TLoS: UAA 20: Lockets of the Lost...

Ddraigtanto was rather tentative about ascending to the shelf where her father once slept. It was a golden rule when she was a young boy; never go into Schakri's bit of the cave. This was a message Ddraig was quite fortunate to understand the first time, and as such never learnt the hard way what happened if she disobeyed. That did however mean Ddraig had never been up there, and as such, had no idea what Schakri kept up there...

It was actually pretty dark in that part of the cave. Still, Ddraig remained reasonably capable of seeing as she looked to find just what was up here. The black dragoness felt quite a nervous chill go up her spine; even now, she had the feeling she shouldn't be there, and would probably get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out what she was doing, regardless of being the queen of a small empire, or anything else for that matter.

Continuing to look around, she felt a slight sharp thing dig into her paw. Lifting her foot up to see, it appeared to be a shard of the broken glass from the bottle earlier. Flicking the broken shard out of her paw (fortunately, dragons have quite tough scales and skin, this was barely a pointy stone to her), she looked up to see the rest of the broken bottle. Said bottle had hit the wall of the cave and shattered, spreading its shard quite far; however, a majority of them were now in a small pile on a rectangular slab in the corner of the wall; it was quite bug, very wide and quite tall.
"That's quite odd." Ddraig thought to herself. "...That rock seems quite out of place..."
Said rock did a lot to further stoke her curiosity, it just didn't seem right; the stone was a little too smooth and a little too oddly positioned against the wall, as thought it had actually been positioned against the wall...

Approaching the stone, Ddraig took a look at the stone, noticing a slight bit of damage to the rock, recent damage. Odd, a bottle shouldn't have damaged a rock like that! Unless...
Ddraig knocked at the stone with a clenched paw. Two things suddenly became apparent: Firstly, the rock didn't sound like rock, it sounded more like some strange kind of pottery, as though the rock was a fake; secondly, the rock sounded hollow, as though there was some kind of void behind it!

Ddraig briefly wondered how on earth, or why on earth, Schakri would have a giant, ceramic fake rock in his part of the cave, where he would've gotten it from, and how he was able to make it look so convincingly stone-like. These thoughts quickly passed however as a new one was beginning to emerge: Would it move? And if so, what's behind it?
These thoughts quickly manifested into action. Ddraig ran her paw along the back corner of the rock, yes! There was a gap! She gripped, and sure enough, she was able to get a grip on the 'rock' from behind it. Then, she pulled. It was quite difficult, the recent changes to her body had left her slightly weaker in the legs than before, but still, it gave, and suddenly fell to the floor, breaking into pieces with a large, deep crashing sound!
"Oh... My..." Ddraigtanto muttered to herself. The 'rock' had been concealing a pretty sizeable hole in the side of the cave wall, as though it had either naturally formed or have been dug out into the side of the wall. Schakri had reason to hide this hole, as he'd been storing many, many things within the space!
"Guys!" Ddraig called out. "You might want to come have a look at this!"

The contents of the hole were mostly mundane; junk, alcohol, empty bottles and the like, but then, Ddraig noticed the chest, or chests.
"Wow..." Cynder muttered.
"Hey, help me get those out of there." Ddraig asked the others.
Between the four of them, the two chests, each were quite sizeable, were lifted from the hole and placed on the cave floor. The locks on both had already been broken, probably by Schakri a long time ago; as a result, they would be quite easy to open, but which one should they open first?
One seemed more elaborate, trimmed with gold and its wood was smooth, varnished and looked quite well maintained. However, the other, while looking rather worse for wear, looked like Schakri had at least tried to fix the lock put on it, without success; suggesting he held that one with more value than the other. That would be the chest Ddraig opened first; none of the others even bothered to ask to do the honours themselves, they were quite aware this should've been Ddraig's job, this stuff did once belong to her father after all.

Initially, the contents disappointed Ddraig, but that was before Ddraig realised just what this stuff was.
The chest appeared to be almost entirely full of papers, documents and a few other things, including a smaller box within the chest. It took a few seconds for Ddraig to realise that, logically, these papers must have meant something to Schakri for him to actually keep them at all!
The papers were all nearly tied together with a few lines of string; others had been carefully returned to their envelopes, which each had a broken wax seal which Ddraig swore she'd seen before somewhere.
"What's in that little box?" Eve asked. "Looks like a jewellery box or something."
It was roughly jewellery box sized and shaped, and so, due to supposed popular demand, that was something Ddraig looked at first. The box was held shut by a delicate little latch on the front of the lid.
Opening the box, Ddraig suddenly gasped sharply in surprise.
"What? What is it?" Eve spoke up, noticing the look on Ddraig's face and her quivering lip. From the box, Ddraig withdrew a small locket on a string, her paw shaking as she stared at it. In essence, it wasn't much to be exited about; if it was made of silver, it was a very cheap, crude silver, and it was attached to a pretty simple piece of string; it was nothing special, and yet it was to Ddraig.
"You see this?" Ddraig spoke in a bit of a shaky whisper to the others. "This, this was my mother's locket. I remember it, she used to wear this. I never got to see what picture was inside it, or if there was a picture at all." The dragon queen smiled slightly, practically hugging the thing. "Well, if I leave here with only one thing, it's going to be this."
That was something Ddraig said, before taking an additional look through chest to see what else there was in there.
"Wait, wait wait..." She fumbles in the chest for a short while, before pulling out a portrait which was practically buried at the bottom of the chest, as though Schakri himself was trying to hide it within the chest. "Hey, hey, take a look." She instructed, mostly to Eve and Cynder.
The portrait was of a dragoness. She was young, quite pretty. She boasted a suit of green scales, with a red underbelly, wing membranes and spines. She had heterochromia, one of her eyes was blue, the other purple. What was striking however was that, aside from spines and the differences in colour, she looked a lot like Ddraig.
"Eve, Cynder." Ddraig spoke, beaming. "This is Selena Caesin. My mother, and by extension, your grandmother." The influx of old memories was potent in Ddraig's mind, but she was curious. "Why do you think Schakri kept all this stuff about my mother? By the end of it, it was like he hated both of us. I don't understand it..." She took a quick look at the papers. Maybe they held a clue? "Can you give me some time alone please?"