It is a grim, grim day and the sorrow of the city could not be higher. The dream of home-grown coffee has been killed, along with the sapling that was to grow it.

The plan was to be the height of simplicisity. We carved out a nice spot in the city so it could be monitored. We planted the coffee bean. It began to grow. Once it got bit enough we’d transfer it to an orchard outside the walls.

We’d give Little Bean all the care and love and fertilizer he deserved to develop as we all knew he could, and then maybe he’d become a mile high and be visible from anywhere in the city. Perhaps the city would grow around Big Bean’s thick trunk and when the mood struck he’d let coffee fall from the sky.

But the dream is dead. Killed by the ruthless winter that has claimed the lives of so many.

Plants usually hibernate, freeze solid, and then emerge good as new once the summer arrives, and nobody is quite sure why Little Bean didn’t. The theory by the top botanists is that he was just a little sensitive to the cold, and perhaps that’s why the riverlanders planted their coffee bean trees in deep ravines. I asked for a proper burial for Little Bean and was refused thrice. They wanted to mulch him up and use him for fertilizer – practically cannibalism.

The adults don’t even care! They just shrugged their shoulders and moved on immediately!

“It sucks but that’s life. Things don’t always work out.”

I couldn’t handle such injustice. I stole his body and buried him behind my family’s estate.

I call for an official 3 days of mourning for our fallen brother, and I invite my classmates to attend a candlelight vigil.