Lisa’s “one more day” with her ring turned into another week, another month, and another year. Continually promising herself that “today would be the last”, she began to want more and more of the attention she got from wearing her ring, and wore it more often and for longer periods of time than before. Eventually, the attention she got from her little village wasn’t enough for her. The news of her expensive ring reached around the country. Newspaper reporters wrote about her, radio announcers told of her, and television reporters wanted for have her on their shows. People flocked to catch a glimpse of this young village girl who had become a celebrity overnight. Lisa soaked in all this attention with seemingly incredible happiness.
Despite her outward happiness, Lisa wasn’t truly satisfied. Although she got worldwide attention and fame, deep inside she felt as if she had an empty hole that longed to be filled with something. She wasn’t entirely sure what, but had a good idea it had to do with the name that was engraved in her ring. Her father’s words about keeping the ring safe rattled in her head, but she knew she’d already disobeyed them and couldn’t do anything to change that.
As time wore on, Lisa’s ring began to tarnish more. She had been so used to seeing it daily that she barely noticed it, but the journalists, reporters, and movie stars did, and they made sure that the whole world knew of the fading of the ring’s beauty. One lonely night, after several years of slowly losing publicity, Lisa sat out on the street, alone and destitute, for her ring had tarnished to the point of losing nearly all its value and worth. As she turned her now worthless ring over in her hands, Lisa was startled to find that the man’s name, which had been engraved on the inside of the ring, was, though a bit discolored, still legible. She could still read the name of a man she didn’t even know, but somehow felt drawn to. Lisa’s thoughts then turned to her father, whose eyes she imagined would have had extreme pain in them when he awoke one morning to find his daughter gone, having taken the ring with her. Surely he knew what she was doing with the ring. His all-knowing mind would have figured out, long ago, what his daughter had planned to do with her gift. “How could I be so foolish?” Lisa thought to herself. “If only I hadn’t touched it that one night nearly five years ago. I would not be in this state today.” Then she wondered what her father would say if she returned to him now and begged his forgiveness. There would be no way he would forgive her now, with all that she’d done!
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