On any other night, she was as all knew her to be. The blue shika doe, her mate the great Wesker, the one all treasured. But on certain nights, when the sky was clear, when the constellation Lupus was in full view, shining starlight upon the doe, she was not herself. No longer was she a doe...she was a demon...

Those nights, Kaoori would steal away from Wesker. She knew about the curse that was bestowed upon certain deer, though only through word of mouth. Those whose herd made a bloodoath with wolf tribes, those who let the most beautiful young does be sacrificed to the wolf gods so that the rest of the herd would be spared...those who disobeyed the pact were cursed on nights like these.

One of Kaoori's ancestors was selected for the ritual, but instead the doe fled, and breaking the oath she damned herself as well as her descendants to the Lupine curse.

This night, Kaoori's teeth grew sharp. Her eyes went black. Her hooves turned to paws. Her body arched and reshaped.

She let out a howl that chilled the souls of the deer around. They thought their Forest was safe. They were wrong...dead wrong...

There were old fairytales that mothers would tell their fawns to make them sleep through the night. The legends told were of wolves that hunted little fawns in the night who stayed up past their bedtimes. The does always thought the old stories were made-up, but this night...

A young fawn wandered off for a drink of water. He left the safety of his mother and found himself alone at the Pond. Bending down, he lapped water, and when he looked at his reflection, he saw a second shadow behind him.

It was too late to run.

The snarling wolf-doe caught him in her jaws, sinking her fangs into his back until it popped. The fawn cried out in sheer agony, but once the deed was done, he no longer felt his body.

Natali adventuring in the human world...naked -_-

The stag sighed, peering in to the water. The forest's magic had changed him a lot. His face was not even a human face anymore, like it had been when he first arrived. His colors, they were odd and unnatural. Even his antlers had been a little changed, blackened.

Iphea wondered what it would be like to change back. He wondered what Roe would think if one day he came up to her and just sneezed a giant sneeze that made everything come loose. All the magic that had settled on him would just disappear in that characteristic puff of blue smoke. He had doubts she would like a deer that was the species found here over the species found outside. But maybe it was just him being... well... paranoid? Could you call it that?

Iphea sneezed. He lay on the ground by the pond for awhile, peering over the edge and in to the water at his human face. It peered back with a forlorn expression, but it was back to the way it had been before the magic, all excepting the color, of course. "I don't know how many times I have changed. Maybe this won't be the last time, but maybe it will." The stag sneezed again, his pelt becoming a suede-inspired brown with white flecks.

Thank the gods he did not shrink.

The beast rose to his hooves and peered around.

"If she finds me, I wonder what she would say."

Iphea traipsed off, peering at the forest, his eyes now in a position akin to predators, though he had always been prey. The stag pressed a hoof to a nearby tree, scraping free some mushrooms and coughing away the mask-spell after he ate them to satisfy the morning hunger in his stomach.

His head slowly raised, nostrils flaring to catch scent, before he moved off to a flower bed to rest among the blooms. Iphea smiled as he rubbed his cheeks in to the flowers, happy to be inconspicuous and naturally-coated among them.