The story goes…
Prince was eight years old when he first came to the town of Wishing. Back then, it was the kind of deadbeat place people passed through without stopping.
He wouldn’t have been there either, if not for his parents, who stopped in because his mother’s slipper broke.
In his head, he was just a tag-along, because the story of his parents seemed complete even without him. He was the purse. That’s what he figured. They handed him coins after every transaction, as if trusting him made up for using him. He was too young to say no, too small to matter, and just light enough to drag around like luggage.
The parents found a cobbler at a street corner. His mother sat down. His father lit a cigarette. They got busy with their usual nonsense—selfies, vlogs. Prince wandered.
What caught his eye was a fountain at the center of the junction. No traffic to worry about in a place like this. Prince walked over and found a spot on the ledge, dipping his fingers into the clear water. He glanced back—his parents hadn’t even noticed he’d left.
He turned back to the fountain and started following a single droplet—its fall from the top, the splash, the ripples spreading outward. Then he saw something else. A different kind of ripple, one that came from below the surface. He leaned closer, squinting into the water.
A froglet.
No big eyes. No storybook croak. Just a wet little thing that looked as lost as he felt.
Prince looked around the basin. No other frogs in sight. “Where’s your mom and dad?” he asked.
The frog didn’t respond.
Prince fished out a few coins from his pocket and started tossing them into the water, hoping for some reaction. After what felt like forever, the frog suddenly leapt out of the fountain and landed on the ledge beside him.
Prince jumped with joy. “My wish worked! My wish worked!”
When he turned around, the town was watching. Prince froze. While he’d been playing with the frog, everyone had stopped to pay attention. His parents stood in the crowd, phones still recording. Someone from the back yelled, “Did it really make your wish come true?”
Word reached the young Mayor, who had recently inherited his father’s position and was scrambling to prove himself. He rushed to the scene immediately.
Within hours, cameras arrived. Photo opportunities were arranged. The forgotten fountain became the centerpiece of a story that would put their dying town on the map.
Thanks to Prince, his parents received VIP treatment from the Mayor, who personally covered their extended stay and made sure they had the best of everything. But for the first time, they weren’t the main characters. The cameras followed Prince. The interviews were about Prince. And their carefully curated online world suddenly felt small compared to this real story happening around their son.
Prince visited the fountain that night to check up on his amphibian friend. Away from the crowds and cameras, he found the frog again.
The frog leapt out onto the ledge, as if sharing the space with the kid.
Just then, the headlights of an approaching vehicle fell on them. Prince gave in to temptation and tried to touch the frog.
The frog leapt into the street. Prince noticed the news van speeding their way, headlights blazing. He panicked, pounced, and grabbed the frog, rolling back toward the fountain. He sighed, feeling relieved—both of them had barely escaped disaster.
The next morning, when he reached the hotel, his parents were already packing and ready to check out. They noticed him drenched up to his knees, covered in swamp mud, and told him to clean up quickly.
On their way out of town, Prince stopped at the fountain one last time. Looking down at the frog in the basin, he whispered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
Two years passed. Prince had almost forgotten the incident, except for the occasional hiccup of a memory now and then.
Then one day, while he was in the park by himself, a neighbor’s kid threw a paper plane. It hit the ground near Prince. He picked it up. It was made from an old newspaper. His face was on it—standing beside the Mayor, in front of the fountain, grinning like someone who believed it.
That night, Prince packed his coins and walked away—from his home, his parents, his old life.
Back to Wishing.
The Mayor welcomed him like a ghost he’d been waiting for. Prince made a deal: room, food, lifetime stay. In return, he’d be the town’s story. Their boy mascot. They shook hands, and a deal was made between two gentlemen.
The town swelled. Tourists poured in. Wishing became a city, then a sprawling beast of a place.
Thirty years later, the Mayor was retiring. On his last day before stepping down, he invited Prince to the fountain where it had all begun. Over the decades, their business arrangement had become something like a friendship. They sat on the familiar ledge.
“What a journey it has been,” the Mayor said.
Prince smiled. “The stories we tell ourselves.”
The Mayor finally asked what he’d wondered for thirty years. “How did you do it? How did you make the frog jump out like that?”
Prince gave him a measuring look.
“I promised as Mayor never to ask,” the older man said. “But I’m retired now.”
Prince hesitated. Then leaned in and whispered the truth.
They laughed. People walking past assumed it was an old joke.
And maybe it was.
The first frog—the one that made Prince famous—had died that very first night. When Prince dove to save it from the approaching news van, his desperate grab had crushed the small creature in his hands. He’d spent the rest of that night wading through the town swamp, searching for a replacement.
What the town celebrated the next morning was already a substitute—the first of many. Over thirty years, Prince had maintained his supply. Some frogs died naturally. Others met accidents. But he kept replacing them.
He didn’t care about the well. Or the town. Or the people. Or the frogs.
What he cared about was the story. The one where he was the hero.
And not because it was true.
Because it was his.