The sun peeked over the horizon, sending streams of golden light bouncing across the landscape. The early morning fog melted away to reveal a small village nestled between a forest and hills. A road wound through the hills, and despite the early hour, the road was humming with the bustling traffic of cars and trucks.
The village was small, with only three-hundred or so people occupying it. At the center of the village, a large square was paved with dark gray stones. The edges of the stones were weathered and worn with the weight of thousands of feet making their path across the square over the years.
The sunlight bathing the village warmed the dark stones of the square. She enjoyed the warmth radiating across her surface, and it was days like these that made the winter months bearable. When the snows covered up the square and the frost's bite reached deep into the gaps between the stones, making her ache to her very core, she could remember the warmth that came with the spring thaw.
The village square was pulled out of her thoughts by the loud snap of a screen door slamming shut. A man had just exited a light blue house, letting the screen door swing sharply behind him, bouncing off of the doorjamb. The man strode purposefully from the house and through an alley and towards the village square. As the man made his way through the alley, one of his work-worn boots caught a smallish, round rock and it went sailing ahead of him. The rock bounced across the square a half-dozen or so times, before coming to rest near the edge of the square. The rock had enjoyed his brief journey, and all the bouncing had only made the trip even more fun. He had been in that alley since last fall, when a squirrel had dropped the rock while jumping from the roof of the bank to the post office.
"This isn't too bad" the rock thought as the summer sunlight began to saturate him. "At least I will get to be warmer; I used to always be in shadow."
The sun climbed higher in the sky and the shadows of the buildings surrounding the square were getting shorter and shorter. The unharmonious cacophony of metal against wood echoed around the village square, startling birds into flight. The children of the village were beginning to leave their houses to gather in the square. They were on break for summer and no longer had to sit long hours in the brick building at the edge of the village, the one topped with a bell that clanged in the early morning hours and called them to hurry.
"School," the village square remembered, "That's what the children called it; it's where they learned subjects like math and writing."
The children always seemed to be talking about learning and the strict human female who taught them. Even now, the children chatted about their teacher, standing together in clumps and scuffing their feet on the warm surface of the square, who was accustomed to the usually bustling activity of the children. Usually they would be running to the village square to start their games of running and jumping; but today, something was different, the village square could feel the uneasiness emanating from the children. She paused, as a thought suddenly struck her.
"What day was it?" She thought to herself "It couldn't have been a year yet…. Could it?"
She counted rapidly "Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, sunrise…"
"It has been a year!"
Upon this realization, the village square almost shifted her pavers uncomfortably. She knew what was to happen in the next few hours, and she dreaded and hated and most of all didn't understand why the humans did this. They had this thing, so different than the dances and other events that were held in the village square, but again so much the same. The humans of the village gathered in clumps, their emotions - whether excited or uneasy - rolling over the village square and surrounding the buildings like the morning fog.
The rock that had landed near the edge of the square felt the dread and uneasiness emanating from the village square. He pushed his thoughts into the air.
"Hello?" He yelled, hoping that the village square would hear him and respond.
"There is no need to yell…" A voice rumbled, chiding the rock; a hint of avalanches and falling rock accenting her speech.
"Sorry! I wasn't sure if you would hear me."
"Then maybe next time you should start with a lower volume?" The village square suggested tetchily.
"Okay… Do you have a name?" The rock asked, almost ignoring the village square's irritated comment, eager for a conversation.
The square paused for a moment, thinking "I may have had a name at one time or several names… but they have been forgotten."
"Oh," the rock sighed in disappointment, "Well, I'm called Clifstán- or Clif. I'll call you… 'Stánflóra' or 'Flóra' for short."
"How original," Flóra replied drily. "It literally means 'paving stone'."
"It's better than not having a name," Clif pointed out.
"Hmmm," Flóra gave a noncommittal noise before returning to her thoughts on what the human children were doing, or rather avoiding the thoughts of what was happening. Clif continued to prattle away, taking Flóra's lack of response as an invitation to continue talking.
Some of the children had begun to break away from their small groups. The boys ran around the square, picking up stones and putting them into their pockets or piling them at the edge of the square. Only the smoothest and roundest stones were kept, those that were odd-shaped or had jagged edges were rejected and tossed back to the ground.
Flóra could hear the glee in the stones' thoughts and she winced. They didn't care if they were kept or rejected or what was about to happen to them- they just knew that it was going to be an adventure. She sighed, not noticing that Clif was still chattering away.
"That's the problem with small rocks," Flóra muttered to herself, "They don't understand that waiting and sitting and watching is plenty of fun- they just enjoy moving, without a care as to how or why."
Clif paused mid-sentence, Flóra's statement confused him. Sitting still, without moving for a long time, was okay to start with, but it grew boring fairly quickly. His thoughts were interrupted by the familiar sensation of vertigo- he had been picked up! A boy with grubby and nail-bitten hands flipped the rock over a few times before depositing it into a pocket- the rock was small but it would serve its purpose. Flóra was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't notice that Clif's chattering had faded away.
"Clif?" She called out hopefully.
"Yes?" "Huh?" "Hello?"
"What?" "Hmm?" "Yes?"
A half-dozen or so voices responded, all varying in volume- but none of them was the Clif she was looking for. "That's the problem with having a name that means 'rock'" Flóra grumbled. She hoped that he hadn't been picked up by one of the boys to be put in a pocket or pile; even though she had only talked with the small rock for a short while, Flóra liked him and would hate for him to face the fate of…
"No," she stopped her train of thought before it reached its inevitable conclusion. "He's small and was probably picked up and then tossed aside into one of the alleys. He'd probably like the change of location."
Letting any remaining morbid thoughts slink away, Flóra ignored all of her senses except the warmth that permeated her. Her consciousness floated on a pool of sun-saturated warmth, but try as she might, Flóra couldn't keep the occasional snippet of human conversation from slipping in. It flitted across her thoughts, and she tried to push it out- but it seemed the harder she ignored it, the more the conversation was able to worm its way in, enshrouding and destroying the happiness that was emanating from the absorption of sunlight.
"The corn's lookin' good…" a gruff voice of one of the men who had begun to gather.
"Yeah? I'll bet it'll look even better after today…" another man answered, pausing to spit a brownish mixture of saliva and tobacco onto the ground.
Flóra hated that; it was just so… disgusting! It was even worse than those paper-wrapped things they lit on fire. Whenever they were done with those, they dropped them on the ground and crushed them into the surface of the village square with the heel or toe of their boots.
"Did you see her dress?" a higher pitched voice asked in a hushed tone, leaning close to the ear one of her friends; the women had begun to gather.
"Yes, it was hideous," the friend replied, nodding. "Puce and orange, with bright green flowers." She shuddered and made a disgusted noise.
The pair parted and joined their husbands, corralling their children as they made their way across the square. More men and women gathered, forming a sizeable crowd that filled the square. A man walked to the front of the crowd carrying an old, black, wooden box. Another man followed the first, carrying a stool. The men set the stool down and placed the box on top of the stool; the first man opened the box and began talking.
Flóra tuned out the voice of the humans, straining to hear the familiar reedy voice of the box that she knew would begin speaking once his lid had been opened.
"Hello old friend…" The box creaked "Have you missed me?"
"Yes" The village square replied tiredly. "But I wish we didn't meet like this, year in and year out."
"Me too…" The box sighed. "What has happened since I last talked to you?"
"Not much… A rock landed close to me today and he wouldn't stop talking."
"Where is he now?"
"He is gone… he probably got picked up by one of the boys" Flóra answered the box's unasked question as to why Clif had disappeared. "He was named "Clif"… and he gave me a name: "Stánflóra" or just "Flóra"…"
The box allowed the silence to continue, unbroken, allowing the village square to grieve in her own way for the small rock. He knew that rocks and stones placed great importance on their names- unlike trees and wood, who might go through two-dozen names in an hour. When Flóra had lost her name all those years ago, it had crushed her, and now that her Namer had disappeared, it was almost as if she had lost her name too.
The silence was broken when the box made irritated noises- not at Flóra, but at the humans. Earlier, they had put small pieces of thinly pressed wood- they called it "paper"- into the box and mix them up. They were now pulling the papers out; it didn't hurt but it was irksome and slightly uncomfortable. It had been much worse years ago when they had used chunks of wood. The paper was still a relative of the box, having come from a tree at one point, but after being pulled apart and soaked and pulled and pressed into their current form; they had mellowed and now acted more like an old tree than the newer trees they had come from.
Wood chips on the other hand, whined and cried and chatted and laughed and would not shut up! They had driven the box crazy, they had been from a very young tree and sliced into small pieces- but instead of dying (like humans thought happened to "dead" branches and wood), the consciousness of the original tree had fractured and divided, splitting into every direction possible. This resulted in a shattered psyche that was highly unstable and prone to mood swings and temper tantrums- in each individual wood chip, all at the same time.
Time seemed to drag, every minute that passed taking longer than the previous on. Both the box and the village square wanted this all to be over. Even though they would part for another year, it would be worth it to no longer have to sit through this gathering.
Eventually the humans were done pawing through the contents of the box and the last slip of paper was drawn out. The men and women unfolded their papers, all breathing a sigh of relief- except one. A woman screeched something about not having time, but the men ignored her yelling, continuing on as if she hadn't spoken.
The two men gathered all the papers from the crowd, including the husband of the yelling wife's paper and placed only six papers back into the box- including the one the man had held, the one with a forbidding black dot drawn on it. The remaining pieces of paper were dumped onto the ground, discarded just like the imperfect stones tossed aside earlier by the boys; but unlike the stones, the papers were able to fly away, scattered by the next breeze or gust of wind.
Flóra wanted to join the spinning pieces of paper when they scattered, pulled along by tendrils of cool air, but she was stuck here on the ground- unable to move or turn away or ignore the events unfolding across her bricks.
The woman who had screamed and her family reached into the box, each pulling out a slip of paper- even the small child, who was not much more than three or four years old, had a white paper clasped tightly his tiny fist, crumpling it happily. After each person- the man, the woman, the two older boys, the girl, and the little boy- had a paper, the crowd quieted, waiting. The children unfolded their papers slowly, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief as all four children's papers were revealed to be blank. The man and the woman waited for the children to reveal their results before opening theirs. The man opened his paper and showed its blank surface to the crowd.
The woman still held the paper tightly behind her back, as if holding onto the childish notion that if she couldn't see the paper, then it didn't exist. Her husband grabbed her wrist and forced the paper out of her hand, opening it to reveal the menacing dark circle. The woman whimpered slightly, as if her earlier screams were trapped somewhere inside of her chest. She stood as if frozen, her hands still clutched behind her, slightly parted where her husband had forced the paper out of her grasp.
The gathered villagers were moving fervently picking up the stones that the boys had gathered earlier. The rocks and stones echoed the excitement of the humans, not understanding what all was going on, but knowing something big was happening.
Someone gave the woman's small child some small pebbles, including one that Flóra knew was Clif. If Flóra had a stomach, it would have dropped, knowing what was to happen next. The villagers surrounded the woman, each holding a rock or several, as if waiting for a signal. The woman became unfrozen after she realized she was surrounded; her lips parted forming the shape of an 'O' as she looked into the eyes of the man standing directly in front of her. It was her husband, and for as much as she searched into his blue eyes, she couldn't find what she was looking for- something that told her that this was okay, that it was a joke, that nothing was going to happen.
But her husband would never lie to her, and they both knew that; a tear rolled down his cheek and his eyes looked even brighter and bluer. The woman began breathing heavily, hyperventilating as she realized her fate. Her voice rose in pitch as she began screaming again.
"It's not fair! It isn't fair!"
Her husband raised his right arm, clasping a stone that was flecked with bits of green and blue, allowing tears to flow freely down his nose and cheeks. He released the stone, sending it flying towards his wife. The rest of the villagers took this as a signal and all sent their rocks and stones towards the woman. They closed in on her, throwing each consecutive rock faster and harder. One woman ripped a rock- Clif- out of the grasp of the woman's son's hand, and drew her arm back to throw it forcefully.
The boy looked around, confused as to why his momma was yelling like that and why the people crowded around her like that. He wailed, his voice a counterpoint to his mothers, and turned around to run away from the crowd. One of the village square's bricks was slightly raised, and the little boy tripped over it, landing on his side and causing him to wail louder than ever.
The child's tears dripped down his face and pattered onto the stones that were still warm from the morning's sunlight. No more than twenty feet away, the crowd continued its fervent activity. The child's salty tears pooled in the cracks between the village square's brick, so similar, yet so very different than the liquids that were mixing mere feet away. The woman's blood pooled and clotted in the cracks, mixing with the ichor that seeped from village square as she wept for all that had been lost.
The life of the woman… gone….
The love and trust between the woman and her husband… gone…
The innocence and happiness of the woman's child… gone…
The village square sobbed even harder, the ichor of her tears flowing faster. She was done with all of this… insanity of the humans. Flóra had sat through countless numbers of these ceremonies, but she decided that this was to be her last.
Taking one last deep breath, Flóra relaxed and released her spirit. She floated away on a tendril of wind, finally free of her earthly binding. Spinning gleefully, Flóra raced away from the village. The wooden box had felt Flóra's escape and he smiled to himself, happy for his friend.
The sun still shone, the birds still sung, but the village had changed. When Flóra had left her body of the village square behind, the stones had changed. Their luster and beauty had dulled until it looked like the rocks the boys had gathered earlier that day. The edges crumbled more, lacking the gathering force of Flóra's spirit. One of the men noticed the crumbling of the village square, and he made a mental note to tell the leaders of the village- they would need to tear up this square and lay a new one soon.