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Update #3, 10/30/11 (or so): It was a chance meaning
and yet, perhaps no meeting is chance. The unnamed stag and the stag who eluded his full name – they met escaping Halloween celebration that neither could stand. The coming of fog behind them, they sat and spoke.
They spoke of illnesses, and the stag feels his own weariness, the decay of the recent past. But also the own confusion, the exhaustion of his mind.
‘I find you to be quite lucky,’ Bartleby, the stranger, said. And he simply could not see it. But as he thought of that, the unnamed stag could only keep thinking about illness. About how he ran in the forest like an enrage boar, like a monster in the brush.
“I'm...I'm better now. Much better. But the damage is still done... The da..."
He stops as the idea firework-explodes into his mind, revealing itself in a blast.
Because someone, someone, had hurt him. Somewhen, a high and ladylike laughter, ringing in his ears. Something dropping him, slashing across his middle. Some pain in his heart.
And all the while, the roaring and the laughter, flush in his ears, buckling his mind beneath it.
"...Something...Someone hurt me, like a knife in the seat of my soul. And then all there was was hurting."
He didn’t know what it meant, but it was so. That laugh, that drop, had done something to him. Whatever it was.
Update #2, 10/2/11 (Later): A Drink Refreshed Him
At least, it refreshed him enough to let him see straight. He bathed in the pond of the forest, diffusing the exhaustion into the water. How long had he been away? When had he been here last?
A stranger, who didn't linger long after, helped him get his antlers cleaned and white as bone. Stranger. Ha.
