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Chapter 1: The Kitchen Escape.
An old woman once set a pot of beans over the hearth. Beside it |warm fire crackled softly|, and she stirred the supper with a wooden spoon. She dropped in a handful of beans, but one little bean bounced out and hid near a piece of straw.
The pot bubbled, and |water dripped into pot| from the spoon as the old woman looked away. A glowing coal rolled from the hearth and landed near them, grumbling that it was tired of being burned.
The straw whispered that all three should leave before the pot grew hotter. They slipped under the table, waited until |the kitchen door creaked| in the evening wind, and hurried out into the yard like three tiny adventurers.
Chapter 2: Three Travelers on the Road.
The bean hopped first, round and proud. The straw rustled behind, and the coal glowed carefully, trying not to scorch the path. Soon |gravel footsteps tapped along| the lane as they passed the garden gate and waved farewell to the smoky chimney.
By the hedges, |forest air hummed gently| around them. The bean said they would find a country where no one boiled supper. The coal said it wanted a cool bed, and the straw said any place without cooking pots would be paradise.
They joked so much that they forgot to watch the road. At last they came to a little brook where |clear stream flowed nearby| between mossy stones. There was no bridge, no plank, and not even a duck willing to ferry them.
Chapter 3: The Straw Bridge.
The straw, being long and brave, stretched from one bank to the other and offered to be a bridge. The coal thanked it politely and stepped on. Halfway across, the straw felt the heat and trembled.
With a tiny crack, |dry straw snapped suddenly| in the middle. For one breath everything paused, even the brook seemed to listen. The coal cried out, rolled forward, and |coal splashed into water| with a hiss that sent steam dancing above the brook.
The bean stood safely on the bank. At first it gasped, then the whole scene struck it as so silly that |the bean laughed wildly|. It laughed and laughed until its little side split open.
Chapter 4: The Tailor's Stitch.
Just then a traveling tailor came down the road. He carried a needle, thread, and a kind heart. Hearing the bean squeak for help, |a traveler knocked gently| on a nearby fence post to announce himself before kneeling by the brook.
The tailor took black thread from his pouch, because that was the color he had. In the sun, |tiny needle shone softly| as he sewed the bean's split side with the smallest stitches anyone had ever seen.
The bean thanked him, though it still giggled whenever it remembered the coal in the water. The tailor smiled and said a good stitch can hold even a foolish laugh together.
Since that day, many beans have carried a dark mark along their sides, as if remembering their laughing cousin. And whenever the tailor told the tale in the village, |everyone applauded the lesson|: adventures are easier when friends think before they leap.
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