The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean

A piece of straw, a glowing coal, and a bean, all having narrowly escaped being used up in an old woman's kitchen fire, decided to travel together and seek their fortune in the wider world, an unlikely trio bound by their shared brush with the flames.

Coming to a stream too wide to jump across, the straw offered a solution: he would lie flat across the water as a bridge, and the others could cross over him one at a time. The coal went first, nervous but successful, crossing safely to the middle — but then, growing frightened by the rushing water beneath him, hesitated too long in the center, and his lingering heat burned straight through the straw bridge, sending both himself and it hissing into the stream, extinguished.

The bean, watching this disaster from the bank, laughed so hard at their misfortune that he burst apart at the seams entirely. Fortunately, a passing tailor found the bean's scattered pieces and, amused by the whole small tragedy, stitched him back together — though the bean carried a visible black seam ever after, a permanent reminder that even the safest-seeming plan can unravel when patience gives way to fear, and that laughing too hard at someone else's misfortune can just as easily undo you too.