diary entry from today's frolickings.
image heavy. written in all-lowercase for stylistic purposes, and uh, good luck differentiating between "it" (the deer) and "it" (literally anything else).
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it woke with little energy. the past days in the forest had not been hard but there was an ache in its ribs and a persistent fogginess in its thoughts that would not leave; it would need to rest, no matter how little it wished to. no easy thing to ask of itself; little choice, regardless.
it sat alone a long time, sometimes sleeping, sometimes just-barely awake. it sensed the stillness of the woods around it and knew that very few creatures were moving. like itself, most were asleep; too tired to rise, or busy dreaming, their hearts and minds in some other world while their bodies stayed behind. it let its senses extend outward and searched the forest for a time, its awareness gliding over old pictograms; some seemed familiar, though it had never met them. they were perhaps deer that someone else had met once, someone it might have been once before, long, long ago.
the call of a fawn stirred it from sleep. it lifted its head, surprised but not startled; it so rarely heard the call of other creatures now. usually, the forest felt like a graveyard, or a ghost. a dead thing that does not know it is dead. but the fawn called, and it rose and answered with a bellow of its own, curious, and it followed the sound to the birches and then the deep bowl in the earth where blue flower-fruits grew. there were deer it did not recognise there. it found the fawn and a great giant and it greeted them with delight and was greeted with the same. they cast spells on one another; it cast its own pelt on a fawn and laughed at the similarities.
it felt young again, renewed, and it followed that feeling and let it suffuse its whole body, shaping itself into the form of its smaller friends, and together they played for a while with the giant.
when the fancy took them they bolted off into the woods and it followed, and lingered a while to let someone catch up, and together they met at the white statues that dominated the hill over the pond. a rabbit was there, impossibly big, not so unlike one of the fawns it ran with.
eventually it sat down and rested. it was joined for some time, then left alone, and it was grateful for both the company and the space given after. the ferns by the statues made as comfortable a sleeping-place as any; it lay there and went still and soon it was asleep.
when it woke it felt like itself again. the statues had not moved and it sensed nothing from them, so it saw no need to greet or say farewell. it looked back at them only once and went on.
at the foot of the hill was a familiar sunbeam, grasses golden in the light. it paused at the edge of the bright circle, its hooves just barely touching it, a strange feeling passing over it. it felt like somewhere someone else might have sat, long ago, to think and grieve and rest. it felt like it was revisiting an old haunt. the sleeping-place of someone it might have been, or known, if it had only arrived in the forest sooner. but it was too late for that. the old ones had moved on and there was no use trying to resurrect their ghosts. it let the feeling settle inside it, warm and melancholy, and then it let it pass.
the view, of course, was beautiful.
