I had blankets draped between the arms of the furniture in the living room when I was younger, and I lived inside my magic cave. I was a magpie even then, and anything that sparkled would be my new plaything. There was a secret box deep down beneath all of my treasures, and one day I found my Mother’s emerald ring on the floor of the bathroom, so it went straight into the box. I forgot about it, and seemingly so did my Mother, until one day when I decided to take my treasure box to school and the emerald ring fell out, the teacher asked me where the pretty ring came from, and I said that my magic box ate it, because my Mother had left it in a puddle on the floor, and so it needed to be kept safe. She told me to put it back in the box and that we could put it in the office where it would be very safe until the end of the day.
My Mother simply said that we were very alike, because neither of us were very good at looking after the ring. Years later she sold it for scrap metal.
