The Man Who Could Talk to Rocks

There once was a man who could talk to rocks.
It started on a trip to the beach. His mother told him if you listened to a shell, you could hear the sea in it. His sisters ran to find shells and, upon pressing them gently to their ears, began to squeal with delight at the quiet hushhh they could hear inside them.

He couldn't find a shell, so he tried it with a pebble, to make his mother laugh.
The pebble said "Hello!" and he jumped out of his skin.
"The pebble spoke to me! The pebble spoke to me!" he yelled. His mother laughed. His sisters chased him with a bouquet of slimy, blistery seaweed.

As he grew older he didn't have to press his ear up to the rocks to hear them. He could hear stones in walls muttering under their breath or pieces of gravel whispering to each other. He heard diamonds, glowering on women's fingers, spreading gossip. He heard boulders grumble and cliff faces call to each other across ravines. He began to strike up conversations with the flinty pebbles in his back gardens. Once a gravestone yelled an insult at him, and was incredibly affronted when he yelled one back.

But it was a blessing, more than a curse. He learnt to ask rocks more pertinent questions, because 'how are you?' means very little to an inanimate object with no emotions or nerve endings. He went to university to study geology and archaeology, and used his rather banal sounding talent to discover greater findings than any geologist or archaeologist before him. No carbon dating for him; oh no. A simple 'How old are you?' would suffice. Of course, some rocks were more trustworthy than others. You couldn't really trust shale, for example. Much too flaky. But you could get what you wanted out of most. Especially the metamorphic ones, who buckled under pressure.

He could find out, for example, how landscapes had changed around them, what creatures had walked on their backs, had lived in their caves and crevices, what settlements had been built on them, out of them, using them as a tool.

The man who could talk to rocks carved himself a rather successful career. He was the best in his field. He was unprecedented. He knew rocks better than anyone. Better, almost, than they knew themselves. But he was at a loss where to go from there. He sometimes felt very lonely. He could tell nobody about his talent, because nobody would believe him. He only had rocks to turn to, and he was getting a little bored of them, despite their infinite wisdoms.

Then he had an idea. An idea that would make him very famous indeed, and not just in the geological realm.

He would ask the rocks of Stonehenge what they were for.

So he went to Stonehenge and asked the rocks what they were for, and
they didn't know either, but they sure as hell had some funny stories about summer solstice.