The Stone - A Short Story

One day, a man turned to stone.

It started slowly at first. That morning, he awoke to find his fingertips were stone. But it soon spread up his arms, then all throughout his chest. By the end of the day, his entire body was made of stone. He felt strong, as this made him impervious to anything the world may throw at him. But admittedly, it was an inelegant solution. It’s hard to be graceful when your body is made of stone.

Then one day, he met a girl made of water. She managed to sneak inside some cracks in the stone. She worked away at these fissures, widening them, opening him up. She wore away at the stone, eroding it piece by piece, until one day, the stone was gone. He was flesh and bone once again, thanks to her.

But some time later, he realized that somewhere deep inside, part of him was still stone. It was dark, impenetrable, and cold. It seemed like no amount of water could ever wear away at this dense chunk of rock. Then he wondered if maybe this wasn’t just a remnant from when he was entirely made of stone. Perhaps it was something that had always been there. Maybe this was the true source of the stone that spread throughout his body in the first place. Perhaps instead of curing him of the stone completely, all that the girl made of water had managed to do was to put things back to as good as they were ever going to be. Regardless of where it came from, he was now scared that that no matter how hard she tried to rid him of this burden, or how much he wanted to be all flesh and bone, there would always be this stone, cold as ice, hiding deep inside, sitting silently, and weighing him down.