When my grandmother passed away, she bequeathed me her antique amethyst bracelet. This antique bracelet, I later learned, had about as many stories as she had, and that was plenty. Her amethyst bracelet had been in the family for generations, as are the case with many antique bracelets, an heirloom viewed as beyond all value, and cherished and for generations to come. The antique bracelet went way back to the old world, to her mother's upbringing in the area now known as the Czech republic. At that time, the antique bracelet was the only true thing that could be said to of that value of her family's possessions. Her journal spoke of a beautiful amethyst bracelet, which her mother would not even venture outside a house with that on for fear of loosing it or having someone taken from her. My grandmother's earliest memory is of watching the sun's rays dance off the face of the beautiful antique bracelet, as her mother rocked back and forth in her old rocking chair in her small village. But the origins of that antique bracelet, that the one amethyst bracelet, predated her by quite a bit as well. The antique bracelet went back all the way to the marriage of my great, great, great grandmother. I don't know exactly how old that is but there sure are a lot of greats in that one. The family has since then fallen on hard times I'm sorry to say, they once had been quite well-off, and the antique bracelet had reportedly been given as a wedding gift to my great ancestor by a nobleman. She at one time could actually lay claim to half of a rich, fertile region, and rode proudly on a horse, surveying all she posessed, the antique bracelet was one of many beautiful pieces of jewelry that adorned her person. In the antique bracelet was mysteriously unaccounted for for quite some time. There evidence that there was some sort of a few with a neighboring nobleman that may account for its disappearance. Apparently it was pretty bad, because there is a long and elaborate record of the dead. As far as we know, it became so there that even their manor was burned to the ground, and the antique bracelet was one of the items that was destroyed by the fire. One of my ancestors became obsessed with the amethyst bracelet, and spent a great deal of time and effort trying to locate its, until the beautiful antique bracelet was hers again. She succeeded and I was glad. But it was also rather foolhardy because the family itself was wanted by the other family to be put to death after having come out on the short end of the feud, and spent such a long time in hiding that they eventually became peasants just like almost everyone else back then, but the beautiful amethyst bracelet is the last remaining remnants and of a once proud and noble clan. |
