At the beginning of the story, Denma’s master appears to him, revealing a thought form – a golden wheel with a thousand spokes and a nautilus spiraling clockwise within it - to show that the time of The Turning has come. A wood vessel, featuring peacock feathers and dragonflies (symbolic of a fortuitous omen in the work of Binh Pho) is held within a vessel cast from dichroic glass representing the Water element. The glass vessel shifts color from blue to lilac depending on the light source and direction it is viewed in. A pendant featuring a flock of dragonflies surrounding a peacock feather hangs in a window, waiting for Sophie – a woman loved by Denma, the villain Neil Alive, and the storyteller Michael – to place around her neck as she joins the adventure.