It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Madison could not have children. She was born with a womb tilted towards heaven, as if pointing an accusing finger at God. It was the greatest sorrow of her life. That’s why she noticed the boys. Two tiny little things dressed in rags scrounging around the apple trees at the end of her fields. The harvest had come and gone but that did not stop them from showing up every day to paw through leaves and mulch for one or two of the bruised apples that had not yet completely turned with the season.

She watched them from a distance, about thirty feet back, wondering who they belonged to and what kind of people let their youngins go scrapping for food every day.

After watching the boys for several days, Madison left a pitcher of clean water and two cups behind a stump. They ignored the cups and gobbled down the water, scooping it up with their hands and spilling it down the fronts of their bony little bodies. The following day, Madison left blocks of cornbread in a basket for them. On the next day, dried pork and buttermilk. By the end of the week, they were running across the field to find the treats.

Madison waited well into the following week before she showed herself to them. She did not approach, but instead busied herself with the tree roots, carefully covering them with straw for the coming winter.

They hesitated at first, taking nervous steps toward the bowls of beef stew set out on a blanket a few feet from Madison. When she ignored them, they flopped down and gulped the stew with noisy slurps.

Since she began feeding them, Madison noticed they had gained weight and they were adorable. Two little bitty bodies of dark brown with identical sandy mops of tight curls. For a fleeting moment, she thought she might adopt them and raise them as her own if in fact, nobody wanted them.

But just then, looking at the two of them feeding like hogs, Madison became angry with herself for even wanting them. She had no time in her life for greedy little boys with the table manners of a possum. She was much too busy with her land.

She waited impatiently as they poured milk down their throats, the liquid spilling out the sides of their mouths. When they finished their meal with loud smelly burps, Madison snatched the cups from them and rolled everything in the blue blanket and stomped back towards the house.

That night, she concentrated on tedious little household chores, pushing the boys from her mind. But in the last hour before she retired to her room, she added the chicken left over from dinner to the basket in the icebox, which already held four biscuits and two slices of pie.

The next day, Madison crossed the field and waited. When she saw the little bodies skipping happily towards her, she set the basket down and walked away.

And so it went. Week after week, as the fall rolled into winter and the trees thinned, Madison brought food and the children ate.

When the ground grew frigid and hard, Madison added knickers, sweaters, two tiny little coats, hats, socks, and even two pairs of boys' hard bottomed shoes, guessing at their sizes. Everything fit fine except the shoes, which were too big and flopped off of their tiny feet when they walked making a clopping sound against the solid ground. For this, Madison was grateful, since their shoes announced them long before they arrived, giving Madison time to head back across her fields.

She found it easier on her heart to leave the food at noon and retrieve the basket early the next day. This required two trips across her orchards but Madison did not mind. At least she did not see the boys and yearn to take them home with her. But despite her careful planning, sometimes while doing her chores, or perhaps in mid sentence with one of her field hands, she would hear a sound or see something that reminded her of the gig gling boys who had become a part of her life and her heart would ache.

That is why, two days before Christmas, when she came to get the basket and found it untouched, she panicked.

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.