(no subject)

Upon arriving at the mansion, she commanded her staff bring the large wooden chest she'd been given as a child. It had no instructions, no covenants. It has just seemed boring to her when the world outside had sunshine, tea parties, otters by the river and butterflies that weren't pinned lifeless to a board.

Nevertheless, she felt a wave of disappointment when she discovered within some old bits of wood and metal.

Carefully she assembled the parts, and somehow it was only near the end that she realised it was another, near identical chest, fractionally smaller.

Every day she went through this as sunshine passed, caterpillars became moths that fluttered against the window of her room trying to reach the light within, and tea parties carried on without her habit of forgetting she had already taken a sugar lump and not noticing the spot of cream on her nose.

She grew old, and the final chests were now intricate doll house models. With failing eyes and shaky hands, toothpicks and tweezers, she assembled one thumbnail sized work of art.

"No more. I cannot. They are so small and I cannot see."

She opened the last chest, and inside was a scroll.

With her most powerful magnifying glass, bought for making the chests, she read the lone word it carried.

"Entropy"

And then she died.