Amaretto was eight years, two days, thirteen hours, twenty seven minutes and forty two seconds when Aunt Katherine gave her an extraordinary gift. Aunt Katherine was extraordinary wealthy in some way and insisted on using all of it to spoil Francis. Diana of course never stopped her, seeing as Katherine was her godmother, but she refused to take anything for herself. She worked two separate jobs in order to provide for her and her daughter and would not take charity. So Katherine, respecting that wish, used her money to spoil Francis rotten. In spite of this, Francis; whom Katherine insisted calling “Her little Amaret”, “Ama” or more often simply by her middle name of Amaretto, insisted on instilling values into the girl. Francis was never bratty and she was never willful for the gifts that she received. Francis was the most well mannered girl that anyone had ever met. She did have a stubborn streak sometimes, but that was perfectly acceptable to Aunt Katherine.
“All women should be stubborn sometimes. It is the only way that they can ever get their husbands in line,” Aunt Katherine would say. As far as Amaretto had seen though, Aunt Katherine never had a husband. Aunt Katherine only had a string of fabulous boyfriends.
“Men should be like tissues,” her aunt would say whenever the girl would ask her about this. “They should be strong, durable, and disposable.”
Amaretto would nod at this advice and then secretly disregard it. Her aunt would give her a lot of advice and sometimes Amaretto would listen to it, and sometimes she would not. The day after her eight birthday when her Aunt Katherine gave her a gift however was exceptionally interesting. That day, Aunt Katherine came dressed in forest greens, sea greens, and all the other greens in between. Her earrings were giant large round emeralds, she had a a topaz the size of a birds egg hanging from her neck and several rings on her fingers.
Amaretto frowned and then nodded when Aunt Katherine walked into the room asking her if she wanted a present. Aunt Katherine's presents were always strange but interesting. Just last year, she had gotten the girl a sextant and a Barbie. The year before, Amaretto had received a stack of books. The year before that, Aunt Katherine had given her eighty-two separate colored hair ribbons, all festively decorated. Aunt Katherine had also every year given her a dress in a new festive color for her to wear. Amaretto didn't wear them often though because of how odd they looked to her. The previous year, the color had been a captivating yellow and she wasn't sure if she wanted that.
This year however, all that her aunt gave her was a small wooden box. Amaretto did not want to say that she was disappointed, but she most certainly looked it at that moment. Katherine chuckled as she was wont to do and then said, “All you have to do is open it you silly girl, and you will see the most amazing thing in the world.”
Amaretto opened the box and gasped aloud when she saw what was within the small confines of the box. There within, settled on a small satin pillow, was a beautiful hourglass. The whole thing was made from gold and on the top there was a small little red gem. Encircling it were thin bands of silver, especially in the middle where it clearly stated:
Il tempo vola, savor ogni momento. I dadi di tempo, bloccano il sentimento. Vite di tempo, libertà del ritrovamento per sempre. Le bugie di tempo, non la dimenticano mai.
Which when translated from Italian means:
Time flies, savor each moment. Time dies, capture the sentiment. Time lives, find freedom forever. Time lies, never forget it.
This strange hourglass was pretty, and was also on a thick golden chain. As Amaretto stared at it, her Aunt came around and plucked it from her hand. Katherine then slung it, chain and all, over her head and smiled. “There we have it then. You look right smart with that on, now don't you.”
Aunt Katherine smiled in such a beatific way, that Amaretto ran off to see herself in the bathroom mirror. As she was running, she heard Aunt Katherine call out behind her saying, “If you don't mind when you come back, bring your aunt a martini!”
Amaretto dashed down the hall and into the bathroom and looked at the small hourglass that hung around her neck, she noticed a strange occurrence and phenomenon. The sand, which in a usual glass, flows from top to bottom, was most assuredly stuck at the top. She shook the glass and came up with nothing, she then tried to flip it upside down and found that the hourglass itself could spin inside of the frame. She stared at it and then gave it a vicious spin at the absolute last moment. The glass itself spun and then the room seemed to twist, her eyes saw stars and she blacked out.
An uncountable amount of time passed before Amaretto opened her eyes and looked up from the couch and stared at her Aunt, who was cautiously sipping from a rather large martini, three olives balanced precariously inside the glass by a rather thick toothpick.
She was lying on the couch and a blanket had been placed over her and at the moment, her aunt yelled something at the TV. She was watching Soap Operas.
“Oh Sami you can't do this again! You'll ruin your wedding to Lucas! Try to think this time, and tell the damn truth or Lexi will have you in her diabolical snare!”
Amaretto stared at aunt Katherine and then suddenly, Katherine swiveled her head to the side and stared back. Deep green eyes twitched for a moment and then Kathrine had a bored look on her face.
“Are you hungry?”
“Not really,” Amaretto replied, sure that she had done something.
“You really gave the glass a spin didn't you. I lost you for about three hours.” Aunt Katherine looked mater-of-fact about it and Amaretto frowned. She had been lost for three hours? She had merely gone to the bathroom, there was no way one could loose her for three hours. She had been right there. She refused to believe that her aunt had swindled her mind in any way shape and or form. However, there was the case that it did seem later in the day, or actually, earlier in the day than it had started out as. Her mind thought that this assumption was incorrect and therefore pushed it away as a mere insecurity.
In fact however, her mind had indeed been right and her whole thought process had been right on the crux of the matter. When Amaretto had been given the gift by her Aunt Katherine, it had been 1:27 PM in the afternoon. She had then run to the bathroom and upon discovering the glass could turn in the holder, she gave it a hard spin which made the glass itself rotate in the frame for a total of 18 and a half turns, or a full 6,660 degrees. It was a horrible misunderstanding that occurred next.
According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, it is predicted that time does not flow at a fixed rate: moving clocks appear to tick more slowly relative to their stationary counterparts. But this effect only becomes really significant at very high velocities that approach the speed of light. When "generalized" to include gravitation, the equations of relativity predict that gravity, or the curvature of spacetime by matter, not only stretches or shrinks distances (depending on their direction with respect to the gravitational field) but also will appear to slow down or "dilate" the flow of time.
In most circumstances in the universe, such time dilation is minuscule, but it can become very significant when spacetime is curved by a massive object such as a black hole; or in this case, the house in which Amaretto lived. You see, when she turned it, the hourglass' special properties kicked in and sent Amaretto three hours into the future. That is to say, for the next twelve minutes and thirty two seconds, Aunt Katherine was not quite sure what to do and was totally beside herself. She searched the house up and down and then sat down, at which point in time, Amaretto appeared from the kitchen with the martini that she later began to drink and promptly disappeared again, only to later appear a minute and five seconds later upon the couch crashing into a state of sleep that lasted only for another two minutes and fifty two seconds.
The facts were these: the hourglass was actually more of a special gift than Amaretto knew. Her Aunt was in fact, just the godmother that Amaretto indeed need, but not a normal godmother. Her godmother was indeed what she had told her mother. However, when Katherine had first met Diana Covington, she had unfortunately, or rather fortunately omitted the part in the front. You see, Katherine when she reached the hospital, she had a palm pilot which told her all the things that she needed to know.
You see when she reached the hospital, she was given the information that she needed and the words that she was supposed to say when she introduced herself. As she did, the palm pilot actually had a mix up, or a glitch as we call it these days, and the part where she was supposed to be her godmother was supposed to say the words “Fairy Godmother”. Now if you are wondering where that was supposed to come in, then you would be correct in assuming that Katherine was indeed a strange person. She was not a normal person either. In fact, Katherine was Seelie Sidhe, also known as Celtic faerie.
Now as we all know, the faerie are separated into two courts. The Seelie, or light court, and the Unseelie, which is the dark court. These two courts, while constantly fighting with each other have finally entered the century in which we are living. You see, no one walked the dark cobbled pathways at night after the evening. People now drove automobiles and now were on cell phones to find out if people were around and big cities that had too much light. There were no dark places and most certainly no more forests around, which had been given over to large byways and asphalt roads.
There was no way that people could be a part of that old world any more, so the Sidhe began to catch up. Soon, the Sidhe were more technologically advanced than anyone else in the world, understanding the intricacies of WiFi connections and cellular phones, fast cars, overnight parking, and the invention of the latte. All in all, both courts actually put aside their differences long enough to catch up to the technological world, and then once again started the war, only on a much grander scale that involved not only the faerie world, but the human one as well. Now the fight spanned over wireless networks, global corporations and even the stock market.
If one knew where to look in a corporation, then one knew that there were Sidhe involved in it. In this case, there were Sidhe involved in the whole gamut of corporations. This however does not explain the glitch. The glitch was caused by a hacker trying to get where they shouldn't be, in order to get a better leg up on day trading. The glitch caused Katherine, whose last name was unknown, to have the wrong information and thus, a lot of the things that should have been done were not done due to deletion.
This birthday present that she gave to Amaretto was in fact, not supposed to be handed to Amaretto until she had reached the majority of her age at twenty-one. Instead, the glitch had upended a rather large quantity of information. However, one cannot say that Amaretto's Aunt Katherine did not explain.
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