Searching for diamonds “Mama, may we look through your jewellery box?” Sylvia requested. It was raining outside, which made it the perfect kind of day for one of her favourite games activities. She had previously referred to this as ‘playing jewellery box’ but as she would be starting Sonora next year, she knew that playtime was rapidly drawing to an end, and - for all that the activity had not changed in the slightest - she had felt compelled to find a more grown up verb.
“Certainly,” Avery replied. She had just finished putting together the food and drink plan for their family Christmas meal, but still had to plan for the couple of small parties they were hosting during the holidays, and a little bit of a break sounded perfect. She and Sylvia made their way up to the master bedroom, and into its attached dressing room, where Avery took down a deceptively small and beautifully ornate jewellery box. As she opened it, there was a subtle waft of jasmine perfume - a charm she would replace when she closed it, and one of the more subtle security features; other people took it to be the scent of the jewellery box, some dried flower she kept there for fragrance, but only she knew that it was a single-action charm, and that if the smell was missing when she opened the box, someone had been in there. This was more a guard against unauthorised borrowing by the likes of Sylvia than a serious measure against theft, though there were plenty of those too.
“Real stories or pretend?” she asked Sylvia, as they returned to the bedroom and settled on the large bed, spreading the jewellery around them.
“Pretend,” requested Sylvia, after only a fractional hesitation. She knew perhaps that she should grow out of make-believe too, but the trouble was, she already knew all the real stories by heart. Almost every piece of jewellery had been from daddy for a birthday or an anniversary. The pretend stories changed almost every time, although sometimes she would request a particularly good one again.
“Well, as you know, the best rubies in the world come from India,” her mother began, plucking out a beautiful ruby bracelet that had been a Christmas gift from Alexander. She slid it over Sylvia’s small hand. Sylvia held her hand up carefully, so that the overly large bracelet would not fall off, admiring the shining stones as her mother invented a rich history for them.
“The maharaja’s daughter had had a choice of two handsome wizards to marry, and the one she hadn’t chosen was very bitter and angry. He cast a powerful dark spell to steal away the girl’s soul. Without her soul, she turned dark and angry. She could not love anybody - not her new husband, not her father and her mother. I didn’t know anything about this though, not when I first visited. They kept her away from people, you see, because she was cold and cruel and it made their guests unhappy to be near her. It was the middle of the night when I heard a voice calling. At first, I thought I dreamed it, but then I heard it again. I got out of bed and followed it, down a long, dark passage. It seemed to be coming from inside the wall. When I put my hand out though, the wall melted away, and there was this strange glass bottle inside - ruby red, and filled with a glowing light. The voice was coming from inside the bottle, so I took off the lid and the light went rushing out. It was the girl’s soul. It went flying back to her, and she was the bright, happy spirit she had been before. The maharaja was so grateful that he had the bracelet made for me.
“Next?” she asked. Sylvia carefully considered before plucking out a fine sapphire necklace.
Once she had had five stories, her mother decided that it was time she did something else.
“Sorry sweetie,” she said, as they packed the pieces away (except for a pair of silver hair slides decorated with jet which, as they did not suffer the same problems of the other jewellery in being vastly too large for her, she had been permitted to wear for the remainder of the day). “I should get back to my party planning. How about you come and help me?” she offered. Sylvia normally loved party planning, and it was a good educational exercise for her.
“Will I be seeing Simon’s friends at the parties?” Sylvia enquired.
“Not at ours, sweetie. These are grown up parties,” the Mordues did not command a high enough place in the society pecking order to throw one of The Big Events of the Christmas season - there were only so many suitable evenings for such parties, and thus not every family could play host. They had a few smaller occasions though - nibbles and drinks with Alexander’s work colleagues, brunch with the ladies she played cards with.
“Could we ask Simon to invite them over to pl- to visit one day? That way, when I start school next year, I’ll have a good head start on knowing all the right people.” There were big parties where she might meet such people, of course, but sometimes children as young as her weren’t invited, and then there were ever so many people to meet, and sometimes older children like Victor and Winston didn’t pay attention to someone her age, if she was even there in the first place. She was somewhat fascinated with the two Crotalus boys, and had decided that one of them probably ought to be her future husband. Certainly, there might be suitable boys in her year too, but she’d heard that girls were often much more grown up than boys, which was why men were often older than their wives (and certainly this seemed to be running true in her family, as the snatches of explanation she’d been given or overheard regarding Uncle Nicky seemed to relate to a younger woman and the fact that he was incapable of growing up). Furthermore, she currently did not know much about her year mates, whereas she knew Simon’s room mates were both excellent choices. It certainly didn’t seem like a bad idea to try to make a favourable impression before school started, and perhaps decide which of them was her favourite.
“Mm, perhaps,” said her mother, a little hesitantly. Christmas was always so much busier than summer, and she didn’t particularly want to have to fit in a visit from Simon’s friends, but she wasn’t well-practised at saying ‘no’ to Sylvia - none of them were. “They might not be free though. People have a lot of plans over Christmas,” she explained, hoping to shift the potential responsibility for disappointment onto other people, or circumstances, although this still received a pouting lip in response. “Why don’t you start a letter to your brother to tell him to ask them whilst I work on the party orders?” she suggested. At least that would keep Sylvia happily occupied with the task and with the possibility of a visit.