Storytelling Week 4: Christopher and the Fountain

Christopher and the Fountain         

A young boy by the name of Christopher lived in a little village outside of Jerusalem.  Christopher was the smartest and most devoted and trustworthy boy in his school.  After searching for the right person to carry out this important task for months, the King of his village sent him out to find the mysterious fountain of youth.  The young boy was confused and did not think there was such a thing, but he did not want to argue with the King. 

            With friends and family nervous and skeptical about his adventure, Christopher set out to fulfill the task for the King.  It was an early rainy Wednesday morning when he left, but the King gave him no direction to where this fountain may be.  The King was selfish and did not think of others so he told Christopher to only return to the village when he gathers a gallon of water from the fountain of youth. 

            Climbing through the bushes and trees and walking across the hot deserts, Christopher still had no sign of the fountain of youth.  Years went by and Christopher learned to live off the land but continued looking for this mysterious fountain.  He began to think that this was not worth it.  He wanted to start a new life somewhere else and never return to his village, but being the devoted person that he was, he knew he had to fulfill this task. 

            One day, passing through another long desert, he fell upon a small body of water.  A body of water in the middle of the desert? Christopher knew this was something out of the ordinary.  The heat was getting to his head and all he wanted was to drink some water.  Christopher knelt down by the water and began to drink and drink until he couldn’t anymore.  All the sudden, tingles shot through his body and he had never felt more awake and energized.  Had he found the fountain of youth after many years of searching?  He knew this was the fountain and with a new jolt of energy, Christopher filled his bottle with the water and began to head back in the direction of the village.

            He brought this water back to his village and shared it with his friends, family, and the king.  After drinking the water from the fountain of youth, those people would stay young forever.  They still walk the earth today, but they stay within the walls of this small village.

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Author’s Note: This specific unit explains a lot of the Holy stories from the different religions.  Even though each story is ultimately connected, they all have different characters and different plots.  Many characters overlap, but I chose to dial into one story specifically.  My favorite was the El Khudr the Evergreen story, therefore I took the idea about searching for the fountain of youth and traveled through the adventure with El Khudr. All of these stories have a Muslim decent and this story was significant to me because it was different than all the stories that are very similar to the Christian stories.  Also, this is a very important and significant figure in the Islamic culture so it stuck out to me and I had to include it in my storytelling.  I changed a lot in this story and basically only kept the concept of the fountain of youth from the original tale.  There were more characters in the original story, as well, and I did not include them in my twist on the story because I really wanted to focus on his journey in finding the fountain rather than the only loops that were in the story.  If this story does not sound familiar to you, it had many different names to associate with different religions.