Stones were lonely...
Through hundreds of millions of years of geological change, rocks had always been lonely.
After magma cooled, as the temperature fell, the minerals within it crystallized in sequence according to their melting points, eventually forming different kinds of rock. By then, barriers had already arisen between them, and those barriers would endure for a very long time.
After becoming rocks, they were buried deep underground, continually affected by tectonic movements over the long years, endlessly compressed, cycling through high temperatures, high pressures, and cooling, constantly tempered by nature while never fully melting.
Throughout this process, they continuously altered their chemical and physical structures, changing their own "textures," adapting to the Outside World, making themselves more "complete." Yet at the same time, their connections with the Outside World grew fewer and fewer, until they gradually became stable, isolated individuals.
If they were fortunate enough not to be buried underground and were instead exposed on the surface, they would still suffer nature's weathering and erosion. Even if they were hard enough, they would eventually be worn away by time, shattered by wind, rain, thunder, and lightning into fragments and dissolved substances.
These fragments and dissolved materials were carried by rivers, wind, and glaciers to low-lying places, where they settled. Then, under pressure, they gradually compacted and, through mineral cementation, became isolated rocks once more.
Nature's wind, rain, and torment did not make them feel any kinship with this world. Instead, they plunged into endless loneliness once again.
They wandered like this through nature's rock cycle, like ghosts floating beyond nature itself:
Igneous rock formed by magma was exposed on the surface and weathered into sedimentary rock.
Sedimentary rock and igneous rock were buried underground and compressed into metamorphic rock.
Metamorphic rock melted under high temperatures and pressures, becoming new