2023-04-15
He could reach immense speeds. He could blow away the roofs of buildings and the umbrellas of the nobles. He could move the clouds and thus control the Sun’s brightness or where the rain would fall.
As winter came he caused blizzards and froze people to death where they stood. So much schadenfreude, so much glee.
Not only could he blow rooftops off houses. If he pushed himself he could blow away the houses themselves, or cause floods that floated them out into the oceans.
When he spun himself around and danced he became a tornado and his unwilling dance partners were flung away at great speeds and distances.
But every high inevitably ends and eventually ha crashed into an immovable object. He thought himself an unstoppable force but no matter how much he tried or effort he exerted his immaterial body only folded itself around it.
It was a mountain. And he simply could not affect it. It was the ultimate resistance.
”I wish,” he thought, ”I was the mountain.”
And so he became it. For a long time — he didn’t even know how long, because time didn’t mean anything to him — he just enjoyed existence.
He had gone from an active participant in the world around him to an observer. To his surprise he enjoyed it much. Maybe he was past the need to prove himself. Now he was content knowing that no power could move him. No matter what happened he would never at someone else’s mercy again
He sat. He rested.
Then one day he felt something unfamiliar. At first he didn’t even understand where he felt it. Was it a physical sensation or a stir in his emotions? How much time had passed?
He concentrated, slowly rousing himself. It was something physical. Something at the foot of his immense body. It wasn’t painful, but as he focused he found that his body was being reduced. Chipped away at. He looked down.
It was a stonecutter.
The end.
-- CC0 Björn Wärmedal