Setting: The Red Sand Desert
Blaze was a Caracal—a medium-sized wild cat with magnificent, tufted ears and legs that were built like steel springs. He was the most elegant hunter in the desert, and he knew it. He didn’t just chase prey; he made it look like a dance. But Blaze was also incredibly vain. He would sit on the highest red dune and groom his fur, watching the smaller animals scramble for shade, and sneer.
“If I had to work as hard as you to stay alive, I would simply give up!” he would call down. “The desert smiles upon my grace. All other creatures are just… ugly sweat-beads.”
One afternoon, a tiny, segmented creature with a broad tail and two pincer claws—a Deathstalker Scorpion named Snap—was slowly, methodically digging a hole.
“Look at you!” Blaze jeered, landing beside Snap with a silent, powerful jump. “Your whole life is spent in the hot dirt. Why don’t you try jumping? A graceful life is lived in the air!”
Snap didn’t stop digging. “Grace is a luxury, Blaze. I am digging the Temple of the Deep, where the ‘magic water’ is hidden. When it rains, the water flows right over you and into my Temple. I would share it, but of course, only ‘floor-dwellers’ can enter.”
Blaze’s vanity was struck. He was The Champion of the air; he couldn’t have some lowly scorpion have something “magic” that he didn’t. “I’ll take your magic water! Where is your Temple?”
“Oh, you cannot reach it,” Snap said smoothly, gesturing with one pincer towards the highest, steepest dune in the desert—a mountain of loose, dry, shifting sand. “The Temple lies right behind that mountain. The only way to open the secret door is to jump over it. Since you are the Champion, it should be easy. For anyone else, it is unreachable.”
The steep dune was made of a specific kind of sand. Any desert creature knows that the steeper the slope, the harder it is to move, because any heavy movement makes the loose sand slide and crumble, like a treadmill made of sugar.
“I can jump over anything!” Blaze boasted.
He took a running start, focused his massive leg power, and launched. He expected to fly high over the peak of the dune.
But instead of flying, Blaze’s powerful paws met only empty air, and when he tried to push off the sandy slope to get a second leap, the loose sand simply gave way. He began to slide. The faster he tried to climb, the faster the sand poured down, pulling him lower.
Shhhhh-p-t-t-t-t-s-h!
Blaze spent the next four hours battling the “Unreachable Mountain.” He tried jumping from different angles. He tried running faster. He tried walking slowly. But no matter what he did, the dune, with its loose, dry sand, kept him trapped in a useless, humiliating slide. He was like a beautiful cat stuck on a terrible, infinite treadmill.
By the time the sun was setting, Blaze was covered in red dust, his tufted ears were droopy, and his magnificent legs were trembling. He had never been so sweaty or so ugly.
Snap peeked his head out of his actual burrow, which was just in the shade of a small rock. “You are indeed the ‘Champion’ of movement, Blaze. I’ve never seen anyone move so much and go absolutely nowhere. Perhaps ‘grace’ is just knowing when to stay on the ground.”
The Moral: Arrogance will often make you choose a battle you cannot win, simply to prove a point that doesn’t matter.
Review The Caracal and the Unreachable Mountain.