Kelnidran Dane once fell down a well.

He had been six or seven years old at the time, a scrawny thing made up of awkwardly long arms and unusually big feet, that stumbled and wobbled through the thickets of nearby forests and abandoned farmsteads. More often than not, his explorations ended with a bruise or graze to evidence his adventures and his mother, an avid believer in the power of traditional remedies, would treat each wound with tinctures and salves. She would stand at the doorway, wet cloth in hand as he trapsed over the green fields, bloody, bruised but grinning.

Where was his mother now? Could she nurse him back from this oblivion?

That childhood day had started fairly normally, a spur-of-the-moment reconnaissance to a particularly rickety old barn over the nearest hill, long abandoned to time and root. He happily trod over the miniature mountain, his rucksack chiming with the clatter of a metal tin, filled with all the supplies an avid pioneer would need. Leolan dried jerky, a well-thumbed book filled with images of edible plants and most importantly, his mother’s sour candies.

His mouth was dry, his throat hoarse. He pulled a clump of dark soil from his lips with the hem of his uniform; everything tasted of dirt and blood. 

The barn had stood empty as long as any of the townfolk could recall, its creaking timber joists and holey tilled roof long bereft of care and attention. Rumour had it that the land was owned by a man who had opted to journey amongst the stars and simply never returned and with land not at a premium amongst the lush green surface of Trill, no one had ever worried to pursue it. He would come back or he would not, but the people of this world had never considered a single lifetime as the end of a journey, and it wouldn’t surprise anyone if a different face came claiming the untamed fields as their own. Till then, it would sit and wait and tempt young boys with its secrets.

Dane pushed away at the pile of rubble, casting it aside with a sudden urgency like a particularly repressive duvet. He was determined that he would not be the first and last host for this symbiote.

The suns hung high in the sky when Kelnidran arrived at the farmstead, the twisting sisters in sunlight hanging directly overhead, flooding every nook and cranny with radiant energy. The barn had long been deprived of anything of note, time and weather having turned much of the remaining objects of interest to dust and dreck. Only the squat stone circle in the corner of the worn building sparked any excitement. What could lie beneath its heavy wooden lid, which wind and rain had yet to turn aside? What secrets were hidden within its rocky artery?

A smattering of rocks tumbled near his head as he squeezed through the most recent in a series of tiny apertures, causing him to stop abruptly. The stone continued to gripe and groan as he held his breath, fearful that even the smallest rising of his shoulders could push another rock from its unstable resting place. He didn’t know if it was a minute or a month he waited, stretched out like a worm, his belly pressed against the cold stone. Eventually, satisfied that the stony sky wasn’t going to fall any further, he pushed onwards into the darkness. 

Removing the lid of the well had been relatively simple; a strategic application of an offcast piece of metal beneath the seam caused it to open with a satisfying pop. And as the heavy wooden cap fell to the ground with a heavy single thud, the young Kelnidran felt like an explorer at the tomb’s door. He tentatively edged himself over the edge of the thick stone and peered into the well, counting the rows of bricks aloud to the empty barn as they disappeared into the shadow.

One, two, ten, twenty, thirty, forty… until they disappeared into the enticing shadows.

After an age, the tiny channel opened out into a larger cavern, though the low ceiling still forced Dane to crouch as he scuttled forward. Beyond the dark stone roof, he could now hear the dull scraping sounds of distant tools and machinery, the unmistakable din of metal on stone causing his ears to ache after his extended journey in silence. He reached down to his belt and drew forth a tricorder, placing its cracked and bruised shell in his equally bruised hand and entered a set of commands with his dirt-covered fingers. Its wounded form emitted a strangled chirp as the tiny computer attempted to fulfil its duty, and the screen flashed with a momentary glimpse of hope before it hiccuped a death rattle and went dark. Five beings a few metres away through the stone. Five beings almost within reach. 

The thin rope chaffed his slender fingers as the young boy tied a second knot into the loop around his waist, giving off pale white fibres that danced in the waning afternoon light as he tugged it tight. With another hefty tug of his paltry muscles, he tested the anchor he had made around a nearby timber pillar, its aged plained circumference thicker than his tiny waist. Satisfied the knot was good and the barn unlikely to fall around his ears, he stepped up the brick circle and eased himself down, planting his worn boots onto the dry stone walls. With a gangly arm, he reached out and lifted a loose coil of spare rope onto the edge of the well and with one final breath, began his descent.

Dane’s hand was numb as he struck the stone surface again with the base of a cracked rock, the paltry sound barely reaching his own ears. His body screamed for him to stop, to give up these desperate attempts to illicit the searcher’s attention. The cavern was a dead end, no more paths he could squeeze through, no more holes he could claw asunder with his bloody fingertips. The tricorder lay in pieces in the darkness at his feet, vomiting its innards onto the stone floor after a desperate attempt to revitalise it had ended in failure. The scratching and scraping of the search party’s tools had faded, taking Dane’s last shred of hope with them. Once again, he was alone in the darkness. 

The sound of the rope breaking was minute, a microscopic whipcrack as the twisted fibres let go of their brethren. The scream of Kelnidran’s voice was less so. As his body suddenly fell prey to the unrelenting claws of gravity, he let out a desperate cry of surprise and fell downwards, the dry bricks of the wall’s surface racing past him with a gleeful mocking echo of his own voice.

He fell, and fell, and fell, and fell.

His stick-thin limbs flailing wildly for any handhold in the surface of the walls as he fell backwards for a lifetime. His dirty fingers scraped against the cracked surface, twisting and gripping desperately for any salvation. Until he abruptly hit the muddy base of the abandoned well and stopped still. Unblinking. Unconscious.

The darkness was already filling Dane’s lungs when his strength to stay awake failed. The tiny flame of resistance sheltered deep in his chest sputtered and choked as his strength waned and his eyes closed.  

The silence was insidious. The silence was endless. The silence was final. 

Kelnidren Dane once fell down a well.

Kelnidren Dane was once rescued.

Kenidren Dane lies at the bottom of a well once again.