The Items

As a child, I had done a little research on Aunt Anne, my only saving grace with my history tutor. Otherwise, I think I would still be sitting with that awful woman. Turns out good ol' Aunt Anne was a pirate! I leaned in to see if there was something hidden in the chest, and while I was feeling around in the bottom, I fell in, and the lid shut. It was then that I discovered the dual properties of the chest I would come to love.

I thought I'd been turned around at first, as the lid seemed to now be on my side. When I pushed it open, I fell out of a dumbwaiter in another shadow! When I hit the floor of the laundry I had entered, clouds of steam rose up from the water puddled there.

When I pulled the map out of my pocket to check it, I started sneezing uncontrollably.

When I emptied my pouch on the counter, one of the keys turned a set of gold earrings I had in there to lead.







After some experimentation, I determined that each of the items of Aunt Anne's that I had taken from the chest had some sort of weird property - from the mundane (a pair of pantalettes that let me tell time) to the truly bizarre (a dead parrot that would empty out the contents of my stomach when I squeezed it). I also managed to figure out how to get back; if I go back into a chest, or drawer, or cabinet, I end up in the chest again.

Life just got a whole lot more interesting.

Wherein I flee my home, and scatter the Items to the four winds

It started like any other day in our camp. I'd always known that my parents were fighting some kind of war, but I never really paid much attention to it. I mostly occupied my time by dodging my tutors and tagging along with Magras. Home had always been safe, and I guess I thought it always would be. I was wrong.


The darkness rolled through the camp, devouring everything in its path. People I knew since I could first remember disappeared in the blink of an eye. We ran, and in the chaos I was able to grab the chest. I wouldn't leave everything I knew behind.

I followed someone I barely knew as they travelled the shadow pathways, running from the jaws of the Abyss. I still had not learned to travel myself, and was stuck in their wake. The open plains of shadow were oppressive in their freedom, so when we passed through a shadow not unlike the world my Aunt had inhabited, I decided to stay. I was tired, and I just wanted to be done running. I opened up the chest, hoping to comfort myself in its confines...and it was empty.

The Chest

My Great-Aunt Anne's Sea Chest. I found it in my parent's attic when I was about five. It was the perfect place to hide when I didn't want to be found. Only Hanu knew where it was, and I think by the time he found me inside the first time, he'd been looking for a couple of days. There was a lot of her stuff inside. At first, I made a bed out of the linens, and would sometime sleep in there when I felt particularly lonely. As I got older, and bigger, I had to pull stuff out, and I tossed it aside until the chest was nearly empty. Little did I know what I was doing.