The Kingdoms of Rock
Animals and rocks once lived together, though unharmoniously.
Rocks, being of greater mass and stature, played the bully as the powerful are often want to do. They'd smash herds of organics like a broom sweeping up dust and would roll over frightened organisms while they traveled, unaware of the damage in their wake. You could call them heartless, and you'd be right. We were their insects.
The biggest of them bumped around the oceans in a massive waltz, forcing us to brace for impact whenever they entered a tackle, one lifting the other off the earth, all of us sliding down their backsides.
Thus, we were always on the run. To linger was to become the sole of a shoe, the pawn in a game of chess, or the ball in a sport. We were prey, and they were gods, unconcerned with our plight. It did us no good to breed – we seemed at times an unlimited resource –, but breed we did.
So it was that Ayil begged Soon a single wish, "Let my whole life be lived in an hour. For beyond that, I lack the strength for this world." Soon, laughing at her self pity and thinking the request Animalistic in its stupidity, took the time to weave in such a strain.
And when Ayil's children came, they acted as dust, dispersed and transprent within an hour. It was only when, Soon realized, Ayil finally passed away herself, that her children had multiplied. Each day, whole generations staked claim on its shoulders, easily weathering its clumsy attempts to rattle them off, and we older animals faded behind, unable to cope with such swift competition.
I've tried to conjur the world of the children for myself. Boulders suspended and stacked at the queerest angles must seem to hang like cumulus – stuck in the sky, ignoring gravity, but secretly moving. Pebbles, once eratic and frightening in their numbers, probably sit as piles of tools and toys.
But Soon's attempts at disruption, even in their rarity, surely are felt. A god is a god after all.