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Osmanthus loved a fight.\n\nHe was the runt of the litter. But he guarded his food fiercely. He ate anything he could get down, and fought any littermate who came for it. That reckless ferocity made him the only one to survive.\n\nBut fight and fury alone couldn't carry him through the snowstorm.\nOne day deep in winter, he lay frozen by the gate of a mountain temple, until a pair of hands, barely warmer than the falling snow, gently gathered him up.\n\nWhen he woke up, he heard a rhythmic knocking. He followed the sound of the wooden fish, and the sound abruptly stopped.\n"Brother, I never thought a bit of warm broth would bring him round. I was sure he'd..."\nA young novice monk approached him, delighted.\nOsmanthus arched his back and growled low in his throat.\n"Leave him be. This dog has been hurt scraping a living out there. You don't reach for him carelessly." A steadier voice held the novice back.\n\nThe dog tried more than once to slip away down the mountain, but each time he ventured a paw past the gate, the two of them would appear with a bowl of steaming broth and set it down on the steps, some distance away.\nBefore he knew it, the better part of a year had gone by.\n\nThe young novice monk had been trying to come up with a mighty name for him, but a regular pilgrim beat him to it.\nThe pilgrim smiled and said that every time he climbed the mountain, the little yellow dog would always lead the way in silence, never barking, never yapping. A dog of few words, and a fine match for this quiet osmanthus courtyard.\n"Let's call him Osmanthus, then!"\n\nLate autumn came, and osmanthus blossoms drifted down through the trees onto Osmanthus's back. He shook out his coat, mildly put out by the sharp sweetness of the petals.\nHeaven's fragrance in the osmanthus; clouds upon clouds of white.\nOsmanthus let out an enormous sneeze, sprawled on the sun-warmed bluestone, and thought drowsily that he hadn't been in a fight in a long, long time.