Footsteps thudded unsteadily across the worn path of the forest floor. Grass on supple boots. The overhead roof of natural flora concealed from land trippers the cycle of night and day. Only thin streaks of silver through the few thin patches of leaves and bark brought light onto the deep darkness, lengthening the shadows.

Light, fragile steps of one unused to such exertion sang its tune of growing tension, bearing one who seemed unsure of where to go but determined not to stop.

The thick canopy soon showed signs of thinning as she neared the center of the village, brighter portions of silver light came here but it only made the path seem more eerie, more otherworldly. She slowed down to long strides, still unwilling to let go of the urgency of her steps. Dark eyes staring, thin film of cool sweat on pale skin, she didn't seem to notice the deep forest flanking her sideways. Darker still were the thoughts starting to enter her mind, thoughts she had nothing to do with but could do nothing about.

Rounding of the slight incline, she drew a deep, ragged breath as she saw the source of the many voices, the village trader's place, alive even in the high noon of moonlight. She walked slowly into the forest searching vainly for a rock she could rest upon. She heard, even before she saw the figures through the threadbare curtains. Clutches of tendrils of alien images invading her, tolling on her compassion, her anger, her pity. The gift and curse which she had too recently acquired.

Grasping the pendant of dark stone encased in pewter that marked her as no ordinary mortal, she closed her eyes and willed the voices to go away or to at least be kind this time. To no avail for such is the fate of empaths.

The basest of human emotions pounding on her soul made her almost physically ill. She tripped on the hem of her deep blue robes and fell to the soft ground. The thoughts came, like the forest, content to dwell in its perpetual twilight. Images that turn to knives inflicting wounds and to anvils that leaden and deaden the soul. There were simply too many worries to contemplate. Too many issues of insignificance that suddenly became priorities of the race of mortals. All of this in their seeking to exalt their purpose of survival.

How small they seem even when they have so much.

Still she had not faltered in the belief that the hurried lives of men need not equate to a craven existence. Clinging to this hope, she called upon her faith to take her away momentarily, thus did she leave the world where tragedy seemed ordinary.

Her limbs slowly disappeared, her footsteps turning to dust, silver in the moonlight. In the place where her robes have fallen, the land shifted taking on her form. Hollow ground shaped like a lady, curled up like a frightened child.

The time of the empaths have come and gone, the years and generations that have passed came to forget the beginnings of the surreal formation on the ground, now called the Well of the Sleepers. Some say that this well (which was really just a hole in the ground) could make your dreams come true. Others attest that if you whisper your question to its ear, the answer will soon come in a profound dream. Of course, there were those who say it's merely in the mind. But all of them agreed that being by the well gives a sense of grounding, of a need to trek inside the confines of your own mind.

The lady of the Well awakens the hidden sleeper she knew was dreaming in each of our immortal souls.