The Garden She Carried Week 1: The Red Ribbon Path

Clara hadn’t meant to find her.

She wasn’t looking for a story. Not this time. Not so soon after the garden, the lilies, the hush that followed Monet’s farewell. She was still drifting. Still gathering herself like bits of thread scattered across her studio floor.

But the ribbon changed that.

She found it tucked inside a secondhand book. She didn’t remember buying “The Diary of Frida Kahlo,” translated into a language Clara couldn’t fully read. The red ribbon fell out between two pages that stuck together like skin and time. It wasn’t just a bookmark. It was frayed. A stain at one end. Faint perfume. Almost a whisper.

She picked it up. She kept it.
But she didn’t tell anyone.

That night, Clara dreamed of mirrors.

Dozens of them—tilted, tarnished, suspended mid-air. Each one reflected a different version of her. In some, she was younger. In others, her eyes held a sadness she hadn’t lived yet. And in one—the last—she wasn’t alone.

A woman stood there, wearing a crown of marigolds. Her braid coiled like a question mark. A faint smile graced her lips, as if she knew something Clara didn’t. Her eyes locked on Clara’s.

And then she spoke. Not in sound—but in symbols.
Images. A corset. A jungle. A crack. A key.

Clara woke with her sketchbook already open on her lap. She didn’t remember moving.

She began chasing the ribbon.

It wasn’t literal—not anymore. It became a thread through her days. She saw it in spilled paint, in the curl of her tea leaves, in the cracks on the windowsill. The more she noticed, the more it unraveled.