The Stone

"Why do you come here every day?" Asked the stone.

She jerked in surprise, having never been spoken to by a stone before, especially one the size of her fist, grey streaked with blue. Surely if any stone could talk it would be a large one, a mighty one. Colossal even.

"I come here to think, and to feel, and to be quiet," she said.

"Take me with you when you leave," the stone said, "I've always wanted to see the sea."

"Of course," but she forgot.

Skipping back down the winding, dusty trail from the mountain, she saw the stone, leaning against a signpost.

"Liar!" It cried.

She turned her face away and skipped faster, after all, it was only a stone. Further down the trail she saw a squirrel gnawing on the stone, trying to crack it between it's tiny paws.

"You promised!" It screamed.

She ran, to a cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea, and slammed the door. Tiny cries flowed from a doorway, and she stepped into the bedroom to find the stone, accusing and angry in a crib by the window.

"How could you leave me?" It wailed. "How could you skip away, when all I wanted..."

She snatched the stone from the crib and flung it against the wall. "No!" She screamed. "Leave me alone, you are just a stone!" She beat the stone against the floor until the crying ceased.

The man of the cottage, hearing the screams, left his work in the garden and rushed into the house. She lay sobbing, next to the broken body of his newborn son.

She cried, and clutched at him as he jerked her to her feet, his anger hot in the tears on his cheeks. He dragged her to the cliff's edge and she fought, and kicked, and begged, but he threw her into the sea's icy embrace.

The fall stunned her, and as she drifted to the bottom a small stone, grey streaked with blue, fell out of the pocket of her dress.

"I always wanted to see the sea." it said, as she struggled, then died.