About the girl who spat into puddles

Once there was a little girl who had to spend the whole summer in the village with her grandmother. There was no one to make friends with – all the children were either too young or too grown-up. For hours walked the bored girl through the streets, looking for anything interesting. She found interesting beetles, old shoes, birds’ nests, and even found a footprint in dry clay. The footprint was what the girl liked the best, because she could explore it and invent stories about it.

But one day the weather got worse and it was raining for several days. When at last the sun came out, the first thing the girl ran to check was the footprint. Of course, it was washed away by rain.

Girl was so mad! There was no more mystery in anything. Trivial beetles crawled over trivial flowers; silly birds were building nests and twittering about their silly joys.

Filled with anger and wish for revenge the nature, the girl spat into a puddle. And she liked this! Puddle went rippling with circles; reflected sky fluttered. Girl spat again. Then she decided that for fun and for fulfilling her revenge, she should spit into each and every puddle on her way back home.

So she was walking and spitting until near the end of the village, close to the forest, she discovered a strange puddle. The surface of this puddle did not move from spitting. The girl spat again, then again. Spits were lying on the surface of the puddle as on a mirror. Puzzled, girl bent over a puddle to look at the phenomenon more closely, but immediately screamed and jumped back: instead of the reflection of sweet face and braids with ribbons some green ugly mug was staring at her from the puddle. While the girl touched her face in panic to make sure that it was still as pretty as it was in the morning, the ugly mug slowly crawled out of the puddle and grabbed the girl's leg with its long, long hand. Girl was speechless with horror, but also intrigued, so she did not try to escape.

On closer inspection the ugly mug turned out to look like a mix of a frog and a monkey. Holding the girl's leg, it suddenly cleared its throat and spat into the girl. It spat much better than the girl did, who now from head to toe was covered with greenish stinking sticky slime.

– Well? – barked the ugly mug.

The girl was silently shaking. The ugly mug grinned, let the girl and disappeared in the strange puddle, leaving only couple of footprints on the wet ground. Girl was standing and gazing at the footsteps, neither frog’s nor human.

– I only wish it won’t be raining tomorrow! – She sighed, wiping her face with a sleeve.