Little (dark) story on this. Years ago, on a rainy day in Paris, I stumbled into a museum to get dry. It was @museecluny and turned out to be a wonderful jumble of very old, well loved things. My jam. (1/x) https://twitter.com/undarkmag/status/1246339977572757504

The main thing I remember about it though, over a decade later, is a single exhibit. Things French Jews had hidden in the walls of their houses and down wells during times of plague. (2/x)

It was valuables and money and family keepsakes. Coins and cups and jewelry. All hidden away, to protect it from neighbors-turned-potential-murderers who might blame Jews for disease and use that as an excuse to loot. (3/x)

The thing that stood out to me most was a wedding belt. A beautiful, delicate golden circlet. It had words worked into it. Don’t remember exact but this was love. This was what someone wore, instead of a ring. And that’s when it hit me ... (4/x)

That wedding belt was in a museum. It had been found in cache in a wall hundreds of years after the plague ended. (5/x)

The people who hid it had not come back for it. (6/x)

You don’t just leave your wedding jewelry, this thing that represents your love and your hopes, in a wall for safekeeping and forget about it. The fact that the belt was here, now, meant something happened to those people. (7/x)

I don’t know how they died. I don’t know if the bacteria got them before the hate and fear of their neighbors died. But they died. And no one was left to come back for the belt. (8/x)