Once there was a jewel merchant who wandered the realms looking for the rarest and most precious of gems to add to his collection. One stormy night he was forced to seek shelter with an old woman during a particularly stormy that turned the roads to mud and flung icy sheets of rain across his warm, woolen clothes.
Though her house was simple stone building, caked with limestone and thatched with straw it was warm and dry inside. The fare was likewise plain but, nourishing and hot. The merchant spent a pleasant evening by her fire, warmed on the outside by the oaken logs and on the inside by tripe-distilled blackberry brandy aged in oaken kegs.
The storm's damage was too severe for him to start out again the next day so he found himself a guest of the old woman for another handful of days until the mud had dried enough for his caravan wheels. For the first time in his career as a traveling merchant he found himself at ease, without any worries that someone would try to rob him.
He noticed that the old woman had many small and valueless gems set into crudely wrought settings placed on her mantlepiece amid rough stones that could have been jewels. As he was preparing to leave, he approached the old woman with a tray of fine jewelry and his jeweler's tools.
"I have enjoyed my visit with you, Mistress Heatherfax." he said " Please accept a piece of jewelry from my stock as a token of my thanks." Then he added. "I cannot allow a jewel such as yourself to live without at least fine adornment."
Mistress Heatherfax who had been looking at his tray with some interest drew her hand back from the tray as if it had suddenly become a poisonous viper. "Fine adornment. Are you saying that my jewelry is not fine enough for you?" She asked with anger crackling in her storm grey eyes.
The jewel merchant flushed and stammered but, he said truthfully. " I am sure your jewelry is the finest you could afford, Mistress, but they are crudely wrought and the gems in them are small and dull."
The woman's grey eyes softened like the early morning mist being warmed by the first rays of dawn. "Ahh, you are right young man. They are crudely fashioned and the gems are small and dull but, you see these were the best my Warren could afford for me."
She picked up a small ring with a chipped diamond in its setting. "He gave this to me when we were wed for diamonds are everlasting. I chipped it helping him set the stones for this house, washing dishes after meals, scrubbing our floors and cleaning basketful after basketful of clothes."
She smiled fondly at the ring with its pitted stone. "And yet I was happy to do these things for at least we had sturdy walls, we had food to put on our plates and we clothes to wear and get dirty in."
Carefully she put the ring back and picked up a copper band set with a golden beryl. "This one he gave me when we found out we could have no children. As I lay crying on the bed, he went to the orphanage and picked up a baby girl who had been left there and a ring." Her face softened further with the memory. "I named her Beryl after the stone in the ring."
She sent the ring down tenderly and picked up another. "When my pickles won at the Baron's festival, he was so proud he bought be a ring as green as they were even though it was just a speck of spinel"
On and on she listed the memories each ring held for her til she came to the rough stones. "My Beryl married a fine lad, a jeweler. Their young lad wants to be like his Da and would bring me stones from his grandda's mine for me to admire." She chuckled softly.
"He would make up stories about each stone, and that's how he came to be a Bard. Now he sings for kings and queens but, if you look on his right hand, you'll find a simple gold band set with a tiny diamond that I gave him from one of the rocks he brought me."
The jeweler blushed with shame. He understood now why the old woman hadn't tried to rob him. Her jewels were the memories of the good life she had lived and the happy times each jewel stood for. His gems for all their sparkle and shine were as pretty as cut glass with no substance of memories to give them weight.
He rummaged through his chests until he found a chain strung with various pearls of different sizes and colors. He brought it to the woman after dinner. He wrapped the strand around one meaty fist and brought up a pink pearl that was shaped like a butterfly with opened wings.
'This was one of my first finds. I was sitting on the shore of an island where my father had weighed anchor while we on an expedition to Taisdion island. I had found a bed of oysters which I wrapped in seaweed and steamed until they were cooked. As we sat around the fire eating their succulent flesh I found this pearl nestled inside one. "
He moved the small pink pearl out of sight and brought up a black pearl as big as a grape up next. All night they sat by the fire while he told them woman about his string of pearls. When he left the next morning a small copper band set with a freshwater pearl was on a pinky finger where none had been before.
The old woman watched him leave from the edge of her doorstep, the morning sunlight glinting off a simple diamond hairpin perched in her graying curls.
A dark brown Zoluren marnet glances up at the stars and makes a purring sound of contentment.
