Time is an unusual thing to a stone. To understand this, you must understand the impenetrable belief stones have in fate.
Long, long ago, when the earth was young, and stone flowed hot and free about the surface, the philosopher "molten swirls of magma and rapidly melting meteorite" (As you can imagine, stone names don't translate well to English.), successfully presented an incontrovertible oratory demonstrating beyond a shadow of doubt that everything in the span of stone is already written, and nothing could ever change it. So powerful was his argument, that since the day of his presentation, no stone has ever chosen to do a single thing.
The lives of stone are as leaves upon the river, though, admittedly, a river that moves quite slowly indeed. Without a belief in choice, stones have no reason to do anything at all. Events just happen. Some stones become statues, other gravel. Some go on long journeys down rivers, but fate never calls them back. Over the course of its life, a stone may be in turns a cliff side, part of a rioting avalanche, a human memento, part of a wall, a meaningful paperweight, a pet, a sculpture, and a skipping stone, but never once will it choose any of these things.
To be a stone is to be at peace, content in the knowledge that what will be, will be. And to this day, no stone has ever proven otherwise.
