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All good things must come to an end. She had been slowly forming for tens of millions of years and she knew it wouldn't be long before something was to happen to her. Nothing could possibly stay for that long without being destroyed and started anew. It was just a fact of nature.
She just wished her people knew it too.
Humans seemed to all be about making something last forever. They wanted to leave a permanent mark on the world around them. They wanted to be remembered—loved, hated, looked up to. Humans had such short lifespans that she couldn't blame them for wanting the impossible. Being formed from deposition steadily building up her layers like blankets to slowly being eroded away left her with plenty of time to think about and observe the cycle of life and what that meant for her.
But the man who called himself the king of her lands seemed hellbent on creating something to last. He gradually rose to power like the water eroding her rocks further and further inland. She admired his human willpower by trying to create an empire on her barren lands. He brought new life to her old and weary body, decorating her with greenery and flowers.
In return, she allowed pockets of ores to be revealed to him, and grew the Mother Tree for his use. It wasn't much but, in return for her long life, she couldn't do much. Creatures with the shortest lives always accomplished the most.
She watched with amazement as the king began to build the Matral Palace, an exquisite building full of life and colour. She could almost picture it hundreds of years into the future still standing, a new generation of humans marvelling at its height and craftsmanship.
Almost.
But she had watched human civilization collapse from interpersonal conflict and nature take its toll like it had always done. The outcome was always rubble and death. And she was no exception.
It started like the blight: red pocks of corruption marking her ground. No matter how much the king tried to replace it with regular terracotta, it always came back. Unnatural red vines grew from her and she bled lava instead of water.
There was a light spot throughout her sickness, however. The king fell in love with the neighbouring queen of the ocean. The couple walked on her lands, hand in hand, bumping shoulders as they conversed until the sun fell and he boated her back to her empire. He'd fall asleep with a smile on his face and do it all over again the next day.
She worried when they fought but they always seemed to make up, seemingly stronger for it. When they got married, she could see the fireworks from her place in the sea. Every boom and crackle from the temporary new and vibrant stars in the sky made her think that everything would eventually be okay. She'd heal from her red sickness and the king and queen would take their daily walks through the empire until they shrivelled from old age or the land became dust beneath their feet.
She wondered what it was like to love and be loved like that. Sure, she loved the king who inhabited her surface, but he surely did not feel any which way for the land he walked on except to be thankful that he did have a land to walk on in the first place.
The corruption receded, and she was given short relief before the earthquakes came. Her whole being vibrated and she could feel herself beginning to crack. Her rocks scraped against each other, making the land unstable and therefore the empire on her surface too. She watched helplessly as buildings began to collapse, the Mother Tree's roots loosen from its dirt, and the bridge snap and be washed away by the receding waters below.
And then the glorious Mezalean Matral Palace cracked in half. It splintered top to bottom, as if some god had brought a massive axe down upon the tallest domed roof. All of the king's hard work: gone in less than an hour.
If she could cry, she would have.
When the king returned to his empire, he stood still for so long that she thought that he had fainted or died on the spot. He gripped his sword until his knuckles turned white, as if he wanted to fight mother nature herself.
Fix it, she begged silently, hoping that her thoughts would pierce his mind. I have watched you grow from boy to man. I have watched you go from building a tent to a palace. I have watched you make and break alliances as you fight your petty wars. Yet you always persist. You create in the face of strife and fall in love when the future is unknown. Grab your pickaxe and some blocks and build.
But the king flew away.
When you've lived for so long, time is hard to track unless you're paying close attention. A millenia may feel like a day—a mere blip in the timeline of life. But you learn to watch evolution and nature as it grows up and dies.
The ocean that had retreated slowly while the earthquakes tore through her land slowly came back. And it kept rising. The water rose and rose until the rubble of the old empire was fully under water. She grieved the terracotta buildings and her beautiful tree she had gifted to the old king she had not seen since he left. She would most likely never see him again. Too much time had passed for a human to still be walking the earth.
The water eroded her lands further, carving new rivers and revealing more of her colourful layers, a testament to how long she had lived. Each layer told a story, needing years upon years to be created and then sculpted to the temporary shape it took. She was like the clouds she watched overhead—ever changing, going through its cycle of life.
She could feel she was towards the end of her life now, the water nearly swallowing her whole. Nothing had inhabited her surface or caves for many years now. Kelp didn’t grow on her land and the now underwater caves were far too unpredictable to be explored.
She sighed, accepting this fate that everything would eventually succumb to. Like the old king of her surface. Like his wife who had somehow managed to find her way back to his empire, acting as if nothing had happened. Love was supposed to last an eternity but it seemed that nothing really was for forever.
The mesa shattered and cracked.