Leap and Creep

A louse named Creep lived contentedly for generations in the corner of a king's luxurious bed, feeding carefully on the king's blood while he slept and never disturbing him enough to be noticed.

A flea named Leap, blown in on the wind, arrived at the same bed and was captivated by its comfort, immediately asking Creep for permission to share in the feeding as a guest. Creep, mindful of the duty to treat guests hospitably, agreed but set a firm condition: Leap could only bite when the king was deeply asleep, drunk, or exhausted, and only on his feet, never anywhere that might wake or alarm him.

Leap accepted these terms but, being famished and impatient, broke them almost immediately -- biting the king sharply on the back the very first evening, before the king had even fully settled into sleep.

The king, startled awake as if burned, ordered his servants to search the bed thoroughly. Leap, sensing the danger, fled quickly into a crevice and escaped, but Creep, who had done nothing wrong and had no warning of the search, was found and killed along with her whole family.

The tale is remembered as a caution about welcoming a stranger into a shared, hard-won safety: a guest's impatience or carelessness can destroy protections that took a long, careful history to establish, and the harm often falls hardest on those who had nothing to do with the original mistake.