Kids & Fables

by Scribe Leaf Library · 1 min read · 0 views

Once there was a small fox who loved the moon so much that one clear night she decided to borrow it, just for a little while, just to see it up close. She climbed the tallest hill, and the tallest tree on the tallest hill, and stretched her paws as far as a fox can stretch, and to her enormous surprise, the moon came loose in her paws like a coin shaken from a jar. She carried it home glowing softly against her fur, and showed it to the owl, who blinked and said, "That's very lovely, but the field mice can't find their way home without it." She showed it to the rabbit, who agreed it was beautiful, but admitted the garden flowers had already begun to close, confused by the dark. The little fox looked at the moon in her paws, and then at the dark, worried forest around her, and understood that the thing she loved most about the moon was never really the moon at all — it was what the moon did for everyone underneath it. So she climbed back up the tallest tree on the tallest hill, and put it back exactly where it had been, and the field mice found their way home, and the flowers opened again by morning. And every night after that, when she looked up and saw it shining, she loved it more than ever — not because it was hers, but because it wasn't.