Nikki Mickens

Truth Hates Delay

There was a catch. There was always a catch. Raindrops splattered the intricately scribed calligraphy, which, to an 18-year-old, looked like the ancient writing of ancient beings, akin to a lost art. Ophelia Reynolds pulled her hood up and darted to the porch. Page by page, line by line, she frantically scanned the document, hoping to find some other way, any other way, to complete the seemingly insurmountable task in front of her. The delicate pages with didn’t spew forth any secrets, nor did they offer any alternative ideas. Names, dates, land descriptions, measurements. All meaningless. Perhaps if she read the Latin phrase haphazardly scrawled in red ink on the inside cover, all secrets would be revealed. Ophelia read the inscription aloud “Qui totum vult totum perdit”. She squeezed her eyes shut momentarily. To her dismay, nothing extraordinary had happened, no magic revelation, and certainly no instant sense of enlightenment. She was going to have to do the unthinkable: she was going to have to speak to her father.