“You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

-Will Rogers

Sitting on the edge of a forest, today, is a rock. I can tell you this with certainty. The jagged rock is just getting over his bewilderment of the swirl of change he found when waking up from his nap. For, you see, this rock is deep, deep in the ground, and his senses have to travel all the way around his rooting bedrock in order for him to get emotional. Because of this, it takes a good two hundred years to get emotion out of a rock.

Upon waking up, the rock wrote a letter to his new friend, a Willow tree:

Dear Friend,

What a rude awakening!

Searing pain quickly passed through me today. It was from some kind of glowing mud or ash. Before it landed in my lap, it had lost its effect.

Then, out of a cloud of smoke, I was blinded by nothing but red. I saw a large mass of red above shiny black twigs. I was shocked when I saw the same occurrence across the plain: smoke followed by sounds that shook me to the bedrock.

In fact, an old neighbor of mine was in the middle of it. That is, indeed, why he is my old neighbor.

I then noticed the red mass diverging and massing together in many different areas. It was like a ripple in a pond. As soon as the branches of the mass stopped together, a strange sensation occurred at the top of me and knocked the red, fidgeting clutters to the ground.

I wondered, had I done this? In a world so changed, had I, too, developed a defense system? Mother Nature is not normally so secretive and sudden.

A thumping feeling carried down my side and I saw more of these fidgeting masses appear. They hugged their own little branches at the chest—these branches were very loud and made clicking sounds. One of those branches was especially long and carried a desperate, flapping, mutated leaf. On this square leaf, there were three colors and it had many nooks and turns in the insignia on it.

There was more fidgeting from the holders who carried the leaf as it slapped in the wind. They let out a cry which resembled a chimpanzee, those petulant, impatient things.

That was the moment I recognized the bright-colored masses as the mutated apes. These were the same apes that threw themselves at me and, eventually, shed their blood on me.

This is what compelled me to rest a while in beginning. I’m sure you remember? The angry, furless meat bags favored me as the last resting place of betrayers of their scrap of land. They used to push their own kind down against me and strike with scraps of your family and mine. They probably still do it.

I find it silly that these apes war against their own kind for such an underdeveloped concept as boundary—an invention even younger than their race.

If we all did this, I would not mind hurling myself at the pheasants that fly above me, going about their business as they loose their waste pellets at me.

But, I digress. I still have much to record.

Next, I saw an ape while he was peeling his limbs of the black and squatting. A few twitches and fleeting relief touched its face and it was gone. Smoke enveloped it, it screaming all the while.

The living things fertilize the land, making it even more worth this unpleasantness. Somewhat as bird droppings make the soil around me even richer.

Perhaps that’s what it’s like to be mortal. Is this how you, also, feel? Do you, without question, follow a higher order you yourself created? And take what life you choose—just as your plain living might bring?

Well, now I have become so involved in my writing to you that a large change has come again. Things are quiet, thank goodness. What has happened in your corner? The trees are all black there, and they are oddly, exactly alike. Your lovely branches are all gone, young friend. Or is that wafting, black plume at the top your new branches?

One never knows when change rules all …

Nonetheless, I am finished now, and I anticipate your reply. Perhaps this charming, pale ape will deliver this for me.

It is smiling, but shivering. Could it be the very same flinching ape who blew to bits just before? Its sharp nose spills over the upper lip as before, and it’s eyes are wide and fearful as before; it’s top-fur is a dull, dark color—a semblance of the gloomy sky.

It is laying something down on me, very gently. It seems to have a letter, too—

The rock felt a tiny cry as the letter and envelope landed on the rock and the girl disappeared as quickly as she appeared.

Now, I say “felt” for the very simple reason that rocks do not hear—though, they also do not feel the way we know feeling to be—they are implacable blobs of mild emotion. Reacting is about the only thing they can do, after billions of years of wear by the winds and waters of the earth. Their reaction is hardly personal and defensive, though, since they can not be harmed and have no personal space to offend. Insults are too miniscule to worry about and nature has its way of making things come full circle: that is why we do not get complaint letters when stones are sculpted or turned to pebbles—they don’t feel it enough, and, supposing they did, rocks would look forward to more material build-up in the recent future. Time takes care of it.

The same thing goes for when I say that he writes a ‘letter.’ It was more psychological and archaeological and, of course, geological. Rocks have no organs except for the one they share with all of nature—which includes us.

Now, the cry he felt was a familiar one that he had expected after he sent his letter: his Willow friend! He was not sure what has made the tree so much closer to him, but he knew it was his friend—at least part of him. The letter and envelope ratified that he felt the rock’s reaction by beginning to make what we call “small talk.”

This reunion was cut short when the envelope’s ‘voice’ seemed to double when a man came by and rested a rifle on the rock. Consciousness flowed to both sides of the rock now—the Willow was to the left and right.

For, you see, wood from Willow trees are very useful for paper and weapon. The Willow was one large tree, and now, a very diverse presence.

Curious—but it was not the first time it had happened to the rock. All was relevant; all is relevant. Everything was and is everywhere. To be is not to be.

The man wiped his sweat-glazed forehead and wiped blood from the crotch of his tan pants and down to his knees. After a sigh, the envelope was picked up by the man and stuffed into his pocket. That same day, a girl was reported as missing and kidnapped by a foreign thief of a man who had supposedly killed this girl’s father. Her father was a political official of the country and owned a rifle dating back to the war that had established his country over one hundred and fifty years ago.

It did, indeed, have a letter. And now, the ground may continue its cycle of death. Its cycle of life. The choices are there along with the un-choices. There are enough for everyone—and no one.

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A/N: Hopefully, you got something out of this. I wanted it to be a dark humor satire, but it seems more of a satire and . . . something else. This is another product of my Creative Writing class.