Once upon a time, there was some sediment, swirling in water and spiralling downwards. It accumulated in long, slow, thick blankets on the bottom of the sea and thickened and buried itself and eventually it got really, really packed firm. It wasn’t a complicated process, but it was a pretty long and boring one and there really wasn’t much more to it. Sorry.
Twice upon a time, there was a lot of dark, quiet nothings interspersed with UP. Imagine being snuggled underneath the world’s most massive blanket, except you didn’t have to come UP for air. But every now and then, a jerk and a shove and nudge. UP.
Thrice upon a time, something UP pale and clear seeped in around the warm dark edges UP until one UP day the weight was missing.
And a long time later – but not so long for a stone, even one that had once been silt – the shale woke up. It was pretty surprised about that. It had never been awake before.
“Wow,” it thought to itself, looking all around (rocks have ways of doing that without eyeballs, don’t worry). “What’s all THIS stuff? This is new. There’s air and light and a lot of complicated things I’ve never even heard of before. Better ask around. Hey, you! Over there! What’s going on up here? What’s with all the green stuff and pink stuff? Why’s the air full of oxygen?”
The passing farmer let the reins droop from his hands for a moment and repositioned his pipe nine or ten times. “Respiration,” he said at last.
“Pardon?”
“Folks took up respiration. That’s what we all do nowadays, in public or private, doesn’t even matter no more. Boys respire, girls respire, mice, birds, bees… everyone’s respiring. It’s very popular.”
“Oh,” said the shale. “Well, I’m not sure if I like it. It’s all…tingly.” It looked up to ask the farmer another question, but he was gone and dead and buried already and its stony heart sank a little bit deeper.
“Oh no,” it said. “Oh dear. I hope all that respiration didn’t do him in. He seemed so… well, not enthusiastic, but so ambivalent about it. Over there! Can you tell me why it’s so…sunny out?”
“The sun’s brightening up,” said the passing kid. “I learned that today. In a few billion years it’ll fry the whole planet.”
“Oh my,” said the shale. “Oh no. That’s…not good. That’s not that long either. Tell me, do you…” and then it realized the kid had grown up and moved away and it sighed in the tragic, rumbly way of stone.
“So fast,” it lamented. “So fast! I was content with being buried, and I was very happy in the water. But now I’m up here and things are changing too quickly. I want to go back home. You there! Can you take me home?”
The passing IT worker pulled over. “Hitchhiking’s illegal,” she said. “But what the hell. Where to?”
“Several hundred metres underground, please,” said the shale politely.
“Can’t,” said the IT worker. “There’s no mines around here and it’d take too long to dig a hole.”
“Oh!” said the shale. “Then the sea, if you please.”
“That’s a little ways too far for me,” she told it. “But I can take you partway there. Tell you what: I’ll drop you off near my work and you can hail a cab or something.”
The shale watched the landscape slide by for a moment, and then it was in the city and a man was trying to spraypaint it.
“Excuse me,” it said, “but do you have a cab?”
The artist jumped. “Shit! Sorry, sorry. You surprised me, that’s all. Most of the things I work on don’t talk much. No, sorry. No cab. But I know a guy.”
So the artist took the shale downtown to a bar where they looked for the guy but found drinks instead, and then to a pub where they looked for the guy but found drinks instead, and finally they went to a liquor store and were gently but firmly sent home and had drinks instead. When the shale woke up again it was face-down in an alleyway and its mouth tasted like the Precambrian.
“Ow,” it articulated, somewhat indistinctly. The sky was moving in an unfriendly sort of way and it didn’t like the way the buildings made it feel, so it wandered gently into traffic where a man in a pickup truck ran it over.
“Ow,” it repeated, this time a little more clearly. “I said ow once already. Why did you do that to me again?”
“Sorry about that,” said the driver. “Need a lift somewhere, buddy?”
“The sea, if it’s alright.”
“Sure. Heading that way anyways. What’s your musical preference?”
“What’s music?”
About half the drive was full of very complicated conversations on things like melody, rhythm, and harmony, and the other half was sort of pretty and the shale liked it very much. Then the truck’s tires crunched on dirt, gravel, and sand.
“Here we are there you go good luck,” said the driver. Then they vanished in a whirl of tires.
The shale stood on the beach, blinking its eyes (that it didn’t have). The sun was setting and the sea was wide and wild, waves burbling up no matter where it looked.
It gingerly dabbed its corner in the water, then was knocked over by a wave and dragged along fifty-six metres of coarse sand.
“This could be a problem,” it said.
Much, much later, the shale felt something very heavy on its back.
“Excuse me,” it said. “But I believe you’re standing on me.”
“Woops,” said the surfer. “Aw, sorry about that, no hard feelings eh?”
The shale considered itself.
“All my feelings are hard,” it admitted. “But that’s okay.”
“Good to hear. Whatcha doing?”
“I am going out to sea,” said the shale.
The surfer looked up and down the beach. “Nice day for it. So am I. Y’want a hand? I’ve got a spare board.”
“I don’t know what a board is but I accept your generous offer,” said the shale.
The explanations were complicated again. Everything was so complicated up here. But the shale nodded a lot and after a long time it was sliding over the smack and thud of the waves, smooth fiberglass beneath it. The wind whipped across its surface and whistled in the little fossilized sea-shell that was embedded in its side and the water seemed to be laughing all around it.
“This is very nice,” the shale told the surfer.
She yelled something and waved her arms around.
“I’m sorry?” asked the shale.
The surfer yelled louder and waved her arms with greater decisiveness.
“I really can’t hear you,” said the shale, as the shark popped up beneath it, mouth-first.
Unlike almost everything else in the shale’s journey, what happened next was familiar.
After all, it had done this once before.
“Just… maybe not so quickly,” it said to itself, as the blue wrapped around it and began to carry it down.
“Well, you’re awfully heavy,” said the shark. She was following the shale down, studying it with a curious night-black eye. “Sorry about before, you looked an awful lot like a sick sea lion. Why are you sinking so fast; haven’t you ever swum before?”
“I deposited,” said the shale. “This seems a lot quicker. I’m a little worried, if you must know.”
“I don’t disagree with that,” the shark said. “It’s pretty dark down there, and it gets lonely very deep. Why don’t you stay up here? Just swim back up.”
The shale wiggled itself with great vigor as it saw the shark doing, but it didn’t seem to accomplish all that much.
“Use your tail more,” advised the shark.
“I don’t have one,” the shale said.
“Well that’s your problem,” she said. “Really, you aren’t prepared at all, are you? What were you doing all this time?”
The shale considered what it had been doing.
“Sleeping, mostly,” it said. “And then pining.”
“Wastes of time both ways then,” the shark said.
“That’s not very sympathetic of you.”
“I’m a mother three times over,” said the shark. “That tends to wean you off sentiment and into the practical. And what you’re doing isn’t. Have you even thought about what you’ll do when you get down there? Why are you so eager to go?”
“Things change too quickly and I’m frightened,” said the shale.
The shark rolled her eyes at it, flashing their whites like a ghost. “Change too quickly? My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents were swimming in this water when you were still filtering down the water column. Maybe they were shaped a little differently, maybe they ate things I’d call strange, maybe the temperature wasn’t quite what it is now, maybe things weren’t quite the same at all. But there’s been some kind of ocean longer than you’ve been around, and there’s been sharks in it for longer than you too even if they weren’t quite me. Everything changes, but the shapes stay the same. What a waste of time to whine about!”
The shale felt sort of ashamed at this, and the little pit of guilt in its heart weighed it more quickly; unless it had just hit that point in the water column. “What can I do?” it suggested, miserably.
“Well, you can try a little harder to swim than THAT.”
The shale tried a little harder to swim than that. It wasn’t quite hard enough.
The shark sighed as only a fish can do, water gurgling and sploshing through gills as long as the sigher wishes it to last. “Well. I suppose I can give you a small bit of help. If you want it.” Her body was a faint blue-on-blue smear; the water was really quite dark now, and the shale was starting to grow alarmed at how much it was missing the strange, bright light.
“Please,” it asked. “I’m sorry I’ve been a bother, but please help me swim.”
The water swish, and the shark was beneath the shale, closer than she’d seemed, closer all along. “Alright,” she said, as she opened her mouth. “But just until you’re comfortable on your own, understood? Just until then.”
“I understand,” said the shale. “Thank yommff.”
It was dark again. That surprised the shale. The shark, like all the other people it had met in the world, seemed to be so soft and squishy that light should pour through them.
But it was a comfortable sort of dark.
“I was on my way to Australia,” the shark told it, all around it. “That’s plenty of time to learn at least how to cruise properly. So don’t fall asleep on me in there; this is school, not a free ride.”
The shale rustled affirmative, then it sat in the dark warmth and felt itself at home again. But this time, it was going somewhere. And afterwards…well.
Maybe there were more places to go in the world than up.