The old woman and the well

Once upon a time there lived an old woman.

She didn't have any children anymore and her husband was long dead, but she had a parrot. And as the parrot flew around the household and settled down in various places, it reminded the old woman of her youthful days.

She saw before her very eyes scenes playing from times long past, when she was a young woman, and she had children. So she helpfully nagged at the bird, as if she were still upstream in the great river of time, still among her memories. "Don't jump in the well!" she'd say, and "Don't skewer yourself on the pitchfork!" and "Don't stick your hand in the fire" and so on, all day long. The bird took careful notice and life in the old woman's household moved on.

Until one day, when the old woman died. They held a funeral for her, and once that was done her little old house was, at least for a while, left empty and alone.

One day, a young woman walking by the mossy fence noticed, up on its perch, the parrot. He didn't have any grains in his little feeder, and looked sad at the house now with an eye, now with the other...

The woman figured that indeed, they had slaughtered some animals for the funeral, and then relatives split the rest, but nobody knew how to cook parrot and so they paid the poor bird no notice. It must have hid away in all the commotion, but now here it was, all by itself. And so she decided to take the poor orphaned parrot to her own house.

Now this woman, she was young and her husband still living, and a lot of children all over the place. She knew the brackish nature of the old woman, and so on the way over she had a very serious talk with the parrot. She explained to the bird that there's no need to deny everything all the time, and perpetually "don't this" and "don't that", it's not really what people are all about nor how their language works and functions. And the bird paid her a lot of attention, and perhaps understood.

They gave it a nice new perch just like the old one, and all day long the parrot could be seen flowing to different parts of the household, as it could be heard giving useful indications to the children playing and jumping and climbing : "Jump in the well!, Jump in the well!" or "Skewer yourself on the pitchfork!" or "Stick your hand in the fire! Stick your hand in the fire!"

The end.