The caribou walked along, his eyes watching the birds and trees as he passed them by. He smiled at the nature around him here. The Forest was a beautiful place, he was happy to have found such a lovely land.

As he walked, a root caught his hoof. He tripped over it, and his antlers collided with a tree close by. As he straightened up, he realized he had scratched into the tree, leaving a deep in the bark. It was already starting to seep resin.

"Oh I am so sorry! Here, let me help you...", Snowshoe spoke, and using his hooves, he collected dirt from the ground and packed it in the scratches. He did his best to mend the tree so it would be just as beautiful as it was before he tripped.

Happy with his good deed, he continued on. But as he walked, he heard a whisper in the wind. "Snowshoe...I love you, Snowshoe..."

"Hmm?", he looked around, unsure where the voice was coming from. He kept going, his eyes scanning around in case he heard it again.

"Snowshoe...you are my one love..."

The caribou jumped and looked around once again. There was no deer close by. He must be imagining things.

But he felt vines crawling up his legs. Looking down, he saw different plants blooming beneath his hooves. Jumping, he ran, the vines breaking but entangling his legs as they held on. He ran as far as he could, the voice continuing to call him.

"Snowshoe...come back, Snowshoe...come back..."

He wasn't watching where he was going, and his hoof tripped over a root.

He had run in circles. As he raised his head, he saw the tree that he had scratched, but only this time, it had different markings that had been cut into the bark.

His pictogram.

The caribou was unable to get up in time, as the grass and vines entangled him. He struggled to break free, but he was engulfed and pulled closer to the tree.

Just gonna work on some art and prolly stream some video

www.livestream.com/alinaquil88

For Kaoori's contest =]

...and let me love you to death.



We are all terrified of something. We can't help it. The second we step into sentience, into knowing right from wrong, the ability to form words, we start to learn.

Fear comes from memories, really. We start to become afraid when we can remember what it is that we fear.

Perhaps we are afraid of the dark places, the dark spaces beneath our beds, the crack of a child's closet door. Perhaps we are afraid of these things because darkness represents the inability to see, and when we cannot see, we cannot face the unknown.

We are all afraid of the unknown.

Or perhaps we fear the sight of the stars - no, no. It is not the stars that we fear, but the gaping, spanning spaces between them, the yawning darkness that we cannot perceive.

One might be afeared of dreams - because most cannot control that which takes place in that sacred space between waking and sleeping. It's all an illusion, but it has meaning, bearing on our lives. More often than not, we cannot grasp what that meaning is - and that terrifies some.

What if your dreams were telling you you were mad?

Many grow out of their fears. We fear things as children because we are ignorant - and with age, we learn that there are no monsters in the closet and beneath the beds. Over time, we are taught of the planets, the stars, the spanning universes - and while there's something to be said about the thought of all of that space, it's relatively fleeting, in the grand scheme of things. We accept the stars, the huge shapes made of ice, dust, and gas, filling the sky with beautiful colors.

And dreams?

They're just dreams.

And all of these things, they seemed unimportant to a deer like Wesker. He'd been through - and survived - so much worse. Nightmares and dreamspaces, the sprawling of the stars - even the monsters, the skeletons that hid in one's closets? Sooner or later, they all die.

Halloween trade for Scythe.

This will be something eventually.

On any other night, she was as all knew her to be. The blue shika doe, her mate the great Wesker, the one all treasured. But on certain nights, when the sky was clear, when the constellation Lupus was in full view, shining starlight upon the doe, she was not herself. No longer was she a doe...she was a demon...

Those nights, Kaoori would steal away from Wesker. She knew about the curse that was bestowed upon certain deer, though only through word of mouth. Those whose herd made a bloodoath with wolf tribes, those who let the most beautiful young does be sacrificed to the wolf gods so that the rest of the herd would be spared...those who disobeyed the pact were cursed on nights like these.

One of Kaoori's ancestors was selected for the ritual, but instead the doe fled, and breaking the oath she damned herself as well as her descendants to the Lupine curse.

This night, Kaoori's teeth grew sharp. Her eyes went black. Her hooves turned to paws. Her body arched and reshaped.

She let out a howl that chilled the souls of the deer around. They thought their Forest was safe. They were wrong...dead wrong...

There were old fairytales that mothers would tell their fawns to make them sleep through the night. The legends told were of wolves that hunted little fawns in the night who stayed up past their bedtimes. The does always thought the old stories were made-up, but this night...

A young fawn wandered off for a drink of water. He left the safety of his mother and found himself alone at the Pond. Bending down, he lapped water, and when he looked at his reflection, he saw a second shadow behind him.

It was too late to run.

The snarling wolf-doe caught him in her jaws, sinking her fangs into his back until it popped. The fawn cried out in sheer agony, but once the deed was done, he no longer felt his body.

...everyone falls for this, I knew it, I knew it.

Some of them were easy. Some of them were so trusting - and why wouldn't they be? They thought they knew. They thought they knew sweetness and light. They thought they knew a little innocence, a little naivety. A little song, a little dance, a play put on for them to watch while machinations were set in motion.

They really had no clue.

It started with Takeshi - a simple slip, a little accident, a little push, a fall, a sprawl atop a too sharp rock.

Oops.

And of course, there'd been the alligator tears, the consoling touches, the murmurs of reassurance.

It was an accident. It had just been a horrible, terrible accident. She could not be blamed.

From there, it had been nothing but child's play. A pied piper couldn't've played it better.

It was a dirge, a funeral pyre put on display.

The attention she showered on the skull of her once lover bordered on affectionate, for love had never once entered into the equation with him.

"You always thought you were smarter than me," she murmured in an ear that would never heard her again, "didn't you?"

The small doe straightened, looking at the long line of corpses, bloated bodies growing fat with gas. Soon, she'd be able to count the crows that pecked out their eyes.

It was enough to make her smile.

This time? She meant it.

Ich bin seit heute bei tef. und sehe nirgens andere hirsche bitte helft mir