Ficlets

Basalt

The cliffs cragged and scowling, the ragged stones that line the river’s banks scummed with algae. The mammoth rock sprouting tenacious trees through its jagged hideā€”all rose from the same source. Many years ago, so long that even the sky-scraping fir can’t remember, armies of mountains spouted and drooled ropey red hot strings of liquid stone.

“Lies,” the fir will answer you. “I’ve never seen such events and I’ve stood sentry here since the beginning of time.” Sheep graze among boulders coughed from the throat of the earth. They roll their yellow eyes at you when you ask and only tell you, “Don’t be foolish. This is all the world has ever grown: herds of grass, purple thistle, and bent wire fence.”

But you have heard the elders whisper, traced the clues in the rainbow grains, dug elbow deep in the old tales. And though the land rolls warm under your bare soles, you know it once wore a skin of molten fire. In the absence of that heat, that fury, the earth seems very cold and hard indeed.

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