We moved the stones, Ada and I, because that’s what the stones commanded us to do. They didn’t tell us directly, of course--our brains are much too simple for that--but they told the trees, who told the birds, who showed us where the rocks wished to go. When we cradled them in our arms we could feel them humming, couldn’t we, Ada? So we moved them where they ate the sun, and in turn they blocked the winter wind, collected rainwater for us to drink, fed the trees that fed the birds whose eggs kept our own bellies full. Like this we knew our place in the way of things. Once--do you remember?--a stranger passed and laughed at our foolishness. Stones have no desire, he stated, they are not even a they. But we laughed back at him, Ada and I, because he could not hear the secrets pressed into the layers of sediment, which tickled tree roots with jokes heard from fossils. We laughed--didn’t we, Ada?--because, poor man, he heard only himself.