“Maybe they’re just to look at,” the Leiran boy had said.

I took out the stone with the clear vein in it and held it up close to my face and my brightest lamp. The light hurt my eyes, but I needed to see these things. The vein led deep into the blue-gray stone, a secret passage allowing light to penetrate the cool darkness and reveal the secrets of the stone that would otherwise lay hidden. Deep in the heart of the stone were delicate patterns of yellow and green and blue, arranged in spirals and sunbursts and flowery splashes, a tiny garden of color.

Each of the gifts was the same in a way. The iron-like wood hid a thousand tiny perfect crystals in its pores; the ugly fruit pit masked a miniature sculpture finer than any woodworker’s creation. The dish of sand had been only a piece of the ordinary desert, but presented in an unexpected way, intriguing. And the mirror… There my speculation came to an abrupt halt. My chest ached. Why a reflection of me?