The Three Keys

This isn't my best short story but it is my favorite. It speaks for itself and the message is contained in the young man's speech.

Instead of opening the box, she threw the key out to sea. She saw it floating, nay drifting away, never to return. She threw the box into another box, and threw its key from atop a mountain. Then, she put the two boxes into another box, tied the final key to a helium balloon, and let it go into the air.

Her love, whom she was hiding the contents of the boxes from, got into a hot-air balloon with the most sophisticated tracking equipment, and retrieved the key. Then, he took a tank and metal detectors and found the key lost in the mountaintops. Finally, he took a fleet of submarines and, after five years, found the last key.

Her love took the three keys and presented them to her. "My love," he said, "I have spent all of my millions in search of the three keys to the object in the chests. However, I present them to you now, knowing you may take the keys and scatter them once more. For I know ypu keep the chests dear to you, an dI know that in taking them, I'd hurt you emotionally and, perhaps, physically. Please do with them what you will." Her love was kneeling, holding the keys in his palms, raised towards her. He resembled an ancient Greek, offering food to a god.

She left him kneeling and returned with the chests. He unlocked the first chest to find the secind chest. He unlocked the second chest to find the third chest. He unlocked the final chest and revealed a small scrap of paper. As he picked it up she smiled, and he turned it iver and, reading it, was tightly embraced and kissed by her.

The paper fluttered down and was swept up in the breeze. It fell, face-up, in the ocean, never to be seen again. Before the paper was destroyed by the water, it read: "My heart".

Author's Note

People have whined about the ending before, --the paper is symbolic!
...Sad; they didn't get it....