Three travelers walked into a village and nobody wanted to feed them. They knocked on doors. "We don't have food to spare." Through the gap you could see bread on the table.
Same thing everywhere. Bad harvest, hard times, can't help. The usual.
So Henri sat down by the well and pulled a stone out of his pack. Regular stone. Grey, round. Nothing special.
"Guess we'll make stone soup," he said, loud enough for people to hear.
He borrowed a pot from a woman who was too confused to say no. Filled it with water, lit a fire, dropped the stone in.
A guy showed up in about four minutes.
"What's that?"
"Stone soup. Old recipe. You boil the right stone and it makes great soup. Would be even better with an onion though."
The guy stood there thinking. "I might have an onion."
He came back with an onion and some salt. Henri sliced it up, stirred it in. The water started smelling like something.
A woman brought carrots. A man brought potatoes. Someone brought butter. A kid showed up with a cabbage almost bigger than him. "My mum says you can have this but she wants the pot back."
A farmer brought a ham bone. Still had meat on it.
By evening the pot was full. Real soup. Someone brought wine. Someone brought bread. A guy with a fiddle showed up. They hung lanterns in the trees.
Everyone ate together.
In the morning, the village fed the travelers breakfast.
Before they left, the woman from the first door stopped Henri.
"That stone's not magic, is it."
"It's a rock."
"Then what did you bring?"
"The excuse."
She took the stone. Not because it did anything. Just to remember she had bread the whole time.
The village started doing Thursday night dinners after that. Everybody brings what they have.
Goodnight.