Thief of Time - Elements

It was like the Garden of the Four Elements. Every novice found the bronze symbols of three of them - in the carp pond, under a rock, painted on a kite - but none of Lobsang's classmates found Fire. There didn't appear to be a fire anywhere in the garden.

After a while Lobsang had reasoned thus: there were in fact five elements, as they had been taught. Four made up the universe, and the fifth, Surprise, allowed it to keep on happening. No one had said that the four in the garden were the material four, so the fourth element in the Garden could be Surprise at the fact that Fire wasn't there. Besides, fire was not generally found in a garden, and the other signs were, truly, in their element.

So he'd gone down to the bakeries and opened one of the ovens, and there, glowing red hot below the loaves, was the symbol of Fire.

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The Thief of Time - p50-51