A Loaf of Happy-Bread

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They knew her as the Mad Lady. No one really knew her real name, but she had always been there. It was a dark and cold Friday night, and she was walking down the road, keeping herself to herself (like always), and as she walked on she heard a man fighting with a woman. She stopped, just out of sight from them, half hidden in the narrow alleyway she had been walking down a few moments back.

The man was tall, it seemed he was twice as tall as she was. The woman was quite small, it was her voice she heard at first. A shrill scream of rage in the night. She was shouting at the man.

She leaned in, she didn't want to intrude on their privacy or anything. She just wanted them to stop fighting.

"You come back at all sorts of hours, and you expect me to be quiet? Who do you think I am, your pet poodle?" she screamed at him.

"What I do is not your business. Come with me quietly to the house, and make some food for me. Don't you understand, I'm hungry? I've been working all day long, to make enoufh money for the house!"
"Working! I know what you call working! You're nothing but a lazy man. All you do is sit on your butt all day long in the factory, looking at the hard working men there."
"I'm the foreman, that's what my Job is. I have to supervise them, you stupid woman!"
"Supervise them? Are they a herd of goats? Supervise them my foot!"

They were walking quite close by to her, but just like everyone else in the locality, they didn't really notice her standing so close by. But then again, what reason would they have to notice the mad lady who walked the lonely streets.

The Woman tripped, and dropped a loaf of bread. It rolled, and came to a halt at her feet. She picked it up, and could still hear The Woman fighting with her husband. She knew they weren't very rich, and what that loaf of bread meant to them.

She started walking, faster than The Man and The Woman. When she caught up with them, she just started walking behind them. They were still fighting, but she didn't hear them this time. She was staring at the loaf of bread in her hands instead. It was still warm from the baker's oven. "A warm loaf of Happy-Bread!" her mother used to call it, and her father would smile too. This was a loaf of Happy-Bread as well. If They got the bread, she knew they would stop fighting immediately.

She called out to them, and they stopped. They were scared of her, but then they saw she was carrying the loaf of bread.

"I told you, you must have dropped it. Now The Mad Lady has picked it up. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to make enough money to buy that loaf of bread?" he told to her in an angry whisper.

"This is not a regular loaf of Bread. This is a loaf of Happy-Bread. You can feel how warm it is, the heart is still inside it. I think you dropped this a way back, ma'am. Here, take it. But remember not to break the Happy-Bread's heart when you eat it. Just smile while you're eating it, and you'll see how much warmer it gets."

She handed the loaf of bread to The Woman, and melted away in the dark alleyways. She was Happy, even though she didn't have the Happy-Bread.