So life continues: friends, school, enemies and friends; all different gasses cooking and boiling the stone. Past boiling point to infinity. Some days are bearable, some tiring, some knock you out for days and you even lose track of time. The stone thinks back to the time when it was on top of the world. There are some memories but they’re not clear anymore. It’s not even sure whether these are real memories or fantasies. One thing it still remembers is the sun and the light and warmth it brought.

Oh how it longed to see it just one more time, it had been surrounded by darkness for too long. Sometimes the stone would imagine how life is on top. There must be a hundred children running and laughing on the ground above it innocently. Ah, the innocence that was taken from it on that day without choice or will, and it was left to die and rot under this earth.

Now out of all things you may wonder why the stone imagines innocence. Simply because it was taken away from it too early and to this day, it still wonders, what if it had kept it? Would life have turned out differently? Would the world be a happy garden with flowers and trees blooming, the sun shining, laughter from morning till noon? Instead of this darkness and dirt and gasses that are surrounding it. Making it hard for it to breathe, cooking it, burning it from inside out.

The stone knew and felt it was changing, into what, it was not sure. It thinks back to the stories it used to hear on the top, of life being destined and a creator that had made everything and planned everybody’s life. He knew everything that has happened and is happening and will happen. It was also said that the creator was very powerful and he was loving, caring and forgiving. The stone wondered if the creator knew that it was under the earth burning, choking and changing. And if so, why did he let it stay there, was this his plan for it?

Now again, back to reality, the lines today are so blurred. Let me light a cigarette so I can focus.

Being focused is not pleasant, that’s why I light it so it can dull my senses. I do not want to think, I want to live. I do not want to survive but I want to live. And that is why the stone is changing. It has to adapt but not to the gasses but within itself. The change is hard, the stone feels itself getting weaker every second, more brittle. It no longer feels like a stone rather it feels lighter, yet darker. The stone couldn’t recognise itself anymore. It had been years and this was bound to happen. One day the stone felt the ground way above it shake. It thought that maybe the creator had pitied it and he was here to get the stone out of this place. But it soon realized that the digging was way too far away from it.

But one good thing did come from that day though. Hope, for the first time in a long time filled the stone. It had hope that it might one day see the sun again and feel its warmth. Even if that did not happen, at least it now knew that it was not the only one buried under the earth. There were countless other stones being dug up above it. But there were not stones anymore; they had turned into something else.

They had turned to what the stone felt it had turned to. Oh the stone could hear the digging from the distance but soon realised it was not even close to being found. But at least it now heard voices, faint but at least it was something. These voices were not pleasant though, they were not like the ones it had fantasized about, of children laughing and playing. It was rather voices of old greedy men, counting, dealing and negotiating.

***

Tell us: How do you get back to your sun when you feel down and under?