The king dreams of a golden lamb and demands it by noon. Tenali brings a shepherd, a mirror—and humility in bright light.
The emperor woke laughing and ordered the impossible before breakfast. “Fetch me a golden lamb by midday.” Courtiers scattered toward mines that didn’t exist. Tenali visited a shepherd.
In the courtyard he set a mirror in a shaft of sunlight and placed the lamb before it. Wool flashed like coin. Gasps replaced instructions.
“Behold,” Tenali said, “a lamb of gold—according to the grammar of dreams, where light does the lying.” He turned the mirror. The lamb returned to lamb. “Desire gilds what it gazes at. Reality charges differently.”
The emperor grinned, half‑embarrassed, half‑delighted. He rewarded the shepherd with coins that kept their color and apologized quietly to the morning for asking too much of it.
From then on, dream‑orders waited until lunch, by which time they often cooled into better questions. The mirror stayed in the corridor to remind requests to check their reflections first.
Tenali watched the lamb snatch a flower and thought: some wishes look perfect until they chew.
