Piper carefully opened the old box, its hinges rusting over and decrepit, and inside the felt-lined interior was a small collection of glassware.
The box was about a foot tall and just as wide, and it was the heavy wood lent it the heft it needed to nearly cave in Piper's crotch. It opened up from the top a good two inches down, decrepit and rusted metal squealing at being disturbed from their slumber as Piper slowly lifted the heavy lid back to reveal the box's contents.
"Oh sweet its a liquor box!" Parker said suddenly and excitedly
"Parker what the fuck is a liquor box?" Piper leaned back and gave her sister a decent 'you're the biggest idiot I know' face
"Yeah, like some rich people used to keep their alcohol in personalized little boxes and shit way back when." she sounded all too certain about her hypothesis as she extended one hand over Piper's shoulder and towards one of the vials, "C'mon, lemme see."
Piper allowed her sister to take one of the vials from its crevice carved into the wood and felt. Parker took one of the middle ones, leaving two vials to the left and one to the right of the centered notches. Brandy-brown liquid sloshed in Parker's vial as she lifted it up in front of the light. Her pretty features squinting, she examined the small glass bottle with a surprising amount of intrigue and depth. Meanwhile, three other liquids of a similar shade and coloration sat undisturbed, still in the box.
"Looks like a whiskey." Parker pursed her lips a bit in concentration, "This some kind of... shot glass?"
"It's not really a glass if you can't put it down." Piper commented as she continued to examine the confines of the box, "And shouldn't there be... I don't know, more of it?"
"Check underneath the felt. It's probably a false bottom, rest of the liquor's in there." Parker said in a quick, almost prescriptive manner as she uncorked the vial and took a whiff—immediately regretting her decision, "Fuck, I think it's gone bad."
"You... know an awful lot about liquor boxes."
"I have hobbies."
Piper did as she was told and, sure enough, the part of the box that held the vials lifted right out. Underneath, the felt continued and insulated a rather large, spherical glass with a long thin bottleneck. It was big enough to touch the box's felt sides, and it had been there for so long that Piper struggled a bit to get it out. The decanter had a good weight to it, even held by the neck. But, curiously enough, instead of a crystal topper, it too had been corked. The same amber liquid sloshed inside the larger bottle as it did inside what Parker had (with surprising collegiate insight) declared to be a shot glass.
"What's this?" Piper put the bottle down gently on the couch and reached back into the box, "Some kind of... paper?"
"Distillery notes, probably." Parker braved another sniff, "People used to make their own alcohol, probably wanted to make more of it down the line."
Piper unfolded the piece of parchment—it felt like Bible paper, thin and delicate. The age of the document didn't help anything at all. Even unfolding it, Piper ripped it a little bit at the sides. Otherwise, it was in pretty good shape. The illustrations held up well enough, at least. But whether it was the age or just bad penmanship, she couldn't make heads or tails of whatever it actually said.
"Was I right?" Parker asked, clearly enjoying being good at this one thing, "Come on, was I right?"
"I can't tell." Piper said with some strain, "The handwriting is microscopic... and very angry."
"Gimme that." Parker snatched the parchment away from Piper, crinkling it horribly and ultimately coming to the same conclusion, "Fuck you're right."
"So... liquor?" Piper asked, gesturing to the disemboweled contents of their treasure chest, "That's what I got my junk cratered in for?"
"I mean... it's not a total loss." Parker held the uncorked glass up as if in a toast, "There are worse things that we could have found up there. Like racy pics of Bubby Judy. Remember that?"
"Ooh fuck don't remind me." Piper shivered at the long-repressed memory, "Okay, could be worse, so much worse."
Piper looked at the remaining three vials on the couch. Parker had been surprisingly good at convincing her that this was just a liquor box. Which, was, apparently a thing. The big bottle was the decanter, the little bottles were shot glasses, but why had they come pre-poured? And somehow the idea of old twentieth-century people lugging around a box that clocked in at a vagina-bustingly heavy weight just to keep their liquor and their pre-poured shot glasses safe didn't seem to jive well. So many questions about—
"Jesus Tapdancing Christ Parker, what are you doing?!" Piper shouted, stopping her sister mid-pour, "You can't drink that!"
"Okay, I almost dropped that, and I would have been so pissed." Parker pointed dangerously towards her little sister, "Why can't I drink this?"
"I-It's old!" Piper answered in bewilderment, "I-It's gross a-and it's not yours!"
"That has literally never stopped me from doing anything." Parker said with a flat face
"Oh God, Parker—"
"What, I'm kidding! Mostly." Parker raised her glass again, "Come on, we deserve it! We busted our asses cleaning out Mom's attic. We deserve a little bit more than pizza, right?"
"Fuck Parker, I don't know." Piper grimaced at the glass vials.
All of this gave her the creeps for some reason. As convincing as Parker's Liquor Box theory was, the idea of drinking strange liquids out of glasses that she didn't know rubbed Piper the wrong way. Everything checked out right, but something just made Piper's hair stand on end...
"Come on, I won't even tell Mom." Parker said in her rare, halfway-decent Big Sister voice, "We've got a new baby on the way, and we won't get to do this sisterly bonding thing a lot once we're up to our eyebrows in dirty diapers."
Parker raised her glass again, just a little higher
"Our little secret." Parker said with a smile that honestly made Piper believe she wasn't just doing this for the chance to daydrink, "Promise."
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