“This is our secret,” he says, within the small unmonitored room of the bank, where customers can check the contents of their safety deposit boxes in privacy. “This was my mother’s legacy to me, and now my legacy to you.”
You look inside. The box under his name–now your name, too–is a small one but it is held deep within the bank’s vault. Old, rare. It marks you and your father as elite patrons of the bank, before the more acceptable term ‘premium members’ began being used. Despite the paltry sums of money in your actual bank accounts.
Inside the old metal box is yet another box, a wooden one, the varnish has worn away from age. The area around the latch is a different color, the oil of generations worth of hands opening and closing the box. Within the wooden box, the inside lined with a red velvet similarly faded away with time, is a pocket watch.
You don’t know much about pocket watches, but this one looks unremarkable to your eyes. The front cover is metal, a simple repeating pattern of swirls etched into it. At your father’s nod, you reach in, pick the watch up, and open it. The numbers are roman numerals, but other than that it looks like any watch you can buy from anywhere. No gems or intricate designs, no additional smaller clocks within the face. The chain, too, is simple.
This is not a very impressive inheritance, you don’t say, but your expression must give away your skepticism. Your father laughs, amused, not offended at all.
“In time, you will see,” he says, clapping a hand to your shoulder, before gesturing back to the box, prompting you to return the watch to its place of rest.
It’s not impressive, but you are careful with it, nonetheless, laying it gently within the circular indentation of the velvet cushion. The chain you wind slowly around in a short spiral, before closing the lids of the wooden box then the metal box.
“That’s it?” You ask your father, as the both of you leave the privacy booth, as he waves down the banker who will help you return the safety deposit box to the vault.
He presses the key into your hand, “That’s it for now,” he responds mildly.
Two years later, you will finally understand what he meant.
~
A/N: HAHAHAHAA, I dunno. Just a quick thing that’s vague and unrelated but is really helping with my strange writer’s block.
I do have an original fiction that sort of starts like this, but I scrapped that because it was all kinds of shuddery and awkward. Maybe I can revamp it. It was originally called Time Taggers, so you can see why I would need to revamp it.
And yes, there’s time travel involved.
Oh, wait, apparently I did write a somewhat related drabble earlier this year.
JackSGreyson Says 