Before there were written stories, there were animals in them. Not as decoration. Not as sidekicks or symbols waiting to be decoded. As presences — teachers, tricksters, companions, mirrors. Across every culture that has ever told a story around a fire or pressed an image into stone, animals appear. The fox who outsmarts the powerful. The crow who carries news between worlds. The bear who sleeps through winter and returns, which is its own kind of magic. We have been doing th
