'The Star Chart'

Before GPS, before the compass, before the sextant — there was the finger pointed at the night sky. Polynesian navigators crossed the Pacific using their hands as instruments: fingers spread to measure the angle of stars from the horizon, the index finger extended toward the star that held position while everything else rotated. Find the fixed star. Orient everything from there. Now you know where you are.

The daisy petals of this ring radiate outward from a center of green. Silver beads scatter across the field like stars. The pale blue is the color of high-altitude air, the sky just before dark when the first star appears and you can finally take your bearings. On the index finger, this ring does what navigators have always done: it points at what is fixed. It tells you where you are in the cosmos.

This ring is for the woman who knows which star to find first.