Cancer 14. In an old display case, a collection of rare mineral specimens.
From far-off places they came, crystals bearing their colors dug from the earth, retrieved from caves and mines and stream beds and fallen from the sky. As he looked into the case he saw into the realms from which each one had come, each rock a window into the dark world under foot, or, as with the meteors, the dark worlds above.
The earth pronounces its words slowly – a single one might take a lifetime. Unless, of course, one stepped out of time and caught the echoes of the past, listening into the future.