"A story of Stops" by Kim Schoonover (FreeBSD/i386 [moose] [ttyv5])

Stops...

A walrus lolls on pink sand, oblivious of sounds and sights both.

A world turns and all around a galaxy obits, but walri do not look up. Or down. Or look at all. Snoring, mountainous things, with tusks and wings, walri of that world do whats good for all: no flying.

Just...
Snoring.
Basking.
Lolling.

For a sky without wings, but without mortal articulations, folks pray to gods and cats, for both may turn away. Or not. It is good. It is without sorrow. For now, sin is dormant. Stars light sky and land, and with that a start stops.

As starts always do.

But so do stops start. As this has.

A day without sound soars around a world, for without air it cannot support audio. Two suns mount a horizon in startling color, a cloud of gas wrapping around such infant stars. But stars too may grow old and go away, fading to a distant land of nothing. As a woman of a sky sits dying, a mourning for that which did not fight for survival sounds out, a sound only for druids of draconian form to touch with minds of wisdom.

Such minds do not always know groovy as much as a curtain, though. Curtains, all-knowing things that go only to past instants, know what it is to mourn, and do. All should, but not all can find a way to a road that is sought, if that road in not groovy in its own kind.

A party of four start a vacation of sanity, following a sought road and starting along a path to fry birds. Crystal monoliths spiral toward a sky without color, glass shards falling to a ground far away to grow again. This world starts to stop.

Dragons mourn.

A start stops, but for now, stops do not.

Walri burn in agony, but nobody pays mind. Flying aids such walri not, as without air wings do not grant flight, and all run away.

Air abandons all. Stopping prolongs naught.

But still, a woman of a sky sits dying. Curtains mourn in sorrow that stop, and druids touch it with draconian minds, but pink sand and cat gods occupy conscious thoughts of all that call up that past.

And this stop of a world stops.

This stop stops too. As do all, to gratifying oblivion.