The Lion was taken aback. "You would?" he said. He had no idea what else to say. He had come to the Lunechien Forest thinking that he was to face the greatest enemy he had ever known, and that enemy was speaking to him as if they were old friends who had just met after a long period of separation.
"Of course I would," said the spider. "I see now that I was wrong to hate you so badly when I didn't even know what sort of fellow you really were. And seeing how I felt when we were attacked by those Land Sharks without having any way to fight them off showed me how grossly unfair I was for having taken the energy from helpless insects and animals. I was as bad as them, and I don't ever want to be like that again! It's much too frightful. I'd rather have a solid group of friends than have all the power in the world."
"I think I am guilty of the same thing," sighed the Lion, still a little spooked by the abruptness of the Monster's turnabout in nature. "I knocked your head off as you slept, but I didn't know what you were like, either. All I knew was what I was told: that you were eating all of the lions and the other animals, and that they wanted to make me their king if I stopped you."
"So you are their king now," said the Forest Monster. "I do not begrudge you the position any more. You are welcome to it. I suddenly feel like I don't care for any position of power any more. When I was gaining the power I now possess, I was allowing myself to be blind to anything but my ever-growing hatred of you. Now that I see how unfounded that hatred really was, I feel that it was I who was the true coward. I was sapping the life energy from countless helpless creatures. I did not give them any sporting chance, either. Nor did I have any excuse to justify what I was doing except that I wanted revenge. It is I who should feel ashamed of himself, not you. Now I have all of this power and strength that was brought about by my hate, and it is no longer of any value to me. All it has done was to make me all the more angry and heartless. If this is the price of strength, I think I'd rather be weak. It is far better to be small and have friends than to have all the strength in the universe but be so full of anger and resentment that you can't even enjoy it."
"So now that you have become a mountain of power," replied the Lion, "you no longer care to be powerful?"
"Exactly," sighed the Forest Monster. "If there were a way to reverse time and put things back as they should be, before I ever hurt anyone, I would do it. I wish I could apologize to all of the poor animals that I sapped. If their spirits are still in the vicinity, I hope they see how utterly foolish I feel for having taken such unfair advantage of them."
"It is very sad that so many of our friends and families had to be destroyed in order for you to have learned this lesson," said Elephant, thinking sadly of the loss to the forest and its denizens. "But I hope that you will try to reverse your reputation now by putting your strength to good use. It is hard to forget what you did, but I think that, in time, we will all be able to accept you as a neighbor. At least, if you act like one."
"Oh, that I will do," said the spider gratefully. "I will do all that I can to make up for my past misbehaving."
"Then it seems we are no longer needed," said one of the Sniffers. "We met the Droffs on our way here, and they have agreed to help us plow our fields. If our job here is done, I think we should like to go home and get started."
"Me wants to plow fields," said the Droff who stood beside him.