Even though Mary and Alex rode different buses to and from school their houses were actually fairly close to each other. Alex’s family lived in a residential shopping district in a comfortably sized home behind their antique shop. Mary lived with her mother in a small tenement apartment in the neighboring residential zone.

The part of Alex that had been the Library Master noted that the distance would quickly become trivial as he and Mary grew older. The more innocent portions of Alex’s personality, the parts that hadn’t fully adapted to the memories of his past lives were simply excited to meet his friend outside of school and didn’t even notice how long it took to make the trip with his short legs.

His aunt Linda held Alex’s hand as they made the trip. She wore a mischievous smile on her face, likely anticipating the look on Mary’s mother’s face when the girl opened Alex’s present.

When they arrived the door to Mary’s home opened to reveal a tired and slightly annoyed looking woman. The woman saw Linda, and frowned before noticing Alex. She gave him a strained smile and invited them in.

Mary was waiting for Alex in the small living room. The moment she saw him she rushed over to give him a hug before stepping away with a grin on her face. While Mary gushed about how happy she was that he came to her party Alex began listening to the adults as they had a hushed conversation.

Mary’s mother pulled Linda aside and began explaining to her with a clear fatigue in her voice, “Last night I got a call from work. They want me to come in today. Would it….”

Linda rubbed the woman’s back and smiled at her. “Can you stay long enough for her to open her present? We can do that right now. After that I can take them somewhere for the rest of the day.” Mary’s mother gave her a frustrated smile and nodded.

Mary let out an excited squeal when she opened the gift, finding a fairly plain looking dress on top. Each piece of clothing was a new excitement for her and Mary’s mother began relaxing as the new clothes came out of the box piece by piece. She gave a cautious glance to the small jewelry box that came out of the middle portion of box but as Mary continued looking through the clothes she found herself dismissing the thing.

Finally after examining every piece of clothing in the box, Mary picked up the small jewelry box and opened it. She looked at the glass ring In confusion. After all the pretty new clothes she had just received the plain and somewhat gaudy looking glass ring wasn’t particularly exciting.

Mary’s mother looked at the ring for a moment unsure what she was looking at before she recognized it for what it was. “No…. that's way too much. How… how big is it.”

Linda smiled and snorted poorly suppressing a laugh. “Not very big. It isn't worth much either.” Linda pulled a somewhat large suitcase out of her own spatial ring using it as a reference. “This is the most you could fit inside. The people who can afford a spatial ring rarely buy anything as small as this room, let alone a suitcase. It was just a useful piece of trash left over from an excavation. I gave it to Alex. He got a slightly bigger one for his birthday this year so he decided to give this one to his only friend.”

The Library Master inside of Alex wanted to sigh. His aunt typically used a spatial ring the size of a small home when she went on expeditions. “Aunt Linda, it isn’t slightly bigger. It can hold like…. that much!” Alex pointed to the refrigerator in the kitchen.