A triangle of rivers

I do not know why I was born in a town with a River's Name, a Cold River, when there is no river at all passing by this town. Saint Irony might have made it, since my hometown stays in the middle of a triangle formed by three REAL rivers: Rio d'Onor, the Honour River, Rio Sabor, the Flavour River and Rio das Maçãs, The Apple River. They all have lots of pure, cold water falling and running by the Granite Rocks in their sides, beneath the folliage in their benches, all but my Cold River.
That is why, when summer arrives, I can not take a refreshing bath in the village. The Onor and the Sabor are too far away for a lonely girl driving an old Renault. The Maçãs is only some kilometers away from home, and it is my favorite.
It is at the Maçãs that my journey to the Abbey begins. Many times I've been there, but never noticed, bellow the watermill, that the small island of stones hides a mistery. All those are the black stones once used in school classrooms, hanging on walls, but in smaller sizes. Some are the size of your hand, some are square, some like bricks, some like little standing stones in top of European hills taken down by time and men.
It must have been three summers ago, when I noticed the stones, and while bathing, half of my body in the water, bitten by small fishes, my hands started touching stones, measuring stones, caressing stones. Then, with one of those little phalus, used as a pencil, I started engraving the square stones. I draw spirals, moons and suns, birds and beasts, but most of all I started drawing spriraling eyes, owls eyes, and the breasts, the dress of what, I only knew it after, is the Goddess of Eyes. I was not drawing for amusement, it was an urge for me. I drawed like in trance.
Summertime went, I returned to the museum. It is a small, generical museum at the city near my village. We have roman coins and 19th century oils, old church garnments and folk dresses. We do not have many visitors. Time is long there.
I take care of the books that nobody reads, books full of traditions recollected by old men in the fields and forrests. I also sell the tickets and the souvenirs by the front door. One day I remembered to take some of my engraved stones to the museum, and guard them as talismans in my desk, where the pencils and t-shirts gain dust. They were there as rememberances of the river.
One day a group of tourists came to the museum and one of the women started looking for souvenirs. She stopped by my stones and asked if they were for sale. I told her they were mine, that I had drawn them. She said I was an artist and I blushed. But she convinced me they were very interesting when, after taking my e-mail address, she told me what they reminded her of. She told me about spirals, moon and sun, and all the symbols I had carved in some black stones one summer afternoon. On and on we developed an electronic friendship and became intimate, though she lives in the capital of the country, some nine hours from here, by bad roads.
After these stone stories, many other occurred, and Irene convinced me I had to meet the Abbess, and tell her about things that happen when I'm very calm and contemplative, when nature meets me and I meet nature. It was a path long before walked that brought me to the Abbey doors, and I'm here to remember it, and to put it in words. Now, it is chill in the cloisters, I'm going to retire to my cell and have some sleep till the cock anounces mourning, like in the village. Bless you, my sisters, for this night and for the centuries to come.