Like all stories, this one begins with… once upon a time there was a duck who sat quietly on her eggs in the nest and dreamed of the moment she would become a mother. And lo and behold, on a cold spring morning, an egg cracked. And then another. And one more. One by one, the chicks came out and nibbled, except for one egg that remained whole and didn’t seem to want to crack in any way. Finally, after another day and night, a large and somewhat ugly duckling emerged from it, with gray-white feathers, different from those of its brothers.
Mother took them all to meet the birds in the big yard, but they all chased away the different little duck because they thought it was ugly. Therefore, she decided to look for a new home and jumped over the fence to the pond where the wild ducks were. Alone and sad, without any friends, she arrived at a dilapidated house where lived an old woman, a man and a hen. Baba welcomed her with the thought that she would make him eggs, but after a few days, our duckling was overcome by the longing for water and continued on her way.
One evening, when he was just bathing in the water, he saw the most beautiful birds in the world! They were white as snow and had long necks. They were swans. Time passed and the winter became harder and harder. Fortunately, one morning a farmer passed by her who was taking her home, and that’s how the duckling got through her first snowfall.
Towards spring, the duck noticed that his wings had grown and he could fly high, high above everything. And so he ended up in a large and beautiful garden on the edge of a lake. Three swans came out of the reeds, slowly floating on the water’s shine. As soon as they saw her, the swans approached with love. It was like they already knew each other! Looking at his face in the water’s sheen, the duckling found that he had begun to resemble the swans around him. Well… she was also a swan with a beautiful beak and long feathers. Although she had been wronged, she was now the most beautiful of all birds.