The Adventures of Luna and Lucas

LIFE OF A LITTLE SPRING hidden in a forest is uneventful, you could even 
say dull. Day after day, you look up at the impossibly tall pine trees that 
 have been there since the beginning of time.


Always the same view, but that suited our little spring fine. It was his home and he felt safe, comfortably settled in his nest of three small rocks covered by a lush carpet of moss.


He liked his world. It was alive with sounds of all kind: birds chirping and singing, insects humming and buzzing, squirrels quarrelling and squeaking, 
 a splendid cacophony in which the gentle bubbling of the little spring was 
 no more than a barely audible whisper.


Little springs don't usually have a name, but we shall call ours Lucas, 
 because his one and only friend called him that. She was a tiny bird referred 
 to as Goldcrest by people with a minimal knowledge of ornithology, but 
 Lucas named her Luna because she had a beautiful yellow crest in the shape 
 of a moon.


Luna dropped in every morning to take a refreshing bath in Lucas's clear waters and then they chatted for hours on end about everything and nothing, simply delighting in each other's company. It must be said that Lucas's knowledge in most subjects was rather limited but Luna, who was infinitely more worldly, filled in the gaps and conscientiously explained the nature of things, one by one.


They were inseparable, except for the cold months of winter when Luna travelled down south in search of the sun. Lucas understood that birds needed to migrate in order to survive, but it still made him sad, so he turned into ice that feels no pain and patiently awaited her return.

WINTER WAS THE TIME of rest and regeneration in Lucas's forest. Snow covered everything with a soft white blanket and silence reigned day and night. Lucas had no idea for how long because he was deep asleep, lost in dreams about fluffy white clouds, colourful butterflies and, most of all, his beloved Luna. Dreaming is the most sensible way of enduring a tedious winter.


Lucas awoke to a deafening sound of cracking ice, made in fact by none other than himself, as he was thawing back into a spring of crystal-clear water. 
The warm rays of the early afternoon sun snuck through the pine trees and filled him with youthful vigour. He was ready for fun and games!

He didn't have to wait long. Before he could count to 926, Luna appeared 
 in the sky above and dived straight into him, splish-splash! There is nothing 
 as wonderful as two best friends reuniting after an absence that seemed like eternity: they laughed and chirped and bubbled till they ached.

"How have you been, my dear Lucas?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I haven't really been, or at least I can't remember having been, I think I must have been asleep..."

"Asleep?!? While I've travelled the whole wide world and seen marvels more marvellous than we could ever have imagined? You don't know what you've missed!"

"No, I don't, but I'm sure you'll tell me," said Lucas with a beaming smile.

Luna was a proper chatterbox and needed no invitation to regale Lucas with 
 a thousand and one tales of her journey, some possibly true, but the majority surely invented.

PART 1: LUNA'S TRAVELS

"WHERE DO I START?" wondered Luna aloud as she settled on the soft carpet of moss.

"At the beginning," suggested Lucas, trying to be helpful.