-1In a field stood a stone. It was not an exceptional stone or even a sub par stone - it was simply a very average sort of stone of some size that sat in a lonely field. And the rain fell on it, the snow fell on it, and the sun shone on it. If it dreamt it dreamt as spiders dream; dreams of dust and waiting - mindless contemplation. If it noticed the world it noted it as trees or lakes would - a boundless chaos growing up around it. And the rain fell, the snow fell, and the sun shone.
Then came a day when all around it green burned away. On this day a boy died against it, and a top it died a man so afraid of the dark he became it. The boy was blonde and he sat on the ground carelessly a smile on his face arms open in embrace. His eyes are burned away, his torso a bloody mess of holes. There were others a scarecrow and a field crow, a boy confused, an emptiness, a fool and a stillness who took the bodies away. And the rain fell, the snow fell, and the sun shone, but the blood remained an earth-bound memory and greenery no longer hugged the stone's sides.
If the stone knew they came it gave no more sign then it told what they whispered, yelled, or wept. It said nothing, replied nothing though they kicked it, punched it, begged it, hugged and covered it yearly with flowers and candles. The flowers wilted beneath rain and sun, the candles crumbled under snow, but the tree the quiet one planted watched on with the stone, and the rain fell, the snow fell, and the sun shone.
A pretty enough girl with snowfield eyes slept her lifeblood away beneath the tree and the stone. The dew kissed her and the wind held her and the sun was kind enough to hid away so that she was nearly alright when the howler and the corpse came for her. While the howler voiced his grief the thing like a walking corpse simply let himself go and if the stone had seen such sights before it never said a thing it understood the ending well enough. Birds often fell dead if they flew too high little bodies becoming bloodied, twisted accidents on impact. So did he the boy who could not be a man dragonfly wings crushed and frosted, limbs shattered, eyes a solid mindless black that finally wept if only blood. If the tree trembled as masses of insects appeared for their kin then it did so quietly. And the following year the grass grew further away and more came to plant flowers, to pray, to simply stare in hopeless silence.
The sun shone, the snow fell, the rain fell and less and less came. Still the stone set in it's field beneath the shade of it's tree until only an old man long without kin stood before it each year and then there was not even that one. If the world seemed that much quieter, that much more sadder the stone never said a thing. And the rain fell, the snow fell with no sun to be seen.