Genres
Fable
A succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, whose anthropomorphized animals, plants or objects lead to a moral lesson.
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features anthropomorphized animals, plants, objects, natural forces or legendary creatures, and illustrates or leads to a particular moral lesson, sometimes stated explicitly as a maxim at the end. The non-human cast separates it from the parable, which uses human characters. Aesop, a legendary figure said to have been a slave in ancient Greece around 550 BCE, is the western exemplar; India's Panchatantra and Jataka tales and Africa's Anansi stories run the same engine in other traditions.
Like the fairy tale, the fable belongs to folklore without the sacred weight of myth. For serial writers it is the oldest proof that brevity plus a moral is a complete story: a whole arc, cast and payoff in a single page.