A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, a100 - write from the POV of an inanimate object. Cue MacGuffin being an ordinary stone.


MacGuffin Stone

It's still warm, even now.

Normal was what it first remembered, surrounded by other pebbles. Sometimes it rained. Sometimes feet ground them deeper into the soil. Sometimes paws or dirty fingers raked them up. The temperature changed: cold, warm, then cold again. Sometimes there were new stones. Always, there were old ones. Friends, perhaps. Except they don't really talk.

Then it's picked up. It alone, and taken away. The wind is colder than water, then. Cold and lonely. Until a name is given. That is warm. Then other words, like threads winding around its rough form and suddenly it is not warm but hot and suffocating as it's passed from hand to drawer to other hands and other nooks and crannies and other hands again –

Until finally, finally, the whirlwind slows and this new hand tucks him away like a trinket he doesn't want, or doesn't need, to touch again.

But the name stays. The warmth stays.

It's no longer an indistinguishable pebble by the wayside, and it doesn't look like it'll be returning to that existence.

It is called the MacGuffin and so it will stay.