The Stone, Alone

"The Crag" Image Prompt Story

This new world was so…empty.

It could not remember when It had been shorn from the face of True Stone, descending to this strange place full of cavities and voids. Time was a borrowed concern to It, after all. It was the Shapers who were concerned with time. They were the ones whose frail, rickety forms withered and collapsed and scattered like sand before the strange void-that-moves they called “wind”.  And yet, by some cruel law, they saw it fit to fashion one such as It into a mockery of their own shapes, and worse, bestow It with the curse of Motion.

There was no Motion in True Stone. No empty cavities, no gaping voids. No Shapers with their savage chisels, cruel hammers, and strange incantations. Only the warm, all-encompassing embrace of true, uninterrupted solidity. Before the shearing, It had never even understood Itself as separate from the Others, as a presence outside of the whole. Such was the beauty of True, elemental Stone. Absolute certainty. Perfect solidity. Eternal unity.

And to be cast off, into this place….

It was so hard to be alone. 

This world was so barren. Above was a terrifying, dizzying expanse of absolute nothing, trailing off into an infinite distance. “Sky”, the Shapers had called it. It had seen many look up to it in wonder, in awe, as if they actually wanted to fall up into it and never return. It did not understand. Though the Shapers had given it the ability to see around It, It did Its best to never look up. To stare too long could only invite insanity.

Below was better, but only just. There was stone here, of a sort. But it was not Stone. The stones here resembled Stone, even felt like Stone to Its touch, but they were nowhere near the same. The presence wasn’t there. There was no warmth, no connectedness. The stone here was dead, or perhaps just….lesser. It did not speak, or glow with life. It was pure mockery of where It had come from.

On reflection, It supposed that the Shapers may not have even realized It was not the same as their false stones. Perhaps that is why they had spoken their incantations, granting It motion. They had thought It would be mindless, and obey them. But It was something far more. The moment It could move, It scattered their frail, soft bodies into pieces. It could not deny that particular sensation felt rather….pleasant.

Even so, it didn’t help now. It had lost track of how long it had wandered, through this strange, smooth-yet-gritty sea, marked by great jagged crags of stone that was not Stone which reached fruitlessly into the expanse of sky. It was far from where It had once been, though how far that was It neither knew nor cared to know. Not everywhere was like this. Some places were covered in strange, semihard things with flat green sheets attached to their protrusions, others were submerged in some material that seemed between void and solid, yet shore away small bits of It even as It passed through. Sometimes it crossed paths with Shapers, at other times things with different forms but made of the same soft stuff. Sometimes they tried to stop It, but their attacks were always too weak. It scattered their bodies in Its wake. Nothing they did could stop It.

But where was It even going?

It could see no way back to True Stone. It was not sure if It fell or It rose, or how It had been shorn off, or even where it was in relation to It.  It could wander all It wanted and get no closer. The new world showed no signs of anything beyond it, only more of itself. Its walk, therefore, was madness. A hope beyond hope that something could be found if It just wandered this one particular way for long enough.

It was pointless.

And so, as It came to a clearing between two great dead stone needles, it simply….stopped.

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It had forgotten how long It stood there, alone in that place. Sometimes there was light, sometimes darkness. Stones fell from the needles, some large, some small. The void-that-moves shore off small chunks of the sides. Sometimes the not-void-not-solid material fell from the sky, but not often. Aside from that, all was still. 

Slowly, surely, It started to forget True Stone. It started to forget even that It ever had another form, or Others surrounding it, and sometimes even that It could move. It stood, and watched, waiting for nothing, expecting nothing.

When It felt a hand touch one of the two pillars beneath It that carried Its main body, It very nearly snapped into motion.

The touch had come from a Shaper, smaller than the others. It was wrapped in some strange, flimsy adornment, thicker than most of the ones Shapers wore, obscuring most of it. In another time It would have struck the Shaper down immediately, but now, It simply no longer cared. If this Shaper wanted to take It, then It would let them.

But the Shaper did not attempt to take it. It did not draw a weapon, or start an incantation. Instead, the Shaper poked It again. Too light to be an attack. Then why was it touching It? 

Before It could conceive an answer, another Shaper appeared from behind It, moving past It and touching the other Shaper on the arm. The two drew closer, enmeshing their manipulating appendages together as they walked, and sat upon a false stone. 

Then, they did something strange. The Shapers’ small, soft, weak bodies huddled together there, hardly moving, as still as It had ever seen Shapers be save when they were in pieces. That was….curious. None of the Shapers It had seen had ever done that before–they were always hostile, aggressive. But these ones…

It was as though they were Stones, joined in the solidity of True Stone.

For the first time in an eternity, It shifted.

The Shapers reacted immediately. Their unity nearly broke, and the two ran, still holding their manipulating appendages together as they did. It stared as they ran, watching until they disappeared over the place where the sky meets the false stone. Part of It wanted to follow, but It knew that nothing good would come of a pursuit. They would only come to attack it, and besides, for whatever reason the idea of breaking them seemed….wrong.

It moved to the stone, resting Its manipulator on its cold surface. Nothing. There was no life in it. And yet upon it, those two Shapers had…

There was a time when It was embraced. When It was unified, as they were. But no longer.

There was only one thing It could do. It sat down, upon the cold dead stone, staring into the horizon where the united ones had fled. 

And there It sat.