Locket passing

Clinging to the dead man’s chest it waited, as it had done many times before, it waited because it could do nothing else. Through the harsh sun blighted days and the deep chill of the frost bitten nights, the ever intensifying ionic storms from the north and the irradiated winds from the west, it waited. Time slowly tarnishing a surface that was once kept a lustrous gold, cared for and maintained not just for what it was but for the meaning it held inside.

On an ordinary day bereft of storms it was relieved from it’s position, lifted from around the neck of the decaying figure by a lone traveler, quickly pocketed and moved from the location it had spent uncounted years. After a few days travel it was exposed to the harsh ultraviolet of the sun once again, this time through the shade of a lone large tree. It was inspected to a close degree, digits running across its edges, tracing the outline of its shape, two arches across its top that formed into a point at the bottom, made to resemble the core of its creator. Intricate patterns curling in on themselves were engraved across its face, care had been take in crafting this locket and it’s new owner recognize this. Grimy fingers ran over its surface, quickly finding a latch. The hinge on its side having long since lost a binding burst open, the meaning within spilling out into the clear open sky, the object of affection it held was lifted from inside, regarded and then quickly discarded, the picture of a woman with pilot goggles resting on her head, a ruddy brown scarf and a beaming smile was caught in a gust of wind and blown far from the shelter the tree provided, lost to the dusty waste, never to be seen by human eyes again. The treasure and memory the locket had safe guarded for many years, even after its last owners death, now all but lost to this world. The locket always retained a small fragment of the love that had been imprinted upon it, as it had done time and time again, as long as it remained, so too would a small part of them. The wanderer took out a small piece of paper with a sooty paw print upon it, folded and placed it inside the locket, closing it and thinking of nothing but this departed companion the wanderer sealed a piece of their love inside the locket and once more it safe guarded these feelings. The locket was hung once again from the neck of its bearer and they moved on.

The journey progressed and time passed, while it was not hung from the neck of it new carrier it’s maintenance was attended too, during the harshest of the days sun a fine paper and cloth spent many hours running across its surface in whatever shade could be found. While hiding in a cave during a particularly harsh dust storm that bore radiation upon its winds the loose edge of its hinge was reworked with a piece of fine wire to restored its action. As distance and time went onward the storms lost their intensity and the land seemed to change, flat plains were replaced with mountainous terrain, harsh sun with dark cloud and heavy snow. The locket once again a bright and shining gold, a hand reaching up to it often on its journey, always when touching the locket the memory of their lost companion coming to for forefront of their mind. This is how it always went for the locket, it had travelled an uncounted distance across a variety of landscapes each as harsh as the last, the irradiated deserts in the west, storm racked tundra of the north, it had seen a time when the seas in the east rose and swallowed much of the land and returned when they had retreated back to their shores to be replaced by a perpetual winter, it was bore by a young girl longing for her father when the first spring in a century had broken and by a mother protecting her children when it experienced its first murder. Always the passing on to a new owner who would place something they cherished inside, always a hand reaching up to touch it to remind them of the love it held. Time between each owner had gradually been longer and longer and one day there would be a last, this world seemingly at odds with those that carried the locket across it.

On a calm day with clear blue sky and a sea breeze gently blowing, the wanderer slowly climbed a rocky hill side and once at the top rested, a hand reached up and held the locket, a bitter sweet feeling swept through it and the hand dropped away. The wanderer would never rise from this place, leaving only the love they had bestowed into the locket, a feeling the locket would carry and protect while it waited for the next to come across it, just as it had done over and again for a millennia.