Unripe mango

There was a garden with a lot of mango trees, some would fruit more mangoes and some less. The mango pickers discovered a great technique to ripen them. When the mangoes were still a little raw, they would pluck them and put them in a basket full of ripe mangoes and gradually they would ripe too.
There was a unripe mango that was plucked from its tree and put in a basket that had a few ripe mangoes, some too ripe and others spoiled. The unripe mango was put deep in with all the spoiled ones where it started to decay a little. One day another raw mango helped this unripe mango to appear on the surface and be next to a shinny ripe one. Miraculously, the unripe mango began to heal! The decay started fading away, a part of it started to ripe. Soon one day a cruel mango picker noticed this change and he wanted it to spoil. So, he pushed it down with the spoiled mangoes again to let it die. The ripe mango grew fond of it in the meanwhile and kept helping it up on the surface when the cruel mango picker would be away. Then one day, it was time for the ripe mango to leave the basket full of spoiled mangoes and go where ripe mangoes do. It was sad, they were sad. They saw each other to help each other ripe and had tonics together when they could. The unripe mango found a way to leave the basket temporarily and see the ripe mango every time it could. It learned that every time it could, it should ripe more than it could spoil.
For one day, it would really ripe.

The Perfect Cup of beverage

You move into a new unfamiliar place and find yourself completely lost. In no time, you really start to enjoy yourself there and in the supermarket you find hot chocolate that you buy. You try it and love it. You like nothing more than waking up, making yourself the very same perfect cup of beverage and sipping on it on your comfy old couch in your most comfortable clothes and messy hair. In a year or two, you buy a pack of marshmallows and add it to the hot chocolate everyday. It is nice and takes sometime to get used to but your mornings seem perfect with the same cup of hot chocolate everyday. It is the right sweet, makes you feel innocent and makes you start your day. You see the hot chocolate everyday and spend all your free time sipping on it. Sometimes you invite friends to come for a beverage but never share your perfect recipe of hot chocolate. After spending 4 years with the same cup of beverage each day, the company decides to shut down from your town and move. They stop its production in your local market immediately. Suddenly, your world changes. You go and try to find hot chocolate but its moved away for good. Your mornings are lonely on your couch. You don't seem to enjoy time with friends and television anymore and you convince yourself that you don't need a replacement for your perfect cup. You keep hoping that it will come back to you one day. You go crazy and even consider moving where the hot chocolate has.

But life goes on. You are walking down a street when you find an old cafe' returning to town. You never tried their coffee but were always advised not to by other people. You think to yourself, 'What the heck, how bad can it be' and step into the cafe. You feel a strange comfort in that place that you had been missing for months and you decide to try their coffee. It strangely tastes mature and good. It is perfectly smooth and makes you wake up. You decide to dress up a few times wearing your favorite set of clothes, your favorite shade of lipstick and do your hair each time to go have that coffee and you start liking it. You keep trying to fill in for the hot chocolate and you do.

Soon, the hot chocolate company returns to town very close to you. You don't buy a big pack for home but have it once in a while for that familiarity but it is not the same as you addiction of coffee. The cafe soon moves away but delivers to you every weekend. You are now addicted to this coffee although it is not consistent like the hot chocolate. It is sometimes too bitter, sometimes with a lot of milk and sometimes with no milk. Your friends ask you to give up this coffee and you do but it seems to keep calling you back and once in a while you do have that cup of coffee despite its shortcomings. Sometimes you miss the hot chocolate but you realize you are too old to be sipping hot chocolate and you need that thrill, the excitement and the surprise. The perfect blend of a mature taste that makes you get out of bed and dress up and it makes you feel like a grown woman.

So, what is your perfect cup of beverage?