Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Periodic Table: Irony in Yellow

My name is AU although many know me by my common name, Gold. I am one of the precious elements, rare and hard to find in my natural habitat. I am considered by many to be the conundrum of the element table. Although not only am I valuable commodity and quite beautiful in any form I am too malleable to be used alone to make anything. I need to be mixed with one of my sister elements to be strong enough to make a lasting item, that keeps its shape. However, as soft as I am I am indestructible, as every gram of me that has ever been in the universe is still around.

Through the centuries, mankind has sought the answer of producing more of me. You see I can't be made and I can't be destroyed, it's one of the reasons I'm a precious mineral. They developed a whole science, called Alchemy just to study ways of making little old me. All those centuries of study and yet no time spent on the basic question. If you found a way to make me easily, I would soon lose my value and end up being worth less than a common potato.

I'd like to answer another riddle here as to why I am so hard to find in my natural state. At one time, I thought about moving to the big city. I thought, bright lights, being where 'It's at' would be kinda groovy, you know. In the end, I just couldn't take the rudeness, all these people yelling at me, telling me what to do. Everywhere I went, I kept hearing people scream,
"AU, get out da way," or, "AU, you can't park there."
I kept looking at these people and wondering how they knew my name, and most of the time I wasn't even the person in their way. I went back to my secure little hideaways and to peace and quiet.

Another strange fact about me, weather ironic or not is that as a people's money system falls in worth, I rise in value. Of course, the answer is that if a country feels it needs more money they simply print more. As they print more money, its value drops and as we already know, you can't do that with me. The people worrying about collapsing economies invest in me thus driving my value even higher.

So there you have it the reasons why I call myself ironic. I am rare and hard to find and yet so easy to see as I stand out from all the other elements around me. I am so soft I can't be made into anything by myself and still I'm indestructible. Lastly, in hard times as everything loses value my worth goes higher. So go ahead mankind, use me for whatever you wish but just remember I'll be here long after you're gone.

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