A small sea in my hand

It fits on the tip of my finger. A little shell, pressed into pale stone, found not far from the Greek coast. When I first held it, I didn't think about millions of years. I just thought: someone lived in here.

Long before olive trees and white houses, this land was underwater. Warm, shallow sea, full of small creatures like this one, opening and closing in the light. When they died they sank, sand covered them, and slowly the sea turned them into stone.

I like that it is ordinary. Not a dinosaur, not a museum piece - just one small life that happened to stay. Most of history is like that. Quiet things that nobody wrote down.

Now it sits on my desk next to my screens, where I build digital cities. Old sea, new worlds. Somehow they belong together.