They knew their name, Lillian, named after the lovely flower. They knew that they'd gotten hurt, possibly died. They knew they'd fallen into the mana pool. Now the pool was gone, but they could still feel the upwelling of mana, the raw essence of magic, everywhere. When the magi told them they were a walking, talking, mana fount, their body had become the container for it, they laughed it off. Now, they were learning to take pieces of amber and fill these pieces with raw mana as new containers for it, at least until they learned to control the flow. -- Anon Guest
There were days when Lillian wasn't sure they were Lillian any more. They retained the name, but all the memories that had made Lillian were gone. Distant, unfocussed echoes at best. Frustrating hints at worst. They called themself Lillian Font, since they had essentially become the well of magic.
The guards of the well weren't certain what to do with them. Lillian could understand that. The well used to be an inanimate thing, a wellspring in the center of a temple. Things had changed.
The acolytes of the temple wouldn't tell Lillian how they had come to fall into the well, nor how they had technically survived absorbing every atom of magic in the world, but now... it still had to flow. It still had to exist. It still had to be stored and portioned out to make the entire world work.
The faeflitters that used to dance through the spring now danced around Lillian, taking portions of magic out into the greater world. They could hold much and take it far, but relay systems had happened millennia ago. A magical bucket chain.
How had that thought happened? Nevermind. Lillian wrote it down in her journal anyway. A series of clues to the person they once had been. They felt they owed it to their own memory. And for the peace of their former friends.
Well, the Lillian-who-fell's friends.
There was a sense of a life gone by. Remnants flapping about like torn pennants in a battlefield. Made of broken hearts and sewn together with tears.
Those friends could not bury Lillian, but they could not be their friend. Not properly. They remembered a Lillian who just... wasn't present. And there wasn't much time for them, either.
Lillian had work.
Baffling, confounding, endless work.
When the spring flowed, there was a stream of magic that ran through undercurrents and into rivers, streams, and other fountains. Weaker fountains. The feyflitters kept things running, but the world needed the fonts.
The magic needed to flow, but it cost Lillian more than they could give to let it flow out of them.
Survival instinct, said the acolytes. The body wants to live, and being a fountain full time would force it to die.
Honestly, dying may yet be an option.
Until that desperate measure became necessary, there was the work. Filling amber vessels with everything Lillian could spare. Experimenting to see if feeding the body real food would allow Lillian to give more.
They had not needed food or drink since the fall.
Amber used to be alive. It had been a part of the world for centuries, been a part of the networks of magic. It remembered. So too did tree resin, but it was not as effective. It was young.
It couldn't hold as much.
The flowing magic from Lillian's fingers inflated the amber like waterskins. From there, the acolytes could merge the vessels into one gigantic pod.
The theory, they said, was that the amber could become a secondary vessel, like Lillian, and create a new flow. That would give them time to unriddle whatever had happened with Lillian and keep the world alive at the same time.
It was looking promising.
At least, they had hope.
"I'm sorry," they told everyone, over and over again. So often that they could believe it was the only thing they could say. "I wish I could undo it."
"We know," said the acolytes. "We can't undo what has been done. We can only move forward, and try to find better ways."
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / umnola]
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