sharing the wishing well

A wishing well is found.

For everyone who takes a sip of water from the well a wish of the natural gifts of the world is granted.

At first the well is known only to a small group of people but as they tell their friends the number of people grows.

As the number grows people start to notice that the taste of the water begins to grow bitter and wishes too start to become tainted and incomplete.

One wise person then asks for their wish to be guidance on how to restore the well to its natural abundance of good wishes and they are rewarded with an inspiration to do just that.

The answer to restoring the well lies in two challenges.

The first challenge is to restore the surrounding area to its previous conditions before the people came and trampled on the natural beauty. People can continue to come in the same volumes, and even increasing, but the space around the well requires an investment of labor to ensure that the physical space is of equal caliber as the gift of the well.

The second way to restore the well is to bring special flowers and drop them in the well. The problem is that these flowers are not plentiful near the well and are spread out across the land. For the volumes to come they would need to ask that all who came would bring the flowers with them to contribute.

Upon learning of these solutions the original group of people who had first learned of the well gathered to discuss what must done.

Some argued that if they were going to labor to restore the land around the well to its natural beauty that only they should know the secret of the flowers so that only they would have their wishes granted.

Others argued that only if they involved all people would they be able to maintain the well and surrounding area to the standards expected.

Others argued that the outsiders should be expected to bring more flowers than them and they could have wishes but their extra flowers would be payment for their labors.

One voice argued that they should share the well, the labors and flowers expected with all. If someone came in need of the wishing well but was unable to provide either labor or flowers they would not be denied.

When their meeting had concluded they agreed to keep the secrets of the wishing well renewal to themselves. They would repair the landscape around the well. For those outsiders who learned of the well they would charge a surcharge. The surcharge would go into their own benefit of the well.

As the years passed the original group struggled with the maintenance of the wishing well and surroundings and they found that they put less and less effort into collecting their own flowers and more and more effort into increasing surcharges on others.

The well became bitter again and the original group simply stayed on near the well because they felt entitled to everything and anything that would come it.

Some years flowers would be plentiful or someone with skills with the land would restore the well and area but nothing was sustained.

Then a strange thing happened.

A stranger, who did not believe in the powers of the well, came with a friend. That stranger did not drink of the well but did witness how beauty seemed to be lurking in the shadows around the well. It seemed as though the beauty was desiring to explode from the natural space but was kept held back by the ugliness of abuse that the land had endured.

The stranger also saw the hope in people when they came to the well, hoping for a refreshing drink that would grant their wish.

Finally, the stranger met the entitled who hung over the well waiting for their next easy wish. He saw how they desired to keep the wishing well and its powers to themselves but that they new that they required the flowers of the others to keep the well producing.

The stranger then met with the appointed custodian and asked about the maintenance of the well. The custodian had grown tired of games that the entitled asked of them. They worked to give access to all who would see their wishes from the well but they knew that the entitled were holding captive some of the greatest potential for the well.

The stranger was perplexed. The stranger did not believe in wishes but was very curious about what the entitled were not sharing with everyone else.

The stranger could just leave, but something made them curious about the mysteries of the well and why some people so badly craved a wish to be granted for them.

What was the stranger to do?