For her birthday, Denis brought a small box lined with dark fabric. Inside lay a black stone with a metallic sheen. He said it was a piece of meteorite, found during a nighttime journey through the desert, and that he had kept it until he met someone worth giving it to. Ena held the stone in her palm as though it were fragile.

She had loved astronomy since university but had never traveled to a desert. Denis spoke of cold sand and a silence unknown in the city. She was glad he was sharing a memory he considered important. He mistook her attention for admiration of his exploit and added several more details.

In reality, he had bought the stone in an airport gift shop. The box described it as decorative volcanic rock. He had intended a harmless joke, or so he told himself, but the moment for joking passed as soon as Ena embraced him. Later came their engagement, their plans and a photograph of the stone on her desk.

At a lecture, she asked a geologist to look at the gift. She did not want a valuation. She wanted to know how to care for it. The geologist explained what could be established through a simple examination and what would require analysis. Then she found the gift-shop label stuck to the bottom of the box.

Ena showed Denis the box in private. She asked only where he had bought the stone. First, he said gifts should not be investigated like receipts. Then he tried explaining that he had embellished the story for her sake. She stood up from the table. "I trusted you for our sake. That's not the same thing."

She returned her engagement ring and took a few days to herself. Denis considered buying a real meteorite. He was already looking at offers when he realized he was again seeking an object to have a conversation in his place. He closed the website and wrote her a brief admission, without a sentence about how much he had wanted to make her happy.

When they met again, he told her about the real journey: a delayed flight, a bad sandwich and a shop assistant offering a discount on a second box. Ena laughed despite her anger. It did not mean the engagement was restored. They agreed to move more slowly for a while and stop using grand plans as evidence of trust.

She kept the black stone with a new label: "Airport, actual origin." A year later, they went stargazing together above a small mountain village. Denis could not recognize the constellations. He asked Ena to show him the first one, and she raised her hand toward the north.