In early centuries, animals lived peacefully together in giant forests across the world. Fish had legs that allowed them to walk on land and all animals had the ability to speak to one another. This story is based on a unique friendship between a leopard and a fish.
Fred the fish was best friends with Linnie the leopard. They spent all of their time together, every day. The two were inseparable. Both Fred and Linnie had wives and two children. The families loved each other and grew up together.
A walking fish.
Linnie the leopard was a recognized hunter among the animals in the forest. He is known to have the ability to kill any predator that entered the forest. Other animals hired Linnie as a bounty killer to find and kill animals who had broken the laws of the forest. Linnie ended his career as a bounty hunter when he married his wife and decided to settle down and teach young animals fighting skills for self-protection.
Fred the fish on the other hand was a schoolteacher. Quite smart, Fred taught algebra to various fish and forest animals. He was known for his intelligence and care for his students.
The two grew close as friends at an early age. Fred would always help Linnie out in school and Linnie would protect Fred from any bullies.
One day, Linnie asked Fred to help him with some finances. Because Linnie’s skill was finding and killing, he needed some help when it came to his finances for his family and creating a retirement plan. Fred agreed with an agreement that Linnie would teach his son how to defend himself at school and learn self-protection.
For one week, Linnie would take Fred’s son to learn how to fight, while Fred took care of figuring out and managing Linnie’s finances. When the week was over, Fred had told Linnie that he had figured out Linnie’s finances and a retirement plan that would assure him to have enough money to support his family for the remainder of his life.
Thrilled by Fred’s work, Linnie threw Fred a huge party and invited the entire forest to attend. The animals ate, drank and danced the night away in honor of Fred’s good friendship. The next morning, Linnie woke up to Albert, a ram who was a tax collector. Albert declared Linnie's bank account as bankrupt.
“How could this be?” asked Linnie, “Fred took care of all my finances just yesterday!”
Linnie looked for Fred, but he was nowhere to be found. He searched the entire forest and asked every animal, but no one had seen Fred. Then, one of Linnie’s neighbors told him that she had seen Fred take a suitcase of money from Linnie’s home during the party. Linnie was astonished and could not believe his best friend would do such a thing after all there years of friendship.
Angered, Linnie went to his old friend the lion, the king of the forest, to tell him the situation. The king sent his servants to search the entire forest and find Fred and bring him back to his palace. The servants found Fred on the outskirts of the forest trying to purchase a giant house tree worth millions of forest dollars. The servants quickly got ahold of him and the suitcase full of money and brought Fred to the king. When the king lion proved Fred was guilty of this evil crime, he swore to the forest that because of Fred’s betrayal to his best friend, that no fish would never be able to walk or breathe on land again and could only swim in the sea. To this day, fish remain in the water due to Fred’s betrayal of his best friend.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story is based from the Nigerian folktale, The Fish and the Leopard's Wife. In this story, the fish and the leopard are best friends until the leopard discovers that the fish is having an affair with his wife. I thought the story was very original and unique so I wanted to take a spin that had similar guidelines. I was pretty surprised about the outcome when I read this original story, but it was so interesting that I enjoyed it. I wanted my story to be similar, but give more background information in to the lives and relationships of the character as well as think of a new way of betrayal. I really don't like stories where affairs occur, so I wanted the trial to be over something that people can relate to, but not as tragic.
I liked how the leopard and fish are friends in the original story, so I wanted to keep the same animals as friends, but give them some more personality. I wanted to bring their families more into the picture to give more of an emotional draw to each of the characters. This was a fun unit to read and I enjoyed getting to write a story based from these myths. I hope you enjoy the characters in this story and can see their personality. It was a fun story to write!
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Title: Folk Stories From Southern Nigeria
Author: Elphinstone Dayrel
Year: 1910
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