In Onylon, an old artisan tells a story to his grandson:

"Totelo Lotel, with his great and terrible magic, stole the color from the sky.

All was grey and all the Ria was taken by a sadness— every day a worse winter; winters like they have in the north.

So Aizyn Onyl set out to dye the sky blue again.

Wise Aizyn Onyl took together all the sacred ingredients for his dye; the purest turquoise, the purest lapis, dahlias from the Hyndal mountains, feathers from the Yirin Jay. And last, what he needed, was a drop of the old earth’s blue blood: saltwater from the sea.

But the cunning Totelo Lotel, in taking the color from the sky, muted its reflection on the sea, so stealing the color from the sea in turn.

What was Aizyn Onyl to do then?

Look at your arms. What is that there?

A vein of blue blood!

What do you think Aizyn Onyl did? Cut open his arm?

If you are cut, your blood turns red.

So wise Aizyn Onyl swallowed all of the sacred ingredients and drank a drop of salt water; And he, with utmost control over his body, guided the sacred ingredients not to his stomach, but through his arm, and to his outcast hand—reaching up for the sky, dyeing the sky blue once more.

How kind was Aizyn Onyl, that he outdid the injury that was done, that he left the old earth better than he found it— making a dye more pure than the sky had been. That is why the sky is so blue in The Ria. That is why our summers are long, and winters short."

“But why did he steal the color blue?" The grandson asks.

“What?”

“Why did the magician Totelo Lotel steal the color blue from the sky? What did he do with it?”

“I don’t know. Nothing good.

Maybe he couriered a favor with the magicians in the east desert. I heard they worshipped the color blue there.”

and here are images on the internet