Gives back everything. Its gap sits up in the ultraviolet, so every visible wavelength bounces — the best optical reflector there is. And it stands one row above gold — group 11, the coinage metals, adjacent by construction.
Its color is relativity. The 6s electron is contracted so hard it swallows blue light (~2.4 eV) and hands back gold. Inert — it never tarnishes, never lets go.
The residue of a power outage. The merger forges it, then collapses to a black hole — the light goes out. Gold is what's left when the power fails.
Glass, not crystal. Amorphous silica — no lattice, so no piezoelectric heartbeat: it can't keep time, only reflect. The Aztecs scried the future in it.