The stone opened his eyes for the first time. Instinctively, he smiled.
His ears, all attentive now, listened to the deeply satisfying music created by the dancing ripples of the river. He stood up and walked in an ever so rolling manner. Reaching near the shore, he looked into the waters. Having forgotten what he used to look like in his previous burst of consciousness, and now gradually forgetting all his previous experiences, he tried to secure in his memory the current stony reflection that was peeping back at him through the flowing mirror. He felt mesmerized.
A thirsty bird landed on the other side of the shore, carelessly ignorant of the stone’s existence. The stone blinked his eyes. And the bird was gone. The stone followed the bird’s flight in the open skies for a while before the bright sun made him squint.
“Imagine the infinite energy the sun contains. May be I too have the same amount of fire in me,” the stone thought, “except I can’t go up and stick myself in the sky.”
He jumped to try and catch the sun. Once. Twice. In his third attempt, he stepped on to the loosely held sand of the shore and slipped into the cold galloping waters.
“Am I supposed to feel cold?”
Some leaves swam past him in that instant during which he waited to decide whether or not to flow on. Before he could initiate a conversation with the leaves, he drowned. In spite of accelerating towards the bottom, he found himself, against his wishes, being vigorously swayed by the movement of the water.
He gave up and looked skywards. The fire of the sun looked weaker now.
“May be now I can shine brighter, and become the sun of the river," he thought, hopefully, feeling happy when he had no reason to.
A fish came by, followed by another, and then some more. They ignored the brightly shining stone, and moved on. Just like the bird and leaves had.
The stone now hit the rock bottom. Similar other stones were there. They were all un-moving, and dead. And they all looked happy.
“Is this my family?” the stone contemplated.
A tiny round stone shook his head and opened his eyes, waking up from his deep and long sleep, and looked at this new stone amidst them.
He smiled and jumped towards him and soon they were both rolling on the river floor towards unknown terrains ignoring the turtles dreaming of reaching the river surface.