The stone chortled with glee, "I shall make myself human!" The rock grew hot and glowed brightly.
A passing bodybuilder stopped in his tracks. His buddy asked, "Hey, Rick, why'd you stop?"
"Getting hard, dude!" he said through gritted teeth.
"Well, think of baseball stats, and let's get going, bro!" his buddy said swatting Rick's tented shorts.
"Ouch!" shouted Rick's bud. "Man, talk about hard. That's like granite! I think I busted a finger...Dude?"
Rick's healthy tan vanished as his body crystallized.
"What went wrong?" asked the stone.
"Looks like you petrified an innocent bystander."
"Why couldn't it have been you?"
"Probably because you've got really bad aim, and are a rock."
"I am a magic stone. I can transform anyone or anything, see!"
The stone glowed. This was not going to be good. I clenched my fist over the rock to lessen its effect on the nearby people.
They started to shrink slowly. It would probably be minutes before most of them noticed. I hurried up the beach toward my hotel. Silently, I sent out a summoning spell to Merlin. It was about time for his thousand year wake up call anyway, a milenium in an ice cave with a nymph was too long anyway.