Farmita at the Pharmacy

On a quiet corner of town, right where the street curved into the main avenue, there was a little shop. Mr. Timoteo’s pharmacy was small and smelled of mint, with shelves packed with boxes and bottles lined up just so. People came and went with prescriptions in hand, tired steps, and eyes that looked a bit dim.

One of the most loyal regulars was Don Romuldo. An older man, thin as a coat rack, always in a grey beret, shuffling along like the floor weighed too much.

He lived alone in a top-floor apartment where every clock had stopped and the windows stayed shut.

Every Monday, no excuses, he’d show up at the pharmacy to pick up his pills against sadness. He never said hello. Never smiled. He just paid, slipped the little box into his pocket, and vanished.

“The usual, Timoteo,” he’d mutter in a worn-out voice, not even looking up. “So everything stays… the same.”

“Here you go, Don Romuldo,” the pharmacist would answer with a quiet smile. “Have a good day.”

But what Romuldo didn’t know was that someone else lived in that pharmacy.

Farmita was a very crafty Magikita. She wore a bright jacket stitched from medicine labels, buttons made from syrup-bottle rings, and she used a thermometer to hold up her hair. She hid between herbal tea sachets and chafing creams, and whenever someone walked in with a heavy heart, her little magical nose picked it up instantly.

That Monday, Farmita felt the echo of Romuldo’s sadness the second he stepped through the door. She watched him reach the counter with his eyes down, ask for his pills, and turn to leave like always.

That’s when she moved.

Quick as a leaf in the wind and soft as a sigh, she slid to the shelf and swapped his pill box for one that looked exactly the same outside, but was a whole different thing inside. In that little box there was a tiny book, almost glowing with magic, holding the perfect story…

Adventures in Taramundi

A collection of tales written to wake up the feelings you thought you’d lost.

That night Romuldo got home, put water on to heat like he always did, and sat in his armchair to take his sadness pill. But when he opened the box, instead of the usual tablets he found the little book. He frowned at it. Hesitated. Then whispered to himself:

“Just one more mix-up… what’s it matter.”

But the cover was so intriguing, with porcelain Brownies playing football with an avocado pit, that he decided to give it a chance.

And he read it. Oh, did he read it.

The book caught him straight away. It was the story of the Magikitos, tiny little beings who lived tucked away in the corners of Taramundi, a magical village in northern Spain. The Magikitos fixed small injustices, turned boredom into one-of-a-kind moments, and spent their days collecting abandoned objects just to give them a fun new life.

Romuldo didn’t sleep that night. When he finished, he got up, opened the windows, and took a deep breath like he hadn’t done it in years.

The next week, he didn’t go to the pharmacy. Not the one after that either.

“And Romuldo?” a woman asked as she passed by. “I haven’t seen him this week. Is he alright?”

“I saw him at the station with a backpack,” the baker said. “And smiling. I nearly fell over.”

Timoteo, behind the counter, shook his head, half confused and half thrilled.

“Well… that’s a strange one. Are you sure it was him?”

A few days later the whole town was talking about the same thing. Everyone whispered, wide-eyed, about the news of the moment.

“Romuldo’s gone on a trip,” the florist told a customer. “And he was always such a homebody.”

“They say he’s reconnected with his sister,” the baker added. “And that he wants to learn to cook with the best chefs in the country. Him, cooking.”

“And he’s looking for a lake where he fell in love when he was young,” someone else said, with a nostalgic sparkle in their eyes.

Farmita, hiding behind a packet of sadness pills, smiled with bright, shining eyes.

She knew that sometimes the strongest medicine is a good story, delivered right on time.