Of Peppermint and Coins (short story)

[SwordSkill]

A/N: Very simple, very short story. Hopefully it isn't too cliche. Tell me if it is.

Of Peppermint and Coins

Every morning the little girl went to the baker to buy bread from him. She carried the money her mother gave her and whatever was left would be hers to buy sweets or a little doll for herself on the way home. Sometimes there was a lot left, most of the time there wasn’t much, but she was a clever little girl and she would save her copper coins till she had enough to buy something she wanted.

One day on the way home, she met a little boy huddled by the road, covered in rags and an empty tin cup before him. Now the little girl’s mother always told her to keep clear of beggars because only goodness knew where the money you gave them would go. But the little girl had just bought a peppermint and she still had a coin left, so she gave it to him because he didn’t look like he had ever had peppermint in his life.

The next day the little girl had barely enough coins left after getting her basket of rolls so she decided to store the coins in her little box at home. Down the street she went and the little boy was there again and his tin cup was empty like before. She stood there and felt the coins in her pocket and waited for someone to drop something for the boy but nobody came. The gigantic grown-up legs came coming to and fro but none stopped. She wondered where the coin she had given him yesterday was and she felt very puzzled. Perhaps one day she would have to find this Goodness and ask him or her (or it, if Goodness was an animal) where her coin had gone. In the meantime she dropped another copper coin into the cup because no one else was doing it and the little boy looked very sad.

On the third day she saw the little boy again and he was crying as if his little heart would break. The girl didn’t know why so she worked up a little courage and asked him. He said he was very hungry. The little girl knew how being hungry felt like, especially when her mother was too busy talking with the neighbors to remember lunch – it was a big empty hole that twisted her stomach and made her miserable. So she tried to fit a roll of bread into his empty tin cup and went back to the bakery to replace it.

The boy never left the spot and everyday she found him and gave him a coin from her pocket for as long as her mother sent her to buy bread. The townspeople thought it was a very pretty sight indeed and agreed that the boy was very lucky to have such a kind-hearted girl looking after him. Then the winds came and passed and the girl grew up and wasn’t so little anymore and one day she stopped going to the baker because she baked her own bread now. But every time she took her steaming brown rolls from the oven, she often wondered how the boy was doing and if he ever had his peppermint.

One day she met a nice young man with curly black hair and fine eyebrows. He studied in the brightest schools to become a painter. They liked each other very much and they got married and loved each other even more. It was very hard for painters to earn money so they didn’t have much, but they were still very happy. They had a child and he was a handsome boy with his father’s eyes and his mother’s smile, but he was very pale. One night when it was raining very hard he began to cough and he wouldn’t stop and his little face would turn blue. His father rushed out of the house for a doctor but he didn’t come back and she was unable to sleep. The next morning the townspeople found her husband’s body. He had fallen into a ditch and had hit his head and died.

She cried. It was like feeling very hungry only that the emptiness was twisting her heart instead of her stomach. The doctor looked at her baby boy and said he knew a way to cure him but only the richest families could afford the medicine that came from halfway around the world. She didn’t have enough. She blinded her eyes with tears so she wouldn’t have to see her baby die as she put him to bed.

Her baby began to gurgle and she though he was dying, but when she looked up she saw someone beside the bed, carrying a huge sack on his back that seemed to him as light as a feather. It was the little boy in the same rags, but now that he was standing up, she could see the holes on both his hands and feet as if they had been driven through by nails. He unloaded the sack and shiny gold coins, like little suns, began to spill out, flooding the room with light. He said, “All of this you had given to me. I kept them for you and now I am giving them back.â€

[true_noir_chloe]

You have such a... delightful, that's the only word I can think of to describe, such a delightful way of telling a story. ^___^ It's corny, but what the hey, it kept me reading until the end. However, I do have a craving for peppermint now. ~_^

[uc pseudonym]

No, no, it wasn't cliche. I thought it was, but you threw me slightly, making it a story of the least-cliche variety. Very well written.

[SwordSkill]

Thanks, both. Was kinda going for fairy-tale infused with Christian symbolism sort of thing.

[Ducky]

That was cute! It wasn't too cliche and the peppermint thing was sweet.