They say that a diamond is a girl’s best friend but, for me, I’ve always preferred pearls.

Once, millions of years ago, when the world was new, a mighty storm rocked the world. Its thunder vibrated the earth, causing mountains to shake; when its lightning cracked, the sound carried for miles. The animals–from the most ferocious lion to the tiniest field mouse–burrowed deep into their dens; mermaids dove into the colder depths of the ocean while fairies sought cover in the hollows of trees. The stars, which are the homes of the dead, went dark, and the moon hid behind clouds, so that the only light given to the earth were the bolts of white, purple and blue lightning . These lightning bolts were unusually strong: they snapped trees, scattering the hiding squirrels and fairies, and penetrated even the surging sea waters. The ocean fought back, rising up defiant waves fifteen feet tall, scooping up creatures to the surface that typically could only be found deep down.

One such creature was an unusually bold oyster. Instead of trembling at the spectacle going on above water, she was curious and allowed the rolling waves to lift her closer to the surface. She found herself bobbing, back and forth, watching as lightning split the sky and thunder made the earth shake. The moment the purple lightning bolt struck the oyster is one she can’t remember exactly; one moment, she bobbed along, mesmerized by the sights and sounds, and the next, her shell tingled as it cracked. She furiously used her tiny legs to latch the belly of a passing whale, then, when it flicked her off, a plant and worked her way deeper until she was, at last, able to rest on the ocean floor. Pain ricocheted from all over the oyster. The crack in her shell ached, her insides burned and exhaustion made her weep. What she didn’t know at the time was that the strike of lightning not only caused a miniscule fracture in her shell, but the bolt’s electricity zinged through her entire body and nicked the sphere of crystallized calcium carbonate that was still being formed. Her curiosity tamed, the oyster felt defeated and scared.

The storm raged for awhile but eventually calmed and peace restored to the earth. As the rain subsided, animals peeked out of their hiding places, fairies cautiously emerged from the tree hollows and curious mermaids came up for a sight of the quiet. A few of the spirits living in the sky turned on the lights in their homes, and so stars once again brightened the night. When morning came, animals grew braver. A dolphin carried our bold oyster up again. Ribbons of vibrant color stretched across the sky: orange and red and yellow and blue curved across the horizon. Mesmerized once again, the dolphin, and our oyster, came closer and closer to the rainbow until the end of it was in sight. The closer they swam, the brighter the colors blazed. They bounced off the water’s edge, the water swirling the colors together, reflecting off the Sun, enveloping the entire oyster. Inside, the oyster sizzled, still drained and aching from the storm’s wounds, yet comforted by the warmth of the colors enveloping her.

A year after the massive storm and the swimming rainbow, a fisherman handpicked the oyster from along the seabed and carried it to shore. The fisherman first examined the oyster, noting the small crack in its shell by running his large thumb across the broken line. Upon opening the shell, a pearl lay atop the oyster’s pink tissue. It was large, larger than most, and it was a brilliant white. He carefully took the pearl out and turned it over. It was flawed: a dent in its top and another on its right side. The dents were small, but they were there. The pearl wasn’t symmetrically perfect… but that didn’t disappoint or sadden the fisherman. Indeed, it excited him because asymmetrical, flawed pearls afforded the most interest, brought in the most cash, told the greatest stories. When he lifted the pearl between two fingers in the air and shifted it from side to side, the sunlight caught it and revealed something extraordinary: hues of yellow and orange buried within the gem, seen only in the right light, remnants of the swirling rainbow the oyster washed in after the Great Storm.

The fisherman sold the wounded pearl to a woman who gifted it to her wounded daughter. The mother told the girl there was not another pearl exactly like this one anywhere in the world; that it was specially formed just for her. The girl, scarred on the face from a traumatic accident, suffered from abuses at the hands of her schoolmates. The pain from her scars, both physical and emotional, left her a lonely recluse, too conscious of her disfigurement to leave her house or speak to others. When her mother fastened the pearl necklace around her neck, the wounded daughter stood before a mirror and stared at the shiny gem. She liked the dents in it and would often run her fingers over the pearl, sliding down over the indent, the Storm’s mark. Late at night, when the house was quiet and everyone was asleep, the girl would clasp the pearl around her neck, stand in front of the mirror and pretend she was a beautiful princess wearing the one-of-a-kind treasure. As the girl grew, she’d bring the pearl necklace out whenever she most needed a reminder that she was more than the scar on her face: she wore it on her first date, when she won her first horse race, when she traveled overseas alone for the first time, when she married, when she sat alienated at her only child’s funeral, when drugs ravaged her body, when she bought and renovated her dream home (the Victorian beauty she’d dreamed about as a girl pretending to be a princess), and when she found herself being honored by the community for her philanthropic endeavors. Finally, the wounded girl was an aged woman standing before another mirror on a night punctuated by the sounds of a violent storm outside. Whenever she wore the necklace, people used the word beautiful and it filled her with pride. At first, she was proud that she owned something as rare and priceless as the Wounded Pearl but, over time, she came to apply the word beautiful to more than the necklace.

They say that a diamond is a girl’s best friend. And diamonds have their own stories to tell. But every time I see a pearl, I think about the wound that created it. Our curious oyster stinging from a cracked shell, electricity burning her insides, felt scared she might not make it through the night. Yet, in the midst of that pain, something miraculous formed: layer upon layer of nacre wrapping around the tiny grain of sand, the irritant, until our oyster was the owner of something priceless and beautiful. Every time I think of the wounded girl growing into a woman with scars deeper than the one on her face, I think of the crows feet around her eyes, there because she’d laughed a lot, too, and how, upon her death, as she lay in the casket with the pearl around her neck, not a single person remarked on the scar still visible on her cheek. Instead, they talked of how beautiful an impact she’d left on them. Because from the deepest of wounds rise the greatest of treasures.