It was sitting there, peaceful and waiting, surrounded by its family, its fellow kin. Its world was rather small at the moment, since it could not move and it was rather sunken into the ground. It saw the sky during the day, the stars and night, and perhaps the occasional belly of the local wildlife.
It remembered when its world was not quite so restricting, remembered all that it saw, and though there was no reason to remember, it did anyway. There was a point, for a time at which it was on top of a very tall hill, and it could see for what seemed like thousands and thousands of miles. There was a point when it knew what wind was, and there was, in fact, a point at which it felt the feet of many now extinct animals walking across its smooth, exposed surface.
Though these were a few of the moments that stood out, there were other smaller, it’s-not-important-in-the-long-run happenings that occurred, miniscule changes that added to the lengthy history behind this little object. However, it was not aware of one future event that would take it out of its small world and expand upon the already thoroughly covered background, and very quickly.
There was a voice, just one at first, and distant to begin with.
“Hey, Rick! That spot looks good, right over there.”
And then there was another voice, seemingly agreeable from such a distance.
“Sure. Hey, wait up a sec!” That voice seemed exasperated, though this was of no consequence to it, since neither of the voices would notice it from where it was, slightly buried in the dry, crumbly dirt. Or so it thought.
Soon, the sound of weight grinding stones together filled the air in a rhythm as the two voices came closer. After a short amount of time, the rhythmic beat slowed down, and eventually stopped, and the voices were close. Very close. The two were quiet, though, and it was indifferent, like all the other disruptions in its world, to the business of the two voices. The two of them built up energy over time, and eventually that rhythmic song came back to life. This had a different, static feel though, for they still kept the same space near it. They didn’t come close or stray far from where they were to begin with, like a steady, natural dance.
It sensed emptiness in it’s surroundings, as many of its likeness left it, stranded, yet it remained blank and impartial, as always.
The voices became carefree, laughing from time to time, exclaiming things like, “Good one!” or, “Seven skips? No way!” Every piece of emptiness seemed to correspond with each “whoa!” that came from the two voices. The empty spaces grew in number, and with every addition, they came closer and closer to it and its partially exposed face, though it was still unemotional. It didn’t mind what was happening, and because of that it did not care to anticipate what was going to happen to itself.
Closer and closer, the voices kept coming, and there was more laughing, more light-heartedness that was added to the rhythmic music of the weighed-down stones. The rhythm came closer to it, the four feet closing ranks on it, as if it had radar honing in on it, leading that intricate rhythm to where it was, half hidden for who-knows-how-long in the ground.
Sooner rather than later, it saw a hand come down upon it. It was rather slender, and had carefully manicured nails, with a lush, iridescent pink coating them. There was a ring on one of the fingers, and it shone in the light, with a delicate silver band that wrapped all the way around the diameter. The band fit the hand perfectly, paired with the slenderness of the fingers and the dedicated neatness of the hand itself, society could expect nothing less than the ring that was on that finger now.
It was lifted from its world, and brought to the brief attention of a human face. The face looked at it quickly, and soon it was moved to another hand, and another face looked it over no more thoroughly than the first.
“Wow, this one’s going to be good!” one of the voices claimed appreciatively. “After this one, though, we have to leave. It’s time I’ve taken you back home to your parents.” It did not care to know which voice had spoken, but it noticed a big yet eerily calm body of water in front of it, and it realized that its past world was smaller than it had once thought.
With a laugh and a last note of the intricately rhythmic song, the smooth, flat rock was flung from the hand. There was precision in the throw, an accuracy that made the skipping stone skim the surface of the lake, leaving small, counted ripples in it’s wake. The rock swept across the water, touching the water twice, thrice, four times, and twice after. The flight was short and impressive to the couple, though the skipping stone did not join them in their appreciation.
With the last skip of the rock, contact with the water was lengthened, and the greedy substance swallowed it, the liquid covered every pore, every particle of exposed rock. The water drug that rock below the surface, and the skipping stone was spiraling to the bottom of the lake. It got darker and darker and darker, and suddenly it came to a none-too-graceful rest in a soft, fine patch of sand.

It had no choice but to sit there, peaceful and waiting, surrounded by the remnants of its family and its fellow kin. Its world was rather small at the moment, since it could not move, and gravity had it rather sunken into the ground. Here the day or night did not matter, for it was surrounded in darkness here no matter what. Which was best, it supposed, since it didn’t have much of a preference to begin with.