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    The four-leaf clover was fragile and crinkled in his hand.  Its brown edges were so delicate.  He turned it over carefully, examining every angle.
    Four leaves.  A good luck charm.
    She'd given it to him.  Months ago.  He'd preserved it in a dog-eared paperback on a shelf in his bedroom.  He used to take it out every once in a while, just to look at it.  It was perfect, lying there between the pages.  Flat and slightly faded, but perfect.
    Four leaves and a stem, that was all.  So simple.  Yet beautiful.
    She'd found it.  She'd found it one summer morning, the dew still clinging to the four leaves.  And a few short hours later, it became his.  Holding the clover in one hand, and her fingers in the other, he thought he'd received more than one sort of magic that day.
    Over time, the leaves had faded and withered.  The edges took on their current brown hue.  But the enchantment had remained.  At least for awhile.
    It was odd, he thought.  Back in that summer, the clover had seemed eternal.  Something that would last wedged between pages 101 and 102 forever, undying and immortal.  It was a kind of amulet.  A hope.  A tiny, green, four-leaved hope.
    Its present state, browned and shrivelled, did little justice to this memory.
    He stared at the little plant in his hand, turning it over and over.
    "You're really not that special, are you?" he asked it.  "Just a mutant that somebody thought was lucky."
    The clover made no answer. 
    It was silent.  Just as she had been.  And silence, he had learned, was deadly. 
    "Just a plant," he whispered softly.  "No magic...no luck about you at all."
    He bit his lower lip.  Just a plant, he thought.  Just a plant.
    "We're just alike, you know."  Not a drop of luck between us.
    His gaze blurred.  He clutched the stem of the frail clover.  Blinking, he fixed his eyes on it.  His muscles contracted.
    His other hand reached out.
    His fingers closed around a leaf.  One of the four precious leaves.
    He pulled.
    "You're really not that special, are you?" he whispered.