The woman, poor her entire life, looked on with dismay as she was handed the smallest loaf of bread she had seen in her entire life.

It was a dark bread, roughly the size of a dinner roll.

Had she really given away her last memory for this?

She couldn't believe that the memory of her wedding day had returned a piece of bread so small.

But she had no other choice- she had a responsibility to feed her family.

Above all else, they must survive.

It was this feeling of dismay and grief that sparked a frenzy of ways that she could continue to feed her starving children.

Did she have any other memories to sell?

Is there anything that she had left that the Department would accept as payment?

She rushed home to search the small shack that she and her kids called a home.

The walls were barren, devoid of anything that could bring any sort of value.

She tried to remember any other happy memory she could conjure in her head to sell.

Nothing.

She searched through the small chest sitting at the end of the bed that was placed in the corner of the room.

The only things that she could find in the chest were some small keepsakes- mementos of a better time.

She continued her search, and right as she was coming to the point of desperation, she saw something laid neatly by the chest.

A small, leather-bound book.

A journal.

It was something that she had faithfully written in every day since she learned how to write, although, as of the recent, had not touched as more pressing matters had cluttered her brain.

She picked the journal up, and opened it to her last entry.

It was a brief recollection of a day with her children from over 3 months ago.

A day where they had walked to the lake nearby to enjoy the warm summer months.

It was as she was reading this that it clicked.

She remembered the day clearly. It was a good day. A memory of a day that she had sold just last week for a piece of meat.

She remembered it.

Not only could she remember it, she could clearly feel the happiness of that day wash over her.

It was a vivid recollection of her children smiling and laughing as they played in the water.

Then it hit her.

The memory once sold, was now present in her mind.

It could be sold again.