Agnė Kišonaitė If

The most important possession 

 
She had lost them, the most important thing in her life. She desperately
rummaged through her enormous black handbag with golden coloured embroidery
and golden handles still holding onto the hope she would find them in her bag, but
they weren't there, nor they were in the square-shaped black case. They weren't
anywhere on her new white work desk either. Ruth tried to think where she had put
them. Having already gone through her path to work in her head many times, she
didn't expect to remember now. But Ruth tried anyway. So, after waking up late for
work, she quickly got ready and ran out of the apartment she shares with her sister
Sarah. Having already missed the first train, she caught the second train. The sky
outside didn't reflect her mood throughout the morning up till that point. A warm
sun was shining when she slept through her alarm clock, the same sun shines now
but more glaringly than ever before. And to think it happened on the most
important day in her life where she had to deliver a presentation she had been
working on for months. Maybe she had left them on public transport. But
she couldn’t go back now. After spending a lot of time searching for them, she
went to do final preparations for her presentation.  
After a while, she came to terms with that she'll have to deliver a
presentation without seeing audiences’ responses which play a significant part in
which path a presenter takes.  
An hour before a presentation her sister called, who had just woken up
from her sleep to ask why she left her glasses near her bathroom mirror. And then
it clicked to Ruth, in the wake of waking up late and seeing it was sunny she
grabbed her sunglasses. And as she was prepared to grasp her normal glasses, she
saw that she wasn't going to make it into the second bus. So, she hastened out of
the door. Luckily her sister offered to bring them to her, but an hour was left before
she was about to give her talk, and traffic jams around this time are quite a
common thing. 
Providentially, 20 minutes till her presentation, Sarah called to go
outside to pick up her beloved glasses with a thick black-rimmed frame. Holding
them in her hands, Ruth almost shed a tear of joy. In the end she got back her
glasses and her project was received very well. 
 Dominykas Valiauga IC

Story “Lost and Found”

Losing an object can be extremely painful, especially if it has emotional value to

you. Now I want to tell you a story about how I lost one of my favourite items in
the whole wide world. It all started in the summer of ’86, when my grandmother
received a beautiful, antique, colourful ring for her marriage anniversary, which
was later passed on to me during my 13th birthday. From then on, I carried the ring
everywhere I went. But everything changed when my family and I decided to go to
Italy to have some time to ourselves. After we had made it to a lake Como, my
father decided it would be a good idea to visit the beach and rent a paddle board.  
“I accept your proposition” I shouted in an overly formal voice. 
 After about an hour, I was already standing on a paddle board about 100
meters away from the shore. My grandmother’s ring, which I made into a necklace,
was hanging on my neck.  
Now at this point the story is getting pretty boring and you’re probably
wondering ‘Dominykas, so how did you lose the ring?’ 
And don’t worry, dear reader, I’ll spice it up. Now when I say that I really had no
idea what I was doing, I mean it. It was all going fine up until the point that I
relaxed and fell off the board. Luckily I kept my cool and swam ashore safely. As I
got to my apartment, I noticed that the necklace was missing and I started
panicking. There was no point in searching for it, since it was a huge lake and I
completely gave up. Even as I ate my beloved Indian food, I felt no joy. 
After a few more sleepless and heartbroken nights, it was already time to leave. I
packed my bags, put on my headphones and started listening to Jim Croce’s “Time
in a bottle”. My family and I decided to visit the beach one last time. As I was
listening to Jim repeat the lyrics “If I could save time in a bottle”, I noticed
something shiny lying on the beach. It was an old, transparent bottle, which I
obviously decided to open. Inside there was a tiny piece of paper, which said
‘Hope this brings back someone’s joy’ along with my lost necklace. And just
like that my smile came back to life, as I was quite literally holding time in a
bottle. 
 Martyna Mituzaitė Ia
It was so hot 
 
“Where did it go?” she was searching her purse as I was glancing around the
crowded park. Joyous children were running around and playing in the fountain. It
was midday; therefore, sun was shining in the sky with all its capacity. It was so
hot. An image of a lake that I got a glimpse of while walking to the park flashed
before my eyes. It looked like it was made of porcelain, so clear and tranquil,
with striking dragonflies buzzing around. I was wishing to go there. It was so hot.
Suddenly I felt a stream of something cold running down my hand. Looking up, I
realized the refreshing-looking mint chocolate ice cream was melting in my own
very hands. The only thing I could do was repeat ‘it’s so hot’ in my head.  
“I could swear I put it in my wallet, where did it go?”. My mom was still
desperately searching her purse as clueless me watched her. “I clearly remember
putting 100-dollar bill in my wallet, I don’t understand… Could it be that we were
robbed in the broad daylight?” She squinted a little, trying her best to
remember every place she’d gone that day, trying to understand where the bill
she’s supposed to pay for her daughter’s ice cream with could had possibly
gone. Suddenly, her expression shifted from concentrated to a horrified one. “No
way… There’s no way I could’ve thrown the bill away into the bin next to ATM,
when I was throwing out the check… It can’t be…” 
Time halted. All I could do was sorrowfully watch as my ice cream melted
away with the gentle breeze. It was so hot.

Austėja Lyvaitė Id
Ticket of fate 

I woke up by the bright ray of sunshine shining into my eyes. Still sleepy, I

turned around to check what time is it and my heart almost stopped. It was already
9:20 in the morning. In 40 minutes my plane to France will take off. Having almost
no hope left, I jumped out of bed and began getting ready as fast as I possibly
could. “There's still a slight chance that I'll make it, I just need to hurry”,
I reasoned. Luckily, I had already packed all my stuff the night before, so I didn't
have to worry about that. After finding my phone, I called a taxi and in ten minutes
I was standing in the street, carrying my suitcase. I double-checked that I had my
phone and plane ticket with me. I was shocked by how quickly I got to the airport,
arriving in just thirteen minutes. After thanking the driver, I rushed to the airport.
The clock on the wall showed 9:45 a.m. “Oh my god, I'm definitely not going to
make it”, I said to myself. I hurriedly got in line for security checkpoint, but
I just couldn't find my ticket when the security guard demanded it. I could have
sworn that I had it in my pocket when I left home. 
 “I'm sorry, but I can't find my ticket and my flight departs in fifteen minutes, can
you help me somehow? “ I asked the worker in despair. 
 “I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that. Besides, your plane is about to take off,
so I think it's best if you simply wait for another flight”. 
 “And when will that be? I really need to be in Paris this evening”. 
 “Let me check, the next flight to Paris is in three hours, and there are a
couple of seats still available”.  
“That's a relief, I'm still going to be late, but it's better than nothing”, I said, taking
a deep breath.  
And here I was sitting at the airport, waiting for my flight. Having contacted
my friends in France, I informed them, that I’ll be arriving late. I was still in
disbelief by today's challenges, but I managed to collect myself. As I was about to
go to get myself a cup of water, I heard this shocking announcement: “We're sorry
to announce this, but the 10:00 a.m. plane to Paris was forced to make an
emergency landing due to technical problems. No passengers were hurt. We
apologize for any inconvenience”.  

Vaiva Pauliukaitytė, I a
 
I slid my hand into a bag, which was hanging besides my thigh, to reach for my
phone. But something felt really wrong. The phone wasn’t among all the
belongings in the bag. Searching for it over and over again, I started panicking. To
lose such an important possession in a foreign country is a true nightmare. I just
stood there, in the middle of the sideway, my head thrown back because of the
frustration. A couple of curse words escaped my lips after trying to find the phone
for one more time. Now I didn’t even know how to come back to the hotel. And
what was I supposed to do? 
 
“Is everything alright?” a deep man’s voice reached my ears and I turned my head
to the right to face the stranger. The man was around thirty years old, had coffee
brown eyes, his dark hair was slicked back with a lot of hair gel and, for some
reason, he seemed to be nice. I decided to give it a try and ask him to help me out. 
 
“Uhm, not really.” I sighed, pulling my hand out of the bag and zipping it up. “I’ve
lost my phone and I’m not local, so… I’m lost.” I explained as calm as I could. 
 
“Do you remember where was the last place you used your phone or pulled
something out of the bag?” the man asked calmly, sliding his hand into a pocket of
a black leather jacket. 
 
“Oh gosh, really.” I gasped and began to run through the memories of the past
hour. “I think it was the café around the corner. I suppose I just left it there.” I
rubbed my forehead with a sigh. “I started panicking so bad that I even
forgot how to think like a sober person.” 
 
“It’s okay.” he smiled sweetly. “Do you want me to.. I don’t know… to escort you
there perhaps?” he questioned, fixing his hair a bit. 
 
“Yeah, sure.” I returned him a smile. 
 
The man, who presented himself as Alex later, accompanied me to the café where,
to my surprise, I found my phone on the bar table. Just where I left it. Since
everything was back to normal again, I was calm and laughed about my silliness,
Alex decided to order me another cup of coffee.  

Pijus Vasiliauskas Ie
Mysterious loss of three 
 
 
One time my friends and I decided to travel to Talin the capital city of Estonia.
When I think about it, it was truly a spontaneous idea that was not thought-
through, but anyways me and my friends Jenn and Ked had a great time except for
one mysterious accident with an old bookshop keeper.  
 
 
As we were walking around the old city of Talin, we decided to visit an old
mysterious bookshop. It was filled with dusty, antique books and even some old
medieval scripts that I would personally think to belong to a museum, but
anyways I, Jenn, and Ked decided to walk around the shop while checking out
books, because all three of us are true bookworms. While we walked around this
antique shop, which was of astonishing beauty, we noticed an old seller sitting in
the corner behind the counter. As we walked around, we started to suspect that he
was following us with his eyes, watching every step we made, almost as he
expected us to try and steal something. Nevertheless, we each found a book that we
thought would interest us and went to the counter to pay. The seller was actually
really nice. When he saw three teenagers buying books he started to smile and his
turtlelike skin became even more wrinkly and his eyes, which were ten times
bigger because of his enormous glasses were glowing with joy. We paid for our
books and as we were leaving the shopkeeper turned to us and said” When you buy
an old book with an incredible world inside of it, you always have to sacrifice
something for it to unfold its beauty and become visible to your eyes” As he said
this he went deeper into the store behind the shelves. All three of us were
incredibly confused, with the words the shopkeeper said. As we were walking
around Talin it fell out of our head and we forgot about those weird words of the
seller man. 
 
 
During our time in Talin, we were too busy exploring the city and its breath-taking
beauty we never sit down to read the books we had bought and so we only opened
them when we came back home to Lithuania. And after some time as we started
reading those books, we noticed that all of us three have lost our most used thing. I
lost my AirPods while Jenn could not find her glasses, as well as Ked, noticed that
his sketchbook was gone. All three of us were truly confused because neither of us
had ever lost those things. As time passed those things were gone almost like in the
water and we were unable to find them. After some time as I was reading
the book, I bought in Talin I noticed a small drawing on the back of the book, and I
could not believe my eyes. It was a miniature drawing of AirPods. On a book that
is almost sixty years old. And then I remembered the words the bookshop keeper
said to us in Talin. After some time Ked found a drawing of a sketchbook and Jenn
found one of her glasses in the same book she bought in Talin. Although it is hard
to believe but we think we truly had to sacrifice something as the vendor said. To
this day it remains a mystery how that it is even possible. 
 Augustinas Punis, Ie 
Lost phone 
 
Having delivered the passengers to the hotel I decided to visit the local
shop. It was only a few miles away, so I thought that I would make it back to the
hotel before the midnight. I was thinking of buying a bottle of champagne to
celebrate the start of another journey. As I was driving to the shop, I sang my
favorite Italian song -“Soldi”. After a short time, I arrived at the shop. I checked
my pockets, but I couldn’t find my wallet. Then, I realized that it probably fell
under my chair, while I was driving from the airport to the hotel. And then, as I
was reaching down under my chair and wobbling my arms like a crazy person
while trying to grab my wallet, I saw it. I saw a small phone lying underneath one
of my passenger’s chairs. 
I was unpacking my bags when I realized that something wasn’t right.
‘Where’s my phone?’ I hushed. I checked everything: my pockets, the bags that I
was unpacking, the sheets that I laid on upon entering the room. I even asked my
parents if they had seen my phone. They said no and told me to continue
searching. I knew there was no point in checking the drawers of my room because
I hadn’t even opened them. My mom suggested that I should recall my steps and
maybe that way, I’ll find my phone. But it didn’t help. The phone was nowhere to
be seen. And then it hit me. I must’ve left it in the minibus because that was the
last time that I can remember having it in my hands.  
I came up to my dad and asked him if he knew when our bus would come.
He told me to go ask our guide, so I did. The guide called the bus driver and asked
him if he was close. Turns out, he was already on his way. After hearing the great
news, I immediately went outside and waited for the bus in the hotel drive
through. As the minibus approached me, I saw the driver smiling behind the
wheel. The bus stopped right in front of my nose. The doors opened. And the
driver came out holding my phone in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the
other.