Beach Writers: September Starter Sentence

For the record, I NEVER hated writing.  But since Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, went to High School with me, I thought the cartoon appropriate to depict me doing my writing homework.  You see, as if I didn't have enough to do in my "real" life, I helped found a neighborhood writer's guild.  One of the challenges at each meeting is to write 2 paragraphs that follow a starter sentence.  The September prompt was "Last night while walking through East Beach..."  This is what my muses came up with.  

     Last night while walking through East Beach, a glint of white caught my eye.  There, peeking out through the mulch piled around Mrs. Dietrich’s Klems Hardy Gardenias.  I stopped and picked up a tile, about the size of a domino only twice as thick.  I turned the cool and smooth item in my hand as I walked.  Within a few steps I was near enough a streetlight to stop and inspect the tile closer.  Hmmm.  One side had markings.  Chinese characters, to be specific, in blood-red ink.  But having never taken a single lesson in Chinese, the symbols meant nothing to me.