On a scree in the African desert of Namibia there grew a wonderful plant Lithops.
Once pied crows flew over the desert. Lithops got so frightened that he took on the stone-like appearance: his thick leaves became grey-brown, inconspicuous.
September came. A pretty golden-yellow bloom emerged between the leaves of Lithops. But the temperature in the desert rose to sixty degrees Celsius and he was too hot. It had been two years that the plant had seen rain. Lithops was afraid to dry up and his long root began to pull the plant under the sand. He was going down deeper and deeper. At last Lithops' only leaf pair disappeared under the sand. The beautiful golden-yellow bloom dried up and fell off.
The desert was dead. Spiders and snakes were the only living creatures of that place.
But Lithops lived a rather comfortable life. He absorbed the water remaining in sand and listened to the stones whispering to one another.
"Will he live all his life under the sand?"
"Who knows..." Lithops heard one day.
"They say there are deserts where one can see lithops in bloom."
"What luck! But we are alone here... The only thing to do is to lie under the sun forever and ever."
"Lithops with white flowers grew over there... Don't you remember?"
"And with yellow ones over here..."
"Our Lithops was the most beautiful! Golden-yellow... Oh, poor Lithops... Our dear Lithops... How we miss you..."
The stone burst into tears. Big teardrops soaked into the sand at once. Lithops' root felt moisture and began to move up.
Very soon the desert came back to life - the living stones began to bloom and talk.
May 2015