real water to drink

[wowenglish1]

I would like to know the meaning of "I could have had real water to drink"


One moonlit evening a fox was passing by a well in the forest of a foolish wolf. The fox looked down the well and mistook the moon reflected in the water for a round of cheese. Leaning on one of the buckets used for raising water, he lost his balance and went rashing to the bottom of the well. The other bucket, which had been in the well, went flying up, as the bucket that held the fox went down, down, down into the water. “So that’s what the bucket was for,” the fox said under his breath. “I could have had real water to drink instead of imaginary cheese.”

[BobK]

The narrative is a bit defective. There was a bucket at each end of the rope. When he went rUshing to the bottom of the well, he grabbed the top bucket - so that his fall caused the bottom bucket ('the other bucket' to rise. So 'real water' is just that - the actual water that he could have pulled up from the well. (I haven't come across such a 'dual-bucket' well, but the use of the phrase 'the other bucket' implies that it was one.)

b

[rlfwood]

The term "real water" is in contrast to the cheese, which is "imaginary".