The Stone That Shouldn’t Be Here — A Five-Ounce Piece of the Dragonfly Portal

There are things I keep.

If you have followed Mystic Dragonfly Creations for any length of time, you probably already know that.

I keep strange stones. I keep fragments. I keep things pulled from the earth that make me stop what I am doing and ask the question that has followed me through paintings, gardens, books, and eventually an entire Archive:

What is this?

Most of the things I find never become products. They don't get price tags. They don't leave. They become part of the Dragonfly Archive.

They sit on shelves and windowsills and beside paintings. Sometimes they wait for months before I research them. Sometimes years. Sometimes I still don't know exactly what I'm looking at.

That's part of the point.

The Archive has never feared the words “I don't know.”

But every once in a while, I find myself holding something and realizing that maybe its story doesn't end with me. Maybe I'm only one of its keepers.

This little five-ounce stone is one of those pieces.

IT CAME OUT OF THE DRAGONFLY PORTAL

I found this specimen here, in the place I call the Dragonfly Portal.

That is its provenance as I know it.

Not a mineral show. Not a crystal shop. Not something I ordered online because I thought it was beautiful.

I picked it up here.

And, as usual, I asked: What is this?

At first glance, the stone looks predominantly pink—peach, salmon, rust and pale rose depending on the light. Then you turn it. The pink breaks into blocks and plates. Translucent gray and milky material appears between them. Tiny dark crystals disappear into cracks and emerge somewhere else. Certain surfaces catch the light with an almost pearly reflection.

From one direction, it looks rough and earthy. Turn it slightly, and suddenly an entire crystalline structure reveals itself. That was enough to send me researching.

SO WHAT IS IT?

Based on its visible structure and the simple field tests I've performed, the best current identification is a coarse feldspar-and-quartz pegmatite, dominated by pink potassium feldspar.

The pink mineral appears consistent with potassium feldspar—possibly microcline or orthoclase—while the pale translucent material includes quartz and possibly additional feldspar.

Then there are the dark crystals. Those became particularly interesting.

Several are elongated, dark brown to nearly black and embedded directly among the feldspar and translucent minerals. Their appearance is consistent with schorl, the common black variety of tourmaline found in many granitic pegmatites.

I tested an exposed dark crystal carefully. It didn't flake. It also resisted scratching with my steel knife.

Those observations make tourmaline a strong possibility, but I want to be precise about what I know and what I don't. I am an artist and an endlessly curious researcher—not a mineral laboratory.

So I'm calling the dark material probable schorl/black tourmaline, not laboratory-confirmed tourmaline. I actually love that distinction, because certainty isn't required before something becomes worth investigating.

WHAT IS PEGMATITE?

Pegmatite is an extraordinarily coarse-grained igneous rock. Its crystals can become much larger than those found in ordinary granite. Feldspar and quartz are among its principal minerals, while some pegmatites also contain mica, tourmaline, garnet, beryl and other accessory minerals.

In other words, what makes this little specimen interesting isn't simply that it is pink.

It's how it grew.

Look closely at the photographs. This isn't a uniform stone. It is an architecture.

Blocks intersect blocks. Translucent crystals push between salmon-colored feldspar. Dark minerals occupy tiny passages through the larger mass.

The specimen weighs only 5.0 ounces—approximately 142 grams—yet within those five ounces is an entire record of mineral growth.

That's the part that fascinates me. A rock can fit in your palm and still contain a landscape.

I TESTED IT BEFORE I NAMED IT

One of the things I've learned while researching the things I find is that photographs can fool you. Color can fool you. Lighting can fool you. And enthusiasm can definitely fool you.

So before settling on a working identification, I performed a couple of simple tests.

First: vinegar. No reaction.

That helped move the identification away from carbonate minerals such as calcite.

Then I tried a steel knife against the dominant pink crystalline material. It did not readily scratch.

Feldspar has a Mohs hardness around 6, while quartz is harder at about 7, so that observation fits the working identification much better than a soft mineral such as calcite.

Then I tested one of those intriguing dark areas. It did not flake. It resisted the knife.

Again, that doesn't magically turn my Art House into a mineral laboratory. But those observations matter.

So this piece enters the Archive record as: Pink potassium-feldspar and quartz pegmatite with probable schorl/black tourmaline.

The word probable stays there deliberately. If a future keeper ever has the dark mineral professionally analyzed, I hope they'll tell me what they discover. Because that's how an Archive should work. The story should remain capable of growing.

BUT THEN THERE WAS A BIGGER QUESTION

Identification wasn't actually the strangest part. The strangest part was location.

This piece was recovered here on the Texas Gulf Coast. And a coarse crystalline pegmatite is not what I would expect to have formed in the young coastal sediments beneath this part of Texas.

So the question changed. It was no longer simply: What is this? It became: How did this get here?

And I don't know. That matters.

I could invent a fantastic story. I could tell you exactly how it arrived, who carried it, how long it waited underground and why it was waiting for me. But that would be a story—not provenance.

Provenance means documenting what can actually be known.

What I know is that I recovered it from the Dragonfly Portal.

Its geological source before arriving here is unknown. It could have been brought into the area as landscaping material. It could have arrived in construction fill. It could have been carried here by someone long before I ever touched it. There are perfectly ordinary possibilities. But none of them are currently proven.

So the Archive keeps the question intact: How did a piece of coarse pegmatite end up here?

I don't know. And that's much more interesting to me than pretending that I do.

THE DRAGONFLY PORTAL HAS TAUGHT ME THAT QUESTIONS HAVE VALUE

This is how so much of my work begins. Not with answers. With interruption.

Something makes me stop. A stone. A buried object. A mark. A painting. A strange little thing that would have been completely ordinary to someone else.

I pick it up. I look closer. What is this?

That question eventually became much bigger than rocks. It became part of the philosophy behind The Dragonfly Journals. It became the Archive. It became the way I look at forgotten things.

Because sometimes the most important thing you can do with an object is resist the urge to immediately explain it.

Look first. Ask. Test. Research. Turn it over. Put it under another light. Admit when the answer isn't complete. And keep going.

AND NOW I'M DOING SOMETHING I RARELY DO

I'm letting this one leave.

That sentence is probably more significant than the price I'm eventually going to put on it.

I don't part with many pieces from the Dragonfly Archive.

If something came out of the Portal and made me stop long enough to research it, photograph it, catalog it and wonder about it, my instinct is usually to keep it.

I have shelves full of evidence of that particular character flaw.

But an Archive doesn't necessarily have to mean possession forever. Sometimes an object can move. Sometimes another person becomes its keeper.

So this specimen is being released through Mystic Dragonfly Creations as an original Dragonfly Portal specimen.

There is only one. Not one like it. This one.

The actual five-ounce specimen photographed here. The one I recovered. The one I tested. The one I researched. The one that caused another round of: What is this?

ITS NEXT KEEPER WILL RECEIVE ITS STORY

I don't want someone to buy this as an anonymous decorative rock.

If it leaves my Archive, its documented story leaves with it.

The specimen will therefore include a signed Certificate of Authenticity and Provenance from Mystic Dragonfly Creations, identifying it as the actual specimen released from my Dragonfly Archive.

The certificate will record its Archive designation, weight, recovery provenance, current working mineral identification and the fact that the geological source locality remains unknown.

Recovery locality: Dragonfly Portal, Texas Gulf Coast.
Geological source locality: Unknown.

That's the truth of the object as I currently know it. Future research may add to that record. It should never erase it.

BEFORE IT LEAVES, I'M TAKING IT WITH ME

This little stone is coming to my upcoming book signing.

That feels right.

The Dragonfly Journals didn't begin because I decided one morning that I should manufacture a fantasy world. They grew out of the way I already interacted with the world around me.

I painted. I dug. I picked things up. I researched. I asked questions. And eventually Avrilis began telling the stories.

So when people come to meet me and talk about the books, I want some of the real objects that live beside those stories to be there too.

This specimen will be among them—unless its next keeper finds it first.

FIVE OUNCES ISN'T VERY MUCH

Put five ounces in your hand. It's not heavy. It doesn't occupy much space. This specimen is only a few inches across.

Yet somehow it managed to hold my attention for hours.

That's one of the reasons I love stones. They completely destroy our ordinary ideas about importance.

Something doesn't need to be enormous to contain complexity. It doesn't need to be precious in the traditional gemstone sense to be extraordinary. It doesn't need to have a perfect crystal termination or a famous mine written on a label.

Sometimes the value is in the question. Sometimes it's in the texture. Sometimes it's in knowing exactly where you picked it up even when you don't know where its geological journey began.

And sometimes value comes from realizing that an object has passed through one person's hands and is ready to pass into another's.

I WON'T BE ABLE TO REPLACE IT

That's the important part of releasing pieces from the Dragonfly Portal.

If this sells, I cannot order another one. I cannot contact a supplier and restock DP-PEG-01. There is no case of twelve sitting in a warehouse. There is no inventory hiding behind the product listing.

When its keeper takes it home, this exact object leaves my Archive.

They aren't really becoming less meaningful by leaving. Their stories are simply getting longer.

Mine becomes:

I found it.
I asked what it was.
I researched it.
I documented it.
And then I let it go.

The next sentence belongs to somebody else.

MAYBE THAT'S WHAT A KEEPER REALLY IS

We use the word keeper throughout the world of The Dragonfly Journals. But I've been thinking about what it means outside the books.

A keeper isn't necessarily someone who possesses something forever. Maybe a keeper is simply the person responsible for something right now.

The person who notices it. The person who protects its story. The person who refuses to strip away its history just because history is inconvenient to fit on a product label.

For a while, that person was me. Soon it may be someone else.

And whoever takes this strange little five-ounce piece home will receive something that I very rarely offer: an actual object released from my Dragonfly Archive.

Not a replica. Not something sourced afterward to fit the story.

The object came first. The question followed. And the story grew around it.

THE ARCHIVE IS LOOKING FOR A KEEPER

DP-PEG-01 will be offered through Mystic Dragonfly Creations and will travel with me to the book signing if it hasn't found its keeper beforehand.

Its current working identification is pink potassium-feldspar and quartz pegmatite with probable schorl/black tourmaline. It weighs 5.0 ounces / approximately 142 grams. It carries documented recovery provenance from the Dragonfly Portal and will be accompanied by its signed Certificate of Authenticity and Provenance.