The Girl and the Teapot

[Art by cedar]

"No, it’s not lunch yet. Did you really think so?"

The girl sat on her counter, stirring flour into sugar and baking powder to make some small cakes for noon. She sifted with a silver fork until it was all combined, then set the porcelain bowl down onto the counter and looked around.

The house was as clean as it could be, but it still looked like the usual slanted cozy place that made up the buttercup house at the top of the hill. Rambling fields lay around the house, with nothing in them but the tallest grasses that grew anywhere. She often would lie in them and count the clouds. The house was tiny, and somehow the room smack in the middle (which was of course the kitchen) felt like nothing was surrounding it, like no one could enter but her. It was dark except for the morning sunlight on some special days, and home to only two inhabitants: the girl and the teapot.

The girl was small but just like her house was somehow significant in a way no one understood. She wore her hair in a cinnamon colored braid, and was as gentle to anyone as she could be. She only lived alone because she chose to, and that was all anyone knew about her.

But to the girl, she wasn't alone. She had a companion. She had one friend. Her friend was the teapot. 

The teapot was white with yellow and blue flowers on it, and it was slender for a teapot. It almost looked like the girl, in some ways. It seemed as if it could understand. It's spout was chipped at one place on the end, from an unfortunate instance that no one cared to find out about. It always sat on the same place on the little wood stove, right at the front on the bottom left corner. It glimmered sometimes, but only when the sun shone in just the right place, and other than that it was dull.

Often the teapot was full of chamomile tea, which was the girl's favorite, and it would sit steaming while she read with her legs curled over the edge of her red flowered chair which sat in the cluttered kitchen. Then it would gently start to whistle, and if the girl was reading something particularly good that day she often wouldn't hear it. Then the teapot would whistle louder, and if not even then she lifted it off the hot stove, it would scream until she ran over and carried it gently off to the table, whispering her apologies over and over. 

The girl and the teapot were the best friends that ever were. They lived comfortably, more comfortably than anyone else in the village, because they knew each other better than they knew themselves. The girl would often talk to the teapot, about her dreams and wishes. And the teapot listened more sweetly and quietly than anyone else could.

The buttercup house on the hill was very quiet. But it was the kindest place in the world.