This is a little piece inspired by today's writing prompt in Worldbuilding community. Enjoy !
"What is it, Rif ?"
"No idea, Miya. Someone's idea of art, maybe. But it'll be gone when the tide comes in, washed away by the sea."
The children shivered in the cold sea air as they looked down at the hundreds of stones arranged in a complex spiral pattern. Each stone had been worn smooth, and no two were exactly the same. Some had hollows on the surface where imperfections had been dissolved away by the sea's endless washing. Others had dark marks where the remains of impurities still lingered, waiting to be purged.
"So who made it ? And how did they have time between the tides ?" Miya's logic could be very direct at times, but then she was a ten year old and hadn't learned adults' ways of dressing things up to hide the gaps in reality.
Rif, at eleven years old, was a boy of action. Miya's questions confused him, he didn't do logic, he did activity. So rather than answering, he impulsively did the thing that seemed best. He jumped onto the first, outermost, column of stones. They were piled up seemingly at random, but there was a definite symmetry to them.
"Don't Rif ! You'll get us in trouble !"
But Rif didn't care about that. He could feel the topmost shone tilting under his feet, and his only concern was not to end up on his posterior and making an idiot of himself in front of his younger sister. So he stepped across onto the next pile of stone, as carefully as he could. The pile behind him shifted back into it's upright stance, and he felt relief that he had neither embarrassed himself by falling down, nor upset the arrangement of the stones.
But this second pile felt distinctly unstable as well, so he stepped across to the third, which almost immediately tipped forward forcing him to jump onto the fourth column, and then skip onto the fifth to make sure he could keep his balance. This was a fun challenge !
He could hear Miya's voice in the background telling him off, but he was used to filtering it out when she got annoying, so he pushed the noise into the distance and stepped forward again, this time onto the first stone that was a simple upright rather than a pillar of piled stones.
This stone was thin and sharp, but the next one had a nicely rounded top which gave him the chance to slow down and look around at the world.
"Rif, what are you doing ? Stop ! We have to go home !" Miya's voice sounded confused and a bit lost. But Rif was on an adventure ! He knew his mission; see how far around the spiral he could get before the stones became too small to hold his weight.
Hopping from stone to stone, Rif soon lost count. He was a whole circuit in, then two. The stones seemed fine, firmly wedged into the wet sand they were holding his weight as long as he kept moving, and they didn't seem to be getting too much smaller with each jump. There was a noise in the background, but it was probably just seagulls.
It was getting harder now. The pebbles seemed further apart, and each jump was more difficult. He was getting tired, but he was determined. He'd make it all the way to the middle ! Then he could make a mighty leap out to the edge and they could go home.
But looking out, the edge seemed far, far away, and the boulders there were great monoliths. It would be a heroic leap to get clear of them and back to the beach. The biggest jump ever done by an eleven year old. It would amaze everyone at school !
First though, he had to get to the centre. Not far now. He couldn't just run from stone to stone any more, he was making jumps with both feet to make it, and he didn't want to fall onto the black sand so far below him. That's where the monsters lived.
He could see it ! The centre ! Four great columns wedged together, with a small space in the middle. He'd have to be careful to land on the stones and not in the gap. He jumped, the biggest jump he had made so far, although he knew it would never have been good enough to carry him over the wall of sandy monoliths on the distant horizon. It was a good jump, his feet touched the stone.... and he slipped.
As he tumbled into the hole in the centre, he could see darkness, and stars, and far, far below him, a red sandy beach under a sunless sky.
Miya sat alone on the shoreline, watching the tide come in. Soon, it would wash away the stone spiral. How would she explain to their parents that she'd seen her brother running around the stones, circling them faster and faster like water going down a plughole, shrinking with each step before her eyes until he was the size of a beetle, and then disappearing in a brief red flash ? They'd beat her for sure, but she didn't have her brother's balance to follow him around the stones before the tide destroyed that strange spiral.
Somehow, she knew she'd never see him again. Just like that.... he was gone.