The water was clear. "I cannot be stopped, I shall continue."

The stone was implacable. "I am stone, I have been here for millions of years, not some come by night dribble. And I shall not be moved.

But the water was clear, the water would be moved, eventually. Through ten seasons and ten seasons more, the water made it's argument, and every drip, every gush, every freeze, its argument was stronger, and one season, the water continued, and the stone was nothing more than ten thousand grains of sand, each with its own mind, no longer implacable. The stone became sand, the rock that flows like water.

"But what's the meaning grandfather?" I remember asking this, even now, now when I am older than he was then. And he was old, the lines on his face looked like deep furrows in the field, and his hands hands, wrinkled as they were, trembled slightly.

Grandfather smiled, and the gold that dangled from his ears, shook and glinted in the sun as he chuckled. "Daughter of my daughter, why does there need to be a meaning? Why must every story mean something, hide something greater?"

"But why would you have told it to me otherwise? There was a meaning, I know it!" I remember stamping my little feet, but perhaps that didn't happen, perhaps my memory lies to me.

He smiled wider, stroked his bearded chin. "Well I suppose there is a lesson to be learned. Perhaps two. One, never argue with water, for water will always win. Always."

"And the second?"

"That everything has its time."

I never knew what he meant, until now, my final days.