There were many things stones did not understand. Numb and indifferent, they felt nothing toward these things called "life," merely watching in silence across the scale of time.
But among hundreds of millions of lonely wandering souls, there would always be a few that awakened...
Over hundreds of millions of years of change, several stones accidentally "awakened." They glimpsed the wonder of life. When Flying Insects in the desert landed on the stone wall, when armored lizards crawled through stone caves, the stones felt a delicacy and softness they had never known before.
These weak, fragile lives briefly brought their time to a standstill. For some reason, they came to envy those beings that had given up everything.
"Could we be like them too?"
The stones did not understand how life did it, so they could only choose the simplest method—imitation.
At first, they copied life by replicating and growing, making themselves larger and larger. They did not wish to give up what they already possessed, merely continuing to "expand" through the cycle of rock.
They went from several pieces to many, occupying an area of the desert. Then they grew toward the sky, making themselves taller and taller like those living things.
But that seemed useless.
The stones had always been "many" and "large." This meaningless growth was something they could already do. Apart from creating unprecedented spectacles of towering stone forests, it seemed to change nothing.
Sunlight spilled across the stone forest, and desert winds passed through the stone pillars. After millions of years, these numb stones finally came to their senses. Their direction of imitation seemed to have been wrong.
The "growth" of life was only an outward appearance. Its deeper core lay within that fragile flesh.
So the stones began imitating the bodies of living things.