Spring has already come.
Spring has already come.
Spring had already come to the fields.
Down there, cherry-trees were in bloom, and birds were chirping.
Spring, however, hadn’t come yet in the mountains.
On the tops of the mountains white snow had still remained.
Deep in a mountain, a family of deer was living: a father deer, a mother deer and a fawn.
The fawn didn’t know well about spring, as his first birthday was yet coming.
“What is spring like, Dad?”
the fawn asked.
“Flowers come out in spring,”
the dad deer answered.
“What are flowers like, Mom?”
the fawn asked.
“You’ll find them beautiful.”
the mother deer answered.
“I see.”
However, as the fawn hadn’t seen them yet, he couldn’t imagine well what flowers were like and what spring like.
One day, the fawn was gadding around in the mountain.
Then…
“Bon—g.”
He heard a soft sound from a distance.
“What is it?”
Then it came again,
“Bon—g.”
The fawn pricked up his ears.
The sounds provoked him to keep climbing down the mountain.
There was a vast field at the foot of the mountain.
And there, the fawn saw cherry blossoms, and smelled their aroma.
The fawn met a kind old man resting under one of the cherry trees.
Looking at the fawn, the man broke off a twig from the cherry-tree and tied it onto the fawn’s little horn.
“Well, this is your ornamental hairpin. You’d better go home before sunset.”
The fawn happily went back to his mountain.
Listening to the fawn talking about what he had experienced, the mother deer and the father deer said unanimously,
“The sounds were the temple’s bell.”
“Those really are cherry blossoms that you have on your horn!”
They let him know,
“You’ve met the spring where you saw a lot of cherry blossoms and smelled a nice aroma.”
Soon spring came in the deep mountain too, and various flowers began to come out.
Original by Nankichi Niimi
The end