Lying nearby was a younger fawn, half immersed in the water. He showed no signs of cold, his dense, short light coloured fur keeping himself relatively warm as he lay with his head propped against the long slender trunk of a tree that had fallen long before his own father was born.
Father? The fawn shuddered in his uneasy sleep. No, he must not dwell on it. The memory to painful to bear, his mind trotted restlessly as he continued to dream. He dreamt of many things that have happened in his so short life so far. The confusing neglect, the shocked reaction and rejection by his own deer now returned in full to the front of his young mind. He sighed, it sounded like a squeaky low growl. He could do nothing for him. His mother, he never even knew.
His breath quickened, his small pale chest rising and falling fast as he dreamt of running. Running so far that he had become lost in the strange new territory that was not anyone’s as no one had yet moved to evict him from the collection of water. The spray of the waterfall that filled the large pond did not reach him were he lay, and he was thankful.
His pale fur glistened in the wetness of the morning. What was not underwater was layered with the morning dew as he shuddered, struggling from the whispers and the silence that haunted him in his sleep.
“Such a odd little fawn, so light and that pelt can’t mean anything good!”
“He’d be a liability! Spotted in a instant by hunters…”
“Who was his mother? He’s a scraggly little thing. Abandoned him so close to us, his own mother did. The indecency to leave! She cannot even raise her own fawn!”
