The world was alight with smokeless flame. The beautiful emerald pigment had bled from the landscape. Only the bright gold and blood red of fire remained, accented with the hue of copper and a sky made of cold blue steel. The rut had seemed, like every year, to spark the flame that fueled the death of the landscape, each labored breath of the warriors fanning the blaze. The canopy fell more every day, crackling as it hit the earth... a thousand falling ashes to signal the death of summer. As if the smell of smoke hung low in the air as warning, animals skittered among these fallen emblems in search of provisions to sustain them, fearful for the promise that lay in every single fallen flag.

Autumn was a promise of terrifying beauty ahead. Winter: when the world would be blanketed in ice that glittered like diamonds, and rubies would become a visible sign of death on the ground that no murderer but the season herself could hide. There would be no food unless one stole from spring, digging deep beneath the blanket that hid the incubating season of plenty and pilfering the buddings of what could have been a lush feast a quarter year away. Or, one could simply strip the coats from the trees, killing them in the same way a predator would tear free the skin of his prey, exposing it to the icy cold. In winter, though, carelessness was the only way to get by. None could ignore the need for survival.

Carelessness has for millenia been regarded as a terribly negative feeling. Everyone ignored the gentler side of the term as if it were a blade with no master.

Quietly, a living creature moved among the ever-aflame world that the birch forest symbolized. No chroma of this world singed him, for he was already browned from something greater than the sun's heat. From touching the ravaging fires of fall, his tips were blackened; Horn and hoof. And yet, beneath a protective layer of polished wood and color, incubating purity remained preserved on his white-dominated face. Like the ice of the pond, the young buck's eyes showed a clear barrier behind which the world of spring had paused, waiting on the day of its return.

Behind the eyes of the adult, the mind of the fawn still lived freely. Bits and pieces escaped from visible white areas, from the way that the buck moved with spring in his steps. From the way that he danced past trees and frolicked in flowers with wild abandon, one could see the brighter side of carelessness. Careless beings could be beautiful, and with each new face that greeted the masquerading child, he planned to plant spring's joy in their hearts. The buck was careless toward judgement, toward fear, toward disrespect and toward senseless anger. Though he walked a fine line that threatened to blacken his pale face, the buck still tread with the light steps of a deer at play. Even the keenest of wolves would be aware that there was no catching something so confident and healthy, for he showed the pride in himself like a caribou flying over snow.

War didn't know it yet, but winter would lay in wait; a pack of wolves to stalk him. There were dangers in being careless toward negative things.