This category is producing great drabbles!

Jewellery drabble:

I grew up in a town where huge, gold earrings and a ring on every finger was the fashion and still is today. I made this look my own, until it no longer suited me. Eventually, I replaced gold hoops and ruby rings with dangling silver earrings and a platinum and sapphire ring. The ring is antique I bought for myself when I graduated from high school. I wore it everyday, until it became too small for my finger. I currently wear no rings and one of three pairs of delicate, marcasite earrings, each pair a thoughtful gift of love.

Thanks, Ouise! I do have the abridged version of that (and have poked around in the unabridged) and it's useful.

As I'm looking, it turns out that I know more about British myth and folklore than I thought I did, but there are some vasty pools of ignorance.

Cereal for drabble

The seashells that were your necklace lie on your chest in a row, even though the sinew thong rotted long since. You were buried 2000 miles from a coastline – did you migrate here, come to this desert to die? Or did you trade for the shells, offering the finest squash and beans for something you couldn’t eat? Perhaps your husband gave you the necklace. Perhaps it marked your status. What did it mean, this seashell necklace?

I may not know your life, gone these 2000 years, but I touch my own necklace of turquoise and coral, & I know you.

Raq, that's beautiful.

Is the repetition of "long since" accidental, in the first sentence?

What repetition of "long since?"

Psst everyone, Cindy's craxy!

Um, no. Last-minute edits in the posting box. Thanks.

Like one more iota of craxy would be obvious on me.

Raq, try Kathryn Briggs for facts on myths, and maybe Bruno Bettleheim for psychological underpinnings of myths.

Um. Jack Zipes, too.

You know, apart from the Golden Bough, I honestly don't remember where and how I learned what I know about the mythology for that half of my family history? I mean, I read the GB as a teenager, but the stories, jack in the Green, all that, it was just always there. So, probably heard rather than read.

Erin, not entirely off-topic, but Laura Anne Gilman has, like 500 books, and enthusiastic about sending them to you. I'll be send her your info.

You should have my(admittedly less impressive) box by Friday or so, babe.