One one of my many wanderings about this great city, I came upon a piece of sea glass, and immediately began to speculate on the force of luck that one might obtain by recieving it.

It is a small piece of glass, one that fits comfortably within your palm, with a burnished consistency left by the passage of millions of grains of sand reclaiming their resources from the fused former members of their order. Still, though, through this rough treatment, a few polished edges can be seen, a few scarce surfaces that have withstood the test of time.

Still, though, how can something such as luck be attributed to an object such as this? A penny, perhaps, is lucky by nature, or by old-wives'-tales, but what of a piece of glass? Traveling across the sea from anywhere in the world, the possibilites for its existence are endless.

- A wealthy man, accustomed to living a life of luxury, lounges on the secluded, private beach of an even-more-private island. Unhindered by family or a strong sense of morals, he has quickly moved to the top position in a large, multinational corporation. He has no qualms about climbing over anyone and everyone in his quest for power and prestige. Now that he is at the top, though, he despairs for somewhere else to go - and so, he sits on the beach, gathering his thoughts.

He sips beer, a limited-edition microbrew made in a batch especially for his use by one of the finest German breweries, and stares out at the ocean, his mind preoccupied with thoughts of mergers and takeovers, oblivious to the picturesque scenery that surrounds him.

He finishes the bottle and, without a thought to the otherwise, tosses it into the surf, watching it idly as it struggles to float for a few brief seconds before finally being swallowed by the vast expanse of ocean. The crashing waves bring it briefly back to the surface, a small gleam of green in an azure sea. The businessman ignores it, and pulls another bottle out of the cooler. "A takeover, definitely a takeover," he thinks. "Mergers are for cowards."

The bottle traverses the ocean, breaking apart after hitting an underwater reef, damaging a shoal of ancient, surviving coral, and scattering to the four corners of the world. One piece, from the heavy bottom glass of the container, finally washes up on a distant shore.

- A solitary man, down on his luck, walks stumblingly along the waterfront of a foreign city, desperately clutching a half-empty beer bottle in trembling arms. It is winter here, and the man strives to stave off the cold through clothing that is little more than threadbare. He truly wishes for something stronger to ward off the cold, but a simple beer is hard enough to come by. That being said, though, he has already consumed three bottles since evening fell a few hours earlier.

He has been drinking for so many months that he cannot remember how he got that way, or even who or what he was before the sequence of events that led him here. A failed marriage? A corporate layoff? The answers, such as they were, lay locked in a distant and optimistic past, something incongruous and out of place in a world defined by alcohol and devoid of form or meaning.

He walks, slowly, down to the pier's edge, cut by the cold winds blowing in from the ocean, just as the icy chill of despair forever haunted his mind in the few moments that he now dared to allow himself to become lucid. Mindful of this, he takes another long swig, draining the bottle in a vain attempt to stave off the demons for just a bit longer. Suddenly tired, his uncoordinated legs fail him, and he slumps down against the railing, the bottle falling from his grasp and rolling off of the pier to crash on the rocks below.

Struggling, rallying the last of his strength, the drunk manages to lever himself up and stumbles off in an attempt to find some kind of better shelter. If he is lucky, he might find a warehouse with a cracked-open door and a measure of shelter against the wearing environment. And if not... well, there wasn't much left to look forward to in the morning anyway, was there?

The pieces of the bottle are swept off to sea, crossing an coean and finally washing up in waves all along the shoreline of the continent on the other side of the great expanse of water.