Скала посмотрела вниз, и убедилась что это правда. Its mountain was feeble, frail. The Rock could hear all the little rocks in the mountain groaning beneath its weight.

Suddenly the little mountain the Rock had erected collapsed. The Rock felt itself being dragged down; it toppled down the mountain side and all the little rocks came in its wake. It hit the ground and the little rocks piled in front and back and the sides and on top the Rock. It was trapped beneath all the small rocks that it had gathered for its mountain; they squeezed it tight and the Rock felt like suffocating.

Vormar finished the story with a small bow and Karin started breathing again. She didn’t hold her breath through the whole story, that was humanly impossible, but she always held her breath during the last part of the story, when the Rock was smothered under its own mountain. Maybe she did it to empathize with the Rock; as a child Karin always took the side of the Rock in its struggle with the evil Mountain. That was before she understood the metaphorical meaning of the story and realized the folly of the Rock’s actions. But the story had always remained one of her favorites and the chance to hear it now from a master storyteller like Vormar enchanted her even more.