A single stone sat upon the edge of a distant shoreline and contemplated existence.
Surrounded by a panoptic wreath of sea and sand, the outward world felt expanding and almost unending: like a single needle placed into a pin-cushion, as if a lone dot was struck upon a canvas; the stone would think of distance and it would sigh, the sheer vastness of what was beyond too unimaginable for thought.
From another headland the stone appeared as if it was reaching from the ocean, stretching to the sky as if it wanted to pluck the sun from the clouds above, grabbing at lost strands of light, wishing to carry their embering glow below the water’s edge, just to hold this radiance, just to give a small gift back to that which has always lived in lightnessness.
It was alone, even as the million grains of sand busily chattered away in whatevers and nothings, the stone felt lost, ‘It’s too wet,’ the ocean’s edge would mutter as it crept along the shoreline, ‘ít’s too dry,’ the dunes across the flat beach would call. An infinite number of voices all seemed to gossip and cry: echoing their thoughts out into the noise of life.
They wouldn’t speak to the stone very often, occasionally a grain would whisper, ‘you’re quite tall,’ under its breath, but before a reply could be spoken the sand would be shifted in the swell and another grain would take its place.
People would sometimes climb up onto the stone and gaze out across the ocean.
They would often just sit in silence, looking to where the stone looked and sharing in the awe of a distance that can’t be seen or imagined. Some would yell at this distance, calling out, ‘coo-ee,’ with a laugh or simply bellowing a shout, their lungs full of air and anger. The stone treasured these moments of simple connection, its craggy back weathered enough to help even the smallest ones up onto its plateau and its height not too daunting for those who needed help.
It would imagine itself to be a whale in these moments, happily travelling across the ocean on some grand adventure, a small bird perched atop its head enjoying a brief respite.
The stone was lonely though, these people would clamber down in time and walk over the dunes into the distance beyond, some would return but never the same, they all would grow taller and on each new visit they would grow frail; these people would one day return with youthful faces, but holding a saddness in a way the stone could not understand, they would throw ash into the wind and then all too quickly grow frail once again.
The stone would imagine itself to be a lighthouse when alone, a white sentinel blinking away and keeping this coast free of shipwreck. There weren’t many ships that sailed past these days but the stone was patient, it could wait.
With every dip and turn of the sun the stone would lose small fragments of itself, becoming smaller and smaller, as it became lined with the pockets of a place where life had once been. It didn’t mind after a while, it thought of the people and how they grew, it thought that maybe it too was growing in some way, its gradual erosion showing a history that was being told by a life without voice.
It had been a mountain once.
A tall mountain of beautiful granite that stood unbaulking against the time that parted around it. The earth sprawled out before this mountain and every line of the landscape below would fall ever changing as days rolled onward. The forrests would breathe with life, growing lush and then becoming bare as fire blossomed from their branches. The snaking rivers charged onward, wavering from wide to narrow, flowing from slow to fast, all the while carving beautiful shapes into the land as they moved. Elsewhere, the mountain would watch the rain circle the land and give life to places where the rivers could not touch. The glinting beauty of this silver rain would always bring the mountain joy as it danced from sky to ground: flashes of its lightning striking fast and illuminating the clouds with fleeting moments of dazzling light, each one drawing attention to the symphonic tension of air that heralded a storm’s close arrival.
Drawing themselves to full height, clouds would then sweep outward, like titanic castles of growling white so spectacular that they dwarfed the land and hung so impossibly to a sky set alight by the setting sun.
It was lonely then, like the absent sky of summer blue, no one would visit the mountain in its days of nobility; the figures at its base too small to hear, the mountain could only watch as the world slowly changed. Not knowing how it came to be, the mountain’s peak grew cold; not able to hear, it’s sides became steep. It withdrew into this hollow and looked to find friends in the wind, river and rain.
The river would then steal from the mountain, to its granite walls its water would run, taking rock greedily as it lay its bed with beautiful pebbles and stone. Seeing this, the wind would sweep upon the mountain, galling and gusting, it tore height from the peak of the mountain and dressed its hidden body with dust and snow.
The clouds would then cast down rain and reduce the mountain further, not able to see something so grand as to challenge them. So jealous of the mountain where these three, that they stole and lashed and struck, until only a single stone remained, one now weaker than the river’s tide and one lost to the land that created it.
The stone looked to the ocean and was amazed, this expanse of silent sea that did not age or crumble. It seemed that every life in this world contained some small ember of beauty that lived beyond its simple means, but the ocean would always shine the brightest; It’s waves grew stronger than the wind’s mighty gale, it’s depths became unreachable for the clouds above, unmoved by the river’s strongest flow, the ocean was simply impassive to these things. It existed so presently, so complete, but for some reason it too seemed alone.
A gentle wave meandered up the beach and reached out to the base of the stone. For a moment, the old mountain was no longer lonely.
J.McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 