Long after the pilgrims had learned that the Kingdom remembered itself by preparing every gift for another, they began to wonder about one mystery that no Keeper had yet explained.
"Why," asked the youngest among them,
"does the Kingdom never seem to run out of tomorrow?"
The elders smiled.
No one answered.
Instead, they led the pilgrims to an ancient well standing alone upon a gentle hill.
It was older than the villages.
Older than the Orchard.
Some said it had stood there before the first Tree had found its roots.
The children peered over its stone rim.
The water lay deep below, clear and still.
One child asked,
"Who fills the Well?"
The oldest Wayfinder replied,
"Watch."
So they watched.
Travellers arrived with empty cups.
Gardeners carried water to the young trees.
Shepherds filled their flasks.
Birds drank from shallow bowls nearby.
Every day the water was drawn away.
Yet every morning the Well stood full again.
The children whispered among themselves.
"It must be endless."
The Wayfinder smiled.
"Stay longer."
The pilgrims remained through the turning of the seasons.
They noticed rain soaking into distant hills.
Snow melting upon the mountains.
Streams vanishing beneath the earth.
Roots drinking deeply.
Moss clinging to shaded stones.
Far below their feet, unseen waters slowly gathered.
One evening the oldest Keeper asked,
"Has the Well filled itself?"
The children shook their heads.
"The hills."
"The rain."
"The hidden springs."
"The roots."
"The stones."
"Everything has been helping."
The Keeper nodded.
"The Well is never merely filled."
"It is continually becoming."
Years passed.
One traveller grew curious.
He wished to discover the source of the Well.
He followed every stream.
Climbed every mountain.
Explored every cave.
At last he returned, weary and thoughtful.
"I found many beginnings."
"But never the beginning."
The Wayfinder smiled.
"You have learned something important."
The traveller looked into the clear water.
"It is not one spring."
"No."
"It is many faithfulnesses."
The words settled over the gathered pilgrims like gentle rain.
The Well was no longer simply a place.
It had become a lesson.
Each drop had travelled through forests, clouds, rivers, roots, stones and silent darkness before arriving.
Every gift carried countless earlier gifts within it.
One summer a long drought came upon the Kingdom.
The River narrowed.
The Orchard waited.
The grasses grew pale.
The children hurried anxiously to the Well.
Its water stood lower than before.
Some feared it would soon disappear.
The oldest Keeper asked them to walk with her.
They climbed into the surrounding hills.
There they found the moss still gathering dew before sunrise.
The roots still holding hidden moisture.
The shaded stones still guiding tiny streams beneath the earth.
The preparations had never ceased.
Only their visibility had changed.
The Keeper smiled.
"The Well trusts what it cannot yet see."
The rains returned.
Slowly the water rose once more.
Not suddenly.
Patiently.
The children laughed with relief.
The eldest Wayfinder looked upon them kindly.
"You think the rain filled the Well."
The children nodded.
"It did."
"And it did not."
They looked puzzled.
"The rain joined preparations that had never stopped."
Silence settled around the ancient stones.
Not the silence of uncertainty.
The silence that accompanies the quiet recognition of a generosity too patient to hurry itself.
Years later one child became Keeper of the Well.
Visitors often asked,
"Will the Well ever become empty?"
She would lower the bucket slowly into the clear water.
Then she would answer with the oldest saying of the hill.
"The Well empties every day."
"And that is why it is always full."
Few understood immediately.
Some returned years later with tears of gratitude.
From that day onward, the pilgrims no longer asked,
"How many possibilities remain?"
Instead they asked,
"What unseen springs are even now preparing possibilities that no one has yet learned to recognise?"
For they had learned that the Well did not possess abundance because it held everything.
It remained abundant because generous becoming continually taught the world how to gather again.
And so the Kingdom never exhausted tomorrow.
Not because tomorrow waited somewhere beyond the horizon.
But because every faithful becoming quietly prepared another spring beneath the earth.
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