the lives of elves (GLAUGUST 2)
Glaugust begins in earnest. Prompt: "Selection of interesting wells, wishing or non-wishing."
WELL 1: WELL OF LOST DREAMS
The Viridian Elves of the Tangle send their branded exiles out of those woods, and a gradual distancing from the Tangle's living center causes their minds to slip away from them. Towards the distant edges, they forget they are meant to leave, and have to be chased out by the loyal Elfhounds who guard its perimeter. These empty Elves are like newborn children, cast out into the world of Men.
The memories, opinions, and dreams lost in this process are collected in the Well. Here they are rationed out to the Elves according to each Elf's need. An Elf who hates the taste of the eternal stew, for example, might place this opinion into the Well and receive a replacement more suited for living in the Tangle, such as that the stew is delicious. Likewise with unsuitable ambitions, antisocial morals, and troublesome memories, such as the knowledge of how this system works.
Thus, the Viridian Elves who best represent ideal citizens are marked, sent out of the Tangle in exile, rendered blank slates, and those with deficiencies are repaired. The unwanted material collects at the bottom of the Well, heavy and undisturbed, slowly filling it.
WELL 2: WISHING WELL
The Pale Elves remember nothing of the Tangle. Men have, on occasion, been permitted to enter, and from these visits they constructed a limited understanding of Elven culture. Pale Elves find it comforting to believe they still retain some connection to their homeland, and so towns of Men have Wishing Wells. These have no supernatural properties, but are the focus of a ritual. Pale Elves and Men alike imagine to drop their dearest hopes and dreams into the Well, with the expectation that this might suffuse the water, such that when people drink from the Wishing Well, they absorb some of the hopes and dreams of their community and are motivated to support one another. It also helps the Elves find a sense of direction, which they sorely lack.
WELL 3: UNWELL
The progenitor of the Viridian Elves cares not for any of this. The Tangle, a vast mesh of living circuitry, a forest-mind, probes deep into the soil with a drill-proboscis and extracts the planet's Soul.
This is a spiritual terraforming, in preparation for the eventual colonization of this planet by the Ancestors, who live beyond the dark sea of space. The Viridian Elves are a cog in this machine, a synthetic stage in the Tangle's bioengineered life cycle, adapted from seed pods. In truth the Elves are a type of fruit. Such is the power of the Ancestors.
By extracting Soul and purifying it, the Tangle fills the Well of Lost Dreams with darkness, and fills the Viridian Elves with Soul, which they return to the soil when they die. Eventually the Well will be full of darkness, and the Tangle will withdraw its drill-proboscis and abandon the planet, abandon its Elves and its Elfhounds. It will fly into space, taking with it the darkness it has collected, and it will deposit the darkness into the great Unwell. It will die, and in dying it will awaken the Pale Elves who have scattered across the planet. They will seed and grow and form a new Tangle, and this process will repeat until there is no darkness left on the planet. Then the Ancestors will come and settle there. They will be welcomed, because the planet's inhabitants will be kind and generous, social and forward-thinking, entirely bereft of darkness.
The Unwell is a hole in spacetime, an infinite void. The Unwell contains already the darkness of a hundred worlds.