My aunt, Harriet, was a woman of many eccentricities. She ate everything with a spoon, and her cottage, number eight on the lane, was filled with peculiar trinkets. My brother and I always knew she had a secret, but we aren’t quite sure what it was until her passing. She left me a single, cryptic note.

The note’s scrawled handwriting was difficult to read, but it hinted at a treasure hidden in the woods. The first clue read: “The auger will find what the augur foretold.” I was stumped. I had no idea what an auger was, let alone an augur. A few hours of searching revealed that an auger is a tool for drilling holes, and an augur is someone who foretells the future. The clue was a riddle, not a direction.

I turned to the next line. It mentioned a “mistake between an auk and an orc.” I’d been on an oar-powered boat with my brother to see a puffin rookery once, which is a type of auk. But an orc? The only ones I knew were in fantasy books.

Puzzled, I decided to go on a trip to the cottage. The journey from my flat was long, and as the lorry’s axle creaked with every turn, I wondered if I’d ever figure out these clues. Upon arrival, I felt a strange sense of awe. The cottage was exactly as I remembered it. The garden gate was open, and I walked away from the house to the small shed in the back. A small, rusty spade was inside, and next to it, an old, wooden oar. Could this be it? My eye scanned the shed, and I saw a strange symbol carved into the back wall, a small circle with a line through it. Was this the ore? Or something else?

I finally understood. The aural hint was in the way my aunt spoke, and the oral tradition of her tales. She’d always told me stories of a treasure at the bottom of the lake, in a boat. The boat’s anchor was to be set aweigh with a simple touch. I found the ancient boat and saw that it had an old, broken axle near the front. The boat itself had a crack in the hull, and I had to bail out the water.

Then I saw it. A huge bale of wool, sitting by the boat. As I approached, a small auk flew out from the inside of the bale, startling me. The note was right! An auk could be mistaken for an orc if you weren’t looking closely. I looked at the hole the auk had flown from. Inside was a small, dusty box.

I opened the box to find not gold or jewels, but a collection of old photographs and letters. A letter from my great-grandfather explained that the “treasure” was the stories and memories they had shared as a family. My aunt had left this legacy for me.

The old boat creaked in the wind. “Aye,” I said to myself, smiling. “This is a treasure I can appreciate.”

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Vocabulary Notes

Eccentricities
Definition: The quality of being unconventional and slightly strange. An eccentricity is often a peculiar habit or mannerism.
Example: “My aunt, Harriet, was a woman of many eccentricities.”
Similar words: peculiarities, oddities, quirks, idiosyncrasies.

Cryptic
Definition: Having a meaning that is mysterious or obscure. Something cryptic is often difficult to understand.
Example: “She left me a single, cryptic note.”
Similar words: puzzling, baffling, mysterious, obscure, perplexing.

Augur
Definition: A person who foretells the future; a prophet or soothsayer. (Note that the homophone auger is a tool for drilling holes, which the story also uses.)
Example: “The auger will find what the augur foretold.”
Similar words: seer, prophet, soothsayer, oracle.

Awe
Definition: A feeling of reverential respect mixed with wonder or amazement. It is a powerful emotion that can be inspired by something grand, beautiful, or powerful.
Example: “Upon arrival, I felt a strange sense of awe.”
Similar words: wonder, amazement, reverence, astonishment, wonderment.

Legacy
Definition: Something that is a result of events in the past, or something handed down from an ancestor or predecessor.
Example: “My aunt had left this legacy for me.”
Similar words: inheritance, bequest, heritage, tradition.

Story written by Gemini Pro AI.

Image created by imagiyo AI.

CC Music: Drifting at 432 Hz – Unicorn Heads.

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