The Ox
A girl was given a calf on the day it was born, and because it was small and frightened she carried it everywhere. To the well. To the field. Up the hill to watch the carts go by.
Nobody told her to stop, so she didn't. The calf grew a little every day, and every day she lifted it, and every day it was only a little heavier than the day before. She never noticed. By the time it was an ox, she still carried it to the well every morning, and the village came out to stare.
"How do you lift that?" they asked.
"The same as yesterday," she said.
A traveller who saw it wrote it down as a marvel. But an old woman in the village said it wasn't the strength that was strange. It was that the girl had never once asked whether the ox still wanted carrying. It had legs. It had had legs for years. Every morning it waited by the door, because that was what mornings were.
The next day, the girl set it down at the well and walked home without it. The ox stood there for a long time. Then it walked home too, slowly, on its own legs, and the girl met it at the gate.
Both of them, she said later, felt lighter than they had in years.