Pride gave a little nod, his expression pleased.
"I do, though the texture is--strange," he decided after a moment, his tone one of admission. It wasn't a good feel to have in his mouth, this odd fuzziness, and he would likely avoid this plant if he had other options. But for trying something new, it wasn't bad, and the taste itself wasn't terrible.
On to the story, though.
He rocked back some, antlers scraping the air above, and flicked his ears back as he settled himself into the right mood. Dreamy, creative, content--ready to elaborate and spin his yarn most richly.
His voice melodic as ever, but now possessive of a haunting, distant quality--as if to draw the listener into the tale itself, and to forget Pride's existence--he began.
"In the beginning, long ago, before life or rain or dreams, there was only stone. But this stone was gem, of all the kinds of the universe, and so everything was... beautiful." A pause, his gray eyes half-closed. As ever, each word was precisely-chosen, slowly and carefully enunciated, and so for a lover of stories, it was easy to savor each part. "All was perfect and crystalline, and every facet and shard glinted with multi-hued light. The glow of the tunnel spheres filled the world with its blinding beauty, and this shivered and shimmered through the gems, so that all was slivers of ruby cast across sapphire, or shifting emerald dancing over the sparking shine of a diamond."
"The universe was once one mind, one soul, one magic: and it was quiet, then. But as it split and fractured into a thousand thousand crystals, it began to think amongst itself. Crystal and stone is above all else, unchanging: and for an eternity, the universe was content with this. But as a single mind can think among itself--debating whether to eat, or rest, or whether it likes to swim despite the cold after all, so did the crystals think. They thought and considered, but it was all as one mind, and it grew lonely. The crystalline existence was interminable, even in its beauty; its stone perfection was unchanging, and this infinity of stasis became unbearable. Obsidian whispered of change; topaz murmured of chaos. The pale blue apatite sang of shifting waters, a concept alien to the universe, and this captured its imagination; dreams came into existence, and the universe dreamed of seas and rivers. With this yearning, it soon made up its mind."
Pride paused, closing his eyes fully now, trying to remember how his tale went. He was making little changes to it, here and there--tweaking it as he went--but, he thought, overall he wasn't doing terribly. He was taking pleasure in its telling, too, contentedly going over the details, weaving it and laying it out for Mercurius to see like a true work of art, like something he had himself created--and he had, hadn't he?--and was happily sharing away.
"Slowly, the world-stone began to mold itself, to spend its beauty and its magic and its color in pursuit of change. But change meant destruction of what was, and slowly, one by one, the crystals began to crack." His eyes opened, dramatic. "The muddy jasper and the smoky quartz crumbled away to form rich soil. The sapphire melted into the roiling sea of Fornax, and the apatite trickled--ever-singing--through Eridanus as its brooks and creeks. (And that is why the waters hum and murmur, to this day.) The great emerald and the rich, thick jade became the flourishing plants that spread throughout the world. White stone breathed into the air to become the mist and fog. These gems, that gave themselves to creation, went still and dark, with only slender threads of color remaining in the vast walls of dull rock that remained. Yet now there was change, after the pain of creation had ended, and for a time, the universe was content."
"It watched as the plants spread, and grew; it watched as the waters carved away stone, here and there. As the fog gathered, and dispersed, and as rain poured down, only to dry away again, and fall in torrents somewhere else. There was beauty in it, and a beauty, too, in its rhythm--yet it was a pattern ever-repeated, and again, the world grew hungry for change."
Pride again paused, no hurry to his tale-telling, and shifted in place a little before continuing. He was only a little distracted by just how comfortable this bed of moss was beneath him. "At last, a breath passed through the caves. It was a sigh: a great, soft, cool exhale of a mother-spirit, the soul of reality and of creation itself, born of the universe's yearning and loneliness and from the gifts it had already given to the world. And the remaining gemstone resonated with this, reached for it, yearning and pleading and giving itself to the magic in this breath."
"The magic coalesced. In the threads of color that lingered in the stone, life grew. Here and there the rock shattered, and new creatures tumbled forth: wolves and birds, horses and fish, stags and lions. The universe and its magic took root in all of them, taking all of these forms, and yet in each--as each was birthed from the stone--the universe could no longer feel its own truths, the vast reality of its single cosmos, its one being. Its unity." Pride looked solemnly to Mercurius. "Instead it saw through each pair of new eyes: the fear of the rat, the hunger of the hawk, the patience of the snake. And as each creature eventually perished, the universe remembered all of its experiences, and it marvelled: for here was true change. True chaos. And it, too, was beautiful. The magic of reality had woven itself into each of these beings, each one but a shard of the world's magic, and each experienced reality anew."
"Each creature was the universe, existence, the whole of the world--experiencing itself." Pride paused again, to let this sink in, and then he continued.
"And so it has continued even to today: the seams of glittering color split, and spill forth new life, for the universe to dream and learn. And sometimes, these dreamers, these storytellers, these Gem-bound--they come to understand that they are they--that each individual life--is but another glinting facet of the soul of the universe. And though they are but one facet, there is nothing more important: for now, the universe is not a single and lonely world of stone, as beautiful and perfect and crystalline as that might be."
"Now it is a dancing tapestry of color--each gem given flesh and form, to move and think and create, to destroy and learn and teach, for existence itself to experience, for the first time, growth. We are the universe dreaming," he finished softly--and then bowed his head, hoping he had not come across too foolish, hoping that there was some thread of something to cling to in his tale.
There was no real metaphor in it, no lesson; it was a simple enough and straightforward creation myth. But he hoped beyond hope that Mercurius would find it a good one.