Transformers

Once upon a time, there was a woman who owned an orphanage in Qibao who had been out for a walk one fine Wednesday afternoon, when she accidentally dropped her wedding ring into a well. There was a boy at the bottom at the well, and the Orphanage Owner called down to him, asking if he could give her back her ring. Before the boy could answer, however, a voice erupted from the walls of the well he was sitting in. It said "I can get get your ring back for you!" and then shape-shifted itself from the shape of a well into the shape of an old, ruined house. The ring, of course, was now simply lying on the floor and very easy to retrieve.

The Orphanage Owner, a bit confused about what had just happened, thanked the boy and the talking Shapeshifting Well for their assistance, and invited them to come back to her Orphanage for dinner sometime. The Shapeshifting Well declined the offer, being that it was a piece of architecture and could not leave this spot. The boy said nothing. So, the Orphanage owner headed home.

On her way home, she noticed that Prince Kampfire was in town. He was talking to the mayor, and the Orphanage Owner overheard enough to gather that he had been traveling the country trying to apprehend a criminal mastermind. The prospect that a master thief might be in her home village worried her, but not enough to cause stress. She continued on her way home and went to bed.

The next morning, she realized she had no milk for her cereal, so she decided to go out shopping. But just as she was exiting her front door, she was confronted by an old, sickly man hooked up to an IV pole. He explained to her that the boy in the well had been his son, but he was too sickly and old to take care of a child, so he begged the Orphanage Owner to accept his son into the orphanage. She declined, being that the orphanage was currently at maximum capacity, and went about her day.

The old man came back every morning for about a month, begging and pleading for his son to be allowed to stay in a safe place like the orphanage, and not out in some enchanted transforming wall with no money or food. Eventually, after weeks of pestering, the Orphanage Owner gave in, and said that she could try to make space in her orphanage for the boy. So, that night, the boy was brought inside and slept in a real bed for what might have been the first time in his life.

The following morning, the Orphanage Owner was awoken by Prince Kampfire, who had stayed in the village all that time investigating clues about his criminal research. He told her that the thieves he had been searching for were right under her roof, and chastised her for not doing anything about it. The Orphanage Owner didn't understand, so the prince elaborated:
The infamously wise and beautiful thief Sword Wolf had teamed up with some other hooligans to steal the orphanage's valuables. His parterres in crime, Moth Wizard and Shapeshifting Well, were experts at disguise, and had aided Sword Wolf with their talents. In actuality, the boy had been Moth Wizard, the old man had been Sword Wolf, and the Shapeshifting Well had been the Shapeshifting Well. They had merely used a magic spell to transform their appearances, and they had played the Orphanage Owner for a fool.