Once upon a time, in a land far away, there once lived a wily little raccoon and a clever little monkey deep in the heart of the Forest on the Mountain.

They had all the appearance of being the closest of friends. Being both shrewd and quick of thought, they enjoyed a sense of symmetry in each other’s company, and could often be found conversing with one another over the small happenings of their day to day life.

One beautiful morning, the monkey, swinging through the trees, spotted his friend the raccoon far below him on the forest floor. The raccoon was moving in what seemed to be a great hurry back in the direction of its home, and carried in its mouth a large white bone.

“Good morning, brother!” the monkey shouted from above.

The raccoon jumped at the sudden sound, and dropped the bone from its mouth. But when it saw the monkey hopping down through the branches, it spread its small arms wide in welcome and placed a firm footpaw on top of the bone.

“Brother monkey!” it shouted. “How are you enjoying yourself this fine morning?”

“I am enjoying it and myself most deeply,” the monkey replied, dropping itself down beside the raccoon with a bow. “And I would return the greeting in kind if the answer were not already so apparent! What is this treasure you’ve found?”

“What, this?” The raccoon looked down at the bone as if surprised by the attention being called upon it. He waved a clever front paw. “A paltry thing not worthy of your notice, dear brother. It is a crumb that I have come upon by pure happenstance. A meager discard, no doubt fallen from the mouth of a much greater beast, and forgotten.”

“A crumb?” The monkey tittered behind a hairy hand. “Surely you jest. Nowhere does there exist any such ‘crumb’ as the likes of this morsel you hold beneath your foot, should scraps fall upon us from the table of heaven itself!”

It hopped and laughed in place at its own joke, shrieking in its amusement.

“Worry not, old friend, worry not,” it said, once its merriment subsided. “I promise that I will neither pass a claim nor seek to partake of your day’s reward. What you are fortunate enough to find is yours to keep. I am simply curious as to what it is you plan to do with such a find.”

“Well,” said the raccoon, mollified by the monkey’s good spirit. “I admit that when I first saw it, I thought to crack it open for the sumptuous marrow inside. But then the thought occurred to me that I have not dined on hot bone soup in a very long time. So I hurry home to my hollow, fully intent on preparing and most thoroughly savoring this rare and wholesome delicacy.”

The monkey’s mouth watered at the thought of sweet marrow and fragrant soup, and despite its earlier reassurances, found itself longing for a taste of the dinner that had been so described. Quietly, it struggled to find a course of action through which it might gain possession of the bone for itself.

It smiled a wide, placating smile. “Dear friend raccoon,” it said. It wrapped an arm around the raccoon’s shoulders. “Let us discuss other matters. Do you remember the pine nuts I fetched for you from the tops of the high trees, very nearly a span of days ago now?”

But the eye of an old friend is a sun in a cloudless sky, and the raccoon tightened his footpaw over the bone.

“I only mention this,” continued the monkey. “Because it crossed my mind just earlier this morning that it has been some time now since I accomplished this favor for you. Is it not said that a debt between friends is as a wound that festers?”

Here it tapped a finger on its chin, then clapped its hands together.

“Brother, what do you think of this? Why don’t you give me that small mouthful you’ve found. Though an old bone is a poor equal to the fresh picked meat of the Forest’s pines, I would be only too delighted to overlook the disparity for the sake of our friendship.”

“Dearest friend,” replied the raccoon immediately, his footpaw not budging. “Let it not pass beyond the shadow of doubt that neither flame nor flood could keep me from allowing the blemish of such a burden on our friendship overlong. For how precious and rare is a friendship such as ours?”

“As precious as the stars in a moonless sky,” nodded the monkey sagaciously. “And as rare to hold.”

“It is as you say,” the raccoon agreed without the slightest hesitation. “But, dear brother, and how I despise mentioning this at all, do you not recall the plump, beautiful fish I snatched out of the river for you, just a few days past? How I delivered it, still fresh and writhing, straight into your eager hands? Surely such a specimen could not possibly be found unworthy when brought before an obligation of mere nuts.”

“How right you are,” exclaimed the monkey, but its heart twisted inside its chest. “How could I have forgotten? It was a heavenly gift!”

“How generous of you to say so,” the raccoon bowed.

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“But it is with some shame,” the monkey quickly added. “That I must also remind you of the night when I snuck up into the home of the owl as it was away and stole the warm treasures from its nest. Did I not come down with one in each hand, one for myself and one for you? Did we not feast ourselves on a kingly dinner? Did we not delight in the rich, golden sap they held within?”

“We certainly did,” the raccoon chuckled through its teeth. “But it is with some shame of my own that I must remind you, dear brother, that while you were the one who snuck into the nest, I was the one who came upon the knowledge that the owl was in fact nesting. Furthermore, I was the one who discovered the times when it left to hunt. It was only after I had devised a plan and shared it with you that it became possible at all for you to venture up unto its nest, and to retrieve its eggs without harm.”

“But the onus of risk was carried by myself and myself alone,” the monkey replied with a short smile. “If the owl had returned to its nest before I had made good my escape, it would be a lesser monkey standing here before you today.”

“But seeing as how we both profited in our shared dinner of the eggs, I still do not see a reason for me to share my fortunes with you and not take it for myself,” said the raccoon, sharply. “Though you may clutch and wheedle with old forgotten debts, is I who came upon it on my path. It is I who found it amongst the roots of the trees. And it is with the greatest regret, dear brother, that I can only conclude that there is no measure of obligation between us that compels me to concede this tiger’s bone to you.”

The monkey shrieked with fierce, high pitched laughter.

“Tiger’s bone?” it scoffed. “What nonsense you speak! What drivel falls from your mouth. There has not been a tiger in the Forest since its trees were but seeds on the wind, and the Mountain but a churning within the earth.”

“How the gilding falls from your silver words, dear brother,” the raccoon replied haughtily. “And certainly it is a tiger’s bone. Though the recognition of the monstrous scent only comes to me through the ancient memories of my forefathers, it is impossible to deny or ignore. The bone reeks of tiger as if the scent and the bone were one.”

But the monkey laughed in mocking disregard. “So I am to believe the sleeping memory of your dead ancestors over the truth of my eyes? Look at it! Even with your dull eyes it is clear to see that though it is certainly not small, it is not by itself large enough to have once belonged to an animal as immense as the tiger.”

The raccoon’s ears flattened angrily against its head at the monkey’s discourteous words with regard to its ancestors.

“Nay, little brother,” the monkey continued, not noticing. “I have come across the remains of many a felled creature, and I say to you that the origin of this bone is obvious to anyone with the wit and will to see the truth before their eyes. It is the bone of a man.”

“It matters little what manner of flesh it was before it became naught but bone,” the raccoon snapped. It bared its teeth with a growl. “This bone is mine, dear brother. It is in my possession, and so it shall remain.”

The monkey opened its mouth to retort, but was interrupted by the sound of dry, raspy laughter that burst from somewhere in the branches above them.

The mad old raven, having alighted quietly above their heads during the course of their discussion, had overhead nearly all that had passed between the two friends.

“What an amusing spectacle I have come across this fine morning,” it said, still laughing. “A most amusing spectacle indeed.”

“Begone, carrion,” the raccoon snarled with a sharp sudden flush of irritation. “Do not meddle where you are not wanted. We speak of matters beyond your knowledge.”

“Do you, O wily raccoon?” the raven croaked, its amusement nestled between each fold of its creaking voice. “Do you truly?”

“This is a matter between friends,” the monkey cut in, before the raccoon could reply. “In which you have been neither invited nor sought to so taint with your depraved insights. Depart at once, foul creature.”

But the raven burst into another fit of uncanny laughter, as if it had found the monkey’s words the most hilarious of all.

“A matter between friends, is it?” it gasped. “Is it really now?”

The two friends glared menacingly as the mad old raven cackled and cawed on its perch above them. But their glares served to only tickle it even more, and it laughed even harder at the sight. Wholly unconcerned, it shook its head and flapped its wings in its amusement, sending tufts of dark plumage raining onto the angry pair, before finally settling itself back to near solemnity.

“I think I really must thank the pair of you,” it chuckled. “It has been some time since I have last seen such an apposition of convenient paradigms, and I cannot remember when I have ever enjoyed myself as immensely as I do now.”

“Either speak the truth plainly or begone,” spat the raccoon.

“Or stay,” added the monkey, a stone now in its hand. “And let us see whose merriment shall come at the expense of whom.”

But the raven, having seen the stone, had already flown off from its perch and circled over their heads. It cried in a loud, dissonant voice.

“How sturdy and strong is a friendship as closely acquainted as the one this humble raven has just witnessed with its own eyes? What great records it keeps! The prowess of its remembrance! I would sooner live a thousand unhinged existences of abject loneliness than suffer such a companionship for the duration of even a single breath. Even as they contest a point of insignificance that is neither one nor the other, how truly could their friendship be equated to a snare that entangles and binds? If they were truly friends, would not the path forward be clear?”

Then it flew away, still cawing and laughing madly.

For a short time afterward, the raccoon and the monkey fell into the prickly, soon forgotten silence of those who stubbornly endure moments of inconvenient truths as they pass by.

“It is a mad animal,” the raccoon growled, once the raven had disappeared from view. “With no care or concern for the peace or private affairs of others.”

“The creature knows nothing but to bring grief and agitation upon whatever it happens to come across,” the monkey agreed.

Having said this, the raccoon and the monkey exchanged hasty goodbyes and slunk off, each in their own direction. They did not see each other again until they crossed paths the next morning. There, they greeted each other with their usual, familiar cheer and made no mention of the bone, or the raven, or even any of the words that they had passed between each other just the day before.