There was once a young crow who lived along the banks of a wide river, the kind of bird who was always hungry and always in a hurry, the way young creatures often are before life has had the chance to slow them down.

One morning, he spotted something drifting on the water — the body of an elephant, long dead, carried gently by the current. To most creatures this would have been an unremarkable, even sobering sight. To the crow, half-starved and always looking for the easiest meal, it looked like paradise.

He landed on it at once and began to eat. The meat was plentiful. When he was thirsty, he dipped his beak into the river running alongside him. When he was tired, he simply stood there, rocked gently by the water, and rested. Days passed this way, and the crow grew fat and pleased with himself.

“What a magnificent boat I’ve found,” he thought, strutting along the elephant’s back as if he owned a kingdom. “Food whenever I want it, water at my feet, and I don’t even have to fly to find my next meal. Why would any bird choose to work for its living, when it could simply float?”

He stopped noticing the small things a hungrier, humbler crow might have noticed — that the body was drifting further from the banks he knew, that the trees along the shore were changing, that the water beneath him was slowly turning from sweet to salt.

The river, unlike the crow, had never forgotten where it was going. And one grey morning, the banks disappeared entirely. There was no shore on either side. No trees. No familiar bend to fly back toward. Only water, endless and heaving, in every direction he turned his head.

The crow, who had never once in all his floating and feasting practiced the art of flying long distances, began to panic. He tried the sky first, flapping upward in short, frightened bursts, hoping to spot land from higher up. There was none. He flew east, then west, then in circles, his wings growing heavier with every wasted minute.

By the time exhaustion caught up with him, the body beneath him, his floating kingdom, had long since sunk without his noticing exactly when. He had no shore to return to and no strength left to search for one. He fell, at last, into the grey water that had carried him so pleasantly for so long, and the sea — patient, indifferent, unhurried — closed over him.

He never saw it coming, because it never arrived as danger. It arrived as comfort.

Somewhere, right now, something is carrying you gently along, asking nothing of you, feeding you well, and you have stopped checking where the banks went.

What is your elephant?

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The Miser and His Gold – another quiet fable about mistaking comfort for something worth keeping.

Work Is Worship – the grasshopper who also forgot to notice the season changing.