If you came to the shifting sands of the Outlands to hear a story, you might just hear one in the wind as it rustles through them dry riverbeds and pillowy peaks of the dunes.
With the rainy season a distant memory, them sands will speak in soft, creaky gasps.
In their parched whispers, you might hear of the young man from the Core who left the world he knew to step into a dream. There he found danger beyond his imagination. And the world teached him that getting everything you could ever want comes with a price.
Or those sands might spin a yarn about Old Greybeard, that queer wanderer of the wastes, himself no slouch at storytelling. The valleys might whisper about his mysterious comings and goings, echoing hushed stories shared by the dwindling pockets of desert folk and their reverent conclusion that the old witchy feller had abandoned his humanity many moons ago.
When the sands speak, they might tell of the story no Outlander would ever forget, the legend of the hero who defeated the great serpent from below and buried her beating heart far beneath the drifting dunes.
That was in the time afore our world was filled up with people folk, back when haints and the Fair Ones still crossed over regularly—afore the One Great Spirit molded the clay of our world and breathed a part of Hisself on into us.
Those stories are dying, people say.
As new ways replace the old, modern folk have little use for remembering how things used to be. Some say the magic that once filled our world afore Creation is gone, or it may have never existed to begin with. They say the sands just don't talk no more.
If you ask me, them folks just ain't listening.
The wind blows still. The sands sing still. Their voices may not be as loud as they once was—or maybe the bucket of the modern mind is so plumb fulled up with worries and cares that we ain't inclined to stop and listen no more.
But the legends still echo, passed down from the Source Itself to humble storytellers like me and to the few curious folk who tarry long enough to lend an ear. Folks like you.
And when we die, the earth takes our bodies back on into herself and the sum of all our stories is joined to the Source. We all return to the grand story that birthed us, whether we do so while our wills still guide our bodies or when they leak on out, carried on our last breath like a heavy sigh on a snowy day.
Listen!
You hear that?
A gentle breeze is blowing over the sands of the Outlands, cooling the face of the desert from the scorching heat of the afternoon. Listen close for the voices of the old storytellers, echoing faint but clear in the wind whistling through the sand.
They're singing a new song with a familiar tune just for you and me.
