Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Greed

I'm not a big one for jewellery, but there's a pair of earrings I want. I can't show you pictures of them (I saw them four years ago), I can't tell you where to pick them up (they were hanging from a friend's earlobes) and I can't tell you exactly what they're worth (not much in money, but because I can't have them, effectively priceless).

I can tell you what they were like though. Think dark hair falling in soft waves. Black metal. Not shiny, just, very black. Think art nouveau wrought iron, winding, curling, looping. Distilling the waves from her hair into a dark lattice. Then, hanging from different points in the framework, garnets. Not real ones; just cut glass. But a deep, deep red. Like the arils of ripe pomegranates.

And every time she moved her head, the facets would catch the light, somehow turn it inwards, and glow. Like embers in a dying fire.