The Stone sits next to a gnarled tree on a windy hill on a desolate plain, under the hill a stream gurgled happily away, In the distance a dark line shows where a forest is just visible, mountains cast a shadow over the forest and the plains like huge slumbering giants, the wind blows past all things, the grass, the ancient trees at the heart of the forest which can rival mountains in age, and the stones of the ancient mountains older than all except time itself.

The Stone is the oldest stone of the plains, it’s all that time keeps around of the mountain It once was, all the rest of the mountain is now dirt that makes up the hill and the plain it sit upon, It remembers when the mountains in the distance were but hillocks and not the multi-kilometer high behemoths of jutting rock they are today, it also remembers when it could put the mountains massive height to shame, but that was so long ago, and now it’s just but a small stone, sitting on a lonely hill, in an empty plain, by a dark forest, overlooked by the ancient mountains.

It’s seen so many things and remembers them all, it’s seen life and death, victory and defeat, betrayal loyalty, loss and gain, it remembers when a tribe of orcs came and settled around its mountain; It remembers when the tribe grows into a massive orc empire that stretched beyond the horizon. It remembers when that empire burned and they were driven out, leaving me alone, again.

It looked back at all the things It’s seen, when two wizards dueled to the death shattering mountains and burning down forests, making slashes in the earth kilometers deep, when ships were burning up high in the atmosphere from battles fought out in orbit with weapons of mass destruction.

When a clan of dragons carved out of its stone great halls lined with huge tapestries stolen from kings or made long ago when dragon where still accepted before the human kings became greedy, and made vaults with glittering heaps gold and precious stones of red, green and blue, they have kept its company for the longest of all the non-godlike beings but even they faded into oblivion leaving me alone again.

I’ve been around far longer than the gods.