The flight was exhilarating. They watched in amazement as the scenery spread out below them in every direction. The miles and miles of 'gift wrapping' which covered the Cumbrian landscape in long flowing ribbons of dry stone walls was a sight to stir the heart of even the most hardened of rocks. It was a 'treat' which none of them were quite prepared for. The scale and beauty of all these walls surely matched stone structures found anywhere around the world, in any previous civilization. Below them, and spreading further over Britain's narrow island, was an architectural network of stonework that rivaled the pyramids in scope .
The rocks were dangling high over the picturesque fells of England's Lake District now.
The Squire thought to himself that it wasn't that long ago that stones first started to fly. In his relatively 'short' lifetime he had seen an amazing amount of progress. The ways rocks got around was constantly evolving. When he was young (back in the early neolithic period) and on into the middle ages it was mostly logs and crude barrows, wooden rollers, stone boats and simple wagons. Modern times saw the coming of huge trucks, freighters, trains, and now even helicopters which could be utilized to transport rocks anywhere in the world they wanted to go.
It was a pity that the craft itself had not progressed to the same degree, he thought. Skilled stone masonry by contrast was on the decline. Humans no longer had the same affinity with stones they had in earlier ages. The know-how had been lost too. The traditional technologies associated with creating good stonework was something most people had little understanding of. Natural stone was seen as something foreign or just plain antiquated. Humans no longer considered stone structures to be as majestic, transcendent, inspiring or even as interesting as modern contraptions like cars and planes and computers. Except for modular veneered applications, the modern world was pretty much drifting away from stone altogether. Machines and power tools and assembly line computerized fabricating factories reduced the shaping process into a dusty inhuman 'nega-lithic' activity.
Meanwhile, Rhonda was attempting to talk over the deafening noise of the helicopter with a couple of the other younger rocks in the bag.
"Is this your first flight?" She shouted.
It was no good.They might as well been stone deaf.
One younger 'rockette' ( the proper word for a 'female rock') did manage to communicate, more by way of sign language to Rhonda, that she hoped one day to travel to the moon.
"They are more advanced in their skills of rock-persuasion on the moon than we are." She gestured.
She went on to explain that 'moon rocks' have more sophisticated powers over humans than stones here on earth do, as evidenced by the fact that astronauts had been influenced to take them back to earth, while here, apart from an occasional helicopter flight, stones have not made much progress in the 'space' department . The young rockette hoped to see a day when a true conglomerate of international space travel would be formed that focused its efforts on sending rocks (not just humans) to the moon and Mars and beyond.
