Helping the Mailman

Zansho looked down at the letters in her hand. She had stumbled across the mailman who was sick; and he asked her if she would mind finishing his route while her mother nursed him back to help with her special soup she always had on hand for such occasions. Zansho nodded. "Okay, I think I know my way around enough to help you out."

"Thank you child, I really---", the man lifted his hand which was balled into a fist and couched into it for a good twenty or so seconds. "I really appreciate it.", he said as he finished with his coughing fit. Zansho's mother made a tisking sound and went to pour him a bowl of the soup since it had been heating up on the fire long enough.

Zansho nodded and took off down the street, skipping. She looked back and forth; noticing that even numbers were on one side and odd ones were on the other. It would be easy enough to keep track of things like this. She looked down at the first number on the set of letters: 222. She went up to the mailbox and placed all envelopes that had 222 on them into the mailbox.

From there she moved on, heading to 224 right next door to place that appropriate letter into that mailbox. She looked down at the stack, seeing that her next number was slightly higher up, 240. She started down the street, skipping her way down the sidewalk and to the direction of 240. Once there she put the appropriate letter in the mailbox and glanced down to the stack again, noticing now it was an odd number: 251.

She looked up and down the street before crossing it and heading up the street once across. She skipped her way up to 251 and deposited the letter into the mailbox. She looked down at the last letter which had the number 260 on it. She glanced up and down the street and then crossed once it was safe; and headed a little further up the street. She placed the last envelope into the mailbox and then turned back around. She skipped her way back down the street, whistling as she went; glad to have finished that job and helped the mailman. Her stomach growled, and she found herself hoping that her mother had some of that soup left.

Word Count: 399