and he cried, "help me, would you? help me find a way out, would you?"

but they all walked around the pit, heads turned away, ears deaf to him.

and who could blame them?

it was he who had dug the trap. and what's more, they all knew: his dark secret eyes held the power of a gorgon; his voice could summon forth fatal maledictions and unfortunate storms; and his touch could roll heads as easily as dice. even if they could see that behind all of these things, he was a kind and well-intentioned soul, they dared not approach: they were all too afraid.

and so, he was alone in the pit, in the center of a crowd that drifted around him like an uncertain river. and in time, his voice grew hoarse, and he gave up calling altogether, and the reaching out slowly turned into a reaching in. and it was not a pleasant reaching in. for his hands, as i've said, even the figurative ones, were viciously cruel in shape, and what they touched, they cut and scarred and bled deep. every face of innocence that healed over his heart like a scab, he peeled off again, so that the raw edges could feel the air, and feeling could flow again, flow and pulse like an angry red star and its wavering corona. and when the sensation dulled, and the scabs stopped forming, and the bloody feelings stopped being deceived into emerging again, only then did he stop everything, both the reaching out and the reaching in.

and that is when he turned into the stone of the world, and its deepest and most secret heart. a thing frozen and unknowing, secrets buried within secrets, darkness tumbled over in darkness.

and for a time, he knew a measure of peace, or, to be more precise, he didn't know anything... didn't know anything at all.