Kids & Fables

by Scribes Stories · 3 min read · 4 views

The Lantern Fox Genre: Kids and Fable | Reading time: approx. 6 minutes In a forest where the nights grew very dark indeed, there lived a small fox named Ember whose tail glowed with a soft, warm light, unlike any other fox in the woodland. She had always been a little embarrassed by it, wishing she could blend into the shadows the way her brothers and sisters could, gray and quiet and unremarkable in the dark. "Why must I be the only one who glows?" she asked her mother one evening, tail tucked self consciously beneath her as she watched other foxes move invisibly through the underbrush. "Because the forest will need it," her mother said simply. "Not every night. But someday, and you'll know exactly when." Ember doubted this for a long time, spending her early years avoiding open spaces where her glowing tail might be noticed, ashamed of the very thing that made her different. It was on the night of the great storm, when the wind tore through the forest and knocked down the old signal tree that travelers used to find their way home, that she finally understood what her mother had meant. A family of hedgehogs, caught out past dark and hopelessly lost without their usual landmark, huddled beneath a fallen log, frightened and shivering, unsure which direction led home. Ember found them first, drawn by the sound of their frightened whispers, and without thinking twice, she lifted her glowing tail high enough to cast a soft warm light across the muddy forest floor. "This way," she called to them. "Follow the light. I know this path even in the dark." The hedgehog family followed her glow gratefully through the storm, all the way to their burrow, and word spread quickly through the forest after that night about the small fox whose tail had guided a lost family safely home. Ember expected the attention to embarrass her further, the way it always had, but instead she found something unexpected waking up inside her. A quiet, steady pride, different from the anxious self consciousness she'd carried for years. Word of the lantern fox spread through the whole forest, and soon travelers who found themselves lost after dark began watching for her soft glowing light, trusting it the way sailors trust a lighthouse, a small steady beacon promising that home was still reachable, even in the deepest dark. "I used to wish I was ordinary," Ember admitted to her mother one night, watching her own tail cast gentle light across the forest floor as she guided home a young owl who'd lost track of his nest in the fog. "Ordinary is easy to come by," her mother said. "The forest has plenty of foxes who blend into the shadows perfectly well. It only ever had one who could light the way home for everyone else. That's not something to hide, little one. That's something to carry proudly, exactly as bright as you were made to be." Ember carried her glowing tail high after that, no longer tucking it shyly beneath her, understanding finally that the very thing which had once made her feel different was the same thing the whole forest had quietly been needing all along. And to this day, if you find yourself lost in those woods after dark, watch carefully for a small warm light moving steadily through the trees. Follow it without fear. It will lead you exactly where you need to go, guided by a fox who learned, in her own good time, that the things which make us different are very often the things the world most needs us to shine.