Online Stories for Children for a Month: Third Week

     Once, there was a king who used to always worry about his death. He would often ask astrologers about his end.
      One day he invited a renowned astrologer and requested him to reveal every detail of his life. First, the astrologer revealed all the positive aspects, which made the king very happy. Then he revealed the negative aspects. This made the king so angry that he asked the astrologer to reveal the day of his own death.
     The astrologer knew that the king would disprove his prediction by having him put to death on any other day than the predicted day. So, the astrologer said to the king, “My death will come one day before yours.”
     The king was in a fix now. Ordering the astrologer’s death meant inviting his own death a day later.
     He praised the clever forecast of the astrologer and lavished him with expensive gifts.

   A merchant used to visit nearby towns to sell bags of salt which were loaded over his donkey. 
     While on way to the town one day, the donkey slipped into a pond. The merchant pulled him out. The donkey was happy as its load turned very light since salt had dissolved into the water.
     The donkey decided to deliberately slip into the pond everyday while carrying the load on its back. The merchant understood the donkey’s plan. So, he decided to teach the donkey a lesson.
     The next day, the merchant loaded his donkey with cotton bales instead of salt. When the donkey fell into the pond, the cotton bales got wet and became very heavy. The donkey had to struggle to come out of the water. Besides, the already furious merchant beat the donkey with his cane to drive it.
     Therefore, the donkey never cheated his master since that day.

  A washer man had a horse and a donkey. One day he was going to the market with both the beasts. The washer man had loaded his donkey with heavy bundles of clothes. The horse carried nothing.
     The load on the donkey was very heavy. So, requested the horse, “Brother! The load is killing me. Please share some of it.”
     The horse neighed, “Why should I? We horses are meant for riding.”
     The donkey kept walking on with the burden. Eventually the donkey fell down exhausted by the heavy load. Then the washer man realised his mistake. He gave water to the donkey and transferred the entire load of clothes onto the horse’s back.
     The horse repented and thought, “I should have listened to the donkey and accepted half of the load. Now I shall have to carry the entire load to the market.”

     One day, two young friends, Sujal and Piyush, decided to visit a forest. They promised each other that they would help each other against any danger that came their way. While in the forest, a bear came suddenly and rushed towards them.
     Faced with the sudden danger, Sujal quickly climbed the nearby tree. Piyush, on the other hand, did not have enough time to escape. So he lay down on the ground and pretended to be dead.
     The bear growled as it came close to Piyush and appeared to whisper in his ear, as if to say something to him. Piyush held his breath and kept very still. After sometime, the bear grunted and went away. Sujal came down from the tree and asked Piyush, “What did the bear say to you?”
     “The bear told me to stay away from selfish friends who run away at the time of crisis,” Piyush replied.

     There was a dog that lived in a barn. He would always sleep on the soft hay lying in the manger from which the horses ate their hay.
     The dog’s food used to be kept outside the barn in the farmyard even then the selfish dog would stray right there in the manger. Whenever the horses came in to eat their hay, the dog would start barking at them.
     The poor horses could not eat their food. They had asked the dog several times to leave the manger, but he had stubbornly refused. They told the dog that the farmer had left bones for him in the farmyard, but he simply refused to move out of the manger.
     “What a selfish dog!” the horses said. “He knows that he cannot eat hay but he will not let us eat our food too. He wants us to starve.”