Through the Lenses of Time
Mary Smith was an ordinary woman leading a normal life until one day when an unexpected, peculiar object found its way to her. A pair of glasses, packed in a cobwebbed ridden box that arrived in the mail addressed to her from an anonymous sender. An ancient note with the glasses stated, 'Wearer of these lenses can see the rivers of time.' Mary, intrigued, put the pair on.
When she looked through those glasses, her living room turned into a meadow filled with beautiful, enchanting flowers. She stumbled and took off the glasses, blinking as her room reappeared around her. Intrigued, she did what any rational person would do; she decided to explore.
Mary put the glasses back on and bravely stepped forward. She found herself wandering the vibrant meadow, surrounded by trees brimming with flowers she had never seen before. Suddenly, she noticed a peculiar tree with a couple carving their initials into the bark. Astonishingly, the boy looked just like her grandfather. The girl--was that her grandmother? She had seen their old photographs. Moved by this impossible scenario, she realized that these glasses allowed her to visibly travel through time, viewing past events and historical moments.
Emboldened, Mary decided to dig deeper into history. She visited Victorian England, witnessing the coronation of Queen Victoria and partook in the jubilation of the common people. She roamed the streets, taking in every detail; the aristocratic air, the lavish attire, the horse-drawn carriages.
She then traveled through time to the American Revolution, standing amidst the cries of freedom. She witnessed the signing of the Declaration of Independence, an event so serene and pivotal that it sent chills down her spine.
Her curiosity eventually guided her to ancient Egypt. She marveled at the sight of the Great Pyramids being constructed, the grandeur of the Pharaohs, the worship of the Gods. It was like walking into a history book, yet so real and so vivid.
In her quest to time travel, Mary documented everything she witnessed, the people, the culture, their stories, their hardships, making her realize the unrecorded depth and diversity of human history. The experience was positively overwhelming, to say the least.
However, one day as she roamed the streets of Constantinople during the Byzantine Empire, she noticed the glasses' frame cracking. Surprised, she realized that there was a limitation to the usage of the glasses. They had started to deteriorate.
Faced with limited time, Mary had a decision to make. She had seen history, revisited the past world - did she still have the right to change it? To prevent disasters? Warn humanity of their future missteps? But temporal ethics weighed heavy on her conscience. She knew meddling with time could disrupt the course of history, leading to unimaginable repercussions.
Mary decided that it was not her place to interfere. Strengthened by this realization, she made her final venture to her childhood town. She saw her younger self, playing joyously in the yard with her parents. She cherished these delicate, heart-warming memories and decided to protect those memories for her younger self by not intervening in the past.
As the glasses finally broke, Mary found herself back in her ordinary living room. Her heart brimmed with experiences of a lifetime, enough stories to last several generations. She was no longer the ordinary Mary Smith she had been before. With every sight, every era that the glasses had allowed her to witness, a part of them had become a part of her.
As she cherished these memories, she knew the glasses were not a mere time travel device; they were a journey - a journey through the heart of humanity that stretched across time, an intimate view into the spectrum of human history.
Her adventure ended there, but she was not the same Mary Smith. The lenses had shattered, but the reflections from those shards had forever imprinted on her soul the rivers of time she had so intimately witnessed.