Once upon a time, there was a girl and her sister. In other words, once upon a time, there were two girls. Or you could say, once upon a time there were two sisters. Whichever suits you best.
Anyways, the second sister was standing at the kitchen sink, washing out paintbrushes. She called the first sister (who, in real life, is actually the second sister, if one goes by order of age, but who we’ll call the first sister in this story since she is the main one) and asked her to take half of the paintbrushes and go down to the sink in the basement to wash them out. The first sister, being the obliging kind of person she was, did as she was told.
Now, let it be said here that the basement in which the sink was located happened to be the sort of basement that one would imagine held snakes and spiders in the shadowy corners. And one would not have to imagine at all to be able to see the cobwebs up on the ceiling…since there really were cobwebs on the ceiling.
Anyways, as the first girl went down to the basement, she hardly noticed the spidery corners — she was used to that by now — but was not at all surprised when, as she was in the process of washing out the yellow paintbrush, she saw one long, thin strand of spider web, one end being attached underneath the faucet, and the other to the opposite side of the sink.
She waved her hand at it — not as if she thought it would magically go away with a fluttering of the fingers. She did not believe in fairy tails (you don’t believe that fairies have tails, either, do you?), pumpkin coaches, or magical wands. She simply waved her hand at it to knock it away from the sides of the sink, which, as you can imagine, should not be terribly difficult.
However, when she went back to wash the yellow paintbrush once more, she found that the spiderweb was still there.
She was not concerned, for she had found out somewhere — most likely from one of her many fictional adventures — that spider webs are actually quite strong. So she swiped at it with her brush, which not only failed to knock away the spider web, but also splattered yellow paint on the counter.
The girl, it must be told, was not at all concerned for the counter at the moment. She was too busy being in awe of what she had just seen. Her paintbrush had just passed all the way through the spider web without breaking it! She decided that — being the sort of person who likes to experiment with things — she would try to make her paintbrush go through the web again, without tearing it from the sides of the sink.
Once again, she watched the paintbrush go all the way through the single strand of spiderweb without doing any damage to it. She tried it several more times, and, convinced that this was a discovery that the second girl must see as well, she hurried out of the room. (Being a good girl, she turned the faucet off before she left so that she would not be wasting water.) Suddenly, for a reason she was not quite sure of, she went back to see if the spider web was still there.
To her surprise, no matter how she stood or where she looked, she could no longer see the web. It was gone!
She was not too concerned, for she thought that the last time she had touched the web with her paintbrush, it must have fallen down without her noticing it. She went back to work, washing out the green paintbrush this time. Then, with a jolt, the girl saw the strand of web again. It was still there, even though she was sure she hadn’t been mistaken when she had thought it had disappeared. She waved her paintbrush through it, and again it went all the way through. She waved it back again, and this time she saw something that made her know for sure that the web had to be real and wasn’t a figment of the imagination. When the brush passed through the web, the place on the handle that had touched the strand got wet because of the water that had gathered on the web. Her fingers could pass through the web as well, but she could not feel the web itself, although she felt the slight wetness of the strand as her hand went by. What was going on?
Once again, the girl determined that her sister should see the sight. So she turned off the water, set her paintbrushes aside, and left the room. But then she decided to go back and check again to make sure that the web was still there.
It was not. Although the web had been there when she had left the room — or so she had thought — it had disappeared by the time she returned, only several seconds later.
The girl could not believe her eyes, and suddenly wondered if her mind was going crazy. What on earth could be happening? Why did the web disappear, then reappear, then disappear again? Trying to decide whether or not to tell her mother, the girl went back to work, this time with the blue paintbrush. Suddenly the web materialized before her eyes! The girl felt cold with shock. Surely this was not really happening to her!
Upset, she set the blue paintbrush down and shut the faucet off, considering the idea of telling the second girl. When she looked back, of course the web had once more disappeared.
Suddenly the girl’s eyes lit up. She turned the faucet on slowly and saw the “web” come spurting out from underneath the faucet. It was the tiniest stream of water the girl had ever seen, so small that when she ran her fingers through it, it was impossible to feel it unless you knew it was there. And it left her fingers slightly wet when she ran her fingers all the way through the stream and back again.
The girl no longer has to question her sanity, though others may.
The paintbrushes are now all clean. The next thing that needs to be done is to fix the leak underneath the faucet.
True story.
~The End~