The Gifts

There were three gifts, made of metal with slide openings, with a little glass window.  Though they were more than decorative, ornate even, they had a heavy understanding attached somehow, like it permitted the ethos of the viewer to be warned.  Each of the three was exactly the same.

1910, Russia

A child finds one.  A twenty seven year old thief finds one.  A dark hair woman in her late teens finds the last one.

Each has a similar experience.  They find them difficult to open.  Each eventually presses a finger to the glass window somehow, and the window glows red.  They are all over come with emotion, but only the kind that can touch the very soul, the deep earth shattering awe that comes in partaking in something that will never be forgotten for a lifetime, or a century, which ever came first.  All three are overcome with the desire to think of a wish.  The child wishes for Luck, then divine poverty.  The twenty seven year old thief thinks of Power.  The woman in her late teens, in her shitty pre war Russian apartment, wishes for Seduction.

Rushes of voices through the child's frame.  An older girl in her late teens is speaking.  "You must give me what is in your gift," the voice says.  Then a booming males voice "No, I am stealing that one."  Then the woman:  "You can't until you undress me."  The child takes the box, leaves, and buries it in the woods.  He finds a gold coin.  It was a test of Luck.  Divine poverty didn't come True.