It is cold down here, and dark, and clammy, and lonely.
All the company I have is a pile of moist bones that sparkle against the dark. Even their lustre has faded.
A thousand years I have sat at the foot of this well, in Linfield Abbey, since the bones of St Burnis were dropped. St Burnis and I, and the wishes of ten thousand desperate men and women.
Those men and women no longer come to us, to the bones and I. Perhaps there is no more suffering on the earth. Perhaps the Lord called his children home, and we were forgotten. Left behind to moulder forever at the foot of a dank well beside an abbey in an abandoned town.
The bones of St Burnis once glistered like diamonds, like a child’s tears of joy. Their power diminishes now, their sparkle has dimmed, and I am alone, a discarded and forgotten ghost unseen. The granter of wishes with no wishes to grant.
What can I do but wait?
Once we eradicated despair in the hearts of those who most needed us. We spread joy and wonder amongst the desperate. Now I wait, and wait, and wait. I have waited a hundred years or more to bring a smile to a face cracked with pain and hardship.
Once I lurked unseen and unthanked as I stripped away the layers of agony that enwreathed undeserving sufferers like smog around a spire. Now, I wait. Now, it is I who despair. I breathe in the clammy air of loneliness and strain my eyes to see it pour from my mouth as steam.
The Ballad Of Michael Dreher 