Beyond the Violet Mist: the Lost Box

A Box of Lost Things:

finally finding what you've been searching for,

just as soon as you stop looking.

What happened last night (now a few nights ago) was like something out of a creative writing prompt. I almost expect that somewhere out there, on one of those websites that lists creative writing prompts that I've been meaning to look at but haven't yet, the exact scenario that occurred last night is listed as a hypothetical statement for a prompt, a "what would you do if..." statement. But it really, actually happened.
I found a box for which I have been searching for three years. You may or may not know that about three years ago, we moved. I'm not going to say where being as this is on the internet and all, nor am I going to explain the details, but moving is moving and so if you have ever moved (or even if you haven't), you likely already have a picture in your head of a house filled with boxes in which all the stuff of one's life must be crammed. The particular box to which this blog post pertains was the very last box I packed from my bedroom. It contained what I then considered to be among my most select and favorite items in my room, carefully packaged away. It was one of the last things on the moving truck and so it followed that it would be one of the first things off, but in the utter chaos of unloading I did not see where it went. I unpacked all the boxes that had been put in my room and I was distressed to find that my treasure-box was not among them. I searched the boxes in my mom's room, and in the closets, and the living room, and throughout all the house, and I did not recover it.
I still searched on and off as time went on. Whenever we cleaned the house I picked up my search, and I double- and triple-checked all the places I had already checked, and I still thought of it. It wasn't as if I was searching for it constantly, though, and quite some time had gone by since I had looked for it. I don’t mean by the subtitle of my post to imply that I had given up all hope of finding it, but rather that last night (or a few nights ago, as aforementioned) I was not looking for it. Instead, I was looking for our Harry Potter books so that I could find a selection for my Lit Program piece for individual speech. I know I’ve seen our Harry Potter books since we moved, but I couldn’t find them on our bookshelf, and I thought that the last time I’d seen them might have been in a box in the basement, so I went down there to check.
The first thing that caught my attention down there is actually the inspiration for and subject of what is now my third blog post of the week which I have recently placed in another tab. But beneath it (and perhaps slightly to the right), I found my lost box, literally my box of buried treasure (it can indeed be said that it was buried, because it was under a thing or two in a pile in our basement storage area). I stared at it in awe, hesitating and questioning whether it truly was what I thought it was. The defining characteristic of my box of lost things was a rather large bulge in the top, where the castle tower came up. Indeed, my castle was probably the most defining thing that was in that box, and the item I remembered and missed most while it was gone.
So I saw this box with a bulge in the top, labeled "Bedroom--fragile" in purple sharpy, just how I knew the box would be (and I couldn't help wondering how a box labeled "bedroom" so clearly could have ended up in a pile in the basement, but all's well as ends well, I ‘spose) and it was really a sort of dream-like moment because there was a part of me that had wondered if the box hadn't somehow been left behind, even though I'd handed it up onto the moving truck myself, or if it had been gotten rid of somehow, and I had come to doubt whether I'd ever see my treasures again, and yet here they were, in front of me. I picked the long-lost, near-mythical, treasure-filled box up at long last and peeled off the plastic wrap holding it closed, and I pulled open the folded cardboard lid-flaps, and I gazed in wonder upon my precious things which had been hidden from me for the better part of three years, which has felt in a way like forever (though at the same time like no time at all). The warm, caramel-vanilla scent of my candles mingled with the fainter underlayer of the oddly familiar smell of dust that seemed to be specific to my room back home flowed out of the box and transported me back to the moments spent packing it, carefully wrapping and tucking away my favorite things and entrusting them to the care of this little box. Deciding I could pursue the HP books later, I hastened upstairs with the box in hand and began uncovering each cherished possession, lifting them from the box one by one with reverence.
Time runs short and so I fear my post must as well, but perhaps here I shall simply list the items that were in the box and insert the pictures of them I took the other night, and I shall explain each one’s significance in yet another promised follow-up post.

First and probably most significantly, my castle. Yes, it is the kind from a fishtank.

My beautiful music box. It's funny that it plays the Peter Pan song, because after watching Once, I definitely look at that differently now.

a fish from my old fishin' around game. Remember, explanations later.

a little purple decorative "princess" box... which holds mysterious things...

mini-keys from a journal that had a lock on it and an ancient starburst in said box. There's an inscription on the inner ring of the box that says a little rhyme about wishing. It's not a famous one, I don't think. I'm away from the box right now so I can't recreate it here. You probably can't read it from the picture, but if you can, that's cool.

some decorative do-dads from the gem show--a carmelly-gold rock, an amethyst pyramid, and a butterfly, which might be tourmaline, I don't recall. I should ask my mom. She knows her gems!

a translucent monticello keychain, of which it is very tricky to take a good picture. I think in this picture you can see the dome and columns fairly well, you just can't quite see the word "monticello" under it, and it isn't very clear. You can see some of the pictures on my wall, my lamp, a hat, the floral head ring I wore to prom last year, and a few other things, if you're observant like that.

one of my yummy-smelling candles that scented the box so strongly. I don't recall exactly what the scent was called, but it is something to the lines of caramel-vanilla, perhaps with some note of spice or another.

a thing of miniature cupcake cups; one of the few things the box contained about which I had completely forgotten. I believe I'd gotten them more recently, so they didn't have the time-honored-ness nor the connected memories the other items had.

a small wood plaque-type thing I painted with a waterfall scene upon a purple background. Somehow it escaped my notice then that nothing is supporting the waterfall but for some floating rocks.