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From a young age, Elizabeth had lived in a house where she was barely noticed. Her stepmother – a short, cantankerous woman – looked right through her with cold, grey eyes, as if she were a glass partition, whilst her stepchildren openly despised and teased the girl. The only person who offered her any warmth was her father. It was he who taught her to love these marvellous plants.
In her small greenhouse, there were various species of cacti, striking in their diversity of forms: unusual Astrophytums and Opuntias, undemanding Mammillarias and Rebucias, flowering Echinopsis, and the unique Pelecyphora aselliformis and Espostoa lanata. Elizabeth loved all cacti, but she was particularly fond of Selenicereus grandiflorus. Her father had brought it from his homeland and called the plant Reina de la noche – ‘Queen of the Night’. It is with the Queen of the Night that this crypto story about 121 bitcoins is connected.
One evening, her father fell ill and ended up in hospital, and the atmosphere in the house changed completely. Her stepmother’s indifference turned into an icy coldness, and later into open hostility. After coming home from college, Elizabeth increasingly took refuge in her attic under the glass roof. Only there, amongst the prickly plants, did she feel safe. But, as they say, trouble never comes alone.
After her father’s death, her stepmother began to pick on Elizabeth and her conservatory in every possible way, and she was forced to move to a country house along with her plants. Years ago, Elizabeth’s mother had asked her husband to build a small glass conservatory there so that their 10-year-old daughter could pursue her passion – growing rare cacti. And now this conservatory had become a new home for hundreds of cacti.
A year had passed. Elizabeth lived modestly, tending to her cacti. They had long since become her only family. But one day she noticed that her beloved ‘Queen of the Night’ had outgrown its small, old pot. Elizabeth decided to repot the plant, without even suspecting that this would change her whole life forever.
As the girl carefully freed the thin roots from the old soil, her fingers came across something hard. Inside the pot, hidden not very deep beneath the soil, lay a small plastic container, and inside it – a small folded piece of paper. The note was completely covered in small handwriting. The handwriting was her father’s.
Inside the container was a note from her father, mentioning 121 bitcoins. Once, without really understanding cryptocurrency, he had nevertheless taken a chance and bought them. Later, he decided to leave them to his daughter as a gift when she finished college. But sadly, it was not to be.
‘If you’re reading this, it means I didn’t get to tell you the most important thing. I didn’t really know much about it, but I took a chance once… There are 121 bitcoins here. I wanted to give this to you when you finished college. Perhaps this will be your chance at a different life. I’m sorry that Mum and I left you so soon.”
Elizabeth, through the tears slowly rolling down her cheeks, switched on her laptop and followed all her father’s instructions in the note. Access to the crypto wallet opened up before her.
In the silence of the conservatory, she sat for a long time beside the cactus. It was the cactus that had kept this secret. It was the cactus that had become the bridge between the past and the future.
A week later, the ‘Queen of the Night’ blossomed, its petals unfolding slowly, as if entrusting its beauty to the darkness. Elizabeth looked at the flower and, for the first time in a long while, felt no pain. What had once been merely her father’s strange financial experiment now proved useful to her.
She was no longer lonely and knew that sometimes the greatest treasures are hidden not in banks or safes, but in the things we love. In the things where memories live.
