"I didn't mean to distract you, it's just that I haven't..., so it never occurred to me that it was possible."

"Don't worry you'll come back as a girl too, the odds will even out. After you have been both a man and woman things tend to get more fluid, less defined by hard lines. You’ll see in time. It’s cool to be both. It offers an interesting perspective."

I'd always rolled around the idea of coming back and remembering this life the way I remembered the others, but the matter of fact way she said it like it was a foregone conclusion, made me begin to think about it as a probability instead of a possibility. If we were alike, she had been in this situation many more times than I had, enough times that it had become a foregone conclusion. The ringing from the glass continued for a few seconds after she removed her finger. "Please continue, you were talking about Marco."

"Yes. I was born for the fourth time, in 1630, as Marco Parcalus on the island of Murano. Murano is a small island near Venice and was home to the city's glass works. I was born into a family that had lived and worked on the island for generations, each father passing the secrets of Venetian glass to his son. The finest glass in the world came from that island, and I became the best craftsman that ever worked their furnaces. My father started teaching me when I was old enough to hold a blowing tube, five or six I think. He taught me about plate glass, leaded glass, colored glass, mirrors, and Cristallo like this," she said, looking at me with one eye through her wine glass. "At sixteen I was already a master craftsman. I could achieve any color, thickness, texture or shape and could make plates of glass half again as large as anyone else on the island.

"The families of Murano were very close. They had to be because once you were born into a family you were also born into the art of glass, and you were never allowed to leave the island.

"I stayed for a while but you must keep in mind that I had just spent a long frustrating life trying to pretend I was normal. The idea of doing it again left me no choice but to risk escape."

"Wait," I said, looking around the vault. "These people are the same ones in the stained glass scenes aren't they?" I asked as I made the connection.

"Yes, but as I said before, I am those people, the scenes are from my own lives."

"Right, Marco is the one rowing away from the island."