LORE

LORE · the origin story

There is an old valley where every creature walked the same road.

No one remembered who had made it. They only knew that their parents had followed it, and their parents before them. The road was wide, smooth, and crowded with hoofprints. It promised safety, though it led nowhere new.

Among the herd lived a young blue cow. In a sea of ordinary cows, he was the only one all blue.

No one knew why his coat carried the color of the evening sky. Some called it strange. Others called it unfortunate. The elders simply told him to lower his head, stay among the others, and never wander too far.

But at night, whenever the wind came down from the mountains, the blue cow felt as though the world were calling him by a name he had not yet learned.

“Do not listen to it,” the elders warned. “The wind belongs to wild places.”

But the blue cow wondered. Day and night, all he could think of was running off to these ‘wild places’, dreaming of a world that he didn’t know even existed.

So one dawn, he stepped off “the” road.

The forest scratched him. The river knocked him down. The mountain offered no signs and no applause. Many times, the blue cow looked back and saw the herd moving together like one enormous shadow. The more he looked at the swarm the less he missed it, and the more courage he found in the choices he has made.

With every wrong turn, he learned the shape of the world.

He learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the decision that something else mattered more. He learned that being lost was sometimes the first honest step toward finding oneself. And he learned that the mind, like a path, disappears when it is never walked.

Years later, travelers spoke of a blue cow wandering beyond the known roads, fierce-eyed and calm, carrying the sky upon his back.

They called him a misfit, a mad cow, and all the crazy little names. But little did they know, that to the blue cow, the herd was always nothing but a shadow.

Then one day a courageous few came wandering to the blue cow asking for directions. The blue cow simply smiled and said “A road can show you where others have gone. But it can never tell you where you must go. Make your path, and keep moving.”