MYSTober 2024

31 vignettes based on single-word prompts. One story.

29. Golden

Young Jacob ran along the beach. Yesterday he'd run here because he was happy. He frolicked in the sand and played in the waves, giggling and laughing.

That was yesterday.

Today he ran with tears on his face. Today he ran to get away from the priest Mordecai. The priest had promised to keep him safe and secure, and to teach him things. Then the priest's hand was in a place it shouldn't be. Jacob had never felt more unsafe. He'd never felt less secure.

"You're special," he'd said. "Nobody else gets this special time with me."

Jacob didn't want it. He wanted to be anywhere else at all.

"Now, don't you go telling people about this," he'd warned. "This has to be our little secret. Nobody else is special enough to know about this."

All Jacob wanted was to get away. He'd responded with a sheepish, "Yes, sir." He would have said anything to make the man let him go.

Then he ran. He didn't know what the priest would do, or where he could be, so Jacob ran as far as he knew he could go – the beach. He waded into the water and grabbed handfuls of wet sand from beneath it, trying to scrub the priest's touch from his skin. As hard as he tried, and as much as he cried, it just wouldn't go away.

He slumped there, water lapping at his chest and shoulders, watching his tears disappear into the ocean. Then a wave lobbed water into his face, and he stood back up and dragged his feet through the sand on his way back to shore, his head hanging as low as it could.

Out of the corner of his eye, as his feet were just leaving the water, he caught something glinting in the sun. He stopped in his tracks and turned towards it. The glint was gone. He swayed back towards the water, and the glint returned.

He approached it slowly, as if getting there too quickly might make it vanish. Finally he was upon it. There, almost completely buried in the sand, was a gold necklace. He looped his fingers through the chain and raised it into the air. The sand fell away back onto the beach, leaving only the metal in his hand, along with a strange brown thing that wasn't quite a circle, which seemed to be attached to it.

Jacob closed his hands around the chain. A sense of warmth spread through his body from it, as if he were holding comfort itself, and that comfort was wrapping him in a thick blanket. His world had become very dark, and into that world now entered this source of light and relief. He cried again, but this time they were tears of joy.

MYSTober 2024

Table of Contents

29. Golden