Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

There’s a word inside a stone and whoever pulls the word out of there becomes king. Men have spent half their lifetimes conversing with the stone, laying forth their theories and trying to convince the stone they would be just kings, fair kings, loved kings. The scholars argue whether the word is stuck in a stone or in all stones, and so stonetalking’s spread to all corners of the kingdom.

A young man sits down next to the big stone (the one stone) and ignores the three knights quoting poetry at it. “Hi, how are you?”

“Bored,” the stone says.