The stag awoke. His throat felt warm, as if there were something important inside. His brain buzzed like a hive full of bees. He blinked, seeing all the patterns in the rocks he had fallen asleep between, and smiled.

The stag rose to his feet in the rocking way all deer did. He flicked his ears, then turned a half-circle to face you casually.

"What do you see in me?"

Asked the being, a voice not only his own. It seemed to carry the tones of another being, though all one could sense was the pictogram of Iphea.

"What do you see in me? My speech is so simple, as if I have no energy to talk. Some times I get things crossed in my brain, and they attain new names. What do you see in someone who hides behind a simple mind? I feel like a false representation. I hide behind simple speech. What do you see in someone too lazy to speak? Hiding behind a guise of stupidity, the guise called Wild Thing. "

"Would you think less of me if I just Changed? If I actually spoke with the eloquence I was born with? Ah, forgive me."

The stag turned back, peering over the red hills toward the Playground. His eyes were troubled, and every breath he exhaled seemed to force more steam from his nose and in to the crisp dawn. He exhaled a heavy sigh.

"Or would you prefer the me that I have shown everyone else?"

He, for a moment, refuses to turn and look at you, but finally gives in with shuffling feet that drag divots in the earth and a look of self-disappointment in his eyes, a slightly hunched stance.

"I am ready."