The Origins of the Stone-Nest: A Fable
Culeldilwen,
My mentor, I overheard a clamoring of young Stone-Nest Argonians beg their egg-tenders for a story when the sun was at its highest. The egg-tender took a moment before launching into the tale that I faithfully inscribed below. It can't be true, can it? Argonian presence on Solstice goes back centuries. We have records of them being on this island for more than a millennium, but they cannot have originated from this island, can they? Please respond at your earliest convenience.
Maltheo Maborel
* * *
As the elders tell it, stone remembers long and deep. If you dig down far enough, the land remembers what it once was and cries out for the embrace of all it knew. Once, the stone was all one piece stretching across the seas and far into the distance. Here, the trees grew. They needed no one to tend to them. There was sun to warm their bark and rain to water their leaves and roots. All was bright and shining. But even the sun sets on beautiful days.
The stone cleaved. It fractured into pieces and the seas, which were once no larger than lakes, rushed into the gaps the stone left behind. Sand whipped and swirled. It formed beaches in which little could grow. And the trees, with their long stretching roots, found themselves unmoored from the places where they needed no tending. Leaves fell. Roots rotted. Trees withered and died.
One stone with a single tree upon its back, too large to sink into the hungry tides, floated far from the others. It would not sink, but it would not stay in place, either. Swept out to the horizon, beyond where the sun shone brightly, the stone finally steadied and in the darkness, it began to cry. It cried for the family it would never see again and for the closeness it would never feel to anything but the tree atop it and the waves striking its edges.
Hearing the stone's sorrow, the tree knew it needed to create something to send to both to its own roots and to the stone. The tree reached inside itself and created rocks of life. It warmed the rocks between its roots and from those rocks, the first of the Stone-Nest people were born.
The Origins of the Stone-Nest: A Fable
Culeldilwen,
My mentor, I overheard a clamoring of young Stone-Nest Argonians beg their egg-tenders for a story when the sun was at its highest. The egg-tender took a moment before launching into the tale that I faithfully inscribed below. It can't be true, can it? Argonian presence on Solstice goes back centuries. We have records of them being on this island for more than a millennium, but they cannot have originated from this island, can they? Please respond at your earliest convenience.
Maltheo Maborel
* * *
As the elders tell it, stone remembers long and deep. If you dig down far enough, the land remembers what it once was and cries out for the embrace of all it knew. Once, the stone was all one piece stretching across the seas and far into the distance. Here, the trees grew. They needed no one to tend to them. There was sun to warm their bark and rain to water their leaves and roots. All was bright and shining. But even the sun sets on beautiful days.
The stone cleaved. It fractured into pieces and the seas, which were once no larger than lakes, rushed into the gaps the stone left behind. Sand whipped and swirled. It formed beaches in which little could grow. And the trees, with their long stretching roots, found themselves unmoored from the places where they needed no tending. Leaves fell. Roots rotted. Trees withered and died.
One stone with a single tree upon its back, too large to sink into the hungry tides, floated far from the others. It would not sink, but it would not stay in place, either. Swept out to the horizon, beyond where the sun shone brightly, the stone finally steadied and in the darkness, it began to cry. It cried for the family it would never see again and for the closeness it would never feel to anything but the tree atop it and the waves striking its edges.
Hearing the stone's sorrow, the tree knew it needed to create something to send to both to its own roots and to the stone. The tree reached inside itself and created rocks of life. It warmed the rocks between its roots and from those rocks, the first of the Stone-Nest people were born.
