The next morning, I texted a photo to my sister. "What is this?" She had no idea.
I posted it on a neighborhood Facebook group. The responses were wild:
"It's a slug without its shell."
"It's a piece of sea glass."
"It's a fancy soap sample."
"It's a geode that hasn't formed yet."
"It's an alien egg."
None of those seemed right.
I called my mother. She laughed. "Honey, that's a bath bead. You put it in the tub and it dissolves. Smells like lavender or something."
A bath bead? I hadn't bought bath beads in years. I didn't even know we owned any.