Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Not people here, no," Elia smiled. "As I said, it is extremely rare."

She seemed unaware that she might have slipped some information. She kept leading them down into the tunnel. The floor was no longer level, either: it was sloping downwards, leading them down into the earth.

"Where are you taking us?" Kiara asked curiously, noting the change. "This isn't just exploring ..."

"Sort of," Elia replied mysteriously. "It's ... not so much a room, I suppose, but ... I think it's more interesting than the rest of the tunnels. Other than this area, the underground is pretty much the same wherever you go."

"But what is this area, then?" Kiara pressed. "You're being more vague than usual."

Elia laughed. "Oh, all right, then. If you must know before we get there, it's the castle well."

Kiara was staring at Elia as well. "I agree. That's ..." She faltered, clearly trying to keep from saying something that might come across negatively. "I mean ... it's a well."

Elia arched one eyebrow. "Ah, but you're forgetting something," she pointed out. "It's not just a well, it's the castle well."

Kiara's brow furrowed, and she shook her head again. "No ... I still don't understand."

"Have neither of you any curiosity?" Elia exclaimed, bemused. "Honestly. When I was young, before I had the Sight, I would have done anything to figure out how the water got from so far belowground up to the castle! And the purification process - everything!"

"It never occurred to me," Kiara admitted, somewhat sheepishly. "I mean ... I'm just used to fetching water from the city well. Bucket down, bucket up, the water already clean ..."

Elia giggled at the two. "Now, now, don't get your hackles up," she grinned at them. "Come, we'll be there in a moment and you'll see what I mean. It's quite a sight, I have to say."

And she was right - or so Kiara thought at least. Even she, who had never been curious about it, and who didn't much care about the mechanics of things, was impressed.

The well was vastly different from what one might traditionally imagine when one thought of a well. Yes, it was a circular hole that went straight down into the earth, and yes, it was ringed with stone; but that was where the similarities ended. This well was a solid thirty feet across, if not more, and though light from above made the room as light as any of the castle rooms, even the midday sunlight couldn't penetrate the depths of the well. A walkway led around the edge of the well to a smaller area, perhaps twenty feet square, that seemed to be a maintenance room, or control room.

There were no ropes going down into the well, however; no buckets being brought up manually. Instead, there was a series of wooden cogs and gears, many of them quite large (that is, ten or so feet in diameter) which were moving slowly together, creaking slightly on their axles.

Kiara could only stare in wonder. She had never seen gears of any sort before, and many of these were a great deal wider than she was tall.

"They run a pump, which is what sends the water up there, but yes," Elia smiled. "That is how we get our water. It's unbelievably deep. I asked Mother once, and she said the well is more than a mile deep - and that's why we don't have to worry about running out of water, despite being in a desert."

She pointed upwards. The gears continued right up to the level of the surface, nearly fifty feet above them. "It never ceases to amaze me how it all works," she murmured softly.

"I would imagine the same person who designed the castle," Elia replied, almost absently. "Or at the least, he would have directed the builders. Mother said that the gears are as old as the castle, so I would imagine that the well would have been dug first, and the castle built around it."

"It must have taken a long time," Kiara mused aloud.

Elia smiled. "Well, considering that my sister Amora was a baby when they began building, and it wasn't finished until recently ... yes. A long time."