Bwandungi Uses Prompts

Fountain Feature

The crystal clear water is cold, seeping into hands that dip into its attractive shimmer, and finding cracks in bone where it sits and learns to live. They don't understand why the Wizard placed the fountain in the middle of the city. No one who is anyone questions the Wizard.

"The water is clear because it has no life," I say to the woman standing beside the fountain, the echoes of her clinking offering fading in the bustle of rushing human bodies.

Her face is streaked with tears and I'm filled with compassion. I've been exactly where she was, staring down hopelessness and losing the battle. I questioned the Wizard and he stripped me to the bone.

"Madam?" My voice cracks with sympathy and I feel the tears of my own despair threaten to return.

She holds her nose and her eyes flash with disgust and warning, but she doesn't understand that I understand what my countenance must communicate. What months of unwashed body smell like.

"Those coins," I gesture, trying again, "will not bring you any goodness. You've just thrown away your hard earned money hoping for..."

She cuts me off with a grunt and turns heel to leave.

"You should have given it to me."

The heat of her anger is palpable from my seat at the fountain even though she doesn't move any closer.

"Give you my money?" She snarls.

Doesn't she understand? This water has no life and was made that way. Hopeless hope. Faithless faith.

I try again, "Your prayers have been given to something false."

"Blasphemer." Her spittle flies in my direction and this time she marches off, her shoes clacking on the pavement and fading into the masses.

Fear is real. The Wizard peddles in fear. He has mastered it by punishing those who oppose him with a question. This is why I'm here. Didn't I mention it already?

Here comes another penitent person, though their offering is borne with pride. She is not sorry, I see it in her countenance. We share a secret, that the all-knowing Wizard doesn't actually know all.

"The water is clear because it has no life," I say, thinking I might have to change my perch. I'm becoming repetitive.

She smiles at me, her features stretching across her skeletal face, cheekbones jutting out with hunger. Are her teeth too big? Too white?

"I know it has no life," she says, drawing close to me.

"I smell."

"Don't be ashamed of it. We all smell."

"If you know it has no life, why are you about to throw that bag with all those coins into the fountain?"

Her smile doesn't fade, pasted onto the features of beauty she has been chasing probably all her life. "I cannot answer that question because you demand logic where there is none. I believe. I know the truth and it cannot harm me, but I also believe."

Her bony shoulders shrug, a marionette on strings.

"Give it to me instead," I challenge. "Believe in me."

Her eyes study mine for a long minute, as though she was searching for something she'd placed there years ago.

"Can you catch it?"

I stand and raise my hands in response. I'd never gotten this far before. Most people abuse me, some laugh at the 'living fountain feature', an unfortunate moniker attached to me by some media personality who thought more of themselves than anyone ever had.