I told them my grandmother left them for me.

A woman from the mountain dressed in dragon scales walked down towards me. Her feet were as bare as mine but that did not seem to matter, because wherever she stepped her feet did not make a sound. "I hear of a man who can perform miracles. He walks across the soil without danger and carries with him his father's ring. Are you this man?"

After all this time away, it seemed a mirage in a desert of hopelessness. My disbelief vanished when I saw my mother appear at the door of our small, cramped home of decaying wood. Home, I was finally home.

"And who are you boy?" Mother asked me. Her weak eyes did not recognize my much-changed face and form. I told her I was her son but she did not believe me. "If you are the son that left so many days ago, and if you are the one who brought back this jade figure of father, then you are the one who will be able to restore him to his normal shape." She flicked her wrist and flung the jade piece at me.

Without hesitance I lifted my pant legs began to dance in father's leather bottomed shoes. The soles breezed across the floor, cutting the mist with rhythmic motions. I then turned the ring on my finger and watched my father rise, soil shedding from his skin. His shaved face and clean hands stood against the paling crowd. This impressed the people who stood before me, as did the fact that my tongue did not bleed from the needle it held.

As the soil on me continued to turn into gold, the ground of our garden sprouted trees, fruits, and vegetables. My family and I stared in a daze as we watched our land grow rich and the people of the soil draw away.