I've been around as long I can remember. That isn't unusual, I know, no one really remembers when they began to exist. I guess my first memory is of when the water came. Then the birds took to the air and the beasts came to the land. I believe I was also used in one of the first experiments in physics. A man picked me up and skipped me across a large lake.
      As you may have guessed, I am a rock; Granite to be precise. Nothing really special, but I consider my existence to be very special.
      After an extended time at the bottom of the lake, I was washed down a river before I was picked up, along with four other rocks, by a young shepherd boy. Soon I witnessed one of the other four used to slay a giant of a man. I was soon disposed of and forgotten for a time.
      The next significant memory that comes to mind is not a particularly pleasant one. A woman in a nearby village had been caught in the act of adultery, and so, by law she was put to death. Unfortunately I was used to stone the poor woman. Her screams stay with me to this day.
      For a long time after that I took no notice of what was happening around me. Perhaps I was still consumed by the blood on my conscious, perhaps it was merely the monotony of the everyday. Needless to say, when I next enlightened myself to my surroundings, I was quite shocked at what had transpired.
      Men, hundreds and hundreds of them, were killing each other. Firing projectiles from mechanical weapons called rifles. A hundred times more destructive than a crossbow, they tore through flesh like cloth. Even more destructive were the tanks. These behemoths of dread levelled even the sturdiest of buildings.
      A grenade landed next to me, and when it exploded I became shrapnel, propelled into the chest of a young soldier. Again I was used to help take a life, and the pain from years before came back to me.
      After the battle was over, the body of the soldier that I was embedded in was returned to his homeland. The body was cleaned for burial, and the shrapnel was removed. I was tossed into a bucket with other stones and pieces of metal before being sorted and disposed outside. And it was there that I lay until present day.

      Now I am being held by a young boy, and as he turns me around between his fingers, he ponders the isolated omniscience of inanimate objects. Presently I will be thrown at a passing bird and land in a nearby forest. The boy does not know, but our paths will cross again someday.
      For the boy will grow into a man, and have a son of his own. They will walk through these very woods, and I will catch the eye of the man’s son. He will pick me up, place me into his pocket, and I will be the start of a modest rock collection that the two will accumulate throughout the son’s young life.
      Alas, time will take its toll, and someday the man will die. Before the funeral, the son will return to his parents home to mourn and remember. He will find a dusty box in a closet, and will open it to find the stones that he and his father will have had collected. He will take the box with him, and at the cemetery, he will lay the box on the casket over his father’s heart. Then he will watch, with tears in his eyes and a pain in his chest, as We are layed to rest.



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