Frog In The Well

Deep down at the bottom of an old stone well lived a frog. He had been there so long that he no longer remembered being anywhere else, and as far as he was concerned, there was nowhere else worth being. The walls were cool and damp, the water never ran dry, and the only sky he ever saw was a small bright circle far above his head — round and tidy, about the size of a pot lid. That, he decided, was the sky. The whole of it.

He was not alone in his kingdom. A few small crabs scuttled in the cracks, and a handful of snails crept slowly across the wet stones. To the frog, this was a great and busy court, and he was its undisputed lord. When he puffed out his throat and let loose a booming croak, the sound bounced off the round walls and came back to him doubled and grand. The crabs froze. The snails hid. "Listen to that," the frog thought, swelling with pride. "Has any creature ever made so mighty a noise? Surely I am the most important being alive."

Day after day he held court. He lectured the snails on the nature of the world. He explained to the crabs that the sky was small, that water came from below, and that he, the frog, sat at the very center of everything. And because none of them had ever seen otherwise either, no one argued. The frog grew more certain of himself with every passing season, comfortable and proud in his narrow, dripping little world.

Then came the rains. Not the gentle kind, but days and days of heavy downpour that swelled every stream and flooded every field. The water in the well rose and rose, lifting the frog higher than he had ever been. It carried him up past the slick green walls, past the damp moss, up and up until — with a soft splash — it spilled him out over the rim and onto the open ground.

And there it was. The world. Not a round little disc but a sky that stretched on forever, pale and enormous in every direction, with no walls to hold it in. Rice fields ran to the horizon. Clouds drifted in herds. The frog should have stopped and stared. He should have felt small. But old habits run deep, and instead he puffed out his throat, lifted his chin, and strutted along the muddy path exactly as he had strutted at the bottom of his well — lord of all he surveyed, certain the world had simply gotten bigger to suit him.

He never saw the ox. The great beast came plodding down the path, head low, hooves the size of dinner plates, and it had no idea the little frog was even there. There was no malice in it, no battle, no grand reckoning — just one heavy step, placed without a thought. And that was the end of the frog who knew everything, flattened on the road by a creature whose existence he had never once imagined.

The snails and crabs back in the well never learned what became of their lord. But the saying outlived him, and people have repeated it ever since whenever someone mistakes their small corner for the whole wide world.