The King's Falcon and the Poisoned Water

A king, returning exhausted and severely thirsty from a long hunting expedition, stopped to collect water dripping slowly from a rock face into a small cup, having brought along his most trusted falcon perched loyally on his wrist as always. Just as he raised the finally full cup to his lips, the falcon suddenly swooped and knocked it from his hand, spilling the precious water entirely.

Frustrated but assuming it was simple accident, the king refilled the cup patiently, drop by drop, only for the falcon to strike it from his grip a second time the moment it was full again. Now genuinely furious and convinced his beloved bird had somehow turned against him without reason, the king refilled the cup a third time, and when the falcon moved to strike it away once more, he drew his sword in a flash of unthinking rage and struck the bird down before it could complete the motion.

Only then, climbing higher up the rock face to investigate the source of the slow-dripping water out of simple curiosity, did the king discover a massive dead serpent lying in a pool above, its venom seeping steadily down into precisely the water he had been about to drink for the third time — the very water his falcon had been desperately trying to save him from at the cost of its own life. The king, holding his loyal falcon's lifeless body in devastated grief, understood too late that acting in the heat of frustrated anger, before pausing to understand why someone was resisting you, can destroy the very protection you didn't yet know you needed.