The Discovery of the Origin of the Glass Lotus

Kara knew that when she found received pendant, it meant something.

She knew that this little glass lotus in the center of her necklace meant something. It had always belonged to her mother, Arista, and was passed down through her families over the centuries. Her mother always said that it first belonged to some broken-hearted princess in the fifteen-hundreds, but Kara didn't listen to that part of the story. She listened to the adventure, to the secrecy, and to the bonds that held the family together in the story.

Something she'd always wanted.

Kara's mother passed away after the birth of her youngest sister, Sadie. She was wearing the necklace, and she placed it in Kara's hand as she died, forcing the girl to always cherish the gifts she had. It broke Kara's heart.

Her dad remarried quickly. The woman, named Megan, was skinny with a pinched face, angry drawn-on eyebrows, and five gallons of Botox injected into her face. Nothing like Kara's beautiful mother, who didn't need anything to make herself look younger or happier. Not that Megan looked happy or young.

Kara made sure that Sadie grew up knowing she was loved. Their dad, Albert, didn't have a ton of time for them between his busy job and spending time and money on Megan, so Kara made sure that her little sister felt like a princess. And she did.

Sadie always begged Kara to tell her the story about the princess and the lotus, but Kara could never remember it right. Some small detail always got messed up at the beginning, and she messed up the ending by the time she finished. The only person who remotely knew the story well was her grandmother - Nana.

Now, Nana was a completely different person compared to Kara or the rest of her family. Nana had grown up knowing her great-grandmother, Old Cougar, who was the something-great granddaughter of the princess in the story. And Nana always kept a lotus in the little pond in her backyard, she made lotus shaped cookies, but she never had anything glass that was remotely lotus shaped besides the necklace that Kara now wore.

Nana didn't come over after Kara's mother died, but it wasn't because it made her sad. Kara actually didn't know the real reason. But one day, when Albert and Megan were later than usual to pick Sadie and Kara up from school, Nana did the job.

The girls gathered in the car and watched as the first snowflakes began to fall on the outside. Nana turned on some old country music, Sadie blabbered on about her school day, and Kara scrolled through her messages with her best friend, Toni.

"Hey, Nana," she said, pausing over a picture that Toni sent. "There's a library in your house, right? Toni wants to know more about the lotus princess story."

Nana hummed thoughtfully, and Kara watched as she rubbed her fingers over the leather of the steering wheel. "Yes, I've got a small patch of books in the house. Just upstairs past the big den. Would you girls like to look around while I bake some biscuits?"

Sadie perked up instantly at the mention of biscuits. "Can you make chocolate fudge biscuits, Nana? Please, oh, please!"

"Yes, yes, Sadie," Nana chuckled, her wrinkly face lighting at Sadie's excitement. "I'll make you some chocolate fudge biscuits and some warm milk. How does that sound?"

"Yes, please!"

"And what about you, Kara?" Nana asked, looking over at her granddaughter.

"I'll be alright, Nana," Kara responded. "I've just got to find the notebook we wrote the story in."

The rest of the ride was quite silent through the countryside. The clouds rolled in and covered the sun, bringing soft speckles of snowflakes to dot the sky and fall down over the rolling hills and into the trees. The girls arrived at Nana's cottage just a bit later, smoke popping out of the chimney at little intervals at a time.

Nana unbuckled Sadie from her car seat and picked her up. Kara got out of the car and looked over the familiar house, a soft smile on her face.

The cottage was two stories high, made from a grayish-yellowy stone and wood on the roof. The chimney was made of the same stone and the door of the same wood, but with a lotus branded into the bronze doorhandle. The windows were bare, and the white indoor curtains closed, revealing nothing to the outside. Snow slowly gathered on the garden gnomes out front, and Kara walked faster, as she hoped to avoid getting too cold before coming inside.

Once inside, the trio was greeted by Nana's fat cat, Lolli. Lolli was an orange tabby whose fur dulled a bit with age, and her stomach rounded with it. Sadie happily picked the cat up and ventured into the kitchen, where she sat on Lolli on the counter and promptly began to mew at her.

Satisfied that Sadie was content, Kara kicked off her wellies and took her windbreaker to the sitting room. There she laid it over the edge of the couch and made her way up the cozy stairs, which held many pictures of the life of her family from over the years. Each woman wore the locket that was around Kara's neck, and she tapped it absently as she looked upon a photograph of her own mother.

"I miss you, Mum," she whispered, pressing her hand beside the photo and taking a small moment to be still. Once she finished that, Kara made the trip up the rest of the stairs and followed her grandmother's directions. She went past the den room and into Nana's study, which was filled with lotus designs all over the wood and the bookshelves.

Time to get to work, I suppose, Kara told herself, beginning near the bottoms of the shelves and working her way around it. As she worked, Kara hummed a soft lullaby that her mother used to sing, and she also forced herself to ignore the smell of the savory biscuits being baked downstairs.

After about an hour or so, Kara stopped and sat against the wall. She'd gone through every book and couldn't find any of the notebooks that she used to recite the story into. Just as she was about to give up and leave, Kara bumped her shoulder against the bookshelf and the whole thing shuddered.

She lept back, surprised, and saw a small compartment in the side of the wood, a lotus etched into the beam. She pressed the lotus symbol and the compartment opened, years of dust flying out and revealing an old, leather-bound book. The front cover read: 'The Book of the Glass Lotus'.

Kara let out a laugh of joy. She'd found it! She opened the front of the book and read through the first page, but instantly had to stop.

The book was written in Shakespearean English. She couldn't read it!

Kara went downstairs with a sigh, bringing the book with her.

"Have you found it?" Nana asked, feeding Sadie one of the biscuits.

"Yes, I've found it, but I can't read it," Kara replied. "It's all willy-nilly nonsense."

She tossed the book down and shook her head in defeat. But as she looked, the sunlight from the parting clouds shined down on the book cover, and there was another inscription of the lotus. This time, however, it was in the exact shape of her locket. Kara knew this because none of the other lotuses in the house had small cracks in the glass.

Kara took off her locket and pressed the lotus to the cover, then opened the book again. Underneath each of the long, winding paragraphs was a modern-time translation. Kara read the story over and over, then looking up to Nana. "Is this real?"

"Yes, it is," Nana replied, taking off her glasses. "Wasn't your mother wearing the necklace when she died?"

"Yes. Yes, she was."

"And what do you think of it?"

"I think that it's a wonderful story."