Crystal Banaba - 4

“Still, I don’t know if I’d want to wear my grandmother on my finger,” Rachel shivered at the thought as she uttered it.

“Understandable. But wouldn’t you want to wear your grandmother’s memory on your finger?”

“Of course, if she gifted a ring to me, I’d wear it proudly.”

“But that’s exactly what she’d do in our community! She’d bequeath herself to you in the form of a crystal. You’ve seen Grace’s ceremony, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what she did when she signed the big memorialization book. She specified how she would want her crystals to be distributed.”

“Crystals? How many can you make out of a small grandmother?”

“One medium-sized or several small ones. She had a big family, and they all wanted…”

“A piece of her gets quite a literal meaning here, doesn’t it?” Rachel said bitterly.

“Ok, I see you still need more time for processing this, Rachel. Why don’t we go to that store, to get the basics you need?”

When they walked into the store, Rachel was surprised to see that it had a limited selection of new items, mostly cosmetics and hygiene products. And some shoes. All clothing was used and arranged in neat rows by size and color, like in a well-maintained thrift store.

“I hope these are not the clothes of all the dead people you crystalize,” Rachel mumbled.

“Not that they died in them,” Linda the store manager, a plump woman in her mid-thirties with exceptional hearing, said. “Besides, we wash them thoroughly, mend them if necessary and iron them before displaying.” Linda said it with so much confidence and pride that Rachel felt bad and apologized.

She got herself a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts, new underwear and basic toiletry items and left, thanking Jon for his help.