The stag was roused from his state by the thoughts of another. Oh my, have I actually begun reading minds? he mused, before replying aloud in a quiet, gentle voice. "You certainly may. What is it that you request help with? " The beast's ears twitched and his eyes closed briefly to focus. Easily enough he was able to locate the little bat and trained his gaze on the tiny creature although it was far enough away that he could only barely make it out. Why would a bat be around when it wasn't twilight in the forest? Had it missed the chance to disappear with the magic? Of course, Moss had no clue that this being wasn't always a bat, so his mind wandered for explanations while he awaited the animal's response.

The stag was roused by the bat's urgency. The poor thing was probably mostly blinded, and exhausted too. A lot of the time, when the Gods graced this place with magic they would also lower the level of light the sun put forth. Maybe if the bat didn't get somewhere dark he would just fade like De Drinkplaatz magic. The stag rocked to his bicolored hooves in a fluid motion, like that of a ship at sea. He could help this small thing. "I have no desire for reward, little creature. I gain comfort in knowing you'll live another day." Moss assured as he walked briskly over to the tree in which the bat fearfully perched.

Two black hooves kicked up and forward, landing on the bark of the trunk on the shaded side. The bat seemed to be up high, so he didn't want it to have to move very far. If the sun was his enemy, then Moss must be careful. The stag craned his neck up and pressed his face to the tree. "Alright, just climb on and bury yourself in the fluff on my neck. I assure you that it's thick enough to keep the sun out." The stag voiced the gentle instructions in a near-whisper, knowing that the animal had sensitive ears from his experience playing with the magical bats in the nighttime and twilight weather that often came to The Forest.

The strong voice almost didn't fit with the small creature's appearance. He felt the prick of tiny claws and the shifting of his own fur as the bat settled. "As are you. I am lucky to have found such a polite little being to spend a time with, no matter how small. Please hold tightly, don't worry about tugging the fur." He couldn't be more cliché, but that was the way of Moss. Careful so as not to jar the little bat from his hiding place, the deer moved back and reset himself in a natural, horizontal position. Had it been mere months ago, he would have made the earth tremble under his weight, but thankfully enough he had become fit.

Carting the little bat along like a piece of jewelry, the stag walked back to the tree he had rested beside all day. Each hoof was placed carefully so as not to jostle the bat from his warm, soft hiding spot. A smile crossed the white lips of the stag, gentle and caring. After a short distance, they finally reached the tree together. The hole wasn't too far up from Moss' standing head-height, thank goodness. Another thanks to the Gods was given when it happened to also be on the shady side of the tree. I guess this little one is lucky. Hmh. Moss inwardly chuckled as he brought his face close again to tree bark, first peering into the hole to make sure there weren't any other inhabitants. Squirrels and birds were abundant here, and some made their homes in the little holes. Thankfully, this was one just his size and therefore too small for the squirrels and nearly so for birds. Nobody inhabited this hollow knot. [b]"You have made it and the sun is not close. Whenever you are ready, the hole is just past my head."[b] a low rumble of voice made its way to the tiny ears of the bat. He probably would have had a hard time hearing through the cottony fur if the noise hadn't also traveled right through his throat.

The stag smiled as he felt the little animal stir and scurry into the hole. "That sounds very good. I am glad I could help." He replied. The little one must be exhausted. The stag again lay down in the patch of grass he had previously been occupying before the adventure took place. A long sigh escaped him as his head settled on the earth, blowing on the grass that tickled his face. Moss reminded himself to introduce himself later, when they had both had their fill of sleep. He too quickly succumbed to a desire to rest. After all, the heat of the day had finally come upon them and that was enough to make the stag wish to hide from the sun for a bit too. The bat had the right idea.

OOC: I'm sorry for taking so long to reply! Life is fun right now.

The stag held completely still in his sleeping position while he watched the shape in front of him twist and change. The air seemed to crackle with magic around him, smelling overwhelmingly of the bat. At first it stirred fear in Moss' heart, but that soon turned to understanding. A smile replaced the look of fear. Finally, the static in the air began to recede.

Quietly, he rose to his hooves. "That was quite a show. No wonder you wanted to sleep. It must've taken quite a bit of energy to keep yourself contained in a form so small." Both eyes and both ears were trained on Bela. The little bat was now much larger than the Endless Forest Stag. It was interesting how those not from here seemed to work. The black and white animal now knew that this was no ordinary bat born by forest magic. Maybe this would be an interesting evening. All the earlier rest from the day promised tons of energy for nighttime antics.

Moss returned the bow. "It is good to meet you, Bela. They call me Moss. The pleasure was mine to offer assistance." It was odd, thinking that expanding energy might take more energy than holding it in, but that was a new way of looking at it, to be sure. Moss felt the rake of Bela's gaze pass over him, and found himself content when the giant had made what he believed was a discovery. It was hard to tell, though, when his eyes appeared to be blind. As Moss again froze as the vampire turned his head abruptly, he realized that those eyes definitely were not blind. He could hear movement in the distance.
"Should we go see what that is?" It was quite comical, as Moss had no idea what he was getting himself into. He'd learn quickly.

The stag cocked his head at the sudden change in decisions. Did this being want to protect him now? Moss' white ears trained on Bela. "Does it make you nervous?" He motioned in the direction of the sounds. Something was bumbling through the underbrush, breaking twigs and ripping leaves as it went. "It makes me nervous, and that makes me curious." Luckily, Moss was not able to be injured by anything in this forest, or he would have died long ago. Unbeknownst to many here, nothing could harm the stag because he would never harm anything himself. It was a wonderful defense mechanism, but Moss would not test it. He was too much of a peaceful creature to do those things.

The pair didn't have to wait very long until the creature drew close enough to smell it properly. "I suppose if we don't find it, it will likely find us, Bela." He chuckled, a low and warm rumble from somewhere deep in his body. Moss was alright either way, as the curiosity within him grew to fawnlike proportions. It made his eyes sparkle and his soul glimmer oddly. Above his head, his pictogram seemed to mirror his resting heartbeat. The stag took in the air, memorizing the smell of whatever it was that would be victim to the vampire.

The black and white watched and listened. As Bela explained, Moss quietly contemplated on what to say in return. He nodded knowingly as the male finished his forewarning. "If it is what makes you most comfortable, I do not need to watch." His voice was quiet, comforting, understanding. It was a strong difference to the excitement that coursed through him moments earlier, though it held no note of disappointment one expected to hear after such a childish tone as before. Although the being in front of him may be about to do something Moss himself could not necessarily condone, the male could not deny the vampire his life. He would not admit his ability to Bela as of yet. The large being did not ask.

"Do not feel shame in what keeps you alive. We here do need beings like you that remove evil from souls and send them where they can be free of the black stains." He comforted, turning to look at the shadow just beyond the next line of trees. It moved as if it bore a heavy load. Moss, although hating death, thought it may need to be relieved of the burden. He only wished the soul happiness in its next life. He smiled.

Moss closed his eyes the moment the stag departed. He held a giant lungful of air, blowing it out as whispered prayers for a safe journey for the departed soul. The metallic tang of blood filled the air and the sounds of gore filled it, but the words Moss permeated it with were a pure, low rumble that drowned them out to him. "... and let Bela, who takes this life be blessed with sustenance from it and rewarded for he has removed evil from this forest." The end of his prayer was met with silence as his eyes opened. The large stag could be seen in the distance, hovering over the puff of purple smoke that gently was blown away by the wind. The body was gone now.

Moss strode forward to meet the vampire, a smile on his face to comfort the other stag. What a night this was turning into! He looks much better when he is not hungry. Moss mused. "There is nothing better than a full belly, is there?" the deer chuckled.

The stag flicked his tail at the words, watching as the vampire cleaned himself. "I have to wonder why. There are many many creatures here who would eat others." Moss paused, looked down at his hooves, then back to Bela to continue. "If nobody here has been kind to you despite your dietary habits... in five hundred years... then they must be ignorant to exactly what you do and how vital it is to their very own wellbeing." If he was visiting and harvesting the evil souls in this forest for that long, then many generations of forest deer could be the reincarnations of the souls he assumed the vampire had cleansed. That was a beautiful form of balance, Moss thought. Bela took souls, let them be cleansed, and then they could return to better ones later.

He prided himself on always being able to believe things in a positive light. He also was a strong believer in reincarnation since he himself was reincarnated here and could remember it. In a short chain of memories, the stag remembered water. He could hear it close by now. "Would you appreciate cleaning up by the pond?" He asked, looking the giant deer over and noticing several blood spots on his velvet fur.

The stag listened thoughtfully. He was unholy? So he thought. "The only unholy being is one who commits atrocities against others without atonement. Even then, the only being he is unholy to is himself. Fate has ways of enforcing the Golden Rule on everything, kind and unkind." The words came out as casual as a conversation about the weather or trivialities of life. Then again, Moss was comfortable discussing anything. It probably was those around him that created the most fuss. He had learned that some things were taboo discussion, but some were okay.

Motioning toward the sound of running water, he led the way to the pond. The entire surface reflected the moon's glow, with stars dotting the edges. Something about the expanse of water always seemed to draw Moss at night. It probably reminded him of his past life. Without waiting for the vampire, Moss waded in until the water lapped at his ribs and covered his stomach. It was cool and crisp, but felt very good after a long day in the sun. This was even so on a Winter's evening. The stag turned his head to watch Bela.

Moss tried his hardest not to chuckle at the expression Bela held. After living for so long, had he not yet reached peace? No, the black and white stag wasn't gloating. He was also feeling incredulous. Another being broke the surface of the water: a huge koi jumping high in the air after an insect. Fate is ready to stir my memories, isn't it? Thoughtfulness enveloped the deer, seeming to give him more years of understanding than his cervid body had lived. "You have purpose here, as do I. We have both wronged and that has resulted in the sadness of many over years of time. My mind was filled with a similar guilt once, for the one that killed my past self accidentally. Yours, if I guess correctly, is for those you must kill to live?" He looked for any facial response before continuing. "If one understands their purpose, they can finally understand where they are needed in the fabric, what thread they are to follow." Moss quoted that long-ago god that had tended the cloud garden he called home. It seemed like forever ago. Then, it was to comfort the koi when he asked to fly. Fortunately, Fate had given him the gift of his place. Here, he knew what his purpose was.

Moss waded over to the large elk, standing a few feet from him in the icy water. "I'm sure you can figure out where your place is." He smiled. No, he didn't feel it was his right to tell another where exactly they belonged, although he could tell them that they did belong somewhere. He didn't foresee fates. His purpose was much different than that. Soon enough, Moss would be finding out what his true purpose was. That is another story. For now, Moss was content to be kind to one who seemed to need it.

"That is not the guilt I carry. I feel no guilt towards the 'evil' ones. It is what I have done in my past that I feel guilty about," he said stoically. No, the guilt he felt was for the innocent lives he took, the absolute pure and innocent souls. "And I should feel guilty. That is my punishment. There is no repenting what I have done." His eyes bore through the black and white stag, "I do not deserve forgiveness. I am a monster, and I know my place in this world." He said all of these things without emotion and as if they were fact. Moss seemed to be a very accepting stag, but he came from a rare group.

The guilt that consumes Bela is the blood of innocent babies and children on his hands. All for his wretched "Mother." A newborn vampire's obedience to their "Parent" was nearly impossible to break, and while Bela had no control over his actions, he still did it. And at the times his "Mother" starved him for months, she would give him babies and children to feed on. Bela hated himself for this. Purely hated himself.

"I will not tell you," he said, and started to move around him. He told no one of this, keeping these crimes locked away, so that no one may know. All this talk of "repent" upset him, even though his face did not show it. He firmly believed he did not deserve forgiveness, and his two millennia old life only solidified it. Many of the men he devoured killed entire families, so how was he any different? Watching murderers beg for forgiveness after killing innocent people made him sick, and he saw himself as a murderer, but the only difference is that he accepted his cruelty and knows he cannot go unpunished.

"You would not want to know anyway."

The aura of this stag comforted him; innocent souls usually did that, and he considered opening up to him about it. "I do not want to hurt your innocence with my horrors," he said before sinking into the cold water, leaving only his long neck exposed. It shimmered in iridescence in the moonlight, but his reflection was no where to be seen in the water. He slipped his neck and face beneath the water, disappearing completely as the moon's reflection hid him. He was under for a while, but he could not die from something like this, and then his head broke the surface of the water. He rose his body off of the pond floor and stood before Moss.

"I am a murderer."

The stag watched, fascinated, as Bela lay beneath the water for awhile. He missed the ability to stay underwater. It was something he had to give up when he gained his current body. The vampire came up clean, and Moss smiled. His smile did not waiver when the words were spoken. "Yes, you have killed." He responded, believing that had he not the stag would not continue. "I have not been harmed by knowing this." He reassured.

Moss felt one of his friends, koi, brush his hind right leg as a pair slipped around them in a game of tag. They rippled with sheens of gold, white, red, and black as they streaked through the water. They enjoyed nothing but the company of one another, despite any past transgressions either koi could have made. One koi could have eaten the eggs of the other, and they still would've been friends. Moss wished that this type of friendship would permeate the barrier to the world of the deer. Mayhaps it would in the future.


For now, he listened.

Despite the raging storm of the vampire's thoughts spilling forth into the crisp midnight air, Moss remained as calm as he always was. It was almost unnerving to see a creature so calm in the face of one with such pent-up pain. Nobody had to mention that the stag was twice his size.

The moon seemed to make the stag's white face glow as he stood in front of the giant, at eye-level with him though he was sitting. Moss commanded his gentle eyes rest on the face that held all of that pain. He trained his ears on the words that caused all of the hurt inside to create hysteria outside. He just stood there until Bela finished, his pictogram bobbing rhythmically above his head with each breath that he took. "Now you remove evil souls, Bela." He tried his hardest to infuse the words with calm in an attempt to comfort the raging vampire, who for all intensive purposes probably thought he could hurt Moss if he was in this manner. Moss would never hurt the vampire, therefore the vampire would never hurt Moss. It was the way Fate had chosen for one of her rules to be contained in the forest.

"That does not matter because it will not bring them back! They die because I killed them! Their mothers' in hysteria when they found their babies not in their beds!" The vampire was losing it, and started to become delusional with sorrow. "Oh, punish me children and mothers for what I have done to you! I deserve to suffer at your hands! Please, I beg of you to punish me!" he wept to those children he had killed and to the mothers he had made suffer. He was curled up in a ball now, his lower half was still that of an Irish Elk, but his top half was of a man, his skin as black as his velvet fur, and his neck still long and scaly.

A bit of anger was forming towards Moss. Why would this innocent soul make him suffer so? Maybe he was a part of his punishment. But, the anger left as quick as it came at this realization.

After he heard the stag speak, he ripped himself from his delusion. It took him a long while to finally calm himself down, his breathing jagged from sobbing, and his face flush with emotion. The top half of his body started to revert back to his bull form.

He didn't respond to the stag, he just stared at the reflection-less mirror that was the water. Deep down, he wanted those children and mothers to forgive him, but he did not feel like he deserved it. "They will never forgive me, and I do not deserve to be forgiven," he said stoically, his face as stone as his words. It would be hard for Bela to change his mind about this subject; that guilt had rooted itself deep within him and festered for twenty centuries.

.

The stag was quiet and still, just listening to the world and to his current companion. There was not much else he could say to the vampire without revealing what he thought to be fate's plan to clear Bela's soul. Unlike the prophet that told Oedipus his fate, Moss did not know if he even was correct. Even if he wasn't, disastrous consequences could still follow. Who wanted to be a blind, tortured, incestuous murderer anyway? Bela certainly didn't want to be a murderer, that was plain.

"What was it? Despite living here, I have never seen such a creature before." The childish curiosity had returned to him as quickly as the stoicism had taken over earlier. "You seem to be able to be a great many things." He chuckled.

The stag dragged his now sopping form out of the pond. His fur was thick, and like a wool blanket it trapped water. A bit of a shake later, though, and it seemed to have sloughed off most of it. He'd be damp until he could lay atop one of the broken walls of the ruins to dry out in the sun.
"Vampire... I haven't heard this word before. I'm glad to know it now." Moss was always happy to learn new things. Now, he had met a vampire and learned about what they eat and what he assumed they all probably felt like deep inside. He wondered if all of their mothers were so restricting. I am not naïve, he said. Poor Moss.

"What other things do you do, aside from changing forms without help and drinking blood to eat?" Leave it up to the black and white stag to be... black and white.