It was a first, to be watered by the blood of The Species. It was a first to be touched. For eons, I watched them spread. As footprints on the widening paths, then as unnatural lights growing ever closer. They put a bench over me in my latest resting place. I could no longer see the stars.
Other species have passed my views, of course. From when I was younger and less smooth, lying at the top of the mountain. I have watched their violence with quiet indifference, unaffected by their changing tides of power. But it is the violence of The Species that has wrought the most change.
It was their desire for change that had brought me from the top of the mountain to begin with—the clearing and construction of a once tiny village that had no room for me. It was their violence that moved me again.
The bench was old, by their measure, when the man and woman came. Splintered and cracked, they sat and yelled, careful not to touch the wood as they unburdened themselves of their heavy packs. Then the man said something that silenced the woman, and he stood, moving on his own to the edge of the cliff. The woman dropped her head, and I guessed the water in her eyes would soon spatter the parched earth at her feet. But then she turned, and saw me through the gap between two boards.
Her skin was warm upon me, like the early rays of the morning sun, and when she swung me upon the man, breaking his flesh, I felt his own warmth gush upon me before he disappeared far below. I worried then that she might throw me down after him, into the damp, stagnant forest, where the air and sky would not change until long after I was buried. Instead, she carried me farther up the mountain.
I lay now near the very edge of the cliff, behind two large boulders, hidden from the trail. The rain that came soon after the woman left washed the man’s blood from my surface and into the soil below. I won’t stay here forever. The land always changes, and often without warning. But for now, at least, I can once again see the stars.