Alma's find
Notwithstanding, Alma decided to keep the coin. The trophy that the typhoon washed ashore on the edge of the West Lake. That token of providence in the devastation. Earlier this morning, Alma was walking Lupa, her faithful four-legged female companion. Toppled trees with their exposed roots, tangled and wiry like Medusa heads, framed the shoreside road - a dismal reminder of nature’s ferocious spectacle. Suddenly, a scraping sound woke her up from her pre-caffeine reverie. Metal scraped against gravel underneath her ballerina flat. Alma bent down to remove the unwanted object and froze in what may have appeared as a static seizure to the onlooker. For a few seconds, she blended with the Medusa head tree roots, her eyeballs popped out in disbelief, her wide open mouth suppressing the miscarried gasp that was about to become a lump in her throat. The unwanted object was a 10 lire Pegasus coin from the 1950s, Republica Italiana. The coin her mother wore on a pendant around her neck until