But I Smile Anyway…

Sue’s prompt for #writephoto this week was a rather stunning one!

I immediately saw two figures within the stones, and the following story is what came out!

“It won’t do,” Major General Monolith sniffed, “it simply will not do!” He looked down his nose, or as southwards as he could, being a large upright stone, unable to heave his weight around.

Lieutenant Lithotome turned his rather handsome head away from his superior. (Well, when I say turned his head, I mean, it was in the direction it always was!) His rock hand resting under his, perfectly chiselled by nature, jaw.

He knew they would never understand. That Monolith and all the other boulders in charge of their settlement. They could never understand his longing. They had been stood there, staid, old fashioned and unmoving for thousands of years, and so had he.

But instead of remaining there he wanted to go. Be different! He was sick and tired of being stuck in one place. This Lieutenant wanted to see the world!

How? I can hear you asking… Well that is something only Lieutenant Lithotome can answer…

He is still stood there wistfully looking out over the moors. Being the tallest of the crew, he had access to views of the vistas that the others didn’t. He knew it wasn’t all about a small hill and and the green grass around them. He knew there were rolling hills, and strange tracks where he would see vehicles coming and going regularly.

He heard the moveables talking about places they had been to. It wasn’t right, he knew. When any moveables came close, they were meant to turn to stone inside as well as out, unhearing, unseeing, unfeeling. That way when someone gouged out their name on one of the boulders, it didn’t hurt. And those moveables, well they had an awful habit of leaving marks wherever they went!

But Lithotome defied the rules. That was the kinda rock he was. And he heard stories.

But what was amazing was when one family of moveables came back.

A rather portly moveable came over and showed a smaller rotund version of himself a particularly deep almost crevice like hole in the Lieutenant.

“Ere son, see this ‘ere ‘ole? I made that, I did. And managed to knock this chunk of stone off this rock.” He then proceeded to show the mini moveable a piece of stone attached to some leather cord, hanging around the larger form’s neck.

Lithotome almost gasped in shock! A piece of him had come back! And in the moments that the large moveable had held that missing chunk close to him, a gush of information rushed into him.

The small shard from him had almost plugged into him like a memory card, and downloaded images from around the world.

Beaches, farms, deserts, forests. Heat, cold, rain,

So much out there that he couldn’t see.

But he could.

If only he could somehow garner the strength to topple himself over. Then he could roll down the hill, breaking into fragments, and get collected, and taken out into the wide world…

The harumpfh from Major General Monolith bought him out of his daydream. Why had he even bothered sharing his vision with that stuck in the mud old piece of rock?

I do wonder where my mind goes sometimes…..