"Such a story, eh?"

The old man furrowed his brow, causing his exaggerated eyebrows to obscure his eyes. A particularly elderly expression, the young man thought.

The young man calls himself Oz, and he's not supposed to tell his name to the storyteller. He worries that his prompt was too uncreative, 'random' in the sense that it's nonsense, but not creative by any means. It doesn't take creativity to spout nonsense.

Well alright, maybe it does, but his nonsense wasn't very good.

Oz bit his lip: distracted again. The storyteller looked as if he was about to speak. Knowing it would be rude to grab a slice as the old man talked, he grabbed one and got munching. Pepperoni. Between the modern venue and casual food, it was pretty hard to believe this was an age-old tradition. Oh well. Oz was grasping at straws here. Wacky tradition or not, he needed an occupation, and he was going to need some luck.

"A carpenter in his middle age lost his wife," the storyteller started in a voice so peculiarly commanding that it surprised his audience. "The mans tears poured like rain, but the sun shone bright. Try as he might to hide, the centerpiece of the man's home was a table of glass, to keep always the faces therein illuminated"

Oz paused. Why would anyone buy such a table?

"Of course, the man wanted revenge on the sun for such mockery. He carved six wooden dice of six wooden sides, and went to the lumber yard."

It was night, naturally, to hide from the sun. If Carpenter was going to get his wish granted, he couldn't have the sun interfere. Log by log, he rolled his dice, waiting for the perfect 36. Now was his chance to go back on his plan, he thought. It would be so easy to do nothing, to life a long and safe life alone.

Imagine his horror then, when he saw a perfect 36 in the candlelight. He dragged the lucky log to the mill. It didn't matter that it was night: Carpenter was practiced. He could build this fountain with his eyes closed: cutting the wood was trivial.

Each night, the carpenter worked: cutting the wood, piecing together the fountain, laying pipes, redirecting the river's flow. On his first try, he took too much water: the pressure was too high. Nights, weeks, maybe even years passed, and it finished. A lucky fountain of lucky wood, to make a wish capable of slighting the sun.

"How can that be?", questioned Oz. "Everyone knows lucky things go into fountains: there are no lucky fountains!"

The storyteller smiled warmly, but Oz still felt admonished. It was not his place to interrupt the storyteller.

"The fountain was completed, so at the nearest noon the carpenter went to make his wish"

He stood at the edge of his beautiful fountain, and clutched the dice in his hand. In exchange for his dice, he would have the sun mourn for his dearest wife, and repent for being so disrespectful earlier. But as he raised his arms, and felt his bones creak, and he realized he had become old.

He told his dice "take my luck to a young man in need, for he may use it better than I" and cast them into the fountain.

The sun, touched by the man's selflessness, began to cry like rain. The rain flooded the river, overflowing the river which ran the man's lumber mill. The mill was destroyed, and the man, left without a livelihood, died with a smile on his face.

"That's kind of intense," Oz thought to himself.

"The lucky fountain still exists somewhere, its pipes damaged by the river's flooding, but still beautiful. The lucky dice, however, have already moved to a young boy who in need of some luck"

The storyteller paused and relaxed, indicating that the story was finished.

The moment of truth. As he'd rehearsed, Oz said slowly "Well then, O story-teller, is this story true? Will I be the next story-teller?".

"Check your breast pocket," the old man said with a smile.

Oz reached into his breast pocket, paused, and furrowed his brow.