Soft the Weaver

A weaver named Soft worked hard making fine garments, yet earned barely enough for food and clothes, while coarser weavers around him grew wealthy. Certain that a change of city would change his fortune, he set off for another land despite his wife's doubts about whether effort could really outrun destiny.

After three years he started home with three hundred gold coins, but slept one night beneath a banyan tree and overheard two spirits arguing in his dream — one called Doer, one called Deed. Deed insisted that Soft was fated to have nothing beyond food and clothes; Doer replied that he was only bound to reward effort, and the outcome afterward was Deed's affair. Soft woke to find his gold bag empty.

Undiscouraged, he earned five hundred gold coins the following year and took a different road home, only to find the very same tree, hear the very same argument, and wake to the very same empty bag.

In despair, he prepared to end his life beneath that tree — until one of the spirits appeared and stopped him, revealing himself as the very Deed who took the gold, and offering Soft one wish in place of his lost fortune.

Soft asked to understand wealth itself, and the spirit sent him to observe two merchants in the next city: one who hoarded everything fearfully and grew sick and friendless, and another who spent freely on gifts and hospitality and was rewarded by fortune again and again.

Watching this, Soft understood what he truly wanted — not a pile of gold he could never touch, but the freedom to give. He asked to become the kind of person whose money flows outward in generosity rather than locked away, and from that day his life found its true wealth.