Their shared enthusiasm for the matter at hand made it easy to move on from the initial sight of Mr Operine — and certainly Arven's instinctive pity vanished like mist in a breeze. After all, this young gentleman was a curator in a grand museum, and his eyes were alight with passion for his vocation. By many, he was surely to be envied.

"Very impressive — I can only hear it when I hold it to my ear", Arven admitted, brows raised. "Must be getting old", he quipped in a murmur, then gladly followed the curator through to an office.

"Yes, I found it on a bank of the Benue River. But level your expectations, sir — while I believe it is something ancient and extraordinary, it is also... broken".

Arven removed the item from his pocket, placed it on the desk, and gently unraveled its cloth wrappings to reveal a small stone rectangle. It had a faint orange glow, and even Arven could hear the slight buzzing now — or was it more of a hum? Upon the stone was engraved tiny words in a Niger–Congo language. "I brought it to an elder in the nearby town. She said it has mystical properties; in particular the power to expedite the growing of plants and trees in small areas. On arid earth, it could be a Godsend. A livesaver. But..." Arven leaned his hands on the desk and looked down at the stone artifact, "it is simply not working."