What is this before my eyes? The pond bit my nose when I bent to drink this morning.
It was silent and still and hard as rock but it shattered beneath my vexed hoof afterwards
like stone, startling me into a panicked run.

What is this unkind wind that blows through my thin ebony coat? Even the trees of the
forest seem angry. They are turning all red and gold against the sky and all of them
throw acorns and pine cones on top of you whenever you pass too slowly underneath
them. Only the squirrels are happy!











My blood is surging with restless alarm, I don't know why I cannot relax.

The air smells pungent, of many many plants' death with a sharp acridness. A little fur folk
told me that was a thing called Fire that was busy consuming grass across the man's land to
the north. What bad breath it has!

Yesterday, I was drowsing, sunbathing in a mushroom circle. Today, I awoke with a white stinging
powder clinging to my antlers that turned into water droplets as soon as I walked fully out where
Sister Sun could see me.

A passing crow just laughed at me and said, "Ice. Isn't it nice? More food! Less lice!"

I felt sorry for the fawns, for they were shivering in the Change. Is this cold? What my
mother shared in stories during my early times? She said that white biting water
would fall from the sky instead of rain and that would become something through which
we'd have to dig for food. And the wind would bite the noses and eyes and mouths of
anyone foolish enough to forage in what she called a blizzard.





How can that be a trial? Mother said there was never any lightning during the sleeping
time for the Forest. I am strong and there are other folk with me who can run and dig,
and leap just as well as I.

Even the air is muted now, no friendly smells of marsh and meadow, just the slight
stench of dust and growing piles of dead leaves.





I met the Elder stag today and he said that Winter was coming and to eat all I could of
the nuts, berries and green leafy branches that I could. He warned me that snow would
cover the remainder like a soft blanket and hide it from my seeking mouth when I
was hungriest. He said it was tiny bits of hard water, fallen like rain, but lasting and piling
and blinding white like the sun and moon once it gathered like sand onto the ground.






But before the snow yards he said we would build to shelter us from the bitter wind,
Fall would fatten us up quickly. Then drench us in bitter rain that would make the muscles shake
and the eyes burn with chill like fire. Only then did the Elder say that our coats would grow
and thicken to defend our bodies against the sharpening Forest whose green life was going
to hide away to last the long frozen darkness to come.







I do not know how to feel about Fall or Winter. So I am spending all of my time running
from sunny spot to sunny spot or pressed deep in snuggle piles with the Folk with
my head buried deep in what few flowers remain to sweeten my dreams. I am craving
warmth and light and the delightful smells of clover and pine with a kind of desperation
I cannot explain easily.

Even the changed folk are different. I met a flyer bigger than myself tonight in the wood.
I wish I could fly away from Winter like he can.




Good riddance, Forest. I cannot keep up. For some reason you are no longer gentle.