Authors Note: Metis is a young adult by the time she reaches the endless forest. This is a story I put together for how she came to have the appearance of a spotted owl. I have another story in the works about her ultimately being raised by the owls. Either way, I enjoyed putting this background story together on Metis, and I hope you enjoy it!



It was a warming day in spring in the scrubland. Scrub jays screamed at each other and dove through the brush. Jackrabbits stood quiet sentinel under the shaded manzanita groves, occasionally nibbling the sparse grass they sat in. The air was warm and dry, and the cicadas sang loudly in the silence. It was here, that if one looked for long enough and carefully, that they would see the occasional flash of brown - a mule deer crossing the dry ecotone from the lush creek beds to rest during the warm of the day up above the conifer line. One such deer did so slowly, and with extreme care.

At 15 years of age, the doe might very well have reason to be tired just for the daily move from graze to water, but the bulge in her belly belied another reason. She was old to be carrying a fawn - too old most would say. Yet, she still made the trudge on a daily basis to find enough food for herself and the daughter she knew she was carrying. It was a many mile walk, that she had begun well before the sun had risen, knowing that before long she would need to recline in a cool copse of fir trees. Occasionally she would pause and flinch, swinging her head back towards her flank as she seemed to shiver in the warm spring air. She had extra impetus this day to get to the safety of the woods, but her old bones could only move so fast. She knew today was the day she would see her first, and last daughter born.

The pregnancy had not been an easy one. As a young doe, she had contracted the disease that most humans know as brucellosis. Sometimes fatal, the disease causes the abortion of the unborn.

I have a question for folks out there, and I realize that the answer will be as varied as the person. I poked around for some answers, but didn't really find any answers or ideas.

Bottom line is, I have absolutely no talent with CSS. I know what it is, and I've played with it. If I buckled down (and spent some time on it that is currently coming at a premium or nonexistant), I could probably spit out something that looked halfway decent. Fortunately, my question isn't about CCS, but it is related!

I have noticed that when people make posts about their deer diaries, often they are encapsulated in small CSS made places on the pages specifically made for their deer instead of as a blog entry that might appear under recent posts.

So, here is my question. Combined with the fact I don't have much for CSS coding, how should deer diary entries be handled, particularly for multiple characters? I noticed some of the roleplays are posted separately. Basically, I'm looking for a loose set of guidelines about posting deer stuff without becoming a spam-bot. I'm certain no one wants to read absolutely everything I write as a new post.

One more question... for those of you with multiple characters...? How do you manage them? Separate accounts (which I saw is a tactic used)? What do you use to keep individual characters separate?

Strange, how familiar faces seem to crop up when you least expect it.

Yesterday, at dusk I had found a delicious patch of young aspen to nibble, when I heard the telltale creaking and popping of a tree beginning to fall. Nothing in the forest makes such hair raising noises as a tree that is giving way. I looked around quickly, trying to figure out which tree was giving way. The tree wasn't very big, but it came down directly behind me, startling the living daylights out of me, and like any deer with good sense, I took off like a bullet through the underbrush.

As I was running, I thought I perceived a familiar hoof-beat above the hammer of my own hooves. My thoughts were cut short as a large roosevelt elk stag suddenly sprang into my path. I ran directly into him, and for lack of a better term, bounced off him, and landed helter-skelter in a patch of sword-leaf fern. As I was shaking my head, trying to make sense of what had just happened, the stag came over and nosed me. I rolled one dark eye to look at him, ready to tell him off and realized with surprise I'd seen the stag before.

"Hey there beautiful. What are you doing back in my neck of the woods?" He chuckled in his deep baritone.

I'd know that damnable stag anywhere.

"Delton!" I sighed in mock exasperation. "I should have known. Do you always get does attention by knocking down trees behind them?" As soon as I had realized it was Delton, I knew it was him who had knocked down the tree. He didn't do it out of spite, or aggression... he simply preferred to remove problem trees before they caught the unwary, or young. He laughed, tossing his antlers in a familiar gesture. Otherwise somewhat nondescript for a roosevelt stag, if you saw his antlers from the right angle, they formed a characteristic heart-shape.

"No. Only yours." He licked my forehead briefly. "Can I make it up to you?

Coming back to this forest definitely isn't what I had imagined. There are lots more deer now, and most of them are bigger than me. Oh, that makes me nervous... specially the ones the size of elk... or bigger!

Most of the deer I ran into today charged me, or made fun of me. I didn't even say anything to them!

I'm going to curl up in the ruins, and maybe have a nap. There is a nice wall I can curl up against and be out of the wind and sun. Maybe there will be nicer deer around when I wake up. Hopefully I can get my crown of feathers back too.