Fable 8: The Newt and the Newspawn

There was once a tadpole, who had a broken tail. She wriggled from her soft egg one day and entered the world of a forest pond with her brothers and sisters.

Her life was much harder than her pond-mates. The broken tail made it impossible to swim in a straight line. Instead, she swam around in circles or pushed against her siblings for direction.

One unfortunate morning found the tadpole swimming farther away from her spawn-mates and into deeper waters. Suddenly, a black shadow passed underneath her. It moved with a swish and was gone as soon as it appeared. The tadpole was startled and began to wriggle frantically, which only proved to sink her further. Another swish passed, this time from above her. She was trapped.

She turned abruptly and saw a large mouth, open and rapidly encroaching on her. A newt! She did the only thing she could at that moment: beg.

“Please no!” She shouted as the newt missed her by a hair's breadth.

The newt circled around, to swim at her again.

“Go after a snail or something! I’m too small to make a good meal!”

This time, the newt’s mouth caught the tadpole’s tail and she found herself being pulled along to the pond’s edge.

“Please! Please!”

The newt suddenly opened its mouth, letting the tail go free. The tadpole blinked back to consciousness and gasped as she found herself amongst her siblings again. Her very shocked siblings.

The newt swam away with a final swish.

Many pond-years after that day, the same newt was swimming around the pond leisurely, snacking on snails and flies. He decided to break the surface and rub his belly on some squidgy mud – the most pleasurable thing a newt can do.

Up he went, feeling the water drip off his sides but not dry his skin, he had a soothing layer of mucus that kept him nice and slippery.

Moments into his cooling mud bath, he felt a shadow swoop above him.

The newt looked up in time to see graceful grey feathers disappearing behind a bush. A heron!

His claws slipped when he scampered to make it back into the water. The newt did not hear the heron before he felt a talon grip around his belly. Fortunately, the heron slipped off the newt with a talon full of mucus and mud.

Instead of flying away, the heron turned and made a grasp at the newt with its long beak.

“Away, bird!” A loud voice croaked, echoing over the pond.

The heron paused with its beak gaping menacingly above the newt. It looked towards the source of the shout.

There, on the same bank, sat a toad of massive proportions. Her wide mouth opened to croak again – a deep, dominant noise from her throat. She was the largest toad either creature had ever seen - fat and dense with glistening warts she shone impressively. She commanded the bank on which she sat.

The heron seemed to weigh their options, staring at the wet eyes of the toad. She made croaked again, deeper this time.

Such a sound was enough to scare the heron, who took flight on swooping wings immediately.

The newt took a deep breath and turned to thank the toad. She looked upon him with wise, if glassy, eyes.

“Why?” he asked, astonished.

“I had a debt to repay,” the toad stated regally before promptly turning and hopping away.

As she retreated into the shrubbery, the newt saw how her hopping was uneven and her tailbone was bent to one side. However, it did not impede her ability to launch herself high on long legs, up and away.

The newt smiled, the tadpole had grown up strong.

Moral: The defenseless never forget mercy.

A/N: I did two things when writing this one. The first was to take more inspiration from the shortness of Aesop's own fables. The second was to completely fudge the title to make the two creatures have names that begin with the same letter!

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