The Warrior Princess

Challenge for October, 26 2007:

Write about an Auction.


Sterling Silver Scottish Luckenbooth Brooch with Garnet



There it is on e-bay where the dealer said it would be, with three days
left to bid. How could he have been so stupid as to let it slip through
his fingers at the Estate sale! All his mother's costume jewelery and
his father's miscellaneous junk from his desk was sold to Borowski's
Antiques and Collectibles. Although hindsight being 20/20, he now
believes that there may have been a few old fountain pens of his
father's that are worth considerably more then what they received for
the lot. The brooch however was a family keepsake and a price couldn't
be put on it's sentimental value. It was given to his Great Grandmother
by her husband on her wedding day and she brought to Canada when she
emmigrated from Scotland in 1887.

It was the old Tartan shawl that his mother had packed away in her
sewing room that led him to the discovery that the brooch was missing.
His sister Kat used to drape the shawl around her shoulders like a cape
and pin it together with the brooch. Once she did this she became a
Warrior Princess of the Urquart clan and fought in many a battle protecting
her her people from the evil McDonalds....She had listened to too many of
Grandfather Douglas's tall tales, but to this day she refuses to eat under
the Golden Arches. The food is bad for you and is full of additives she will
tell you but he wonders how much her grandfather's stories prejudice her stance. After he found the shawl he went to get the brooch to give it to Kat but when
he looked in the black velvet box where his mother always kept it, he discovered
that it was missing.

He had assumed that Kat had taken it back to Halifax with her after their
mother's funeral. A quick phone call confirmed that she hadn't and he had
succeeded in upsetting his sister even more then she already was, as If
that was possible to accomplish. When Kat flew in for the funeral he
barely recognized her, She had lost so much weight since the last time
he saw her and even though she had warned him, she looked so frail and
fragile he started to cry. She told him on the phone about the lump the
doctors found in her breast, about her chemo and the reason that she hadn't
mentioned it before was because she didn't want to add to Mother's stress.
She told him about her jerk off husband who ran back to Brazil as soon as
he found out that she would have to depend on him for support for a change.
The death of their final parent was another weight to her already overloaded shoulders. He hoped that it wasn't the last straw. That's why he had to win
back the brooch no matter what the cost. He had put a hidden bid in for $300.00
and if that wasn't enough he would bid twice that.

He had a plan to join Kat in Halifax and stay with her. He planned to take
along the shawl and the brooch so once again the Great Warrior princess of
Clan Urquart would fight the evil invaders and this time he would be there
at her side when she did.