The Priest

So minuscule, fragile...I do not want you harmed. I will protect you...
You! Get away from that fawn! You can only harm, beast!
And you, foolish doe! Run, back away, coward! Taunt not when you are not brave enough to face me!
Cold. So cold, like the touch of the little one long ago. Frigid liquid pooling about my hooves, gripping, pulling.
Hot pinpricks nettling into me, stabbing, pushing, but I cannot get away. Trapped, not alert, waiting for the inevitable.
Red, bright, garish red, nothing like my pelt, no, dripping, falling, mine, his. Heat joins the cold to pool around my helpless feet.
Please, do not get hurt. I will give my life for yours, little one. I will not let him hurt you.
Then it all falls away.
Slipping, slipping, falling deeper, dragged under by the cold, slipping away from the heat, gone, gone. I can see the light far away, tinted blue. I can see the bubbles caressing my body as I fall deeper, deeper...
Kick. Paddle. Break the surface. Stumble forward. Feel the slick mud. Collapse.
Black.

How can I describe the darkness that followed? Smothering, it was, a killing blackness like maple syrup. Is that a memory from long ago? Yes, I remember it. So faint now, so far away, but bright like a candle in this darkness. I cling to it, remembering.

The brothers are spread throughout the trees, working in silence only punctuated by the sharp sound of pounding hammers. Thump, thump, thump, like a heartbeat. Thump, thump, thump.

It is beautiful. The trees, long barren, have grown new life. Buds spring from every branch, flowers litter the ground, and birds sing their lovely songs.

The little boy is sitting by the pails, waiting for something to happen. One brother motions him over and he leaps to his feet, gripping a bucket. The brother directs him to place it on the peg that now sticks like a thorn from the tree. He does, watching intently for something to happen. It doesn't, but the brother pats him on the shoulder. Merevin looks up at him with a confused sadness in his eyes, but the brother only keeps his hand on the little child's shoulder.

"These things take time."

The light slips away. I reach for it, but it is gone. Instead, I struggle with the darkness. I fight and fight, trying to escape that which covers me completely. I cannot, so I surrender. I let it take me, wondering where the Gods were...
I suppose they were with me, then, for they appeared. I knew precisely why. I had disobeyed them, after I had sworn to them to never again harm. I might swear that their glow was cold and hard.
They said nothing. They needed say nothing. The apparitions that appeared behind them said everything that they did not.
Slowly, forward, forward they came. I could see them, coated in every wound my antlers and hooves had given to them. I tried to flee, but there was no escape from this.
I recognized each of them. Aegle, that beast Wesker, the foolish doe Kaoori, Darkweaver, the one they had whose name they had whispered as "Baal"...Yet more torture only followed behind.
Bastillion. Amary. The small fawn I had tried to protect. Shem. Perhaps there were more. I do not know; I could only focus upon the figures in front of me, heads bowed, covered in rivers of red, opened and angry wounds upon their thin bodies.
"Amary...? Shemes...? Bastillion...?...I did not....I did not..." They only raised their heads to look upon me with pain-hollowed eyes. So empty. Had I hurt them unintentionally...?
The worst was Amary; so deep was despair in her eyes that my heart broke for her. I could no longer take it, no longer take the specters staring deeply into me, begging me to see. The Gods looked on, cold light shining like distant stars. I could not meet their gaze, could not meet the gaze of any deer.
I felt my legs go limp, went along with them, head facing into the darkness. I could not see them, though they continued to stare at me, piercing my pelt with their eyes. I sensed more figures, figures unlike deer join them. I knew them, of course, knew what I would see.
I did not look up. I did not have the strength.

Later on, the boy returns to the grove of maples with his brothers in the faith. They remove the pails, one by one, staring at them with satisfaction. Merevin stands to the side, looking lost. The brother from earlier notices and motions him over. Merevin smiles and runs through the florid growth.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he removes the pail. Amber liquid, thick and sticky, fills the pail. He looks at it with amazement, then looks up to the brother, then down again. The brother takes it from him.
"You wouldn't want to drop it, would you?"
The look on the boy's face is so filled with despair that the brother sighs and smiles the worn down smile of a patient mentor.
"Alright. Just be careful."
The boy runs off with the pail, eyes glowing like little fires. He promptly trips over a rock, spilling the syrup and looking at it with dismay. A tall, imposing brother looks down at him from the tip of his nose, scowling in dismay. The boy looks about to cry, but another brother comes to him, whispering and encouraging. Merevin gets up to walk with him, carrying the now-empty pail.
"Brother Matthias." The tall, imposing one turns to the other brother who had given the pail to Merevin.
"These things take time."
It was the only time Brother Matthias smiled.