A Personal Artifact from the Dragonfly Portal
By April Louann Mitchell — Avrilis
There are stones we notice because they glitter. There are stones we lift because their shape catches the eye. And then there are the rare ones that seem to settle into the hand as though they already understand its shape. This is one of those pieces.
I am completely obsessed with it.
It is not the largest piece I have found in the Dragonfly Portal, the name I have given the place in my Galveston County yard where so many unusual objects, stones, and natural discoveries have surfaced. It is not the most dramatic at first glance. It does not announce itself with bright crystals or demand an immediate answer. Its beauty arrives more slowly. It asks to be turned. It asks to be held. It asks the same question that has followed me through the Archive from the beginning: What is this?
The first time I held it properly, I noticed how naturally it rested against my palm. The weight felt grounding without feeling burdensome. Every turn revealed something different: warm amber-brown color, cream-colored traces, flowing lines, tiny pits, deep hollows, ridges that looked almost carved, and patterns that shifted depending on the direction of the light. It felt less like examining a specimen and more like meeting something with a long memory.
The Portal Keeps Opening
The Dragonfly Portal is not a scientific designation. It is my personal and creative name for the part of my yard that continues to offer unexpected discoveries. That distinction matters. Symbolically, I experience it as a threshold—a place where forgotten things return to view. Factually, it is ground in Galveston County, Texas, and every object found there still deserves patient examination, careful documentation, and honest uncertainty.
The Portal has already changed the way I move through my own land. I look more closely now. I notice texture, weight, color, fracture, and pattern. I photograph objects from every angle. I ask what cleaning may reveal and what cleaning might destroy. I have learned that curiosity is most useful when it travels beside restraint. Not every unusual shape is a fossil. Not every pattern is biological. Not every beautiful possibility is a fact.
But uncertainty does not empty a discovery of meaning. Sometimes it does the opposite. It keeps the door open.
This little piece emerged from that same continuing conversation between the visible and the forgotten. I did not need it to become something extraordinary before I loved it. The way it fit my hand was enough to make me stop. The surface was enough to make me look again. The questions were enough to bring it into the Dragonfly Archive.
Looking Closely at the Evidence
After photographing the piece from many angles, I began comparing the visible structures. Some early views created competing impressions. The flowing brown bands resembled wood grain. The cavities and smoother ridges could also be mistaken for features in bone or a large tooth. Close photographs can be deceptive because lighting, wetness, weathering, and magnification can make unrelated materials resemble one another.
The broader image set revealed the most important clue. On some surfaces, the piece contains many small dots, pits, and short structures of similar size. On surfaces running in another direction, those structures become longer, nearly parallel lines and rods. That change with orientation is consistent with the way vascular bundles can appear in petrified palm material. Viewed across the original plant tissue, bundles may look like dots. Viewed lengthwise, the same structures may appear as elongated lines.
For that reason, the current evidence-based identification is probable petrified palmwood, or closely related silicified palm-like plant material. The word probable is essential. Photographs can show compatibility; they cannot provide mineral chemistry, microscopic cellular anatomy, or a documented geological layer. The formal fossil-wood name Palmoxylon may be relevant, but it should remain unconfirmed unless a qualified specialist or microscopic examination supports it.
I do not know its exact species. I do not know its precise geological age. I cannot prove from the discovery location alone that it formed where I found it. Soil, fill, landscaping materials, water, and human movement can transport stones far from their original source. I will not assign it to a formation merely because petrified palmwood is known from Texas and the Gulf Coast region.
This is the part of discovery that matters deeply to me: allowing the evidence to lead without forcing it to finish the story before it is ready.
The Archive Has Never Feared I Do Not Know
One of the guiding truths of The Dragonfly Journals is that the Archive has never feared the words “I don’t know.” Those words are not a failure. They are an honest threshold. They separate wonder from invention and spiritual meaning from scientific proof.
I can say that the piece is beautiful. I can say that it fits my hand with an almost startling comfort. I can say that its visible pattern is most consistent with probable petrified palmwood. I can say that I feel personally connected to it.
I cannot yet say how old it is, exactly what palm or palm-like plant it came from, or whether every hollow and line represents preserved anatomy. I cannot turn symbolism into geology simply because the symbolism feels powerful.
Both ways of knowing can remain present when they are clearly named. The scientific identification is provisional. The emotional connection is personal. The talismanic meaning will be symbolic and spiritual. None of those statements has to erase the others.
That is how I want the Dragonfly Archive to grow: not as a collection of inflated claims, but as a living record of observation, research, imagination, and the courage to leave unanswered questions visible.
A Piece I Chose to Keep
This artifact is not for sale.
It has already found its place in my personal collection. I do not need to reshape it, polish away its character, or turn it into merchandise for it to matter. Its flowing lines, amber surface, natural hollows, and comfortable weight are enough.
The intention is simple: I want to keep this piece close and preserve its story within the Dragonfly Archive.
A personally meaningful object does not need a fabricated legend. Meaning can grow through relationship, memory, observation, and choice. For me, this piece represents discernment: the willingness to feel wonder while still asking for evidence. It represents the Portal, the Archive, and the act of paying attention. It reminds me that not every story arrives as a complete answer. Sometimes the beginning is simply the moment something fits your hand and you decide to keep listening.
Its value to me is not a price. It is the pause it created, the questions it opened, and the pleasure of turning it slowly in the light. Every surface offers another pattern. Every angle changes what I notice. That intimate experience is why it belongs in the personally owned portion of the Archive, where it can remain protected while still being shared through photographs and story.
There is also something important about allowing a beautiful object to remain outside commerce. Mystic Dragonfly Creations is a professional creative business, but the Archive must still contain pieces whose purpose is memory, study, and inspiration. Marking this one not for sale protects that boundary. Visitors may look closely, learn alongside me, and follow the questions it created without being asked to measure its worth by a checkout price. Some things belong in a collection because they continue feeding the work from within.
Why This Discovery Belongs to Mystic Dragonfly Creations
Mystic Dragonfly Creations began with art, but the work has never remained inside a single frame. I am an oil painter first. My stories grow from what I paint, what I discover, what I research, and what I have lived through. April picks up the stones, studies the marks, makes the notes, and writes. Avrilis tells the stories.
The Dragonfly Archive is where those paths meet. It holds artwork, natural discoveries, artifacts, questions, photographs, research, and the stories that rise from them. The objects are not props placed beside the books after the fact. They are part of the creative ground from which the books grow.
This probable piece of petrified palmwood belongs in that world because it contains the entire process in miniature. First came the encounter. Then came the photographs. Then the competing possibilities: wood, tooth, bone, coral, mineral concretion. More angles changed the interpretation. Research narrowed the field. Uncertainty remained. Finally, personal meaning began to form around what the evidence could responsibly support.
That sequence—discovery, question, investigation, revision, story—is the heartbeat of Mystic Dragonfly Creations. It is also why I share these pieces publicly even when they are not for sale. The Archive is not merely a shop shelf. It is an invitation to look with me.
The Heartstone Connection
Readers who begin with Ignivar’s Heartstone enter a world in which Earth is a living Archive and stones are its pages. That idea did not come from a distant abstraction. It grew from the way real stones, paintings, memories, and discoveries kept asking me to pay attention.
In the story, a forgotten stone becomes a doorway into something larger. In my life as an artist and researcher, each new piece creates a smaller but genuine doorway: a reason to investigate the landscape, learn a new structure, compare possibilities, and admit what remains unknown.
This handheld talisman is not the Heartstone from the book, and I will never blur that line. One belongs to the physical collection and one belongs to the story world. Yet they speak to the same question: what changes when we stop treating the things beneath our feet as silent?
Perhaps nothing supernatural has to be proven for attention itself to become transformative. A stone can lead to geology. A pattern can lead to paleobotany. A discovery can lead to a conversation between generations. An object held in one person’s hand can lead another person to remember the unusual stone sitting on a shelf at home.
That is how an Archive grows—not only through answers, but through shared questions.
Preserving the Physical Record
I want to preserve the record of how this piece appeared when I found it. Measurements, weight, orientation, and close views of the dotted and elongated structures can help a future specialist understand what is present without relying on memory alone.
I also want to proceed gently. Strong cleaners, acids, oils, sealants, and aggressive polishing can change a specimen permanently. A substance that makes the color look richer for a photograph may also settle into pores or complicate later examination. For now, careful dry storage and thoughtful handling are the responsible choices.
Preservation is not separate from the story. It is how the story remains available to be reconsidered. If new evidence changes the identification later, the photographs and notes will show why the earlier conclusion was reasonable and what caused it to evolve. The Archive should record revision as carefully as discovery.
The image record will also allow visitors to study details that may be difficult to see at first glance. A broad view preserves the silhouette. Side views show the direction of the elongated structures. Macro photographs reveal the pores, small hollows, and changing textures that shaped the identification. Together, those views create a more honest record than a single dramatic photograph could provide.
Come Meet the Archive
On Sunday, September 27, 2026, from 2:00 to 5:00 PM, I will gather with readers and visitors for Afternoon Tea with The Dragonfly Journals at Herb & Smudge Apothecary in Galveston. The afternoon will include signed books, artwork, natural discoveries, conversation, questions, and pieces from the world that helped shape The Dragonfly Journals.
The event is an opportunity to meet APRIL LOUANN MITCHELL, step into the story behind Mystic Dragonfly Creations, and see how painting, research, objects, and lived experience come together inside the Dragonfly Archive. It is also a place for your questions. You do not need to be a geologist, fossil collector, artist, or lifelong fantasy reader. Curiosity is enough.
The current physical collection includes artifacts and natural finds preserved for display rather than sale. Each one has a different level of certainty attached to it. Some identifications are strong. Some are provisional. Some remain open questions. That honesty is part of the experience.
This particular piece will remain personally owned rather than placed on a sales table. Sharing it does not make it merchandise. It makes it part of the visible record of how the Archive continues to unfold.
Begin with Book One
If this piece makes you wonder what stories the Earth may be holding, begin The Dragonfly Journals with Ignivar’s Heartstone: How One Forgotten Stone Awakened the Dragonfly Archive.
Book One opens the door to Ignivar, the amber-furred guardian marked by a blue blaze and a flame at his tail. It introduces the Heartstone and the idea that stones can carry memory, story, and responsibility within the world of the Archive. It is the best starting place before moving into Ignivar: The Flame-Born Guardian.
Signed copies and event information will also guide readers toward the September 27 gathering. The September 27 gathering has its own event page, and you can also follow the Facebook Event for updates.
No dead ends. If a reader arrives because of one small stone, I want them to know where the larger story begins—and where we can meet in person.
Some Stories Are Carried
I keep returning to the first sensation: the way this piece rested in my hand.
Research matters. Correcting an early impression matters. Preserving uncertainty matters. But love for an object often begins before the label is complete. It begins in weight, temperature, texture, and recognition.
The stone will remain what it is, whether future examination confirms petrified palmwood or asks me to revise the Archive record again. That possibility does not weaken the story. It keeps the story honest and alive.
For now, its label reads probable petrified palmwood. Its collection status reads personally owned and not for sale. Its personal meaning is still forming. And its place in my hand feels certain.
Some stories are read. Some are uncovered. Some wait beneath the soil until someone asks the right question.
And some stories are carried.
Have you ever found a stone or object that seemed to fit your hand as though it already belonged there? What meaning did it come to hold for you? Share your story in the comments—I would love to hear what you have carried into your own personal archive.
— April Louann Mitchell — Avrilis
READ THE STORY. THEN COME TO THE TABLE.
Ignivar’s Heartstone is where The Dragonfly Journals begins. Read Book One, then bring your curiosity to Afternoon Tea with The Dragonfly Journals.
Sunday, September 27, 2026 • 2:00–5:00 PM
Herb & Smudge Apothecary • 201 26th Street, Galveston, Texas 77550
Complimentary admission • Limited seating
Follow the Facebook Event for updates →
Working Archive identification: probable petrified palmwood or related silicified palm-like plant material. Exact species, age, geological formation, and original source remain unconfirmed. Found by April Louann Mitchell in Galveston County, Texas. Personal Dragonfly Archive collection. Not for sale.
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