to be attentive to sounds to distinguish whether lions, tigers, or other predators are nearby to protect himself. But she wasn't afraid of them; she read their minds and anticipated their movements in the environment, confident in herself. Dogs walked by her side and birds sang cheerful songs, while cicadas followed along with their low hums alongside the little birds in the morning.

So, on a sunny day, there she was, in the water, splashing around, and something caught her attention.

The water there was crystal clear, and she could see an amorphous, crescent-shaped stone. She leaned down and extended her hand. Something had caught her eye. With her hand still in the water, she managed to pull out the piece of matter and distinguished a shell, a peculiar shell with white and ochre stripes, hard in its composition.

Carefully, she opened the shell, and something extraordinary caught her eye, because her eyes widened, and her lips parted in a smile of joyful exclamation…

A pearl! A pearl with a resplendent shine, in a rare natural phenomenon, among millions of places in the world, there it was, the recipient of a hidden secret of nature, and hidden treasures belong to those who find them, and to whom nature wishes to bestow them, just like diamonds when they are found in a mine, a special gift from the universe to a special person.

And immediately her eyes filled with happiness and tears, unable to understand the phenomenon, unable to believe what she held in her hands. She held something of value in her hands, something she had never possessed, and her eyes couldn't believe it because it all happened in a second, in the blink of an eye.

Ludivina excitedly ran back home along the riverbanks, through bushes and wild sand, until she reached the place where her mother was cooking on the old wood-burning stove, building the fire, and on top, the handmade corn tortillas made with nixtamal on the griddle.

Look, Mom, look!” says the little girl Ludivina, excitedly, “I found it in the river!” Her mother stops making tortillas to focus on the object, and the girl shows her the wonderful shell, and inside it, a precious gem gleams brightly, and a pleasant feeling washes over her.

A beautiful pearl that her mother observes with admiration: perfect, pear-shaped, white, the size of a tooth, like a wisdom tooth.

As she looked at it, something happened, a ray of light shone forth, and it seemed to transmit something, as if it possessed an endless power. A series of images flashed through her mind: men and walls crumbling, and as they fell, an incandescent light emanated from the pearl, blinding the men for an instant, and then they opened their eyes, filled with joy and happiness.

Doña Lola knew instantly that it was a precious stone, of great value because of its exquisite quality, and she understood that the moment of a change of fortune had arrived. She perceived that this moment would change her entire life, and so she asked her daughter where she had found it, and the girl replied, “Over there, near the San Juan mission, where the water splashes against a rock as the joyful stream flows by.”