Note: Not so much a fic as it is a theory of the world
at large, with a little hypothesis on Futaba-Kun
Change thrown in as well.

   A lone figure dragged a cot into the valley and set
it next to three others.  A total of four stretchers,
each carrying a severely injured person.  A person
that should have been dead but for the magic of the
magician carrying them to this place.
   The magician stood up and wiped her brow, fatigued.
 She looked about what remained of her family and
almost wept.  Such hardships had they faced in the
last few years.
   They had struggled in an evil world until the
powers that be decided to wipe it clean in a great
flood.  Only they were spared, for all she knew they
were the only ones spared across the world.  She had
no knowledge of the families starting to recover in
the other continents.  
   They had survived the flood only to be attacked by
demons.  And it took at least two people to produce a
bloodline, much less a race.
   The sorceress had an answer though, she had seen
the solution in the last sleep she had taken.  There
was a spring here, a spring with great, raw magical
power that only had to be shaped.  She would lose her
family, but that was going to happen anyway.  With
what she planned at least humanity would continue.
   The sorceress walked forward and blasted three
holes into the ground, then she waited as three pools
began to form in the holes.  She hesitated and then
walked to one of the cots, dragging it over and
holding back tears.
   A few funeral passages and a spell of shaping
accompanied her sleeping daughter into the now glowing
pool.  Her son-in-law followed into the next pool, and
the twins on the last two cots followed into the last
pond.
   Then the sorceress released the tears she had held
back for the ritual.  All that remained was to test
the pools.

************

   The pools worked, after a fashion.  But the shape
changes were not permanent.  Her new family spent as
much time as animals as they did humans.  And they
only really acquired human intelligence if changed
while they were yet young.
   It was a minor concern, however, and she crafted a
pool to render the changes permanent.
   She worried though, the waters were strongly
magical, in time, this spell would warp her original
intent into something else, something dangerous and
only marginally useful.


************

   It was two generations later when the new pools
began to seep up from the weakened ground.  The pools
swallowed up passing animals and held their shapes in
the spell.
   The small tribe had used the pools for years, but
now it started to grow dangerous as the pools
multiplied and some changed position so they no longer
knew which pool was which.
   People used the waters as weapons and the locking
pool to seal the curse.  A new pool was created to
unlock curses, but the curses could not be undone, not
by the waters of the pools anyway.  Not permanently
   In this time all manner of creatures were born from
the pools to inspire myths down the ages of kappa,
tengu, shapeshifters, and the like.
   The descendants of men and women who never locked
their curses found themselves able to transform at
will.  Resulting in small bloodlines of men that
became wolves or other things.  And even one family
that could change gender at will.
   And the Phoenix People were first born when a great
phoenix first fell into the spring of drowned man and
then drowned in a new pool.  Even that would not kill
the great spirit, and he was merely born again, the
Phoenix's natural powers and the pools merging into a
new immortal form, and Saffron was born.  And the new
god was followed by men and women that willing fell
into the new Phoenix pool to follow him.

************

   And so it went until the springs were named
Jusenkyo and sat in waiting for a young martial artist
and his father.

=====
"Caffeinated Kender?  What's that, a berserk spell?" - 
Tribble, Kender Warrior of the Celestial Kingdom
"God has to have a sense of humor, it's the only explanation for sex." - my father
"I have to write a how-to paper for class, so I'm writing a paper on how to be psuedo-evil." - my brother

http://members.aol.com/thrythlind/snake.html

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