The Mysterious Lanterns of Elsewhere

Okay, there’s probably a story or a poem in these, too...
One of the things jewelry makers tend to do is buy more beads than we can ever possibly use. And then we foist some of them off onto our other jewelry-making friends when they visit, who then go home and delve into THEIR overflowing bead stash for things their friends might like, and the entire cycle repeats itself endlessly and we can justify buying more beads because hey, sharing is good, right? Yesterday my friend Kate gave me a handful of square beads (amongst other things) that looked like perfectly nice but not extraordinary grey glass beads, but they were a good size to fit in some square bead caps I’d just gotten, and so I put them on my workbench together today. And then the sun hit them and WOAH WAIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED? They’re grey at some angles. And a muted teal at others. And sometimes they’re purple, or cobalt, and I think I’ve seen green but I can’t get it to show up when I look for it, which seems about right.