The Leopard and the Firefly

In the great Ghanaian forest, long before memory, the Leopard had a coat of pure, unbroken gold, like sunlight poured over muscle and bone. He was so proud of this coat that he spent the morning hours lying in patches of sun so that the other animals could admire him, and the evening hours grooming each golden hair into place.

One night, the Firefly came drifting through the trees, blinking her small light in the darkness. The Leopard, who had been admiring his own reflection in the river, looked up and sneered.

"What are you?" he said. "A creature that blinks like a broken thing? You are nothing but a flying spark with dirty spots. Look at you, covered in blemishes. And look at me, flawless."

The Firefly said nothing. She drifted on through the trees, blinking her patient light.

The Leopard laughed and went to sleep.

That night, while the Leopard slept deeply in the warmth, the Firefly called her sisters from across the forest. They came in their hundreds, each carrying her small lamp. Working carefully and quietly through the long night hours, they painted circles of darkness onto the Leopard's golden coat, dark rosettes, scattered from his neck to the tip of his tail, covering every inch of his golden fur.

As they worked, the eldest Firefly said quietly: "We do not do this out of hatred. We do it so that he may learn what it feels like to wear what he mocked."

When the Leopard woke at dawn and stretched toward the sun, something was different. The light fell on his coat and instead of glowing gold from end to end, it caught dark spots and made shadows. He ran to the river in panic and stared at his reflection.

He howled. He tried to wash the spots away. He rolled in leaves and mud. But the spots were not paint, they were as much a part of him now as his claws or his teeth.

"Who did this?" he roared, and the whole forest trembled.

The Firefly floated down from a leaf above him. "I did," she said calmly. "And my sisters."

"Change me back!" the Leopard demanded.

The Firefly blinked her small light. "I cannot," she said. "What is given cannot always be taken back. But I will tell you this: in time, the spots will become beautiful. The hunters will learn to fear them. And you will learn to see that what you mocked was never ugliness at all; it was simply different."

She drifted away between the trees.

The Leopard sat for a long time by the river, looking at himself. He found, as the Firefly had promised, that the spots made him more fearsome. Prey animals could no longer see him easily against the dappled forest floor. His hunts became more successful. He grew stronger than he had ever been.

He never again called any creature blemished.

And the Firefly? She still drifts through the forest at night, blinking her light, still small, still spotted, still beautiful in the dark.