The moon was beautiful in the night sky… And it had always been so. But the fox never saw it.
His entire life he had spent in shadows. Living under roofs built by others, he had never known the beauty in building one for himself. Dedicated totally to making something out of his life, he never learned to live it. But how could he?
Of the four limbs that he had when he was born, one was lost to the mercy of his kin. Of the two eyes that he had during his childhood, one was rendered half useless due to his destiny, they told him. Otherwise he was fine.
But unlike other foxes, he could not hunt. He could not disable his prey, let alone kill it. He could not run like others, and neither could he play with them. His parents were his greatest support: he was the more loved of all of his siblings, or so he was told by others. As a child, he enjoyed it all. But things changed when he grew up. His brothers could run anywhere they wanted, but he had to always have his parents around. They grew up cool; he grew up in a cradle. They were told to come back before nightfall, though they never did that. “We are fine, nothing will hurt us!” they'd tell the parents. And it seemed true to him. He never had the opportunity to be scolded by parents. His brothers did all their work together and themselves. They roamed around in the forest, a bunch of ruffians, threatening one and all who came their way. They went about hunting, explored the entire forest, bathed in every lake and river, and walked every road crooning every song they knew or knew not. And he remained in his sweet little home, listening to the half-cooked versions of their tales. He was also supposed to do their work, and never to tell their stories to the parents in case he ever overheard them boasting. He would probably lose some more of his body parts if he did that, he was told.
As he grew up, he realised what he had lost. To be loved by parents is one thing, but to live in the sympathy of others is just as shameful as a hapless king. Yes, he had every other thing he wanted- he had his food ready on the table, he was always accompanied by one or the other, trying to help him as servants did. But all that was not love, he seemed to realize. It was sympathy and the pity they had for his unfortunate situation. He even thought he overheard his parents mumble about his weakness once. And thenceforth, he developed a new feeling, something he had never been taught, or experienced before. For someone like him who was brought up in the midst of so much love and affection, this feeling was unexpected. But he didn’t bother to ponder over the consequences. This new feeling was raw inside him. It was anger, not for his parents, but his fate that had bestowed upon him a life full of misery.
Nothing was eternal, he recalled his mother telling him once, and knew that it was true when both his parents died on a moonless night. That was the first time he was all alone in his house, for the brothers had gone out to drink to their deceased parents’ good health. For the first time he could step out of the door all alone and do whatever he wanted, only if his situation permitted that. He had never seen the night sky so openly. He gazed up above for so long that his neck ached. The audacity of the darkness brought tears to his eyes for a reason he couldn't comprehend. That had to be the end as he knew it. But to his amazement, he realized soon that he was wrong. Life was not hard; life was a killer that did all but kill.
He was nothing short of devastated by his parents departure. As for his brothers, parents seemed to have been the ropes that tethered them to their home. They all left two days after the parents died, to explore the world outside the forest, to make their own lives and live somewhere happily ever after. For two days, he had the leftovers for his dinner. None of them was ready to take him along and bear the burden of his survival. But they did show the courtesy to bid him goodbye. And then they embarked happily onto a journey whose destination they didn’t know. He stood at the gate, watching them go, admiring their courage and luck.
Once the sun passed behind the shades of the tall trees, he felt oddly strange, sitting there alone and hungry. He knew he had to fetch food by any means good or bad, fair or unfair, easy or tough. And so he set out. Luckily, he found a dead cat on his way. Limping and blessing his fortune, he took it home. It had to serve for at least two days. He ate lesser and lesser each day, so that whatever food he got once in a while, could remain for two or three days in case he didn’t get so lucky each time. His body was growing frail, all the more with his limping. He would never become the prey for some other animal- that he was sure of, for no animal could retain its appetite once it saw him. But he had realized that life was a killer. He thought so very often about death that it seemed to him that he could think of nothing else. And he was not to be blamed wholly, for he had nothing else to think of except his colourless and apparently worthless life. But death doesn’t come easy, more so when you want it badly.
One day, as he sat below the shades of an oak tree outside his house, wondering what to do with his life, he heard a voice. It was weak, but then he thought that it were his senses that were getting weak. Nevertheless, he heard the sound again. Oddly, it seemed to be calling him. He looked up and saw a little sparrow perched on one of the tall branches of the tree.
“Are you calling me?”, he asked.
“Yes, I am”, came the gentle reply. “What are you doing here on this bright day?”, the sparrow said.
“Nothing”, he said sadly.
The sparrow flew down and sat beside him. ‘Why are you not out hunting for food?’
To this the fox said, “What makes you think I will not eat you up right now?”
The sparrow kept its calm and politeness and said, “Because you can’t. You are incapable of doing that in your situation!”
The fox sighed and said nothing, since he knew it was the truth. He could never catch the sparrow.
“I don’t mean to offend you Mr. Fox, but I think you are deliberately being weak”, the sparrow continued.
“What do you mean? I can’t even walk, run or see properly, do you know that?”
“Yes, I do. Look at me!”, said the sparrow and lifted its left wing. The fox saw that the wing was improperly formed, it was almost like fractured.
He said nothing.
“And unlike me, you’ve been living off dead animals lying in your way”, the sparrow continued.
Surprised, the fox looked up. “How do you know that? Have you been following me around?”
“Yes, Mr. Fox.”
There was silence.
“You never wondered how all that food seemed to be coming your way, did you?”, the sparrow spoke.
One thing that could astonish the fox more at that time was his limb healing all of a sudden. “You…?”, he stammered.
“Yes, Mr. Fox.”
The fox hung his head in shame. What could be worse than being told that a sparrow nearly one fiftieth of his size, and possibly more seriously injured than himself, had been fetching food for him for so long now. Being a land animal, three legs allowed him to walk, although with great effort. But for a bird, both of its wings were equally important. Any slight defect in either of them could render it useless and incapable of flight. He knew he would never muster the courage to ask the sparrow how it had been helping him for all this time, and so altruistically at that.
“Why do you hang your head always so low, Mr. Fox? Has his habit of yours ever let you see the moon?”, the sparrow asked gently.
“The moon?”, the fox wondered and knew at that instant. He had never seen the moon!
“Yes, Mr. Fox, the moon. Have you ever spared yourself the time to look at the moon, or the starry sky? Have you ever seen that crystalline beauty?”
After a long pause in which all sorts of questions ran through his mind, he said, “No, never.”
“Why?”, said the sparrow in voice so gentle that the fox thought it could summon the moon then and there itself!
“What purposes will that serve?”, asked the fox, a bit defiantly.
“You’ll see the beauty of Nature. You’ll realize what life’s worth.”
“My life’s worth nothing. That’s one thing I know for sure.”
“Then why don’t you kill yourself?”
“I never could... It must be so painful to die...”, the fox said.
“The problem, Mr. Fox, is that you never wonder what life has given you. Always busy with finding out our incapacities and others’ good fate, we never realize how much we ourselves have. So much have you been provided love and affection from your childhood and what have you made of that?”
The fox remained silent.
“Your parents didn’t love you so much because they wanted to make a lazy, self-deploring character out of you. They hoped, that all the love would reflect onto you, that you would someday learn to love yourself. But haven’t you failed them?”
The fox remained silent still. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Have you seen the moon?”, he said finally.
The sparrow giggled and said, “Of course I have. Who hasn’t seen the moon but you?”
“What does it look like?”, the fox asked eagerly. He now wanted to see the moon, and he had momentarily forgotten his pains.
“Oh! It’s beauteous! Why don’t you see for yourself tonight?”
“But why do you want me to see the moon?”, the fox asked curiously.
“You and the moon are similar in some respects, Mr. Fox.”
“How?”, the fox was surprised.
“You see Mr. Fox, the moon has no light of its own; it dwells on the light from the sun, like you have lived on the help from others. It has a lot of bumps and holes on its surface, like you have your imperfections. It is always unaccompanied and alone like you.”
The fox felt a sort of happiness in knowing that his situation was shared by someone else too. But the sparrow continued,
“But Mr. Fox, it shines in the light of the sun, unlike you. Its loneliness is its glory, unlike yours. Its ups and downs, the irregularities and imperfections make it all the more beautiful, unlike you. And most importantly, unlike you, the moon does not sit and give up. Travelling over the same skies, following the same pattern, doing its job over and over again, it has gained itself glory and admiration beyond comparison. But what have you done Mr. Fox?”
He hung his head low once again.
“That’s why I want you to see the moon. So that you can learn what life’s worth!”, the sparrow said enthusiastically.
There was a long pause.
“But there’s one condition to see the moon”, the little sparrow said, lifting its deformed wing.
“What’s that?”, the foxed looked up. And he had made up his mind to do anything to set his eyes on that famed moon.
“The one who deserves to see the moon is the one who has done his labour for the day, and has earned his own food.. the one who has worked hard and tried his best to make his living, irrespective of his success.”
The fox was determined to go any extent to see the moon. And so after thanking the sparrow he set out to finish his labour for the day. For the first time in his life, he walked and chased. He ignored the protests from his flailing limb. He ignored all the pain and weakness to find his food. The sun was drifting across the sky; the fox was exhausted, yet unsuccessful. But he overworked his body. He pushed all the limits set by his disability and worked his way through the forest and its roughness.
After the hard work he put up the whole day, sweating and panting, exhausted and completely broken, he sat below a huge tree like he was sitting in the morning. But the difference was that now he had a dead young hound underneath his paws. For the first time in his life, he had hunted his own prey. He was jaded and couldn’t even stand, but he was overjoyed at the prospect of success. It seemed that his heart would fail him any moment. There seemed to be a lack of strength and power all over his body. But somehow, he didn’t care.
The sparrow came yet again to him and twittered merrily, “That’s very good, Mr. Fox, very good indeed!”
The fox smiled weakly and said, “Thanks to you, dear sparrow!”
“Now you can eat your food and wait for the moon to come and show up. I am going high atop this tree and I’ll see from there.”
“Would you like to eat too?”, the fox said gratefully.
“Oh, that’s so very nice of you, Mr. Fox, but I’ve had plentiful for today and I’ll go about hunting once again tomorrow. You really have earned this, and you alone should eat it. Thank you...”
With that, the sparrow pecked the fox softly on his cheek and said,
“May God bless your soul!”
And the sparrow flew up. The fox sat there, amazed at this gesture, and then slowly ate his food. It seemed peculiarly delicious, and he felt full to the brim after eating it all. His health had only deteriorated during this time, but he was satisfied.
It had gotten dark, and the fox, full with anticipation and excitement, sat under a clearing gazing up at the sky. The darkness of the sky was threatening again, but now he could see the twinkling stars. An odd satisfaction and tranquility spread through him, he was peaceful now. Although his fate had not changed a bit since yesterday, he felt some change, some relief now. He wished life could be like this forever.
He lay there waiting for the moon to show up. He gazed at the sky in the hope that moon would spring up out of nowhere, because he didn’t knew how the moon arrived. He thought he heard the sparrow twittering high atop somewhere. But the sounds were getting fainter now. Nearly all the sounds of the living forest were drowning around him. What was this? Was he falling asleep peacefully for the first time in his life? No, this was not the time to sleep. This was the most successful moment of his life, and he had to see the moon tonight. He couldn’t fall asleep now. Not now… any other time, but not now.
The sky showed a slight increase in its luminescence and the sparrow above twittered louder and merrier than ever. On the ground, however, the fox was drifting into a sleep which he had no power to resist. He wished he could prevent it… but now he was feeling peace, a sense of comfort, and placidness, a bliss he could not hope to explain.
High atop the dark and august trees, the sparrow merrily sang praises for the Lord, as the fox fell asleep moments before the full moon shone bright, cool and splendid over his fatigued body.
He never woke up.
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© I.N.C.O.G.N.I.T.O.
