The smoking crow

Be sure to not take what isn't yours. As the smoking crow always prey for those who claim what isn't theirs.

Summary

Once was a young boy of a widowed merchant which did a living by selling salt. The father wished for his sons to learn the tricks of the trade and give him an allowance for it, but his child paid no heed. Since his father always did long hours, he could do whatever he wanted unchecked.
Most of the time, he passed the time doing petty pranks. And when hunger kicked in, he went to steal some foods uncaught or unseen. One of his favorite being stealing to the deaf carpenter nearby the port. However, one day, he stumbled upon a new easy prey when traveling to nearby villages with his father. A crooked homeless person, covered in many rags, and wearing a crow mask which made it hard to distinguish his age or gender. But that person always seemed sleeping, but oddly also smoking as well through a long pipe which had an odd but not nauseous smell. Some villagers came to give him lush fruits and vegetables and some fabrics which they never nodded to, probably in his slumber. Numerous times, the child went to steal the beggar's offerings, to no response.
Many days went similar, only with the beggar changing places from time to time, always seemed to sleep. After time, the child who wandere so much away managed to trail the beggar by scent. One night, during a festive event, the child tried to find his favorite "caretaker" again. With some hardship, he found it this time in a dim place only lightened through the cracks of hay and wood, sitting on his butt, in a dreamstate. The place was filled with hay and smelled a oil, with the sound of the festives around. He went again to reach for his loot when the child heard a strong noise like a door slammed back into closing, when the misbehaver tried to hit to get the person's attention, he noticed the back of the carpenter, who heard nothing on the pleads of the trapped child.
Cause the place that child was an old pagan burning man of wood and hay. The smell of smoke and fire started to take rapidly. Despite the child's cries and pleads, nobody was close enough to notice. No one but the homeless smoker, which for a rare time, lifted their head to reveal a odd figure, that of a smiling scarecrow which a grin forged in hell, the stitches moving to smile at the child's demise in a last vision of hellish flames.
The next day, at the plaza, a worried man was putting wanted poster of his child, in dissarray. While the man did so, the homeless person which nobody knew really was walking on the ashes of the burned figure, the remains still hot and left for later to clean by the villagers.
The vagabond wandered in the burned wasted to find the child charred bones. In which it took a femur which puffed to smoke, put the ashes in a small bag and also in it's signature pipe, and wandered away.

Historical Basis

The original story was shared and written by a woman of immemorial times who had her husband burned in the wooden effigy as a sacrifice for the crime of shoplifting. Her nightmares of her suffering husband's screams and visions were so vivid she tried to cope with it through making a story to dissuade people of the same fate he deserved.

Cultural Reception

This legend was told to many children to portray the danger of strangers, feys, but also the risk of taking the route and claim what others have instead of working for it.