Weaving - A Tale of Three Stones
He was the first of three stones. Despite his age, he did not have a name. But most stones lacked this trait, so it never struck him as odd. Our stone had traveled the world in his years. Wondrous places like the far deep underground, the regular-amount-of-deep underground, the not-so-deep underground. He even made it to the mysterious surface. Propelled by frost and geology, he was proud of his journey. However, none of his adventures lived up to being chosen.
Creatures were strange things, people most of all. All soft and bustling about. Plants at least had the decency to stay in the same place, but people could go anywhere. Strange as they were, something was intriguing about how people made things. The hands that chose our first of three stones were not experts at making, but they were passionate. These hands mortared many stones, bound together, greater than the sum of their parts. Each mortared in place with all the care the hands could muster, but care alone can only get one so far.
Our first stone was mortared with diligence, but it was placed without experience. This misplacement meant our stone bore the burden of his peers for many years, far heavier than any stone should. Though to his credit, he held strong long after the hands were dead and buried. Long after the children of those hands had sold their inheritance. Long after the buyers and the buyer’s buyers had gone, leaving the stones abandoned. He had grown so tired. There was beauty in being a part of something more, but nothing lasts forever. He was the first stone to fall.
The other stones came soon after, falling in huge pieces and chunks. Smashing through ceilings and floors. It was fortunate our second stone fell when she did. For if she had fallen too early, or too late, this all would have been for nothing. She was an elegant stone, perhaps lucky. For she fell alone, perfectly dodging between her clumsy, tumbling peers. She struck the glass of a candle holder, one which had been left on a table long ago. A candle holder, so perfectly placed that the mid-summer sun would catch perfectly in its lens-like form. softening, and melting its wax in the afternoon light. Our second stone shattered the glass and the liquid wax joined the free-fall.
Our final, and heaviest of three stones was the last to fall. Capstone was his name, or possibly his title. He wasn’t exactly sure. Capstone had done well in his duty, gazing up at the sky and stars. Catching rain, and withstanding storms. Now his job was falling. A job Capstone did quite well. He was the kind of stone that onlookers could watch with delight as it was thrown off a bridge, splashing down into the waters below. His destructive weight carried him through the fall faster, and more powerful than the first and second stones.
Capstone gained speed as he fell through the open hole created by his peers. His acceleration was only stopped momentarily when he struck the top of a bookshelf. The bookshelf, not built to withstand falling stones, was no match for Capstone’s inertia. Capstone broke through the top of it and slammed corner-first into the texts lining its shelves. Tomes exploded into paper and bindings. They filled the air like antique confetti. Academic literature, novels, cookbooks, and many others left alone by those who had otherwise scavenged the abandoned building. The remains of books joined Capstone in his fall, mixing with falling debris and wax.
The mundane pages of religious scriptures, cartographic representations, and long-forgotten ledgers swirled in the torrent of objects, mixing with something. Something magnificent. A detail, imperceptible to anyone who may have seen the long overdue collapse of the structure. Pages of a Journal. A journal holding something old, something secret. A secret sharp and telling, like a piece of history, broken off and forgotten. Something unknown, amazing, and dangerous. Something now buried beneath stones, upon stones, upon stones.