The mountains filed their motion at twilight, their subpoenas carved into falling boulders that cratered the cornfield. Ling dodged a granite summons the size of a tombstone, its surface etched with seismic legalese: Tectonic Collective v. Ling – Unauthorized Terroir Appropriation & Sedimentary Harassment. The scarecrow judge's burlap face paled beneath its lichen wig as the earth itself began reciting mineral rights in grinding baritone.
"They've unionized the pebbles," Chu Feng said, shaking gravel from his boots. A pebble shot out, ricocheting off the barn to spell STRIKE in Morse code against a tin roof.
Arbiter emerged from a landslide of legal briefs, his clothes stitched from shredded geological surveys. "I might've explained eminent domain to a landslide! But only to stop it swallowing the pumpkin patch!"
A quartz crystal embedded itself in the porch steps, projecting holographic exhibits of Ling's "crimes":
Infrared maps showing "exploitative topsoil layering"
Seismic recordings of Chu Feng's boots "disrupting crustal harmony"
A sedimentary ledger accusing the scarecrow of "igneous slander"
The Geologic Tribunal convened in a volcanic caldera retrofitted as a courtroom. Judge Basaltia Lex, a towering obsidian monolith with magma veins pulsing through her stony robes, slammed her gavel—a fossilized earthquake—to silence the rumbling gallery of mineral spectators.
"Defendant stands accused of:" Her voice cracked like splitting continents. "(a) Unlicensed use of alluvial metaphors; (b) Willful disregard of metamorphic moral rights; and (c) Emotional erosion caused by…" She consulted a lava scroll. "…'reckless poetic comparisons between love and bedrock.'"
Ling hurled Jiang Yue's music box at the judge's dais. It landed in a sulfur vent, its gears spewing a melody that turned stalactites into jazz drumsticks. "You want metaphors? Let's talk about your out-of-court settlements with glaciers!"
The gallery erupted in tectonic jeers. A juror geode cracked open to reveal amethyst bias.
The prosecution's first witness was a sentient landslide named Erosion Esq., his body a cascading suit of shale and spite. "The defendant's so-called 'crop rotation' destabilized my client's emotional strata!" He projected 3D topographies of traumatized topsoil onto a screen of compressed limestone.
Chu Feng countered by planting dynamite in the courtroom floor. When detonated, the blast revealed:
Fossilized bribes paid in prehistoric coal
A diamond-encrusted plea deal from the last ice age
Basaltia Lex's secret love letters to a rogue glacier
The judge's magma veins flared crimson. "Irrelevant!"
"Irrelevant?" Ling kicked a glowing magma rock into the evidence pool. "This shows you've been fracking the truth since the Jurassic!"
Arbiter, now wearing a helmet of fused courtroom transcripts, tried to redirect. "My clients exercised squatter's rights under the Doctrine of Adverse Possession by Pumpkin!"
A juror stalagmite snapped his pencil (a carved seismograph needle). "Overruled!"
The defense called their star witness: A reformed volcano named Magma Magna, her crater still smoking from perjury charges. "The plaintiff's claims are sedimentary lies!" She erupted copies of backdated mineral deeds, their wax seals bubbling with forgery.
The prosecution retaliated with a sonic boom of infrasound evidence—recordings of Ling's shovel "disrespecting lithic personal space." Chu Feng played counterarguments on a modified didgeridoo that turned seismic waves into delta blues.
During recess, the mountainside jury pool erupted in chaos:
A quartz crystal tried to bribe a juror with tectonic plate futures
The scarecrow judge mediated a turf war between igneous and sedimentary rocks
Arbiter accidentally taught a landslide about class-action avalanches
Ling cornered Basaltia Lex at the magma chamber bar. "Drop the charges, or I'll expose your little glacial affair."
The judge's obsidian facade cracked. "You wouldn't dare."
She dared.
The music box's final aria triggered a Geomagnetic Truth Protocol, compelling the mountains to regurgitate:
Subduction zone tax havens
Fossil fuel lobbyists preserved in amber
A diamond engagement ring Basaltia Lex had swallowed during the Cenozoic Era
The tectonic gallery groaned in collective shame. Even the pebbles stopped picketing.
The settlement reshaped the horizon:
A moratorium on mining metaphors in farm signage
15% of pumpkin proceeds funding seismic therapy for fault lines
Annual apology festivals where humans serenaded cliffs with yodeling
The scarecrow judge enrolled in sensitivity training for "igneous microaggressions"
As Basaltia Lex retreated to her dormant volcano, Ling found Chu Feng tuning a landslide into a blues slide guitar. "Next crisis?"
"Cacti filed a wrongful termination suit." She kicked a litigious pebble into orbit. "Alleged 'succulent discrimination.'"
Arbiter emerged from a sinkhole wearing a tie made of stalactite fragments. "I've learned my lesson! No more teaching mineral rights to anything that can't blush!"
The mountains grumbled their way into sunset, their shadows stretching across treaties written in lava and regret. Somewhere beneath the water table, February 30th brokered a merger between limestone and regret, its calendar pages compressed into sedimentary loopholes.
The audits would continue.
The balance petrified.
But here—between contested strata and rehabilitated bedrock—they let the moon plow rust into a sundial for harder tomorrows, its shadow etching settlements in stone and stubbornness.