For lifetimes the rock had sat upon the cliff.
He had watched as the once distant edge crept closer, as the soil eroded.
He watched the once distant edge creep closer as the soil eroded
He stood in vigil. He watched an ocean of soil, scores of trees and dozens of his brethren—pebbles, boulders—as they were engulfed by the advancing chasm.
The inescapability of the fall was clear.
The rock did not fear the inevitable descent into the abyss. He sat unbothered.
For lifetimes the rock sat upon the cliff.
He sometimes missed the warm blanket of dirt that had kept him shrouded in serene darkness. He recalled his suspension in glacial ice, a mountain formed of a frozen sea. Still more distant was his fiery birth, the volcanic magma spurt that in an instant gave him shape. He reflected upon those first vivid moments and how quickly they waned as he rigidified.
He felt like a ripple, circles expanding rapidly in quick succession
each one expanding quickly before diminishing
petering out across the water’s surface.
Monotony was comfortable.
His own solidity was a soothing consistency.
The first changes were easy to see—
large pieces separated early, becoming his siblings.
Later he had lost craggy protrusions, toes, hands and limbs, now each living their own lives, inhabiting their own cliffsides.
His own erosion had become constant.
He rarely gave thought to his slowly weathering body.
His life was an echo.
And as his past grew distant, the abyss grew ever closer.
He wondered where he’d settle next.
Perhaps he would eventually be carried out to the sea.
He liked the idea of returning to endless water;
But he liked the cliffside,
He had grown fond of its shifting edge,
Ever-changing details texturing unbroken scenery.
He would fall in peace when it was his time,
But it was not his time quite yet.
The rock was unprepared for the man—
Man, ape, monkey,
careless creature of flesh.
A trail of disruption in his wake like thunder follows lightning,
Tramping through the forest, snapping branches, rustling leaves,
Stopping near the edge of the cliff.
Shock. Surprise. He could not process the gravity of what was transpiring.
The man lifted the rock and tossed him into the river.
He plummeted through the air, skittered across the river’s surface, collided hard with a boulder, soared high in one last arc before he plunged into the water.
Dizzy. Disoriented. Shocked. Surprised. Disgusted.
How could someone so carelessly disrupt the harmony of another’s existence through such a crude and violent manner? Jarring.
He was deafened by the roaring water’s dissonant symphony. He could still faintly hear the man’s footsteps above the rushing river but they began to fade as the humanoid continued his entropic trajectory
Surprised. Surprised. Surprised.
He couldn’t remember when he had last felt surprised.
The rock felt the current pressing against him, and saw the grains of dirt beneath him shifting. He could feel the river’s current tugging at him soon to yank him loose from his brief respite
Suprise—suprise—surprise—.
In his unchanging life, he had grown so used to thinking in years he had forgotten how it felt to think in minutes he couldn’t remember when he last felt so
Alive.
The man had made him alive.
The rock realized what he had been given once again
A moment that would shape a life
A new collision in the surface of a river
A new ripple cascading
He relaxed, feeling the echoes of excitement fade
letting himself be engulfed in the rush of the water.
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