Stavanger Bay yes, i left behind a glass slipper and a business card

well, rannveig didn't blame piper for leaping to the assumption that what they were looking for was scary. he hadn't exactly described it in the most favorable light. "well, so, it's not that it's scary..." he started, glancing down the beach for a minute as he wrestled with how to adequately sum up the absolute hellish contraption a horse-shoe crab was: "it's just.. unreal. you'll see."

goaded then by piper's playful tease, rannveig strutted ahead. "no, we'll go together. first, lemme get you this rock. i was saving it for dalia, but then i realized she'd talk to me about it for three hours." he winked, clearly joking -- dalia and her obsession with rocks was very endearing to rannveig, but he wanted piper to have her rocks and eat them, too.

striding down the strand in easy steps, rannveig slowed only as he came to a small cache neatly tucked between stones. from this he extracted a bevy of wares: sea-chewed driftwood, strange shells and conches, and finally, a small stone the size of a fist.

it was a soft copper color, faded and worn to a semi-smooth texture. it was circular in shape, resembling some flattened coin or pancake. on one side, ringulets appeared to fray the surface, not unlike the flattened version of a severed cabbage head.

unknown to rannveig, this particular stone (stromatolite) was once part of a massive formation of "stones" left by living organisms some millions of years ago. to him, it was just a queer rock, with an interesting surface pattern. he nudged it towards piper, hoping she would think it was as cool as he did. but he wasn't a rock nerd, or anything.