Then she led him to a different spot, where the solid granite crumbled into gritty sand. "Now look. The enemy."
"A nautilus," Elara said. "From when this place was a shallow sea, full of mud. Remember the sand we saw? It got buried. The weight of new rock on top squeezed it, cemented it, turned it into this—sedimentary rock. And sometimes, it caught a life and kept it forever." geology 1
"Okay," Leo said, his voice soft. He picked up the pebble he had kicked earlier and turned it over in his palm. It was a piece of the grey granite, veined with pink. "So this little rock… it’s been through everything ." Then she led him to a different spot,
Leo's eyes went wide. "A snail? On a mountain?" "From when this place was a shallow sea, full of mud
"Lesson one, Leo," she said, tapping a fingernail on a sparkly cluster of crystals. "This is the beginning."
Her younger brother, Leo, sighed, kicking a pebble down the trail. "It's a rock, Elara. We've been hiking for an hour to look at a rock."