to laugh, and cry, and laugh again [ Phoebus ]

One minute I was a man holding a month-old baby in my arms and the next I was a stag curled around a tiny fawn in a magical forest that screwed up time too badly for me to even try and explain it.

The sun was bright when I opened my eyes, and I realised we were right where I wanted us to be; beneath the slanted rock against the rocky formations known as the playground. A foot or so away from us lay my masks; one magpie, one long. For a split second I expected to see my sister's mask, left as a gift, a reminder of her - but there wasn't one. She didn't want her child to be reminded of her, of what she'd done.

I looked down at Julia and I knew she was her mother's child. Her pelt was a darker, richer brown, but there was a splash of white on her chest, just like Taliene's. Her back was littered with fawnspots that I knew would fade with time. Something unfamiliar was the complete...fluffiness of her fur, something that her mother had never had. I supposed it was a gift from her oblivious father, whoever he was. Even I wasn't that fluffy.

She looked up at me with my sister's eyes and I felt a lump threaten to rise in my throat. They looked so alike, although Julia was softer, younger - but still simple as my sister had been. For a long time I simply gazed down at this ball of fluff I'd been forced to care for, and I sighed. The little fawn blinked, and her ears twitched as if to rise from their drooped positions...and didn't. I cleared my throat and they twitched again, which meant she wasn't deaf, just...broken.

Perhaps they'd...get better as she grew.

"Hey, Julia," I forced a smile, and turned my head to peer out from underneath the rock. The sun assaulted my eyes. "Welcome to the endless forest, kid." Beside me, the chocolate-coloured fawn lifted herself onto awkward, unsteady legs - they were a lot longer than they should have been, which was somewhat odd to look at, even for a fawn. "Alright?" I rose, too, slinking out from under the rock and into the harsh light. "Come on, Jules."

She trotted clumsily after me, looking quite happy about all of this; she seemed to like the forest already. Her ears hung limply either side of her head, though they did twitch frequently, trying to rise but lacking the power to do so. "Follow me, okay? Follow uncle Rut. That's it!" I couldn't help smiling as she trotted after me, quite the thing with her tail and head held high, proud of herself for reasons I'd never know.

I'd been trying so hard to hate this child because of her mother, but Julia charmed me almost instantly, with her smile and her willingness to follow me around. Every so often as we walked she'd suddenly collide with me on purpose, and to humour her I'd pretend to be knocked off-balance; she'd smile and laugh, kick up dirt with tiny, sharp hooves. Then every so often we'd stop to let her rest, and she'd give a tiny, mewling bleat and push her head against my leg, nuzzling at me.

God damn.

She liked looking into the river, but she refused to jump over it when I tried to show her how. "Come on, Julie! You can do it!" I coaxed and encouraged her, but she shook her head and bleated again, and I decided not to press it. She'd do it one day, I supposed. Someday, when she was bigger, which really wouldn't be too far away now, not with the forest's strange manipulations of time.

Another thing she liked was the Ruins, which made me want to kick things, because god dammit if this turned out to be a creepy obsession in the future and she ended up wanting a skull as a mask I'd probably have a fit. But we neared a certain grave, and I decided that although I wanted to show her Lorak's resting place one day, it would be in the future when she could understand it.

"Julia?" She lifted her head, and I was glad to realise she knew her name. She was obviously older, mentally, already, than a month-old child - in my experience, animals learn a hell of a lot faster than humans do, and forest-fawns are no exception. I jerked my head towards the birches. "C'mon."

As we travelled back to where we'd started off, I thought about my situation. It wasn't so bad, really, was it? I wasn't over-protective; I wanted her to explore by herself, I wanted her to meet other fawns and deer and make friends like the ones I'd once had. But God help anyone that dared hurt her, because even if I was unsure about almost everything else, I knew one thing.

I loved that goddamn kid, and I was going to take on the forsaken role of uncle-dad for her. Not because I had to, not because it was what her mother wanted - because it was right. Because it was something I had to do. Because Julia would snuggle into my fur and make happy little bleating sounds and that told me I was doing something right already.