Corundum II

The second thing of the old world, dug out by the healer Zora with her own hands from the clay by the old dry ford on the eastern side of the Combes. Of the same stuff as Inka's "Goldie," but graphite-grey, cold and dead — it gives no heat, heals nothing, answers no question. Zora names it corundum for lack of a better word and puts it away in a little box on the top shelf, among the "things with no name": the one hard trace of what she cannot explain.