Serene Truth Wheel of Destiny — Morimens

"Won't you buy a match?" the girl whispered, her hands and feet red with cold. It was a winter night. "Just one. Please." "I'm sorry, little one. I won't be buying your matches," said the person in white, bowing just slightly, blotting out the winter moon. "But I have something to sell to you." "But I don't have any money..." "That's all right. Trust in the fairy's blessing, and you'll be selling your matches in no time." The fairy in white pressed a sweet into the girl's hand, then leaned close to her ear. "Do you see that middle-aged woman across the street, the one in the fur cloak? Take hold of her hem and cry as hard as you can. Say: Kind lady, it's so terribly cold, and my grandmother is gravely ill—if she can't get one good meal she'll die of sickness by morning. Please, I'm begging you, give me a little money." "But Grandmother left me a long, long time ago..." "Better still! Just try to remember how that felt, and it'll make the crying more convincing..." "And if she's still stingy and won't open her purse, I have another trick. A woman out wandering the streets on a night like New Year's Eve—her home life is surely an unhappy one. So you add: Grandmother is the only family I have, and tonight of all nights, on New Year's Eve, no one wants to be all alone. Please, beautiful lady, only three pennies, so I can sell out my matches early and go home to be with Grandmother again." "But a match costs one penny..." "The other two pennies—one is my commission, and the last one is an offering to it." Caraboo gave the wand in her hand a little shake, and the sleeping white grubs flowed like ripples over water. "Don't think too hard about it. Just trust in the fairy's blessing, and this trick will work every time. Now remember: Don't let go of her hem until she's got the money out. And if it fails, we'll simply go and find the next lonely rich woman. Don't you worry; in a world like this one, there are more than enough rich women with spare coin to feed the two of us." Why a trick that worked every time should ever fail—no one bothered to look into that anymore. In any case, after updating the script one hundred and eighty-two times, the little girl did sell out her matches. There is no Fairy Godmother in the real world, but a counterfeit fairy saved the poor, pitiful girl from freezing to death all the same. How wonderful. How wonderful indeed.