The cook had offered him a selection of flowers; he’d refused all of them. Dale had never paid much attention to flowers, and had no idea which could be eaten and which could not. In retrospect, he’d probably been lucky that whatever kind of flowers had been on Lyra’s sandwich had been edible. A half-dozen jars of different colored sand sparkles were also turned down. He was going to have to ask Lyra why they ate it—was it to aid in digestion? Chickens and some other birds ate grit to help them digest food; maybe the ponies needed to do that, too. Did the colors signify different types of sand, or was it just to make it look more appealing?