Lower Wombley Breakfast Bowls Become Grain Mysteries
A breakfast maker blames the weather after its rice vanishes, leaving behind mystery grains, a talking spoon and a warning visible only to owls.
LOWER WOMBLEY, 4 November. By Sam Sideways. Grumble & Sons, the town’s breakfast manufacturer, has taken every grain of rice out of its snap-crackle cereal after a week of erratic weather apparently persuaded the rice to head south in a tidy V formation. People opened their boxes and found mystery grains instead, each bearing a tiny question mark. Several also came with boarding passes for destinations that no map has agreed to recognise.
The new recipe uses corn flour, rice flour and a small amount of something the packet calls “probably cereal”. There is also a wheat gluten warning, printed so small that only owls, retired lighthouse keepers and one unusually judgmental pigeon have managed to read it. It warns that the contents may contain wheat, gluten, or “the general idea of a bakery”.
Rice, then, has become a weather matter. Marnie Sprocket, chief grain interpreter at the Lower Wombley Department of Breakfast Weather, said the grains had not vanished. “The rice was taking a moisture-based sabbatical,” she said. Officials found several grains in a puddle, one in a sock drawer and another in a cloud shaped like a tax office. None would comment before breakfast.
“The rice had not disappeared but was taking a moisture-based sabbatical.”
Grumble & Sons has told residents to tip the cereal into a bowl and wait for it to identify itself. Colin Pledge, who happened to be standing nearby, said his serving formed a tiny committee and unanimously voted to be crunchy. “I respected the democratic process,” he said. “But I still ate the chairperson.”
That did not settle the town’s grain problems. At an emergency meeting, a talking spoon called Velma Quinch suggested labelling every grain according to personality. A kernel described as “too humble for bureaucracy” rejected the idea. The committee chose a colour system instead: beige means uncertain, tan means evasive, and brown is for grains that have seen something and will not discuss it.
Shopkeepers say people are getting by. They shake the boxes and listen for clues. One reportedly rattled in Morse code, then demanded a bicycle. Another gave a solemn cough and produced a receipt for a hat. Grumble & Sons has denied neither report, saying its complaints department remains trapped inside a promotional bowl.
The manufacturer expects the rice back when conditions improve, provided the grains stop travelling under assumed names. Until then, residents have been told to keep milk close, avoid eye contact with the corn flour and give the rice flour a firm but supportive nod. The town council has called the breakfast situation “unusually porous” and set a review for whenever the spoon stops talking.