A buffalo endures a monkey’s torment without anger; a forest spirit recognizes a throne that needs no crown. Patience proves heavier than provocation.
The monkey had made a sport of the buffalo’s broad back: plucking tail hair, throwing seeds into ears, riding uninvited like a tassel with teeth. The buffalo, who worked in mud and sun and did not confuse noise with importance, kept chewing. A forest spirit watched with the careful boredom of immortals. After a week, she stepped from the shade and offered the buffalo a wish, impressed by his refusal to dignify small arrows with large responses. He asked only for grass where the ground had gone bald under many hooves. The spirit smiled as one who had prepared for greed and met pasture instead.
The monkey found the new grass delightful and felt a complicated itch called shame. He sat on a branch above the buffalo and considered transformations. He could grow quieter. He could invent apologies that did not center himself. He could learn to ride the wind instead of other people’s patience. The buffalo continued breathing clouds into the morning and did not deliver any speeches because some constitutions are written in how a creature uses its weight. Travelers passing through the forest mistook the buffalo for a hill and the hill for a patient buffalo; the confusion pleased everyone involved.
When the spirit visited again, she brought a crown woven from tall grasses and asked the buffalo to wear it for an hour, purely ceremonial. He agreed, then shook it off gently onto a stump where beetles discovered a cathedral. The monkey, deciding lastly and at last, gathered fallen twigs and built a small fence around the stump to keep paws from crushing the new temple. The buffalo nodded without looking, a gesture whose grammar the monkey studied until his own back felt a little wider.
