Laughter skips across the surface of the lake like a skipping stone emanating different eerie high-pitched tones that seem to echo the ghostly chirps of birds that have gone quiet and no longer fly. Nothing like one would imagine a stone's speech to be like.

A fine flat surface water-weaves itself once more. Nothing threatens to disturb it again. Not even bubbling from below. There are no thermal vents with life growing along their warm edges. No aquatic life beneath that unknowingly breathes its wishes which are carried to the surface and up into the blank slate of a sky.

Beneath it all is a cool concrete floor much like the ones in any backyard pool in the suburbs. Nothing of nature, of adaptability. Only neutral stone at its depths.