On a sunny shelf in the kitchen, right next to fragrant cinnamon and colorful spices, stood two porcelain jars. In one lived Sugar, in the other Salt. And in this world of sparkling crystals lived two best friends. A grain of sugar named Sweetie and a grain of salt named Salty.
Sweetie was cheerful and her little body glittered in the sun like a small precious stone. She always laughed and tumbled among the other grains with a joyful rustling sound. Salty was thoughtful and his edges were precise and straight as a ruler. He liked order and quiet, but when he was with Sweetie, he too could get properly wild.
"Look, Salty! Today we're like mountains of snow!" exclaimed Sweetie one day and rolled down from the top of the sugar pile.
"Just hope there won't be an avalanche," mumbled Salty, but you could hear a smile in his voice. Their life was peaceful and sweet. Or salty. Depending on which jar they happened to be in.
But then something unexpected happened. The lady of the house came into the kitchen to bake a cake. She took flour, eggs, and then reached for both sugar and salt. However, when she leaned over the bowl, suddenly the dust from the flour tickled her nose.
"Ah-choo!" she sneezed so powerfully that the entire shelf shook.
The breeze from the sneeze lifted both Sweetie and Salty into the air. They flew like two little astronauts in weightless space. For a moment they spun, laughed, but then with a gentle clink they landed.
When Salty came to his senses, he found himself lying in the middle of a pile of white grains. They looked exactly like his brothers and sisters. "Sweetie! Where are you?" he cried out.
"Here I am!" came the reply from the other jar. Sweetie too had landed among thousands of identical grains. She looked around for a moment, but then froze. All the crystals around her were somehow too straight, too perfect. And they didn't rustle so cheerfully.
"Salty, I'm in your jar!" she cried out desperately. "And I'm probably in yours!" replied Salty, who noticed that the grains around him glittered more than he was used to.
Both found themselves in enemy territory. They were lost in a sea of crystals that looked exactly the same at first glance. How would they find each other now? How would they get home?
They were lost. They sat down, each in their foreign jar, and almost started crying. But grains of salt and sugar don't have tears. They just slowly lost their shine.
Then something new glittered at the edge of the salt jar. It was a Drop of water that had settled there after washing dishes. She watched this despair and spoke softly: "Why are you so sad, little grains?"
"We're lost," whispered Sweetie. "We don't know how to get home because we all look the same."
The Drop smiled. "Appearance sometimes deceives. What's important is hidden inside. True nature shows itself only when you look more closely."
"But how are we supposed to look more closely?" asked Salty.
"I'll show you," said the Drop and gently touched one grain of salt next to Sweetie. The crystal resisted for a moment, but then its edges began to slowly round and disappear into the Drop. "Do you feel it? Salt dissolves slowly, as if it doesn't want to."
Then the Drop rolled over to the sugar jar where Salty sat. She touched one grain of sugar and it almost immediately disappeared in her embrace. It vanished without a trace. "And sugar? It jumps into water with joy. It's very soluble."
Salty and Sweetie watched carefully. Suddenly they understood the first difference. How they behave in water reveals who they really are.
"That's wonderful!" Salty rejoiced. "But what if we don't want to dissolve? We want to find each other whole."
"There's a solution for that too," whispered the Drop. "Look at yourselves closely. Really closely." She pointed to a large magnifying glass that the lady of the house had left on the table. "Wait until the sun hits it in the right direction."
It didn't take long and a sunbeam passed through the glass of the magnifying glass and magnified everything beneath it. Salty and Sweetie, with the help of other grains, rolled to the edge of their jars to see into the beam.
Salty looked at the sugar grains around him. Under the magnifying glass they suddenly didn't look the same. They were more like irregular prisms, some larger, others smaller, all brilliant and transparent.
Sweetie looked at the salt grains. And she remained in silent amazement. Each and every grain of salt was a perfect, tiny cube. With six identical faces and precise right angles.
"I'm a cube!" cried out Salty joyfully. "And I'm a little prism!" rejoiced Sweetie.
Now they knew who they were. Now they could distinguish themselves. Salty was the only cube-shaped crystal in the sugar jar and Sweetie was the only irregularly shaped one in the salt jar. With the help of other grains, who understood their suffering, they managed to get to the edge of the jars. They carefully rolled onto the table and there they finally embraced.
"We found each other!" they laughed. "We're not the same. We just didn't know it."
The water drop smiled at them. "You see? Your true beauty and uniqueness isn't in being white and sparkling, but in your shape and in how you dance with water. That's your secret."
Salty and Sweetie returned to their homes. From that day on, they were never again afraid of getting lost. They knew that even though they looked similar to others at first glance, inside they were completely unique.
And maybe, when you're next in the kitchen with your parents, you too could try looking at a grain of salt and sugar through a magnifying glass. You'll see how different and beautiful they are. Each in their own special way.