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“ There once was a rose.

It lived long before time, and was not a rose as we know it, for it stood as tall as any tree and its petals were the flawless cerulean of a summer sky, with thorns that curved wickedly from its mighty stem. It stood alone at the top of a mountain, and the heady perfume of its scent danced on the wind and kissed the peaks of other mountains many miles away. The earth had birthed it, the sun had loved it, the rains had fed it, and the wind was its one and only playmate. It had lived thusly, in time beyond time.

But then time began and with it came a cacophony of ice and wind and snow. The rose froze solid, and fell through a great crack in the mountain. Snow and ice covered the rose, and there is remained, deep in the earth while the mountain cracked and sealed around it, sending it lower and lower. As it fell it condensed, and as it condensed it crystallized, and over the course of time is was made into a spherical gem, which in one light gleamed as clear and blue as its glorious petals, in another as black as the earth that birthed it. In its depths could be seen the wisdom of the ages, the entirety of time turned into a stone the size of a child's fist. It was harder than diamond, and when it fell through the crust and into the magma just below it bothered the stone not at all. It merely twinkled blue and black and waited for the kiss of the wind on its face once more, for the shining laughter of the sun.

A volcano erupted (as volcanoes will), and among the fury of the sound and soot the rose-stone emerged once more among its family the sun and the wind and the soil and the rain. It tumbled down the steep slope of the mountain, dodging lava and other lesser rocks, finally stopping at the shore of a vast sea. The tide crept up onto the sand to investigate this stone the color of its darkest depths, and with tentative yet greedy fingers snatched the stone into its fathoms to rest again in the vast and endless seabed. And there it waited once more.

The currents swept the stone along the seafloor, and its blue-black eye saw all the sea held: the creatures, so strange and many, with their fins and flippers, their scales and teeth and shimmering slickness; the undulating dance of the plants; the faint sparkle of the sun and the stars seen from below the trembling surface of the water: all so different and awesome. But the stone missed its mother earth and sister wind, its father sun and brother rain, and the force of its melancholy was such that a great wave, more colossal than a mountain, rushed up and lifted the stone from the bottom of the sea, and when it thundered onto the land the stone went crashing down with it. 

The monstrous tide receded, and the stone rolled to a stop in the middle of a young forest. Many of the saplings and brush had been swept away by the horrific wave, but those that stayed flourished, for the stone had never known another plant during its life as a rose, and the little green things pleased it. It begged its mother earth to house them graciously and its father sun to smile kindly upon them. It asked its wily sister wind to be gentle and calm with the delicate greenlings, and for brother rain to feed them heartily. They loved their rose-stone and so of course they obeyed, and the forest flourished. It spread and grew so that over time it became massive, and covered nearly all the land the water did not touch, and the stone was joyous. 

But the joy was fleeting. Soon the animal Human became plenty and greedy. Soon they began to cut down the stone's beloved green things, and this angered the stone. It sent plagues and disasters after them, incited them to war, rapine, and pillage to punish them for the hurt of the greenlings, but Humanity in all its numbers was stronger than the one stone, and they thrived anyway.

Time continued in its inexorable march, and the forest became less and less as Humanity spread more and more, a black pestilence stinging the earth and the wind and the rain. The stone waited for its chance at vengeance, for Humans surely could not expect to harm so deeply without any punishment in turn? Time slipped forward. Buildings rose and then soared into the sky, offending sister wind and stealing her sky, no longer the blue of the rose's petals. Humanity spread further and further, and the forest shrank and shrank, the rose-stone hiding carefully in its very depths, nestled among the roots of the tallest tree.

Until one day.

On this day the last sanctuary of the greenlings was penetrated, trees torn up or cut down and Humans scuttling everywhere, poking and prodding and chattering self-importantly to themselves. The stone tried to hide itself, but among the Humans was a small girl-child. She had long dark hair and tiny red bow-lips, and big brown eyes that looked solemnly out at the world. She was there with her mother and father, the stone knew (for it could know all such things, its wisdom was so great) and she was bored and inquisitive. She hopped up onto the squat stump of the formerly tallest tree in the forest and pretended she was a fairy princess surveying the ruins of her kingdom. She soon tired of this too, and began kicking at the debris at the foot of the stump. The stone tried to burrow further into the bosom of the earth, but Humans are a force to be reckoned with, and the black toe of the girl's shoe struck the stone and nudged it out of hiding.

The child was surprised and delighted by the blue-black gleam of the rose-stone. She picked it up carefully in her small white hands and held it to the sun. Turning it about she could see at turns a blue more bright and pure than the sky in summer and a black more full and total than the darkest night. Its beauty enthralled her, and in the way of children she knew she never wanted to share it, and so she slipped it into the pocket of her dirty pink dress and hurried over to her questioning parents. The stone was deeply saddened to have lost its forest, but the girl was an interesting creature, and it decided to sit quietly in her pocket, and wait.

In humans the rose stone found a subject far more interesting than the plants of its former forest home; where the plants could only be and survive humans lived, and lived heartily.  They created, they destroyed, they defied great obstacles and surmounted insurmountable odds for the sake of things both nebulous and precious and beyond the rose-stone’s comprehension. 

Though in the beginning the stone was resentful and caused much mischief for the human girl-child who had found it, it soon grew engrossed in the human story.  It was named Cillure, and by its good graces the girl and her family grew to power and prominence, and came to be the first line to form and rule the land named for the powerful rose-stone. 

When the girl was aged, the stone took it upon itself to choose the next in line, and the next after him from those ancient into modern times.  No man or woman may sit in power who does not have the blessing of the rose-store Cillure, nor will one who uses force remain on the throne, for the Cillure stone does not abide by force and violence.  Its rules are simple, and in return we are given lush farmlands and bountiful herds, the pestilences that hound others somehow circumvent our lands, and our rulers are guaranteed to be free of guile and greed and despotism, lest the feel the Cillure stone’s wrath.”

 

The Stone Man looks at the stone gleaming blue and purple and black in the firelight and shivers violently to think of what its power must be, to change the world so completely.  “So then it has magic?” He asks, voice low and rumbling in the quiet after Malaara’s tale.

“In a way,” she responds, reverentially plucking the stone from Annabelle’s hand and tucking it back into the neck of the girl’s sweater, “But more accurately it is magic.  It is something so old and so in-tune with the earth that it has developed into its own form of magic and power.  The existence of the Cillure stone is a very closely guarded secret:  only the royal families and their innermost circle know of its existence�"“

Malaara stops suddenly, turning to look at Annabelle once more.  Immediately the Stone Man sees why�"the girl is stirring, tiny moans escaping her red bow lips and eyes fluttering open as though unwilling to do so.

“Momma?” she whispers, her large blue eyes (so near in color to the Cillure Stone, the Stone Man thinks) darting around the dim room in a panic.

“Hush child, you are safe.  My name is Malaara, and this is my home.  This strange gentleman brought you here; he found you…do you remember?”

Annabelle’s brow furrows in deep thought, until her mind finally seizes on the past few hours, and then the blue of her eyes swells and spills over as she sobs and moans piteously.  Malaara strokes her back and her cheek, bringing comfort in whatever little ways she can.  Though she is gruff and stern with the Stone Man she shows nothing but tenderness towards Annabelle, for which the Stone Man is grateful.    

Reviews

[Jack E Khthon]

Very well done...enjoyable read...great detail....great pace...it really sucked me in to the spectacle of the stone's beginning...

Haven;t read the other chapters but look forward to reading more...this is very well written...

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all best