"It raises a number of further questions, as though we didn't have enough to contend with," she sighed. "It sounds like this girl's father doesn't believe in us--either that we exist, or that we would help. But who is that family? Do they have anything to do with the tree? Is this, in fact, Earth?" She hoped the answer to that last one wasn't yes, if only because it exacerbated questions she was already worried about in regards to Japanese history.

She placed her hand on the mood ring, watching as the stone around her hand warmed gradually to blue. For a girl that age, this was probably a treasured possession. "And it's evidently an industrialized society," she added. Dollhouse objects, marbles, and thread could be found in several historical eras, but mood rings were a decidedly twentieth-century object.