Atop the Monolith

Today the monolith was going to shake.

It meant a lot of things in Seeburg. The monolith shaking was a common expression in the town for change. People would watch their newborns teeth grow in and say that their monolith had shaken. The season would change from spring-summer-fall-winter-spring again, and at each junction, the same expression would grace lips. The monolith was shaking.

No one knew why exactly it shook. In fact, it was so rare that some people never thought it would again. The last time was almost 110 years prior, and it had only "jittered" as eyewitness accounts had testified. Yet every day, the old man who was the custodian to the old moss-crusted rock would walk out of his tiny hut(as he had as a young man) walk up to the stone in the center of that old stone flat, and lay his hands on the surface. He'd sigh, feeling the grooves of the rough black obsidian. Then he'd start cleaning. It was only chance that his grandson had heard him say under his breath "Ten days." heralding the hubbub.

Of course, no one knew for certain that the thing was going to shake. It hadn't stopped them from setting up a big festival. Weird shaking rocks attracted customers to little towns, and stalls of food and souvenirs popped up around the fields along with crowds like spring roses. Crowds that needed a place to stay.

"Colin! Wake up your sisters! I'll need your help with breakfast for the patrons, now!" Colin's mother, do-rag over her hair and sweating, closed the attic hatch as her son woke. He hastily threw on his clothes and grabbed his laundry, descending down onto the ladder and bumping into one of the hotel's residents. "Oh, boy, would you mind telling your mother I won't be here for breakfast? I'm off to measure the stone-" Colin nodded with his cap. "Sure thing professor Alina, gotta run!" and went down the spiral staircase. It creaked and cracked as he burst into his sister's room. Two of them looked over while brushing their teeth in the laundry room's sink, the other three still asleep. "Mom needs my help with the food, can you wake them?" He sat the hamper he'd been clutching down and the eldest tutted. "Fineeee, don't bail and go with your little friend to look at the stupid rock though! I mean it!"

He nodded, lying, then scrambled back up. On the ground level, almost twenty or so people gathered around a haphazardly stocked table, each one pouring water and juice from ceramic pitchers, reading the newspaper with the event on the front page, smoking, writing, waiting for their food. Colin waved to the couple he knew, then ran into the kitchen. "Alina isn't at breakfast." He said, donning his apron. "Ha, that's one less I suppose. Did your sisters agree to cover you for the event. Those rooms aren't going to tidy themselves, you know?" He nodded. "They did!" Then he let his mom set the overstuffed serving platter on his head.

Walking out into the dining hall, people were free to grab the bacon, eggs, cakes, sausage, syrup, coffee, and tins of mints and cigarettes (complementary on the house) from his head as he went. "Ahoy there Colin!" Marcus, the local sea captain, clapped his back and stood up from his seat, his hunched back an oxbow, pipe clenched in his teeth. "Off to see my niece soon?" He winked. "If I can slip out, yeah." Colin smiled to the man. He handed over a tureen to a patron still absorbed by his paper. "I think I can help with that. It'll cost you though..." Marcus rubbed salt encrusted fingers together.

If Colin's mom noticed the old man below the bartered hat was not actually her son who was bringing out more breakfast plates, Colin didn't know. She was often too busy to notice him during such a rush season regardless. He didn't mind any of it. So what if there was another stranger or two using his room, it was more money for their family.

He ran through the streets, pushing through crowds, overstocked fireworks displays and masses of carts. The explosions of ruddy colors over the brickwork felt like mud as his sandals slapped through the streets, until the crowd thinned out into an empty old lot.

Outside a half-dilapidated building, Maya was chucking rocks at a crudely painted target, the slate discus slapping against the old wood and even sticking into it like wall mushrooms. “You’re on target today.” Colin said, coming up behind her and depositing a couple he’d picked up on the way on her pile. “It’s easier to hit than when me and dad were hunting birds with ‘em.” She rubbed the rock in her palm and blew on it, offering it to Colin. He blew on it as well, and she spiked it hard into the target, a perfect bullseye.

Maya was his best friend now. For the last ten days that she and her uncle were at his families’ hotel, it had felt like the best time of his life. They’d been inseparable from day one. Exploring all the secret places Colin had uncovered in Seeburg over the years. Maya showing off her talents of discovery from all across the continent’s shores. They’d watched the stars and seen the waves in new, unseen light together. He smiled, looking at her while she concentrated.

“You've got the stone-skipping contest in the bag! Want to go rob some festival stalls?” He patted her shoulder. For some reason, her usual snaggletooth grin was absent. “No.”

“Ok…want to go climb to the top of the old manor again? See if your dad’s ship is on the horizon?” He waited as she picked up another rock. “Colin, I don’t think we should be friends anymore.”

He froze. “I don’t-”

“My dad’s already back. He said he’s going over the ocean and he wants me to go with him. I said yes.” Colin waited. “Well, I could write! I mean, I could go see you one day, and we could-”

Maya frowned and looked away. “It won’t work. We’re going to be halfway across the world from each other and I- I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“C’mon Maya, I mean, I know the Festival’s ending today, but I don’t see why we have to-” “Just drop it and leave me alone, ok!?” She tossed a rock hard, dislodging the others stuck, the clatter hitting the earth with finality.

Devastation. Colin looked down, then back up. “I don’t believe you. But fine. I hope it makes you happy.” He turned as the tears started, not wanting her to see them. As he ran off, Maya picked up another stone, one of the one’s Colin had brought her. She missed the target, crying as she looked down.

The misery of the rest of the day was awful. He didn't even hear his sisters complain at him as he trudged back into the hotel. Maya, meanwhile, placed first in the stone skipping contest. But she had no one to share the moment with, the crowds and cheers a buzz in her ears.

Towards the evening, the time came for the big event. People lit lanterns and big bonfires and shuffled up the old hill, to where the ancient black pillar stood waiting. The old man stroked his beard and hmmm'd as the people gathered around. Maya's dad and uncle chatted while she stared at the thing without thinking, the words she'd said to Colin still fresh as fruit.

Colin was staring out the upstairs window. His eldest sister was going on about something when she noticed her brother's depressive mood. "Hey!" She clonked him on the head and he spun. "Ow, what was that for?!"

"You had an argument with her, didn't you you little twerp?" she put her hands on her hips. "It's none of your business." He turned back, sulking. "Fine! But you'd better get whatever it is off your chest now, cause life happens once Colin, and you don't want to miss it."

Back at the festival square, people began to wait anxiously. It wasn't moving. People whispered. Professor Alina's colleagues, a gaggle of old men began to say "I told you so" to her. Then-

The air seemed to freeze. The old square-tender's eyes widened, and he whispered hard. "It's here!"

Like a chicken egg ripe to hatch, the black pillar wiggled in place, as if it had been struck like a tuning fork. Some gasps went out, Alina's colleagues were silent as she began to furiously record notes. "I told you! The stone is resonant!"

"Well, how 'bout that Maya? Bet you're glad we came out here, huh?" Her father rubbed her head affectionately as they watched the thing vibrate. Maya squinted her eyes. There was something up there, just on top of the black pillar. A little green thing that waggled enticingly, waiting for something.

Without warning or explanation, she burst out of her father's grip, charging the shaking rock and throwing herself onto it's jagged side. She was climbing up like only a child could, in leaps and hops. "Oy, Maya! Stop that!" Her father chased after her, along with a few others. "Don't alter the event!" the professor ran over, climbing with much more care as the stone seemed to shake harder beneath their combined weight.

Maya had about reached the top when she felt someone grab hold of her ankle. She yelped, but from out of nowhere, Colin was there, climbing over the other people like a monkey, helping pull her up and over as he used the grabber's face as a stepping stone. "Maya! I wanted to tell you something!" He shouted over the din of the others.

She held his hand as they sat on the wobbling rock, their teeth chattering from the force of its shaking. "I wanted to say that-" Colin blinked at what Maya was staring at. "What's this?" He reached down and pulled on the tendril absentmindedly.

In an instant, the people climbing were thrown back as a massive stalk exploded out of the rock. The vibrant green was purplish in the fading light of dusk as it unfolded like a mechanism at rocket speeds; the sides of the rock revealed now as a seed pod. Maya and Colin were blasted skyward, clutching to a massive, expanding oval leaf as the flowering bud reached up, and up, and up over the hills. Colin held fast to Maya, and she to him as they felt the press of the ascension leave them.

They paused, and looked up, hands still grasped tightly. Above them, a massive pink lily bloomed into a gentle giant, the fronds of orange and yellow pollen full and bright and twisting. The flower swayed, catching the sun that it had chased in it's climb. Out beyond displayed the eye-curve of the world's horizon, endless and resplendent, the green seas, the lush mountains and rivers. Birds above clouds and the stars that poked through the ceiling of the sky. Everywhere. "Look Maya! Colin pointed. "I can see across!"

Maya squinted. There, over the ocean, she could see the far shores of her father, a little bit. Colin turned to her. "I wanted to say that- No matter where you go, it won't change how I feel about you. And now, look! Whenever you feel far away, I can climb up here and see you, all the way over. So we won't be apart, not really."

"And...I wanted to say that I-" He didn't get the chance to finish, as she leaned in and kissed him in the fading sunlight.

Down below, people were gawking and clapping. Maya's dad was trying to climb up the flower to rescue his little girl. Her uncle and the old site-tender were locking shoulders and laughing. Professor Alina was being praised endlessly by the older scientists. Confetti flung into the air as the massive leaves swayed in the wind. Colin's family watched the gargantuan flower from the rooftop of the hotel.

The sun set on Seeburg, and the rose and gold that had grown there that day.