((Language warning, also be sure to take advantage of the music when it comes up if you can.))








The transition from spring to summer is subtle in its ways. It creeps with surprising agility, overtaking the fragility of the birthing season only to engulf it in the merciless beating warmth that was the summer months.

Though very much supernatural, The Endless Forest was no different from the other woods of the world. Temperatures rose and fell at a constant, almost rhythmic pace. One day it would sunny and pleasant; the next hot and unpitying.

For a while, the inhabitants of said forest would despise it so long as they clung to their winter coats, their faces, though shaped and molded differently, all pressed into hard frowns.

When they shed their fur, their expressions of distaste give way to happy, gleeful grins of simplistic euphoria. No matter how human-like the deer of The Endless Forest are, even they succumb to enjoying the more tiny factors in life.

Jergens was of no exception. Upon breaking free from his shaggy winter pelt, he grew less lethargic. Every step he took sprung back from the ground in a flash. His coat now carried a short, curly texture to it. The fur on his neck was longer, yet it still insisted to spiral into itself. Such was his ever-consistent pattern.

But by no means was he the regal sort. No, much of everything about him either unkempt or ironically inconsistent. His legs moved with a careless gait. His antler-laden head was held low for comfort's sake. His longish tail swished to and fro with every step. His lips were twitched into a content smile.

Today was one of the nice days, when the weather was calm and relenting to the delicate life that it so nurtured.

Casually, the crimson coated stag strolled along the edge of the forest's only streamlet, his hooves clacking against the pebbled banks. Trickles of liquid seeped up between his toes with every passing step, initiating a reflexive shiver from his leg.

It was a short stream, and it wasn't long before the caribou met the river's source, the endlessly Crying Idol. Without offering her a passing glance, he trotted over to a well-trampled plot of land by an equally well-loved tree, it's bark peeling from being rubbed against.

Jergens plopped himself down next to this tree, flopping on his side to let his back arch around the trunk's circumference, much like a cat stretching in a beam of sun.

Like all other deer, he slept whenever he felt tired. As such, his sleep cycle was rather erratic, not that he had a problem with that. Jergens was the sort that had long bursts of activity that gave way to equally lengthy bursts of inactivity.

As he drifted off, he kept his eyes focused on the back of the Crying Idol, noting how even the small of its back was coated in a slick wetness, providing it with a subtle shine.

He thought to himself, reading over vague things in his head that kept him stimulated.

Though sure enough, his eyelids gently shut closed, and his cracked lips parted slightly.

He was asleep, which for Jergens, a being that thrived on resting within the boundaries of sleep and wakefulness, was very odd.

Still, sleep he did.

Not only that,

But he dreamt as well.


...





...


...


....


He was falling.


He stared up towards a departing sky, his legs curled within themselves, much like an animal frozen in rigor mortis. His eyes were wide with fear, yet, from the back recesses of his mind, he knew that there was nothing to fear.

Even if he were falling in the realm of reality, he wouldn't have been afraid. Life was always, and still was, a constant struggle. At first for his physical need to survive, and now for his mental need to stay sane.

Frankly, splattering against a fast-approaching ground would be better than going insane.

Shell-shocked, he watched as the pigment of the cloudless sky shifted from color to color. First a bright white, then a light, sea-green followed by a deep pale yellow. The color of milk that had set in the sun too long.

He waited until his faux body recovered from shell-shock, then forced himself to roll over to examine the approaching ground below, shocked to find that nothing was there. No buildings. No rolling green fields. Not even a landscape dotted with the bushy tops of trees.

Nothing existed save for him and the simple sensation of falling.

He wanted to move around, to experience it to its fullest potential, yet his body moved slowly. Lethargically.

So, rather than explore his temporary, limited world, he simply rolled himself back over to stare up at the shifting sky. The blending colors lulled him into a sense of ease that nothing horrible was going to happen.

As he fell, he thought.

He thought about seemingly everything there was to think about.

The monotony of the forest... His daughter... Friend... Faith and Rose and every man that he had ever been infatuated with... His sister... his drunk-off-her-ass mother... his starving artist father... the Rottweiler that nearly bit his hand off... Cry... The adrenaline high pleasure of pickpocketing

With a small sigh, he closed his eyes, basking in a sea of swirling air that whizzed past his flapping ears. It was unlike him to bother dwelling on things of the past so much. Long ago, he had learned that moping got a person like him nowhere.

In many ways, he cursed himself for what he had become in the recent months. A sniveling pity-seeker.

He wanted Bartleby back, someone that could set fire to his long-since snuffed tongue... Bartleby would set him straight. Get him to be the jerk he once was. Never giving a damn about people... Always thinking for himself...

...He still did that, just in a way that was no longer likable for others.

Irked, his shook his head. Even in his dreams, nagging fragments of thoughts still clawed and chewed at his psyche...

"Hey!"

The stag's body jolted in surprise. Had he said something? No... but he had heard his voice. That rasping, gritty, horrible voice that he had been so blessed to mature with...

He opened his mouth to speak, yet he found that all sound was lost within the tornado of air about him. There was no sound...

"Over here, man!"

There was such life in that voice! Such energy and youth! In a way, it had a brassy quality that sounded nothing like the stag... but it was still him. He knew it was.

Jergens turned his head to the left, lips parting in a soundless gasp as he saw himself lounge comfortably next to him. No… not just himself...

His human self.

The curly, red-headed man was grinning devilishly at him, arms nonchalantly crossed behind his head. He wore that same army-green hoodie that he had loved so much. The color well-faded from long exposure to the sun.

A catch of light, and the stag saw the unmistakable glint of silver from the man's ears. Yes... he remembered those... Rose had once taken him to get his ears pierced. Little silver hoops... He recalled it as being one of the gayest things he had ever really done.

"C'mon... what's with that surprised look? Ain't this a dream? Ya know damn well that anythin' can happen, right?" he chided, wiggling his eyebrows in mock resentment.

The stag just dumbly stared back, completely astounded... In many ways, he had long since forgotten what he had looked like before he had died.

The man frowned for once.

"What happened, Jerg? Ya used to be on-top of the ball... I know a lot of shit has happened a while back, but that's the key word, 'a while'. Don't ya remember the 'Jergens Way'? Hell, I know ya do. Yer still Jergens, yer still as much of a raving ass as I am..." the man's lips couldn't help but brighten into that cheeky smile.

"He's right."

Startled, Jergens flung his head to the right, staring straight into the human face of Bartleby. His heart contracted into a knot of discomfort seeing him... he had forgotten what Faith had once looked like as well. A petite, deathly pale man.

"I'm not sure how to explain it... but... you've become so beaten-down that you only seem to want to get half-way back up." he softly bit his lower lip, moving thin, vein lined hands to fiddle with his coat. "People want to help you, but you have too much pride to accept it. The Jergens I knew did whatever he could to get that help..."

The frail man faced back to the color-changing sky, letting his eyelids closed as he took a shaky breath of air.

"I remember when we were all together... You, me, Alaska, Malware, and even visitors like Kylar and Code. I remember how we would always pretend to hate each other... You only did it to humor me... I was afraid... I didn't want word of our relationship going public. I remember both of us finding it to be a game to see how dramatic we could get... And I remember the long nights when you would deny every statement you made that day. I remember how selfish and conceited you seemed... but in reality... you were probably the most selfless person I had ever met. You knew I was going to die, yet you stayed with me, even if it hurt you."

He turned back to the stag, olive eyes dulled over with an unsettling air about them.

"The Jergens I knew didn't wallow in self-pity. Nor did he make others miserable with it." he mumbled distantly, lost in his own thoughts.

"Hey, we're gettin' close to the bottom now... Take a look!"

Jergens, feeling a brief shock of panic, snapped his head back up, staring at the sky for a quick last second.

Its color had stopped endlessly changing. As if satisfied, it had faded into a dark, familiar blue...

Unthinking, he rolled back over and stared at the ground, eyes widening in panic.

There was no landscape to greet him, just a void of black mist. It clouded up, bubbling and rushing to meet them. Trickles of playful darkness coiled up and faded away. It as if they were falling into a witch's cauldron...

He looked to his right, and saw that Bartleby was no longer there.

The other Jergens, seeing the stag's discomfort, chuckled warmly in reassurance.

"Don't worry bout' Faith... He's up there." he pointed upwards towards the dark blue sky. "I'll go up there too once I get ya close enough..."

Confused, the stag raised an eyebrow, to which the man smiled in response.

"Don't worry... It's only black cause ya can't tell what's gonna happen. Happens to everyone who ain't a fortune-teller... But it'll all clear up once ya get down there." his smile twitched into a frown as the darkness sped closer and closer. "Look... I gotta go now... but as corny as it is, don't ya ferget, okay?"

With a flourish, he grabbed the stag's hoof and halted their escalating falling to a stop. Jergens expected pain from the uncomfortable hold... for his human self to drop him and let him be consumed by blackness... but nothing of the sort happened. He felt himself dangling on the edge of oblivion with the man holding him effortlessly by the hoof.

For the last time, the stag stared up at his human self, drinking in his past appearance. Committing it to memory. His lips moved... yet he still could not speak.

The man grinned.

"Good luck~"

He felt himself being let go.

And then being eaten by the unknown.














---

He has already been changing into a representation of what he once was.
This finalizes that change.

...

I hope I'm not the only one that understands this...