Ink Magic

#27days27stories Prompt No. 5

Whenever I feel nostalgic, I visit the Farewell Museum. It's a stone building tucked between glass high rises in the heart of my favorite London and displays curiosities collected by the eccentric explorer and historian Edwin Farewell. I can't say for certain, but I have my suspicions he was a traveler to more worlds than one. Unlike me, he didn't limit his belongings to a poultry two suitcases. No, he filled his entire estate with artifacts, and when he ran out of space there, he filled three more warehouses before he left it all to his uncaring son.

His will required the creation of the museum I'd visited the first time on a rainy Saturday with nothing better to do than sip a latte and gaze into the glass cases filled with surgical saws, strangely shaped glass bottles, and mummified appendages. None of it peaked my curiosity until I reached the case of buttons and broaches claiming to span millenniums.

A golden broach embossed with a lion's head and rubies for eyes caught my attention, and I leaned in, searching the edges for a tell-tale sign my mind wasn't jumping to conclusions. And there it was, a tiny but deep scratch that couldn't be polished away, a scratch carved by the blade of a would-be assassin.

I'd heard the story from an old friend, the princess of Wimbledon, when she'd enamored me with the life story of her grandfather and last king before the revolution. I hadn't realized I missed her stories until today when I climbed the spiral stairs into the gallery, walked up to the case, and my eyes fell to the spot occupied by her broach. Today, red felt took its place.