Chapter 1: WE ARE INTRODUCED
Hey you! Have you heard the story of how the most wonderful pearl in the world came to be?
You haven’t? Well, come a little closer. That’s it, sit down in the comfy seat, curl your legs up, squiggle your bum down. Ready? OK, here we go.
How does a pearl come to be? Where does it come from? The sand that drifts inside an oyster. Yes, that’s true but why do they look like they do? Ah, now we’re getting to the point of it.
There was time. And there was a time before time. I was already old in the time before time, I had been there since the beginning, along with my brothers and sisters. We knew the place before everything, in the days before any animals, and birds, any dinosaurs and plants or trees, when there were no oceans and just one great big lump of land. We were old even then. We were, indeed are, the boulders, huge great rocks sitting all over the planet, just where we had always been.
You might think we just lie around the place not moving, breathing, talking or doing any of the things that humans do. That’s not surprising really, after all we’re nothing like you, or any other animals or living things. As far as you would think we’re probably not alive at all. And, anyway, what does that have to do with pearls?
I’ll tell you.
Those huge rocks and boulders are very much alive, but because we live for ever (or nearly) we tend to do everything in very slow motion.
Sometimes, rocks can do a little more than just say hello to their friends on the top of mountains. Some of them go to see the world.
