길을 차지한 여우

The Clever Claim

In a valley threaded with dusty roads, there lived a fox named Verel who prized ownership above all else. He had watched, over many patient seasons, how every creature depended on the roads to trade and to travel. If he could claim the roads themselves, he reasoned, then the whole valley would forever be in his debt. So one grey morning he painted a red mark at every crossing, and he declared each path his private property. He hammered wooden signs into the earth, and on each one he wrote a single word: MINE. Soon the signs stood at every fork and bridge, and the valley grew quiet with unease. The other animals laughed at first, for no fox had ever owned a road before. The fox only smiled. Yet Verel was patient, and he understood that confidence, repeated often enough, can harden into something people obey.