A gold coin was minted in a palace, tucked into a silk purse, and spent on a wedding. By winter, it was dropped in the mud by a thief and found by a beggar who bought a loaf of bread. Over decades, it traveled from the hands of merchants to gamblers, from pockets of silk to pockets of burlap. It never grew weary of the journey, for it knew that whether it sat in a vault or a gutter, its value remained the same—it was the world around it that kept shifting.