Tourmaline smiled at the sound of affection in Blue's voice. It reminded him of the love his own siblings had for him, despite the fact that he was a ghost to them at this moment in time. He missed his family, he missed his home, and Tourmaline knew that nothing would stop him from trying to return at the appointed time. If he missed it... then all that would be gone.
"Ah, yes, stories," Tourmaline said with a wider smile. His eyes sparkled with pleasure at being able to share what he'd discovered. He shifted to a more comfortable position and settled the book upon his lap and opened it. "Let's see... some of these are tales of what I saw while traveling, others are stories that were told to me by others. Where to begin... ah, here."
Tourmaline gently turned the page to a story he'd written down about a princess born of the sands and wind of a land far away. He decided that Blue would enjoy this one the best, since it seemed that the younger Kulshedra also had dreams of wandering, but couldn't. Tourmaline took a deep breath and began to speak.
"Once, when the world was young, the sky and the earth mingled together, inseparable." Tourmaline said, keeping his voice soft. "But eventually, the wind wished to have the sky for itself, and the water wished to have the earth for itself. The wind and the water conspired to separate the sky and the earth, and succeeded. With the earth and the sky no longer together, the wind and the water had what they wished, and created the world as we know it today. But the earth mourned the loss of the sky, and created dry places where water couldn't touch, and it was the earth's only form of rebellion. But the wind saw these dry places, and began to covet them. The earth became dry and sandy, and as the wind swirled the sand, the wind came to love the sand, and the sand came to love the wind."
Tourmaline's expression softened, and he caressed the page which held his own sloppy handwriting. "The sand and the wind were together always, and from that union came a princess. She was of both the earth and the wind, and she gazed longingly up at the moon in the sky, as if she was willing the moon to come to the earth and join her. But it was the stars who noticed her, the stars who watched her from afar, and they spoke to the sky of the princess of the sands. When the sky noticed her, the sky fell in love with her. But because the sky was so far away, all the sky could do was watch the princess as she stared longingly at the moon."
He looked up at Blue then with a small smile. "The moral of the story is to never want more than what you already have, because then you will lose everything. At least, that's what the person who told me it said."
