In a time before times, when beings like you and I were not the lonely things we can be now, in the time before our thoughts were boxed into words, there lived an enchanted creature. She loved one and all deeply with a silent song that went into the heart and moved all who could feel her to the sweetest joy.

Along with humans, there were also many other kinds of beings, some immortal, some fearsome, and many kinds of spirits living at that time. The enchanted creature caught the attention of one of the fearsome immortals who could not feel his heart and could no longer bear his emptiness.  He reasoned if she sang only to him, perhaps he could hear it and feel the joy as well. No matter how he tried, he could not feel her song.  So to silence what he could not hear, the immortal turned her into a stone, where she broke into 5 magically round pieces with markings on them. Seeing this, the immortal cursed and kicked the stones into the surrounding brush. 

Meanwhile, a human cowered behind a tree and watched the immortal turn her into stone and broken into pieces, and when the immortal left, the man gathered her pieces up, held them in his hands, and cried as he missed her sweet song. As his tears fell on the stones he felt her song again. This pleased him, and he decided to take her pieces home. As he carried her pieces home, her song grew fainter, and then he no longer felt her song, which made him sad and he cried again, and then he could feel her song of joy again. He discerned that if he wet the stones he could feel her song. He kept her pieces at home, in a bowl, and watered her pieces every night when he came in from the fields, and every morning when he woke up. He grew old, and died, but not before members of his family understood, and each took a piece of her home to feel in their hearts. Those family members grew old and died, and her pieces got slowly spread from family to family, town to town, and eventually all over the country. A story grew through the land about the magic stones that made you joyful. Eventually as the stones became sought after, stolen, and connived for, and people had to keep the stones hidden, and often they were forgotten, dried up and lost. Eventually only the story of the enchanted stones was left. 

From the creature’s point of view, she was no longer herself, rather she was divided pieces sensing towards a center that was not there. She felt their combined pull,  like spilt water pulling into a puddle, a gravity to one’s self. At first they had very little sense of self at all, just the gravity. Over the centuries they gradually developed a combined sense of self, a group memory and understood they could influence people, especially their dreams, and thus affect events a little, that there was some enchantment left over that gave them power to make wishes come true if the wish also brought the pieces of her closer together somehow. They understood they needed to come back together, to touch and be whole and one. They learned that when they were wet, mortals could use some of their powers. They learned they could appear in peoples dreams, they learned that under some conditions they could even transport people in time and place to help bring themselves, the stones, back together. The sister stones tried and learned like babies learning to walk. They stumbled often, but slowly over the ages they were getting closer together in both time and space.

Over the ages, most of the immortals, spirits and others moved on to other places, and left the humans. Thousands of years passed, and the sister stones forgot about joy, forgot about love. They no longer sang their song of joy. All they understood was they had to find and move towards move towards one another…