The excitement of knowing that it is a pebble aside, Pebble senses its movements as the girl tossed it aside, and is truly pleased by the feeling.
Eventually though, the excitement dies down, and Pebble starts thinking about how it can get to move again. It realizes that in order to be able to move, it must have some method of interacting or communicating with the world around it. Even if it does find legs for itself, it would need to move the legs to attach them to its body.
So Pebble tries mentally focusing on different things, as it had attempted to do in the past with other pebbles. It tries focusing for some time on a blade of grass without any results. It tries focusing on some dirt, also with no results.
Pebble sees a small boy, perhaps 4 or 5 years old, playing nearby, and tries focusing on the child. It feels like it can communicate into the mind of the boy. Pebble realizes that there is only one chance to make a good first impression, so it chooses the voice of the most impressive person it has seen - a fighter who defeated a wild beast with a single punch - and projects a roaring battle cry into the boy's mind, expecting a happy and excited - maybe even respectful - response...
...Looking at the back of the crying boy as he runs, crying for his mother, Pebble realizes that it may need to choose a voice that is not as imposing for its initial communication with a human.
Over the next few days, Pebble starts paying attention to the voices of the people interacting with each other in its surroundings. It notices that when speaking to other humans, humans usually use a calm tone. It also notices that humans tend to group and communicate with others their own age and size.
Another day passes, Pebble sees a group of small children playing nearby, and decides that this is its chance to initiate communication with humans.
It reaches out to the mind of one of the children, a boy no older than six years old, and speaks to it in the voice of a five year old child: "Hello?"
The boy turns around, looking for the source of the voice, with a confused look on his face. "Did any of you hear that?" he asks his friends.
Seeing them shaking their heads, the boy realizes that he was the only one able to hear the voice. In the meantime, Pebble realizes that the boy will be confused if he doesn't explain, so he says "I am communicating to your mind directly, so only you can hear me."
The boy, visibly excited, says "Wow, that's so cool! Can you teach me how to talk in peoples' minds too?"
"I'm not really sure how I did it myself, I just focused on your mind and was able to send you messages" says Pebble.
The boy tries focusing on one of his friends' minds and sending messages, but nothing happens. He says "I guess this isn't something that I can do that way."
"I'm sure you'll learn how eventually. I wanted to ask you, how do you get your legs?" says Pebble.
"My legs? I was born with them. Isn't everyone born with their legs?" says the boy.
Pebble realizes that "born" is not a concept he has overheard people talking about and asks "what do you mean by born?"
The boy, a bit puzzled at the question, says "well, I'm not too sure how it works either, my parents say I'll understand when I'm older, but I've heard some people say that when you're born there's a stork that brings you to your parents as a baby, and then they raise you."
"So when the stork brings you to your parents you already have legs? Where does the stork get you from?" asks Pebble.
The boy thinks for a bit and says "I'm not sure, maybe from some sort of egg? Most birds are born from eggs, so maybe the stork gets babies from eggs? But the babies have the legs from the beginning."
"Okay" says Pebble, a bit depressed at the knowledge. If everyone that has legs is born with it and always had it, then there would be no way for Pebble to get legs, since it didn't have them from the start.
"You ask funny questions" laughs the boy "let's be friends!"
"Okay!" says Pebble.
"My name is Jonathan, but you can call me Jon. What's your name?" asks the boy.
Pebble thinks about it, and realizes that he shouldn't call himself "Pebble" since it would be odd to humans to hear such a name. He notices how Jon said he could call him a shorter version of his name, and says:
"Call me Peb."