An average family of three exits a restaurant on a Friday night. In front of this particular restaurant is a fountain of acceptable size with LED lights that give it an otherworldly glow. The adults of the aforementioned family take a passing moment to look at it, but their young daughter takes a longer moment. She stops, hand dropping from its tiny grip on her mother’s finger, and toddles over to the fountain for closer inspection. (Having just consumed a very excellently prepared meal and being a Friday evening, the parents are indulgent and follow their daughter to the fountain instead of calling her back.)
“What have you found there?” the father asks, peering over the rim of the fountain and down into the rippling surface. He puts a light hand on his daughter’s back since she is kneeling on the edge and leaning a bit too far forward to be stable. The girl doesn’t notice the supportive hand.
“Wish!” she exclaims delightedly, pointing a tiny finger at the coins at the bottom of the fountain. “Can I make a wish?”
The father exchanges a smile with the mother and fishes a hand into his pocket; he pulls out a penny of respectable condition. “Here you go. Now make your wish.”
The girl takes the coin eagerly from her father’s much larger and warmer hand and presses it into her palm, closing her eyes. After a moment, she opens her eyes and carefully drops the penny into the shimmering water. Plop!
The penny is dragged along with the slight current of the fountain and lands at a spot that is not quite where the girl had intended it to land. But that’s okay; the wish suffers no disadvantages from the slight deviation.
The girl blinks, and suddenly she cannot tell which coin is hers. It is part of The Collection now, another wish set free to come true. It might come true for her, or it might come true for someone else. Such is the way of wishes.
“It’s time to go home now,” the mother says, holding out a hand.
“But what if someone takes my wish?” the girl asks, concern clouding her innocent face. She sits properly on the ledge now with her legs dangling over the edge.
“No one will take your wish,” the mother soothes. “Look at how many wishes there are. No one will find yours.”
“And even if they did,” the father adds, “no one takes wishes from a fountain. It’s bad luck.”
The girl accepts this reasoning and hops off the ledge. Hand in hand, the family continues on their way. The parents forget the fountain quickly—it’s just another daily occurrence one must go through when one has little children—but the girl continues thinking about it for a long time after. Sometimes she wonders if her wish is still at the bottom of the fountain, or if someone has seen it and decided to make it come true. She wonders how many wishes came before hers and how many more will come after. She is still thinking about the fountain when she goes to sleep and will continue thinking about it (though not as frequently) when she wakes, for years to come.
But the girl’s parents were mistaken. It is common for wishes to be seen or found; they are in the relative open after all. As for no one taking them, that is an outright lie (though the parents cannot be accused of malicious intent since they do not know any better). Certainly, there are some who believe it is bad luck to take the wishes from a fountain, but it is hardly a universal consensus. If it were, there would be many more coins at the bottom of the fountain than the girl saw. Besides, how do the wishes come true if no one takes them to make them so?
