Benny the Rock

Farewell and Adieu

Hi! I'm leaving Wattpad. 

If not forever, then for a very long time. 

Don't worry! All of my books will still be up, and I might even respond on rare occasions to stuff. Plus, you can find me on Discord (A Sleep-Deprived StarWing #3237), Tumblr (mythicandco), and Archive of Our Own (Mythic_And_Co). I'm also on DeviantArt, technically, but I'm super inactive on there as well. 

So, as a parting gift, I give you a story as a foil for myself when I first began using Wattpad, and how much I've changed since then. Despite all of these external changes, I'm still the same person that I always have been. And now, the epilogue to probably my favorite story I've ever posted on Wattpad, Benny the Rock:

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THE EXTENDED ADVENTURES OF BENNY THE ROCK

Once upon a time, there was a rock named Benny. Well, he wasn't really a rock. He had been, for a while, when he'd explored the world and changed forms from igneous to sedimentary to metamorphic, but now he was back deep underground, swimming happily about in the melted magma inside the Earth's mantle. Many of his friends had come to greet him from his journey, and for years now Benny had been telling them stories about his grand adventures.

"Did I ever tell you the story of Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition?" Benny asked the gathered globs of magma around him. None of these melted rocks had ever come up to the surface - Benny was lucky to have seen so much of the world, and loved to share his life with them.

"I've never heard it," said the magma, and Benny smiled.

"Well then, do I have a tale to tell you." He cleared his throat (despite the fact that he was a glob of melted rock and didn't actually have a throat, but may I remind you that this is a fictional story) and began to recall his account. "They are the forces of nature. They change us, we change other things, and those other things change them. It's called the rock cycle, you know, but also the circle of life, and water, and everything in this world and some things beyond it, too.

"After I was pushed out onto the surface and cooled into igneous rock," Benny explained, "I was left exposed to the elements for hundreds of years." (I must remind you that time moves slower for rocks than it does for us humans - if it didn't, they'd all have gone insane by now). "Slowly, the rain seeped into the cracks in my surface and when it froze to ice, pushed me apart. The wind blew away at my surface and tiny pieces of dust fell off. This was weathering."

"Wooww," the magma gasped in awe. "Was it exciting?"

"No, it was terrifying," Benny replied. "I was worried that I would become sedimentary rock. You've heard stories from some of the others, right?"

The magma nodded. "Being sediment is one of the most boring things ever," it piped up.

"Right you are. I'd heard from many of my friends that being a sedimentary rock was the most boring part of the rock cycle. I didn't want to have to sit around all day doing nothing, with almost no one to talk to and nothing interesting happening around me. Sedimentary rocks aren't very chatty, you know.

"Anyways," Benny continued, "the elements continued to weather away at me, until finally erosion took hold. All the little pieces of me that were scattered about were grabbed by gravity and we rolled into a stream, where the water swept us away into a lake. It was perhaps the most exciting part of my journey so far, but I was too scared of becoming sediment to notice.

"There, we were deposited-" he paused here, making sure they were all listening, and they were, "-into the lake bed. Deposited is the act of deposition. See how the names are so similar?"

The magma bubbled in acknowledgement.

"And once we were deposited, more and more sediment began to accumulate on top of us, and the pressure squeezed us until I became one solid rock again," Benny smiled wryly at the memory. "Sedimentary rocks are just as interesting as the stories say, I'm afraid. They hardly talk and all, and when they do, none of it is interesting. I'm not sure why - I suppose we all expected to be bored, so we all did boring things." Benny was a part-time philosopher, so he knew these things. "I bet if some of you went and became sedimentary rocks, you would have lots to chat about. Remember that life is what you make it. No matter how things seem to be or how much it feels like the world is against you, you can always change things and make them better. And learn about yourself along the way."

"Will do!" the magma gurgled. "We'll be the most exciting sediment ever!"

Benny sighed and smiled again. "I'm sure you will, Pete."