Some say The Spring is where everything started.
Everything.
Something in the movement of the water whispered a wish for life.
Spring forth.
His people believed that they were the first people. The first ones to crawl out from The Spring. And as such they were the ones who took care of it. Who tended to its banks. Who kept it clear and running through the land. And when the land changed, the ones who took The Spring underground. Who protected it from those above.
Because those that came later were not the same as the People of The Spring. They didn't understand where they came from, but they came in droves. Stomping through the woods, cutting down the trees, killing the animals for food. And then there was the first one to find The Spring, to drink from the cold clear water and to wish for a cool breeze. Then to wish for a good meal. Then to wish for an apple, just to test his theory. Well, he changed everything.
The People of The Spring hid The Spring shortly there after. When he told his family and and his friends of the wonderous thing he had found. When they started to scour the woods searching for what he had assured them was there. When a few found it and wished for grand things. For awful things. For things not a single Person of The Spring would have ever thought to wish for. That was when they took it underground.
But those from above kept looking. They were relentless.
One of his ancestors came up with the idea of The Well. To let a small amount of The Spring feed the bottom of The Well. It would not be as potent as drinking from The Spring was. It would not always work for those above. But sometimes it would. And that would be enough to keep them at bay. That's what they hoped.
But they would need to manage it. To make sure The Well worked. To keep The Spring from filling it, or from draining completely out. His people also found a way to track those above from their wishes. They asked The Spring to help. To find a way to know who was asking. What they were asking for. If it was something to worry about or something they could manage.
The People of The Spring understood you could tell about a person by what they wished for.
They made a Keeper of The Spring. Someone to log the wishes, to track to people above. Someone to clear The Well. To tend to The Spring. There would be an honored line of Keepers of The Spring, the People of The Spring knew it was important work. And it was lonely work. The Keeper must live above. Hidden in the woods, but closer to the people above than to the People of The Spring who had gone into deep hiding. It was an important job, taken on with seriousness of purpose and an understanding of what was given up in exchange.
When The People of The Spring began to die off the current Keeper was at first unaware. It wasn't until the log books he meticulously kept were not picked up at their regularly scheduled time that he began to worry. He had not realized that the wishes from the people above that had turned more and more to wishes for health were tied to his people as well.
The diseases of those above had reached The People of The Spring. Their pollution had filled the water, the land, the air. And it had devastated them. They could have wished for it to stop, but they understood that would mean wishing for the death of all those above. And they did not do it.
When he felt his last days coming to him The Keeper of The Spring hung up the stone key in his house, closed his book and left a note hoping that his people might recover and come to take care of The Well and The Spring again.
When she found the house in the woods she found the log book, she saw the letter, but she couldn't read the language it was written in. She recognized the picture on the book as the old wishing well near the village and how the stone key on the wall would fit into the side of the well. She didn't know what would happen when it was placed there but there was only one way to find out.
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