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Tonight's photo is Vltava! She is a Resin Soul Ju in white, and her arrival story is much like Issachar's. While she is the spirit of a tiny forest stream, Vltava is in fact named after a large river. Finding clothes for her is difficult, because she has a distinct style and a very slim figure. Currently, she's wearing handmade things, but she's a wild spirit, and doesn't like to keep her sandals on.
Once upon a time, when the world was younger than it is now and yet older, far older than we believe it to be, there was a deep, green forest. It was a forest unlike any sort that exists now, a forest so deep and ancient that its boughs still sang with the first breeze of the world. This forest was so broad and vast that it was an ocean of trees, carpeting the tumbling, careworn mountains of a quiet land. Such a forest has more stories than one soul can tell, and this is merely one of them.
In a small part of this forest, there was a stream. Like most streams it had a changeable mood, at times a deep pool of thoughtfulness robed with a mantle of fallen leaves, at other times a dancing, giggling rush through jumbled stones. The stream's name was Vltava, and she ran from the lap of her mother-spring to the arms of her father-river, where all her brothers and sisters joined in together. Somewhere, far down her father's reach, lay the great-grandmother Ocean. Vltava had heard of this river, a forest made of water, from the birds that nested above her waters. They sang of it to their children, who would someday need to know the way there. How Vltava listened! She gathered her banks thick with moss to hush the sound of her running, she sang the birds' song to herself beneath the bubbles of her pebbled bed. Down, down, over and down, far beyond the forest crown, through dell and den and fen and free, to find the roaring reach of sea.
Time passed, and birds came and went, and more and more Vltava longed to see the sea for herself. She would never do so, not unless she became a great river someday, and she was impatient. Her pools became less thoughtful, her fleet rapids more wild. And one day, when she could stand it no longer, she left her banks. The water still ran, but it was only water, and Vltava put bare feet onto the moss and lifted her eyes to the boughs of her wood. For a time there was only delight, as she could roam where she willed and not where the stones curved her. Her river-weed tresses dripped on the upturned faces of wildflowers, and she scattered droplets all around the thick towers of the trees. For the whole day, she ran free.
Soon the forest grew dim with night, and Vltava thought it best to be on her way. She had always known which way to go to reach the river, but now, she could no longer hear the sound of water. through the night she wandered, trying to find her way, but it was hard now for her to hear the words in the birdsong, and the forest rustled with inarticulate whispers. When dawn came, Vltava did not know the trees above her, or the carpet of leaves under her feet, and the birds did not know her name, though they sang what comfort they could.
She was lost.
Vltava was our eleventh doll.
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