On the ground, next to the mailbox, there is: a weird rock!
"Yeah, I see what you mean. And it's weirdly matte, too, I'd expect glass to be shinier… plastic, maybe?"
"Well, I dunno, there's kinds of plastic. I guess what I mean is that it looks like it was made."
"Yeah. I mean, it'd be really weird if it was natural, wouldn't it? What with how straight and even the shape is."
"Yeah! Maybe it's part of something? I just dunno what it could be, especially 'cause it's really pretty."
"Well, was there anything else that looked like it nearby when you found it? Where did you find it, anyway?"
"Nnnnnno, I don't think so? I found it by the mailbox. I think it probably woulda looked less interesting if it was - I dunno, obviously a missing piece or whatever? But I don't remember seeing anything else that was this color, or anything like that."
"Weird!"
Sylas doesn't have any other angles at this time, so he lets the topic drop and starts complaining about something that happened in class yesterday.
Later:
He's looking at the rock again. He isn't entirely sure why, at first - he's never had a particular head for mysteries. But it bothers him. It's not just the texture, or the shape, or the way that he can't seem to leave fingerprints on it…
Maybe it's stupid of him, but - maybe the thing that bothers him is that this feels like something from a movie, or Harry Potter. An ordinary person finds something Other and opens up a new world of possibilities. Something that just doesn't happen in real life, even though he wishes it would–
There might be something, at the edges of his perception, but he might just be imagining it. He's pretty sure he wasn't just imagining the rock, though, he showed Sylas and everything. He resists the temptation to immediately text Sylas for confirmation, just in case… well, he isn't sure what might happen but what if it's bad.
Nothing happened yet. He's going to continue to be antsy for… well, not that long, he's still not winning any awards for attention span. But it'll be itchy, as a sort of background radiation thing.
Okay, sure, he'll - move the pain, apparently, on a dimension that feels like it has a "left" and a "right" despite not corresponding to anything except his new sense of the pain.
An object in the new-to-Seiji genre of Weird Flat Rock appears! This one is different from the one he found, though, both in shape and in general look. It feels the same to the touch - smooth and without any apparent temperature - but it's cranberry-colored and a little translucent and so glossy it looks like it's glowing a little. And it looks kind of like a bird's head - there's six flat sides instead of one, and one long triangle extending from the seventh.
He can still weirdsense the dull pain in his elbow, but it seems to be faded, somehow. Diminished.