Visions of Fate

8. A GRANDMOTHER'S GIFT

We stared at the ancient handmade, intricately carved wooden box that timidly trembled under our gazes. The rickety old box was decorated with various celestial carvings of the stars, moon and other intergalactic symbols that originally looked like they were purposed for beautification. But I'd learned to know better.

The object sat looking so harmless underneath my gaze, but I knew that wasn't the case. With it came a flash of so many memories. Memories of granny – or, more precisely, memories of that night. The night of her death. The night we lost her to the cruel hands of mortality. The night she'd left me to the cruel hands of my parents. I could still remember her words clearly.

"Go to your room, my dear," she had so suddenly declared to me after inviting me to her usually gloomy room. "Don't come out till you hear your mother's scream. When you do, search through my wardrobe until you find a wooden box waiting for you. Don't open it until you're alone, when your parents are in the living room making their calls. There will be several items in that box that I need you to keep, including a note. A very important note that you should never let go of."

She had then withered away, leaving me sinking in the depths of mysteries. Her death was so sudden, too sudden. And it was like she herself knew what awaited her.

But she had looked so fine, healthy, if you were being optimistic. Death hadn't seemed anywhere near her. Yet she knew. And she had also prophesied my parent's being in the living room after her death. She had also prophesied their calls to our relatives immediately after, leaving me more in shock than grievous after her death and even during her funeral.

Then I became negligent, straying from the antique box and its mysteries, hiding both of them deep within my shoe closet. But now, as the neglected object sat before me, a fresh wave of goosebumps crept up my arm as the tirade of memories were built up in front of me.

"What's this supposed to be?" A curious tone made me jump and I looked over to meet the question marks in Ethan's blue eyes.

I tugged at a loose thread at the hem of my shirt, the shirt I'd thrown over my head five minutes ago. Before I'd led Ethan upstairs to uncover these secrets that held the mysteries to something plausibly deeper than my visions. Something that led to another story entirely.

"It's the object granny handed to me," I pulled the thread even further out, watching as I detached it from the whole cotton, denting a tiny grave on my shirt. "Before she died." It was only when I said out loud that it hit me. I had never really mourned granny's death. I hadn't cried the night she passed and didn't even cry on her burial as well.

Instead I was left in shock and confusion. As to what she left me with and why she had done so in the first place. I had spent so many years trying to figure out the hidden meanings behind these alien items, but I couldn't. So I gave up, tucked it deep within my shoe closet and moved on.

Thinking about that now brought a stab to my already wounded heart. Because granny deserved a proper grief in her burial. A proper brokenheart that completely shattered at the mere thought of her. Instead I had stashed away what was remaining of her and moved on like the worst granddaughter I was.

I watched Ethan readjust his crosslegged position on the floorboard, the drained look on his face signifying he'd had more than enough emotional rollercoaster coaster for one night. "What's in it?" He questioned, his look only dotting the exhausted tone in his voice.

Slowly, I took the maroon coloured box and opened the rusty locket on its chest with a tired creak. Then one by one, I pulled out its contents. Mysterious items I myself hadn't seen in years. Items that reminded me of darker days I tried not to relive.