Long ago, Leopard and Fire were the best of friends. Every morning, without fail, Leopard made a special effort to visit his friend even though the journey took him quite a distance from his own home.
It had never before bothered him that Fire did not visit him in return until the day his wife began to mock and tease him on the subject.
“He must be a very poor friend indeed”, she jeered, “if he won’t come and see you even once in your own house.”
Day and night, Leopard was forced to listen to his wife taunt him, until finally he began to believe that his house was somehow not good enough for his friend.
“I will prove my wife wrong”, he thought to himself and set off before dawn on the following day to beg Fire to come and visit his home.
At first, Fire presented him with every possible excuse. He never liked to travel too far, he explained to Leopard. He always felt uncomfortable leaving his family behind. But Leopard pleaded and pleaded so that eventually Fire agreed to the visit on the condition that his friend construct a path of dry leaves leading from one house to the other.
As he walked homeward, Leopard gathered as many leaves as he could find and laid them in a long line between the two houses just as Fire had instructed him. He brought his wife the good news and immediately she began to prepare the finest food to welcome their guest.
When the meal was ready and the house sparkled as if it were new, the couple sat down to await the arrival of their friend. They had been seated only a moment when suddenly they felt a strong gust of wind and heard a loud crackling noise outside their front door.
Leopard jumped up in alarm and pulled open the door, anxious to discover who could be making such a dreadful commotion. He was astonished to see Fire standing before him, crackling and sparking in a haze of intense heat, his body a mass of flames that leaped menacingly in every direction.
Soon the entire house had caught fire and the smell of burning skin filled the air. Leopard grabbed hold of his squealing wife and sprang, panic-stricken, through the window, rolling in the grass to put out the flames on his back.
The two lay there exhausted, grateful to be alive. But ever since that day, their bodies were covered all over with black spots where the fingers of Fire, their reluctant house guest, had touched them. (Photo: Pixabay) – (From Sierra Leone. West Africa)
