The creation

An idea. The very first time I was aware of my surrounding was in the memory of someone. I saw his passion, creativity, ingenuity and motivations all in his mind to know he was a bright and ambitious man. I saw his past happy days, traumas and his delusions and desires of mortal wish fulfillments. He was brilliant but prideful, wanting to impress the highest ones of his society. Tuffa, was the name of the craftman who created me.

Not very long after, he decided to bring me to my physical existence. Drawing out his tall, slender and smooth reed pen, he pointed on the thick paper of papyrus and started forming an image of my eternal design I would become as long as I lived. I had transferred from his head to the paper to finally see his real face and the outside world I had known only in his memory.

He called forth his apprentices, his companions to help and make the magnum opus he called me. I could be significant. I could be big. I could be something that could even change the world. I had developed a similar ego that he might have. The other craftmen said I was no greatest thing. They argued that this would be no difference from the usual things they made. But Tuffa was confident. He said he would make me the best with finest of materials and rarest of substances. I believed in him. The following days, he brought me along with him and his men to various sites to collect the necessities for creation.

 A ceremony. There was a diabolical ritual of sacrificing the young women for appeasing of beings they called "gods". I could not see those gods. But all I could see was the brutal death of a person that did nothing. The ritual was presented on top of the massive pyramid building with canals from top to bottom. Those canals let the blood of the sacrificed flow through them toward the gutters below. Tuffa collected the blood from the gutters inside the bottle and put them beside me in the pocket.

Aladima, The place, the kingdom craftman Tuffa lived in was built on the paradise of treasures and jewels. Almost everyone he and I had encountered, poorest or richest had at least one ring on their body. So much so that no bandits were hiding in any corner because if everyone had it, golds and silvers became much less. But he once said he would forged me with best of materials. I started to doubt once I realized he was not wearing any valuables.

He stopped in front of the abandoned mineshaft and looked around to see if any strangers were watching. He then removed the barricades and entered the old fragile underground chamber. The place is bleak and unpleasants and had many possibilities to collapse at any time soon. Not just me but his fellow men felt disappointed. He brought us into a miserable room of nothing worth.

"Is this your grand plan to get the finest of material to forge? "

One of his men yelled.

"You couldn't even afford a proper mineshaft. Is your real plan to kill us quietly in this not very well lit tunnel and steal our accessories..?"

But the craftman Tuffa smiled. Not malicious, but a smile of someone looking at an amateur.

"You don't know anything about me... do you? Who do you think own this mineshaft... Me! You all seem to think of me lightly just because I didn't have any shiny stuffs on my body. And do you know why...? I'll show you all today!"

With his shovel, Tuffa pierced the dirt wall on the end of the tunnel. Suddenly, the whole room luminated from light came out from the hole he dug. The brightest of jewels were revealed behind the dead end. Was he been keeping these all his whole life? How secretive was it for even me to not see in his memory?

"Behold! The mountain of golds even the richest men had not spent in their life."

"How... how did you have so much? What sort of illegal business do you have to do to accquire such monstrous wealth..?"

The same man from earlier asked with the opposite tone of voice from before.

"Never underestimate the honest man's willingness to achieve the nigh-impossible. I had this all by myself with my own sweats and bloods. I even starved myself in the past just to not spend a little."

"Why...?"

"For this very moment... this day...The day I will be forging the peak of all artifacts."

This man... is insane.

"Now shut your mouth and get ready to help me shoveled all these..!"

The currency in this land was that the shinier a metal or rock is, the more expensive they were. 150 bags worth of shiniest golds obtained from the old mine that no one once cared.

"How big was the artifact to require tons of golds?"

"The artifact was not that necessary to be really big. It would be the size of a standard necklace. What we need them for is because we will keep melting and forging and melting again and forging again and again and again until I satisfied with receiving the perfect frame and chains."

"Frame and chains...?"

"That's right... even after making with highest quality golds, this is not the highest. Just wait... the brightest one to drop this month full moon."

Tuffas and his fellows did as he planned. They cut, shaped, heated, hammered, soldered, polished me repeatedly for godly amount of time days and nights. My consciousness had transferred on the paper to the unfinished hexagonal golden frame with chains. But I was still incomplete.

At the night of the full moon, they took me to the wind blowing grass plain. The moon was brighter than any nights, even more so than other full moon nights. The shooting stars could be seen at the night sky. Then... one of them changed it's trajectory to fall in front of us. For an initial second, it felt like the daylight itself had descended. The shooting "star" is producing so much brightness that noone could look it directly. 

Then Tuffa approached with hand covering his eyes, he grabbed the shining object... a transparent rock. Even with no color, it was enough to blind a man.

"How would you gonna utilize that rock? The light is too distracting... it wouldn't be convenience to be used as a middle piece of the necklace!"

"I know... that's why we went to ceremony first..."

Tuffa took out the bottle of blood he collected from the dead maidens. Even though it had been days, the blood remained fresh. He poured it down on the transparent rock. The rock absorbed every drop of blood inside it and slowly changed color while the the brightness became less and less. The rock was now perfectly reddish in color. The craftman attached the red ruby-like rock in my frame body. It fitted perfectly. I was then finished. For the first time in my life, I had felt the true arrogance.