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Lismore => Stories => Topic started by: fawn on September 17, 2011, 08:34:34 pm

Title: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on September 17, 2011, 08:34:34 pm: (http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b84/CheMonro/fawn-sep11_001.jpg)

Memories
The Story of Fawn, a Woman of the Deer People
PART ONE: SLAVE

I was born in a little village in the deep forest. My mother was the doe Gaia, my father the buck Hades, a great prince of the forest. It wasn't a village like the rabbits or human folk build, little houses all crowded together, but rather a loose collection of long houses scattered for two or three miles along the river. Each longhouse was home to one buck and his many does and fawns. Deep in the heart of the forest our little river valley seemed secluded and peaceful. We grazed in the meadows, gathered and baled hay for the winter, worked in our gardens and at night we all slept together in one big warm pile in the middle of the floor.

The only conflict came when one of the young bucks came out of the forest to challenge Hades for his herd, then they would charge against one another and butt heads. But Hades was strong, and nobody could defeat him. He was husband and father to us all. When the male fawns grew old enough to show points Hades would drive them from the compound and away into the forest, other than that it was peaceful, day followed day like we were asleep, like nothing could ever change.

I lived with my mother, my sister, my aunts, we were all very much the same. We all smelled the same. My mother's only worry was my twin sister Hope, who was born with a lame leg. Mother was afraid she would be unable to run fast and so she'd be caught by a predator and eaten. She would rub potions and poultices into Hope's leg, and give her special weeds to eat. They didn't seem to help, but Hope grew, and she would struggle and hop and limp along and keep up with us more or less. She had always been that way, I took her for granted, and assumed that she always would be.

Every fall there was a week of rut, a season of challenges and battles and mating, then in winter and spring we would be pregnant and in high summer we would give birth. In my first season I gave birth to a fawn... who's name I have forgotten. Indeed I can't be sure if they were male or female. Hope must have given birth too, but I forget. I have forgotten much, even now, much just trails back into the darkness and is gone. Sorry.

Next year I gave birth to and suckled two does, Demeter and Persephone. Then the next summer I gave birth to a buck and a doe, Marduk and Tiamat.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on September 19, 2011, 02:20:36 am: Marduk and Tiamat of course slept with me, wrapped in a bundle of rags. It was late summer, a season of over-ripe fermented fruits and thick grasses. In the evening the crickets called and fireflies floated between the trees. At night we slept.

I was awoken by the smell of smoke, the sound of screams and shouts. Still half asleep I grabbed up Marduk and Tiamat and ran for the door but it was already too late. A male, a wolf, in armor stood before me blocking my path. He raised his mace and clubbed me to the ground. I dropped the children. Stunned, I tried to get back on my hooves again, I could just see flashing pulses in the darkness. Through the pain I could just make out the male, he stooped, picked up marduk by his hind legs and swung him towards the wall.

There was a terrible sound, a terrible cracking sound as his head hit the wall and a splash, a terrible bright splash of blood across the plaster. "No!" I screamed and I jumped towards him but he clubbed me again and I fell back on the floor. I think he hit me again. I'm not sure. I passed out.

When I came too the male was gone, my babies lay roughly against the wall where they had been flung. I crawled over to them, but they were both dead, and already starting to cool. Above us was that terrible splash of blood, that terrible splashing curve of blood, I can still see it in my mind's eye. I think I will always see it.

I knelt over my dead babies then, licked them tenderly, and cried. I think something broke inside me that day, and I became two people, one who wanted more than anything to live, and one who wanted more than anything to die.

After a time they dragged me away from my children and took me outside and started beating me. "Call me Master, cunt," a leopard snarled, hitting me with a stick. I put my forelimbs over my head and tried to protect myself. The whipping hurt my body, bright, stinging, flashing slashes of pain, but the pain inside was worse. I looked down on myself, saw myself cowering on the ground, heard myself "Master! Master! Please stop!" It was like it was happening to someone else.

The males laughed at me, kicked me a few times, pulled my forelegs behind my back and tied them up with rope, that hurt too, then they threw me to the ground among a huddle of other broken prisoners and moved on to the next.

I don't know how long I crouched there. The shouted orders to each other, set fire to the long house and the sheds and outbuilding. I could see bodies lying around, and in the distance there were other fires burning in the darkness. Then they pulled us to our feet and tied us together in a line. They were preparing to march us out.

"Hey, this one's no good, her leg's busted." A fox shouted. He pulled Hope out of the line.

"Take her over there," a wolf gestured to some bushes. "And deal with it."

"No, please!" I shouted. "She'll keep up! She'll keep up!"

The wolf just brandished his club at me and I cowered, and curled up, Goddess help me, I turned away, and whined. I didn't want to be hit any more. The wolf laughed, a cruel, cold, snarl of laughter. Hope looked at me, her eyes pleading: Help me, Fawn! Then they pulled her away behind the bushes and that was the last time I ever saw her.

Then they marched us away through the forest, hooves tied behind our backs, roped to each other, stumbling and falling, branches slashing at our faces in the darkness, while behind us our home burned.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on September 20, 2011, 02:05:51 am: Dawn broke over the forest. They marched us through the trees until we hit a trail, then down the trail till it joined a road. Already we were further from my birthplace than I had ever been, and I wasn't sure if I could find my way back.

Morning light revealed our attackers to be soldiers, warriors. They were cats and canines and foxes, led by wolves. They weren't all flesh eaters, there were bulls and bucks and boars among them.

At the road they told us to sit. Other soldiers arrived leading their own lines of prisoners. There weren't just deer but other forest dwellers: foxes and rabbits and shy jungle cats. I strained to see the faces, some I recognized, but some were missing. Hades, and my mother, Gaia, I never saw again. I don't know if they escaped or perished.

In the clearing along the road the numbers grew and grew as the morning wore on. This wasn't a small raid, or a disorganised one; it was a business.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on September 24, 2011, 01:12:45 am: We waited there all day while more and more soldiers and their prisoners turned up. I was glad to rest as my body was bruised and aching. That night they fed us with hay from their supply wagon, the carnivores got dried meat, the same as the soldiers who had captured us, it seemed. There was no kindness in this, it was practicality: they didn't want us to be too weak to sell.

It was especially frightening being enslaved by flesh eaters, in addition to the fear of being beaten was an instinctive terror that they would eat me. I wanted to run away into the forest but I didn't dare make an attempt. I knew what would happen if I did: They would hunt me down and hurt me or kill me.

That night I sank into a deep sleep of hopelessness and exhaustion, every part of me hurt. When the morning came they roused us, fed us, then cuffed us to our feet and got us moving down the road. The road wound down through the hills, and down along a river valley and into open fields. I had never seen country like this before, so flat and green and open. We camped that night by the side of the road, and then marched on in the morning.

The fields were worked by gangs of workers guarded by overseers with weapons. None of it made any sense to me then. That night we camped outside the walls of a town. There was a strange smell in the air, tangy, like salt. Later I was to realize it was the smell of the sea. Next morning they marched us into a dusty square and sold us, in lots. We stood on a low platform, still roped together while carnivores in fine colorful clothes argued in a language I could hardly understand. Trade talk, numbers.

Afterwards different guards marched us away, over a bridge and along another road. The road was sandy and I could still smell the salt somewhere nearby. We turned away from the road and crossed a stream on another wooden bridge. then we were among bushes I didn't recognize, identical bushes planted row after row in straight lines. We came to an open space, they pushed and shoved us into a wooden shed and locked the door behind us.

Inside it was dark.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on September 26, 2011, 03:58:14 am: They had shoved food in with us, a bale of hay, a bucket of potato peelings, and stale crusts of bread. It may sound like scraps to you, but to deer it was a feast. I had never eaten as well at home, a deer could get fat on this diet. There were no carnivores with us, I guess they hadn't bought any. Carnivores make poor field hands.

In the darkness I found my daughters, Demeter and Persephone. We embraced and cried together.

There was a small fire pit in the middle of the floor and the coals gave out a soft red light. I crept towards it, then stopped as I smelled the figure crouched over the fire. Wolf. Old female wolf. I began to back away.

She turned to look at me and saw my shivering. "Don't be afraid of me, girl. I won't eat you. The masters don't buy slaves just to have them eaten, you're safe from that at least, for the most part. Come closer, come, I won't hurt you. Let me get the scent of you. Hmmm. You're injured aren't you? What's your name?"

"F-Fawn."

"Ha!" She gave a bark of laughter. "Someone was being original. Fawn. Sit by me, Fawn, and let me see to your wounds."

"Who are you?"

"Shadow. The masters have forgotten that old Shadow was here, most likely. Now come, sit, sit..." Somehow I scented that I could trust her, and I sat, still shivering, as she applied a stinging balm to my cuts and bruises. "There. You're young and healthy. You'll live." I was almost disappointed to hear it, but she was right, my wounds healed quickly. Shadow had healing paws, everybody went to her with their troubles, even some of the mistresses.

"What will happen to us?" I asked.

"Hmm, oh not much. In the morning they'll brand you and then put you to work. Field hands, I'd be thinking."
"Field hands?"

"Work, in the fields. Growing plants."

"Oh, yes." It was work I knew, that was reassuring at least. Shadow moved me aside and treated another. I didn't know what branding meant, but I supposed I would find out, on the morrow.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on October 01, 2011, 04:36:54 pm: So in the morning they branded us. They dragged us out of the shed one by one to a small fire in the yard where they did it, branded a mark on our right shoulders with a hot iron. Here, you can still see it, a "W" mark like two fangs, that's the mark of the wolf clan, my owners.

What? Did it hurt? Yes, of course it hurt. I screamed. But mostly I just remember what a beautiful day it was. I seemed to be looking down on myself as they did that thing to me, noticing how green the grass was, and how earthy the ground smelt. It was a bright, soft morning, soft white clouds floated in the morning light, everything seemed filled with a crystal purity and beauty. Yes, I remember thinking it was a very beautiful day.

When they had finished they marched us away to the fields. The mark on my arm hurt, but the iron had cauterized it and stopped it from bleeding, and it healed well. Shadow put a salve on it that evening which helped.

So they put us to work. They got us started on weeding, which is easy work for a deer, our teeth were made for pulling up grass and plants, and some of the weeds were good to eat. It was good to sink into the mindlessness of the work, to forget who I was and where I was, and why I was here. The day rolled on, the sun moved across the sky.

About noon they stopped and let us rest and drink from a stream. Shadow hobbled up and flopped down nearby and caught me staring at her legs.

"Eh? Ain't seen that before, have you girl? I was a great runner when I was your age. A great hunter. You wouldn't know it now, would you?" You certainly wouldn't: she was an old wolf woman, her muzzle fur patchy and white, and she hobbled and limped about, her ankles were terribly scarred. She took a pull from a water bottle she carried.

Nobody questioned Shadow, she was part of the scenery. She nominally worked out in the kitchens, helping out with the cooking, but whenever anyone was hurt or sick they sent for her, even some of the Mistresses, so she could pop up anywhere.

"That was how they caught me. I went a long way, hunting in the forest, further than I'd ever been. I was a great huntress in those days, the shadow of the woods. The local tribe caught me in a net and dragged me down to town and sold me. They brought me here and... of course I ran away."

She chucked dryly. "When they caught me they did this to me, cut my legs. I couldn’t run after that."

I stared at her in horror. A wolf or a deer that cannot run is a fearful thing, half alive, worthless. To do that to someone deliberately...

"Ach, stop with your staring, girl, it was years ago. And you have to get back to your work."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on October 05, 2011, 01:26:32 am: And so our lives fell into a regular pattern, at night locked in the shed to eat and sleep, by day working in the fields tending the coffee and other crops. You can buy coffee in the market or the Inn here. It’s expensive, but even if I had the money I would not drink it because I know how it is grown. It is grown with the blood and sweat of slaves.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on October 10, 2011, 02:18:08 am: Then, after weeks or months of slavery came my first rut in captivity. This aspect of life has always taken me strongly, almost like possession, and afterwards I have few or no memories of what has occurred. I sometimes think it is like I have another personality that comes to the surface and expresses herself only in these times of unbridled passion. I woke up afterwards in darkness, black and blue, covered in bruises, every muscle and bone aching. Although I could remember nothing, it was clear that someone had used me and beaten me up while I was in the throes of rut.

Sometime later I miscarried twins, and fell into a fever and only Shadow’s skilled nursing kept me alive. Or... was that later, after my time with Master Claudio? I... I’m not sure. I lost everything for so long, and when it came back it came in bits and pieces, flashes of memory. Sometimes I wonder if I just made things up. I’m sorry.

After this, I think, I went into a decline. I lost my will to live, or maybe I’d lost it long before and just found impossible to pretend any more. I forget. I don’t remember much about those months. It seemed to be dark all the time. I remember the fear. The fear of being hurt. And the not caring if I got hurt. If that makes any sense. I remember wanting it. I remember wanting to die.

Then some food was stolen and the other slaves accused us. It didn’t make much sense because we were well fed, over fed really, but looking back I don’t know if anyone there really knew that. We were wild grazing animals, our stomachs were different to most of the animals there. We could have survived on the weeds we pulled up tending the plantation, we didn’t actually need the food they gave us, but as slaves it was one of the few things to look forward to. Then some bread went missing and the others pointed the finger at us.

I don’t know what possessed me, but I tried to explain it to the guards, to protest. Before I knew it I was on the ground and blows were thudding into me like lightning bolts, making my vision flash. Then everything seemed to fade away to a very far distance, and I thought “This is it. This time they’re going to kill me,” and I just wanted to let it go, let it all go into the darkness...

I may have passed out. At some point I became aware of a voice, deep and commanding, male, giving orders and asking questions and demanding answers. “Take her to my quarters. Send for the healer woman.”
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on October 13, 2011, 09:57:58 pm: I half woke up as Shadow tended to my wounds, tutting and hissing softly and muttering under her breath. I was lying in a strange dark place that smelt of stone and dirt. I was lying on soft, warm rags and there was a fire burning nearby. I hurt. I slept fitfully through that night, my right foreleg hurt and I couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep. In the morning Shadow pronounced it broken and splinted it and put it in a sling.

She lectured me for talking back to the overseers, telling me I was lucky to have gotten off so lightly: they had intended to kill me as an example to the others. Master Claudio had stopped them.

“Who’s Master Claudio?” I asked.

“I am, girl.” He stood in the door, a tall grey wolf, dressed in a long flowing robe, impractical for work. Shadow bowed to him, and following her lead I struggled to my feet and did the same, then winced as it hurt my arm.

“Easy, easy,” he said, coming over and laying a paw on my shoulder, he tutted as he looked me over. “They beat you up pretty badly, didn’t they? Oh well, perhaps you will learn the wisdom to think before you speak now, hmm? What do you think, Shadow?”

“She will make a fast recovery, Master. Her arm is broken but it should heal without any lasting injury. She is young and strong and asks intelligent questions. She will serve you well.”

“Yes, hmm, well, very good. I am pleased.”

“Thank you Master,” Shadow intoned. I echoed her. Master Claudio left and we were along again.

“Who is he?” I asked. “Why did he stop them from beating me?”

“Who knows?” she growled. “Wh o knows why the Masters do anything? He’s Master Julio’s brother.” Master Julio was the head of the clan. He owned the plantation, and all of us. It was his mark I bore on my arm. “Master Claudio has returned from the army and Master Julio said he could choose any slave he wanted as his personal servant. He chose you. The house slaves are all hopping mad, they think it should have been one of them. You’ve been very lucky.”

“Lucky?” I whimpered with laughter. How could anyone think I had been lucky?

“Yes, you have moved up in the world above many who think they are more deserving. And what exactly have you done to deserve this?”
I looked down at her severe tone. She was right, I had done nothing to deserve this fortune, good or bad. “I don’t understand,” I muttered. This world was bewildering, all blinding pain and sudden, explosive violence.

“Then you’d better learn,” she whispered. “And quickly.”
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on October 22, 2011, 05:05:47 pm: And so I came to serve Master Claudio. He had been away in the army for many years and he had risen to the highest command. In that time he had handed the enemy, of whom I knew nothing, so many defeats that they had sued for peace. With the coming of peace Claudio had left the army announced he would retire to his family's farm and study philosophy.

Claudio had taken up residence in a villa at the edge of the plantation. I was his slave, I cleaned the house, laundered his clothes, and cooked his meals. Cooking was the hardest part because he ate meat, I couldn't touch the dead flesh without thinking of the spirits of the animals who had once possessed it. The smell made me want to be sick. I managed the best I could, but I do not think I was ever a great cook.

Master Claudio treated me much better than I deserved. He spoke to me as an equal, talked about a great many things he had learned or was reading. It was all highly improper: On the plantation slaves were regarded as objects to be used, like livestock, not equals to be talked to and asked their opinion. In truth I think he must have been lonely, having retired from the army and the life that he loved and entered a voluntary exile, he found that he didn't enjoy the solitude as much as he had thought. So he talked to me instead.

A couple of Mistresses came to call on him in this time, seeking advancement and a family alliance, but he gently explained to them that the rigours of war had left him unready for the responsibilities of fatherhood at this time, so they went away again.

He would read to me parts of what he was studying, although it was often had to understand. I could neither read nor write and the tenets of philosophy seemed a long way removed from my life. He ordered me not to touch his books, though, or tidy his desk, after he caught me eating some of his discarded notepaper.

Master Claudio encouraged me to start a herb and vegetable garden, which throve in the sunlit courtyard of the villa. He didn't eat many greens or vegetables, being a wolf, but they made wonderful food for me.

Eventually the real thief was found. He was a house slave, a half-feline named Petros, important enough to have his own small room, as I now did as well. He had no apparent need to steal, he was well fed and well treated, trusted with responsibility, but when his room was searched they found a treasure trove of food and tools and clothing and jewellery, all the things that had been going missing for months, maybe years. He didn't seem to need most of the things he'd stolen, or have any use for them. It made no sense to me.

They strung him up in the courtyard of the main house and assembled the entire household to watch his punishment. I stood by Master Claudio, far away across the open ground I could make out my work gang and my daughters. I don't know where Shadow was, but she must have been there somewhere.

They had Petros strung up from two poles. Master Julio said some words about stealing and how it was punished, then the guards started beating Petros with heavy whips. I shuddered, watching his life bleed out and spatter on the ground. I closed my eyes, but I could still hear the thud of the whips on his back, and his screams, which gradually subsided into grunts and gasps. When I looked up he was hanging there unconscious, but they were still beating him, it went on and on and on. It could have been me, I thought. It very nearly was me.

Master Claudio slipped his arm around my shoulder, embracing me. That simple gesture of comfort could have gotten me into serious trouble if anyone had noticed. "Right View," he whispered. "Is to see things as they really are. To understand the nature of suffering and it's causes, and to have compassion."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on October 25, 2011, 09:21:52 pm: Master Claudio always treated me with kindness and consideration, although I was only a slave. It made me feel strange, self concious: what did he see in me that made him, apparently, value me so much? I could not understand it, but slowly I grew to trust him. It seemed odd, having such feelings for a male.

One morning as I was returning to the villa with fire wood a hulking figure stepped out from behind the corner of the building. It was one of the guards, a massive short faced hyena with dirty white fur and a bad smell. "Sweetling," he snarled. "Remember Growler, do you? Have good time again, yes, my little deer chew toy..."

I dropped the firewood and tried to back away, but he grabbed my forelimb. "No! Let me go! It's not that time of year!" I protested, and I struggled, trying to shake him off.

Growler was massive and his grip was like iron, my struggling just seemed to excite him, and he leered at me actually drooling. Was he going to rape me, or eat me?

"Not very friendly, little morsel. Last time was friendlier, no?"

I stared at him. Last time? I remembered the bruises and, bite marks(?), that had covered my body after my last rut. Had I actually mated with this monster? I could remember nothing, looking at him made me feel sick, but just the same sick feeling that looking at any slavering predator gave me.

"Let me go!" I screamed, but he just pulled me closer.

Then Master Claudio was there. "Release my slave," he said in a low, commanding growl.

Growler hesitated, then tossed me aside as he turned to face Claudio. "She ask for it," he snarled. "She wanted it."

"Touch her again and you will regret it. She belongs to me. Now go."

Growler saluted and snorted, and turned and huffed off, muttering to himself.

Then I was in Claudio's arms, crying, and he held me and stroked my fur. "I hat them!" I hissed. "I hate them all and I want to kill them and kill them and kill them all!"

"Don't hate them, Fawn."

"I do! I hate them and I want kill them so badly it hurts. I want to hurt them for what they did to me. But.. I'm too weak to. I'm too weak."

"Fawn, you aren't weak," he whispered, licking my face clean of tears. "You are stronger than you know. Don't hate them – that's their game. Hatred just eats you up from the inside until there's nothing left, so don't hate."

"I'll try not to, Master."

"Good girl," he whispered. "I never want to see you hurt again. I hope you will never have the need to hate anyone."

"I'm sorry, I'll try."

He held me close, his fur was warm. I rested my head against his chest. He spoke softly, "Right intention is to do no harm, to have good will and compassion for everyone."

"Even the haters, Master?"

"Especially for them."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on October 27, 2011, 02:46:28 am: My memories of that time are like a black night, split and illuminated by flashes of lightening. Shadow awoke me in the middle of the night and dragged me out of bed.

"Wake up, wake up. Persephone, her baby, very sick. You must come, girl." I remember it like it was yesterday, but was it before or after the incident with Growler? I'm not sure, but I think they both happened. I'm almost sure.

Shadow took me a small clearing in the forest that fringed the plantation. Light turned the eastern horizon milky, it was almost dawn, and I could see the others faintly. Demeter and Persephone, crouched before an idle roughly hewn from wood. Her figure was vague, head, breasts, round pregnant belly. The Great Mother, the Earth. The sick baby lay on the ground before her, and we murmured prayers. The Great Mother loved children, and looked kindly upon slaves and women. If anyone would send healing, she would.

We knelt and murmured prayers and begged for her assistance. The strange thing is that I obviously knew the child, I was probably present at her birth, but I have no memory of it whatsoever. Persephone had named her Hestia, but in my own heart I liked to call her Hope.

Suddenly Persephone broke off from her prayers and began to wail. "She's dead! She's dead! My baby is dead!"

We huddled forward to embrace her, but she would not be comforted, her grief, aching, endless.

Shadow spoke softly. "This child is not dead."

Persephone would not listend, she struggled free from our grasp, screaming wild accusation. We had killed her child. I had killed her child. I had caused the attack on our village because I would not let her talk to the outsiders, the strangers, the ones who might have taught us how to fight back.

She continued to scream and rave. She would not pick up her daughter or even look at her. Something had broken in her head. It was only with the greatest difficulty that we dragged her back to the work gang before the day's work began.

Little Hestia survived and got better. Demeter took her and raised her with her own babies, her mother would not have anything to do with her.

Was there any truth in Persephone's ravings? I do not know. I don't remember any outsiders or strangers ever coming to the village before the attack. I don't remember any of the things she speaks of. But my memories are incomplete and fallible. Maybe, in some way, I was responsible. I don't know.

Demeter and Persephone turned up years later, having made their own ways to freedom, but they never spoke of their children, and until now I'd never remembered them, or thought to ask. I do not know if they are living or dead.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 01, 2011, 10:59:35 pm: The first I knew of it was when I heard the snarls and growls and went to the kitchen door to peer outside and see what as going on. What I saw made me shrink back into the shadows. Master and a younger wolf were facing off in the clearing in front of the house.

The younger wolf screamed and leapt as Master, then they were tearing at each other with their fangs, rolling over and over in the dirt, I raised my hooves to my mouth, terrified that he'd be hurt or killed. I had no idea what it was about.

I learned later that one of the females Master had refused had taken offence, and now her younger brother was here, filled with rage and pride, to avenge the perceived slight to the honour of his clan. From a deer's perspective it seems like a strange way of doing things – we're used to males fighting over the right to posses the females, rather than the right to not want to – but these were wolves and they lived and died by their own rules.

In any case the result was two grown male wolves snarling and slashing was one another with their mouths. I was afraid for Master Claudio, but I need not have worried. While they were both trained warriors – Wolf clan males spent most of their time exercising and training for war – the youth known as Grey Tail was a stripling fighting for his pride, while Master was a veteran soldier who fought for survival. There was no contest, Master brutally and efficiently brought the challenger down and broke his resistance.

Beaten, Grey Tail lifted his muzzle to expose his throat, and called for, demanded the killing stroke. Instead, Master touched the young wolf's throat with his paw, tenderly, like a lover. "There is no dishonour in this," He said. "You fought fairly, and were beaten fairly. I do not want your death, Grey Tail. Go home. Right Action is to refrain from violence and killing."

Master called Shadow and she tended to the cuts, bruises and bite wounds of both combatants, and eventually Grey Tail limped away home. I think he joined Master in the war the next year. Master's brothers in the wolf clan said admired his cunning, avoiding having to pay the blood money Grey Tail's death would have cost. But I do not think that is why he did it.

*

Every morning after he had completed his exercises and his short sword drill, but before he had broken his fast, Master would sit for a while on the ground in front of the villa. When I had done my morning chores, lit the fire and fetched water, gotten his morning meal ready and made his bed and gotten everything in order, I used to go and sit with him.

It was quiet and peaceful, I could sense it would be wrong to disturb him. Eventually, though, I grew brave enough to ask: "Master, what is this sitting that you do? What is it for?"

He smiled. He was the kindest wolf I have ever known, really. "It is just sitting, Fawn, a way of focussing the mind, learning to see things as they really are."

We sat there together and I looked down at my hooves, they seemed new, as if I had never seen them before. They were black, round, cloven in the middle, my hoof fingers were out of sight, safely tucked away behind the hoof horn. Above them my brown fur ended in a slightly uneven line, individual hairs continuing down over the surface of the hoof, then thinning out until there was just horn, rippled and patterned with lines of grain, down to the gentle curl at the base of the hoof, nicked and broken with minor scratches and cracks.

As I watched the detail in my hooves got greater and greater, individual hairs and patterns and rivers of hairs flowing together. The curves, the individual uneven curves of the quick underneath the line of hair and the unique flowing parallel lines of grain of the hoof nail. These were my hooves, unique. They had never been quite like this before and they would never be quite like this again. The fineness of the detail was incredible. My hooves were worlds to themselves. Worlds within worlds within worlds...

Time passed.

After a while Master got up, indicating the end of the sitting. I got up as well. He turned to me and smiled, and said "Right Mindfulness is to exist in the moment, to be gently and compassionately aware of all things inside and outside ourself."

I don't know if I have ever managed that, but I find that sitting and concentrating my mind on my hooves, or my sitting helps me to find calm and peace, to know who I am, to find my spirituality, my centre.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 05, 2011, 02:35:20 pm: Fall. Harvest time. I carried load after load of produce from the garden into the house. Then there was the storing, drying and making jams and preserves. We hadn't done much of that at home but Shadow was a wealth of knowledge, having used many of the same techniques to preserve medicines.

It was a busy time, full of work and activity, but a happy time was well. The year was over, the harvest was in, and there would be plenty to eat over winter. Master liked to sit and watch me work, a silly grin on his canine face. Wolf clan males don't do any work as we know it, they spend their time training and preparing, studying for war, or else relaxing and socialising with the other males, drinking, gambling, hunting. They are warriors, not workers, that's why they need so many slaves.

He liked to sit and watch me work. "Right Effort," he said, "Is to eliminate all harmful thoughts, words, and actions."

"I guess you've got that pretty much down, Master," I replied. "Since you never do anything at all!"

He stared at me, absolutely gob-smacked for an instant, until he realized that I was joking. Then he laughed and smiled nervously. There are some things a slave just must not say, and if anyone else had been present he would have been forced to punish me. "Oh Fawn, what would I do without you?" Then he sighed and shook his head. He stroked my cheek with his paw, tenderly, as if I was precious to him. "This speaking out of turn has gotten you in trouble before. Please don't give me a heart attack by doing that again."

"Yes, master."

"We each have our part to play, Fawn. Right Speech is to tell the truth, but refrain from idle, harmful, angry or divisive words."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 05, 2011, 10:37:23 pm: Late Fall. I'd been feeling restless for several days, but I hadn't quite twigged what it was. It's funny how these things can still sneak up on you. One morning I woke up and everything was different, there was a new taste in the air. Suddenly I knew what I needed. I went to the yard where Master was exercising, and went over and pressed myself against him. I ran my snout up and down against his soft fur. "Mmm, you smell good..."

It took him a while to catch on, I suppose my scent gave it away, a doe in heat smells rich and musky, intoxicating.

"Oh Goddess," he growled. I could feel his body responding, becoming aroused. "I can't..."

"Please," I said. "You want to. I need you. Please."

"If not me, then who? Not Growler..."

"I need you." I rested my head against his chest, inhaling his scent, his maleness, feeling the need. "I need you."

He licked me gently. "Against necessity, even the Gods contend in vain."

We locked ourselves in the house. I believe we must have made love for three days. The softness of his dark fur against mine. The warmth. The darkness. Memories.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 13, 2011, 01:42:11 am: From there everything seemed to go very fast. One day a number of males came to see Master, to talk him into going back to the army. They were secluded in his room for hours, arguing. I didn't deliberately eavesdrop, but I couldn't help overhearing some of what was said – and shouted. A slave learns to use whatever sources of information she has simply in order to survice.

When they called for food I took it in, but I keep my eyes and ears lowered. Even now it is still frightening to be in the midst of so many hungry carnivores. But they paid me no attention, grabbed the food and went back to their arguments while I fled.

The wolves argued and drank late into the night. I fell asleep by the fire in the kitchen. When I woke up it was morning and the house was quiet. I did my morning chores and went outside to just sit. Master finally emerged and did his martial exercises.

Detachment and serenity evaded me that morning as I watched the sunlight gleam on his fur as his body flowed into postures of attack and defence. Was this the last time I would see him? He came and sat with me in silence for a while, then he said, "Well, you are obviously dying to speak, Fawn. Out with it."

"Will you go with them, Master?"

"I wish I did not have to. Right Livelihood is to abandon trades that harm people or other living things. But I must, little one. The enemy has broken the peace, if they are not stopped it will be terrible for everyone. Sometimes you must do things you would rather not, for the greater good."

I didn't want him to go, but what could I do? I helped him to get his kit together and pack. Then we stood in front of the house and he embraced me. "There is only one more left to tell, Fawn: Right Concentration is living every minute in full concentration of mind and body on Right Mindfulness, Right Effort, Right Livelihood, Right Action, Right Speech, Right View and Right Intention."

I was hardly listening. "Will I ever see you again, Master?"

He kissed me on the forehead. "I will return for you, Fawn. Wait for me." Then he turned and I watched him march away forever.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 15, 2011, 12:53:11 am: For a few weeks they let me look after the house and keep things tidy. Maybe they thought Master Claudio was coming back soon. Maybe they just forgot about me. Eventually an overseer came and collected me and took me out to to the fields to work with the others. At night I slept in the shed again. By now my pregnancy was beginning to show.

Later I heard that Master Claudio had been killed. The family declared a period of mourning. I mourned too, silently.

I gave birth in high summer. Shadow attended the birth, she took the babies away without letting me see them or hold them. She told me they had been born dead, twin boys. No doubt she was only doing what she was told to do. Perhaps she thought it was for the best. I believed her. I was not to know for years that she had lied to me: My little boys were alive.

After that my memories become very confused. I lost the ability to speak for a time, I was so sad. People spoke to me and I couldn't concentrate long enough to make out what they said, let alone reply. I remember Demeter and Persephone talking about me, concerned, but it was too much effort to follow. I was numb, my soul bruised.

Somehow I got confused. I couldn't remember if I had had one miscarriage or two, and over it all hung that terrible arc of blood spattered on a wall. It seemed as if nothing but death had ever come out of my womb. I began to have this terrible suspicion that my time with Master Claudio had been a delusion: a wish fulfilment fantasy that I had imagined in order to make life as a slave bearable. There were two versions of reality in my head and I could no longer tell which one was true. I was too tired to care. I wished I was dead. I numbly wanted to survive.

I don't remember very much of this time. I got sick, I had a fever, and a cough that wouldn't get better. I stumbled to work. I stumbled back again. I had little awareness of anything outside my own misery.

One day they separated me out from my daughters and the other slaves and pushed me over to join a group of worn out useless old slaves sitting by the side of the road. They marched us into town and sold us. Guards made me kneel by an anvil while a smith put bands of metal round my neck, and my fore and hind hooves, threaded them with chain, and hammered them closed with more metal. I watched on numbly, seeming almost to see myself from outside.

Then they joined us together into a long file, joined by a chain, and marched us to the dock and up the gangplank onto a ship. Even in my dazed state the stench hit me – piss and shit and dirt, and death. It made the very air feel filthy. I had no time to look around, they marched us down into the pitch black hold, and chained us onto narrow benches in in the foul smelling darkness. I wondered if I would ever see the light again.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 15, 2011, 10:44:02 pm: Darkness. The sounds of many bodies breathing, talking, shouting, screaming... I was dying of thirst, lying in the darkness, my muscles ached, the chains pinned me in place. After three weeks the metal had rubbed me raw around my wrists and ankles and neck, wounds that festered in the stinking air.

I couldn't move. I longed to stretch, to run. I longed to clean myself, to bathe. I was covered in my own filth. My cough persisted. I slept as much as I could, until I couldn't sleep any more. Then I woke and I was still lying in the stifling darkness, chained, unable to move. I moaned. I shouted for help. I begged. I screamed. It made no difference.

I tried to occupy my mind. I silently repeated the things my Master had said to me. Who cared if they were real or not, they were better than this place. Right Intention is to have good will and compassion for all, I repeated to myself, over and over. Right Intention is to have good will and compassion for all.

The little male who lay next to me had a different mantra. He was some kind of a squirrel. "We're in Hell," he said, voice croaking from thirst. "We're in Hades. We're in Hell. We've died and gone to Hell. We're in Hell..." The male on the other side kicked at him and screamed at him to shut up, but I don't think he could by that stage. He died soon after that.

Sometimes I still wake up with his voice in my ear. "We're in Hell..."

Every day they would drag us up on deck and give us water, feed us a meagre ration of biscuit, and fore us to dance with the threat of blows. It was bizarre. We stood on the deck, blinking in the bright sunlight, weighed down with heavy chains and danced and shuffled while our tormentors kicked us, prodded us with truncheons or laughed.

It grew hotter. Days, weeks passed. The wind died, the ship was becalmed, we sat and rocked on the top of the sea, going nowhere. People began to die. Every day when we were up on deck they they would cut the dead free, hack them loose from their chains and throw their bodies overboard. Gulls swooped and fought over their remains. The stench was indescribable.

Then disease struck the ship. Everywhere the slaves packed in the hold were coughing, puking and pissing. More and more bodies were thrown over the side. I remember feeling weak on one of the last times they dragged us up into the light. I was burning, burning up with fever, chained on my board in the hold. There was more space now, many had died. I found it hard to breathe, ever breath was an effort, I would fall asleep and wake up choking. I couldn't sleep, I couldn’t breathe, it was getting harder and harder.

Goddess, I whimpered, if you get me out of this I will never hurt another animal as long as I live.

There was no reply. I burned. I struggled for breath, I fought, I grew weaker, I whimpered, dying of thirst, I would have screamed, but there was no energy left for that, every ounce of strength went on drawing another breath, and then there was no strength left. I needed to breathe. I couldn’t breathe. Pain exploded through my head and then I seemed to float in the darkness. Mother, I give my soul to you.

I died.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 16, 2011, 11:32:24 pm: I floated above my body, looking down at myself, a surprisingly familiar feeling. Although it was pitch black I could see myself clearly, curled around the chain, lips drawn back in a snarl as my body had exerted every effort in a vain attempt to draw one last breath.

Some time later they dragged my body up onto the deck, attached to the still living slaves by chain and collar. A half naked lemur used a machete to slice off my hooves and tossed them over the side. He hacked off my head with several messy blows. It smashed against the rail and splashed into the sea and sank out of sight. He hauled my body free of the chains and threw it over the side as well.

The shocking splash of cold water reunited my soul with my body. I was sinking into the water, the light gradually receded away above me. I could see the shape the ship made in the water as a shadow, a silhouette, gradually getting smaller and smaller. It got dark. The light faded, and faded, and faded. It was gone.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 16, 2011, 11:33:31 pm: Memories

The Story of Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People

PART TWO: Maiden

Darkness. How long did I float in darkness? Seconds? Hours? Days? I don't know: time has no meaning when you're dead.

At some point I became aware of a voice calling my name, and I was enfolded in warm embrace. "Mother?" I asked. It was my mother, she smelled like my mother, more than that, she smelled more like my mother than my mother had: warmth, milk, babies, hearth smoke, fresh bread. She smelled like the essence of motherhood.

"Fawn, I'm sorry." The kindness and sorrow were evident in her voice. "It wasn't supposed to work out like this. I wanted to help so badly, but I couldn't. I'm sorry."

"It's alright, Mother. I know it's not your fault."

She sighed and I nuzzled her breasts, I must have been about the size of a newborn, and I must have had a snout, and a head, and hooves. Everything was black, I couldn't see her, but her smell, and the kindness of her voice, that was truth.

"I can't tell you how it hurts, Fawn, watching what people do to each other. Wishing you could help, wishing you could save just one..."

"Can't you, Mother?"

"It's not allowed. There are rules. Even I cannot interfere."

"I'm sorry."

"Fawn, my sweet Fawn, it's so good to hold you again. I've ached for you. My daughter. My own sweet Fawn. I'm so proud of you...." She rocked me in her fore-arms, cradled against her breasts while I was subsumed in an infantile bliss of warmth and love and satisfaction. "Fawn," she asked softly. "I must beg a favour from you."

"Anything, Mother, it is yours."

"Please hear me out, sweet Fawn. I have a little chance to help out here, the merest crack through which to show my love in the world, but only with your help. Would you agree to go back?"

"Go back? What?"

"Go back to life. Go back to the world. For me. There is still work for you to do."

"But I'm useless. Weak. A complete failure at anything I ever attempted."

"You are my beautiful Fawn, and I love you. I want you to go back into the world and share my love with others. There is... just a chance it may be possible."

"I will, if you think... If you want me to."

"I do."

"Then I'll do it."

She licked my back and sighed. "It will be hard. To be parted from you, but necessary. To give you back life I must take something of equal value from you. I'm sorry, but rules are rules."

"Anything."

"Let me see, perhaps I can fudge things a little. I will take your memories. So much suffering, they would just make you unhappy." My memories, it seemed almost a relief to be rid of them. Hardly a great cost. "And I will take your magic."

"Magic? But I don't have any magic."

"You never used it, so you will never miss it. Farewell, sweet Fawn, till we meet again."

She breathed life into me, her breath flowing into every part of my body, bringing it to life. It hurt. Suddenly I was thrust up into the light, splashing through the surface and gasping for breath. It hurt. Drawing breath hurt, everything hurt.

I was floating on the sea, everything was moving up and down, waves towered over me and then swept me up and over the top. I saw a flash of green, and instinctively I paddled in that direction. With the last of my strength I clambered aboard, a log, a tree trunk, rolling low in the water, leaves still green. I coughed my lungs up, then lay on the trunk, gasping for air. I was alive?

The breeze tugged at my fur, chilling me. Against the horizon I caught a glimpse of a forest of canvas sails, filled with air, a ship, sailing briskly towards the horizon. I was too tired to even lift my head. Already half unconscious I embraced the trunk and felt utterly exhausted. Who was I? What was my name? How had I come to be in the middle of the sea? What was going on?

I couldn't remember. I slept.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 19, 2011, 02:56:05 am: Hot. Thirsty. I woke up, the sun glaring in my eyes. My back was burned, painfully, I winced as I touched it with my hoof pad. I scanned the horizon. Glaring sun, reflected in blinding water. There was nothing. The tree trunk rocked gently in the swell. I slumped against the bark, then crawled up to find what shelter I could from the now wilting green leaves.

I took a mouthful and chewed on them, they were fairly tasteless, but perhaps some moisture remained in them. I took another mouthful, then another, then slumped again, rolling on my side to shelter my back from the sun. I closed my eyes for a moment. Sleep claimed me.

*

A burning furnace. The sun whirled towards the horizon. I couldn't move, couldn't reach the leaves. Was I going to die here without ever learning my own name?

*

I gasped as I awoke, whimpering from the pain in my burned skin. It was dark. A dim figure held a gourd to my muzzle. "Drink this," a feminine voice said. "You're dehydrated. Drink." She didn't need to tell me twice, I drank the water in big gulps, it tasted incredibly sweet. Life seemed to flow into my body. She touched my skin and I whimpered with pain.

"You're all over burns under your fur. You must have been adrift for days. And there are scars. Let's see what I can do." She raised her paws, and they began to glow, a soft blue glow. I lay looking up at her, even in the dim lamp light in the hut I could make out that she was white, pure white, a most unusual colour, I hadn't seen anyone with fur like that before. She smelt catlike, but not quite, a half-feline, perhaps. Some kind of hybrid.

She closed her eyes and lowered her paws to touch me and coolness flowed out across my skin, delicious liquid coolness that seemed to suck all the pain out of my burns. I sighed with relief. Then she turned her attention to the scars around my wrists. They were rubbed raw. Her paws glowed, she touched my scarred wrists and... the glow suddenly blinked out.

"What the?" The white feline muttered. She tried again, building up a strong blue glow, touching the scars, and the light instantly blinked off and was gone. "That is really odd. I've never seen anything like that before."

"I'm sorry," I croaked. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing to worry about, I'm sure." She got me another gourd full of water and I drank it as greedily as the first. "My name is Naurel, what's yours?"

"I ah..." I strained, there was nothing, a faint whisp of thought or memory, I grabbed for it, and surprised myself. "Fawn? I think...? I'm not sure." Was that really my name?

"Fawn. Welcome, Fawn. You've been a few days in the sun, it seems and looks like you've got a head injury too. Let me see if I can help." She bade me to lay still and tried the glowing thing on my head, but again it just vanished. She was trying to heal me, I realised, the light that had miraculously taken away the pain of my burns had no effect on my wounds at all.

Naurel tutted and shook her head. "You are quite the mystery, my friend. Where did you come from, Fawn?"

I shook my head, bewildered. "I don't know. I don't remember."

She examined me closely, the raw wounds around my wrists, ankles, and neck, now some days healed through immersion in salt water. The brand on my shoulder, and old whip marks, the raw wound on my head seemed to give her the most concern. She tried to heal them all. She muttered in her frustration. "You have less manna than a rock!"

Then she remembered her bedside manner and smiled. "I'm sorry, I can't seem to do anything more, you have a very unusual aura, but you do seem to be healing naturally. Rest until you feel better. Maybe another healer can help you. " This was modesty, I learned later. Naurel was the best healer on the island, and if she couldn't heal someone then they couldn't be healed at all, most probably. "Do you remember nothing at all?'"

"No, nothing, I, I, who am I?"

She hmmed. "Well, perhaps that is for the best, or... perhaps you do that very well?" She looked at me for reaction, and, getting nothing but a confused doe-eyed stare in return – what on earth did she mean? - continued. "It looks like you are a slave?"

"A slave? Me? Really?"

"Yes. You bear a slave brand, and your scars may have been caused by manacles and an iron slave collar. I've seen plenty of them before."

"I... But... where am I from?"

"I don't know. But you can't stay here."

"I can't?"

"No. You can't. The Captain would make you a slave again. Can you walk? Are you strong enough?"

"I think so?"

I tried to get to my feet, but nearly fell, and she had to support me. She let me out of the hut, supporting me. It was night time. She led me out of what appeared to be a small village, up a bank, through some trees, to a wooden post set in the ground, where a shadowy figure waited for us. Naurel handed me over to him. He was male, a wolf, his smell was oddly reassuring.

"Her name is Fawn," she told him. To me she said, "This post is the border," Naurel said. "There's a line of them right across the island. Stay on the other side: There is no slavery allowed there. Don't come back onto this side or Tibur will enslave you again. I'll come and see you in a few days."

"I – I thank you..."

But with a nod to the wolf she had turned and strode off back down the hill was only a distant ghostly shape vanishing among the trees.

"Come on." The wolf supported me and led me on through the trees and out into the open grassland.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Shadow."

I laughed. "S-someone wasn't being very imaginative." For some reason it struck me as amusing.

He just shrugged. "It's a common name among wolves."

I leaned on his shoulder and he helped me to stumble onwards, I was already feeling a little stronger, the night air revived me. We skirted the shadow of an enormous solitary tree, and and some tumbled blocks of marble, and came to a circle of tents around a fire. A few furs were seated there and looked up as we approached, nodding greetings. Shadow led me to a tent. "You can rest here tonight. Sleep." I lay down on the bedroll he indicated, wincing as the pressure made my head wound throb, but I was so tired I was asleep almost before I closed my eyes.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 19, 2011, 11:18:19 pm: Sunlight was flickering in my eyes, filtered through branched and cloth. I opened my eyes. I felt better, my head didn't hurt as much. I got up carefully and poked my snout through the flaps of the tent. The camp was pitched in the shadow of an immense tree, a real forest giant, but solitary, in the middle of a sea of grass. All around there were tumbled and broken blocks of stone that looked centuries old – an ancient ruin. There was a pretty young black and white female wolf poking away at the fire. I watched her for a moment, then she turned and smiled at me. "Hello sleepy head!"

"Um, Hi, I'm Fawn."

"I know. Shadow said. He found you. And that pirate healer's been. She said to let you sleep. You slept for two days. She said she'd be back to check on you tomorrow."

"Two days?" It didn't seem possible.

"Pretty nasty knock on the head, I reckon. My name's Bundy. Shadow's my mate."

"Pleased to meet you. Excuse me, I'm bursting!" I staggered behind the tree and relieved myself in the first bushed I found. Exhausted by this effort, shivering, I came back and sat by the fire. Bundy pressed a bowl of porridge in my hooves. I licked it cautiously, it tasted sweet and oaty. Suddenly I was ravenous and I lapped it down like I hadn't eaten in days. I guess I hadn't.

"You were a slave, right?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"You've got a brand, and scars from manacles. Seems pretty obvious."

"Yeah."

"Well, we don't have any slaves here. Welcome to the Holy Island of Sanctuary. Welcome to freedom!" I smiled at her, or at least tried to. Despite sleeping for two days I mostly felt tired. My body just couldn't seem to get going. I felt weak, old. Sick. It was hard to raise enthusuasm for anything. Luckily Bundy had enough for two. "See that line of posts up on the hill? That's the border. On the other side they have slavery. On this side we don't. Stay on this side."

"Yeah. The healer said. I'll stay on this side of the fence."

"Good! Don't let anyone talk you across, or entice you, or pick you up and drag you. Scream for help. They have done this before."

"OK. Thanks."

"I'm going to go hunting now. Will you be alright?"

"Yeah, I might go for a walk. Graze."

"Take a basket and bring in any food you find. Everyone shares, everyone contributes. That's the rule."

"I will."

"Good girl! I can tell we're going to be friends!" With that Bundy grabbed her bows and arrows and bounded off into the forest, pausing to smile and wave. She was... bright. She shone in the sunlight, full of life, while I felt half dead.

Perhaps a walk would help. I found a basket and headed off into the forest, away from the border, at a very sedate pace. Even so I had to keep stopping every twenty paces or so and lean on a tree or sit on a log. I was weak. I cropped some sweet tasting grass, chewed on some clover, and munched on a few juicy milk thistles. This island was rich, I began to realise. There was grazing here for herds of deer. This could be a paradise. I found a few mushrooms and dug up a bunch or sweet potatoes. I found some parsley and basil and added them to the basket as well.

I walked back to the camp, still having to stop occasionally and catch my breath, but at least I was walking on my own hooves, grazing for myself. I felt like a whole deer again, however sick. There was nobody at the fire when I got there, it must have been mid-morning. I set the basket down with the other supplies and curled up on a mat beside the fire. The sack dress I wore smelled foul, I realised I had to clean it, and bathe, but I was too tired to move. I closed my eyes, just for ten minutes.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 21, 2011, 01:19:48 am: When I woke up it was late afternoon, and people were drifting back to the camp. Lots of unfamiliar faces staring at me, making me feel uncomfortable. To cap it off Shadow cane in carrying a deer carcass over his shoulders, dumped it practically at my feet and began cutting it up.

"Ewwwww!" I protested, backing off. "You poeple are disgusting!" I turned and ran from the smell of blood.

Bundy's cries pursued me. "It's not a thinking deer! It's feral. We have to eat, you know. Fawn, come back, we're not barbarians!"

I just kept running. Once a frightened deer starts to run it can be very hard to stop. It was difficult terrain, I had to keep jumping over fallen columns and dodging around tumbled stones. The ruins were more extensive and more recent than I'd thought, the foundations must have covered several acres.
Once it must have been a mighty temple, now it was just broken heaps of stone. Weeds were just beginning to grow up around the marble: they'd only been on the ground for weeks, perhaps a few months.

I darted into a hiding place and stopped, concealed between two stone slabs. I rested there, panting. My legs felt like jelly, I knew they would ache later, but just now, despite my shortness of breath and spinning head, it felt good. I had run so fast! How long had it been since I'd run like that? Who knew! It felt good to run. I was a deer, I was made to run.

I froze, and held my breath. There was a voice nearby, and splashing. Animals taking a bath. It didn't sound too threatening, but you could never be sure. You could never be sure about anything.

I peered through a crack in the stone, and a screen of weeds. A bear was sitting in a pond, bathing himself and singing. Actually it was some kind of bath, cracked stones surrounding steaming water, part of the ruined temple complex. The bear didn't look threatening, he was a kind of honey blonde in colour, and fluffy. He looked more like a toy you'd give to a baby than a half tonne predator. I was still getting used to the range of colours of the people on the island. The time was to come when a pink wombat or a rainbow hued wolf wouldn't make me blink an eyelid, but in those early days a fluffy, honey-coloured, singing bear could make me wonder if I'd wandered into a dream.

"Hello!" he called, having spotted me. "Come and join me! I'm Sandy."

I poked my head up and regarded him seriously, then stepped closer. He honestly didn't look like much of a threat. "I'm Fawn. What is this place."

"This place? It's the temple. Well what's left of it. At least the bath survived." It was indeed a proper stone bath, set in the ground, fed by a steaming volcanic spring.

"I do need to bathe, and wash my dress. Do you think anyone would mind if I did it here?"

"Mind? Heck no, why should they mind. Here." He tossed me a cake of soap, popping my fingers out from my hooves, I managed to catch it.

"Alright," I pulled my dress off and looked at it. It was just rough undyed cloth, perhaps some kind of sacking material, caked with salt and blood and filth and substances too foul to imagine. It looked like the best thing to do would be to burn it, but then what would I wear? I shoved it into the water and swirled it around till it was completely soaked, pulled it out and attacked it with the soap until it was all white and foamy. Then I shoved it back into the water and squeezed and pummeled it, filling the warm bath with a dirty grey stain. Then I pulled it out again and slapped it vigorously on the rock several times. Then I repeated the process. After a while it seemed cleaner, and several shades lighter, so I hung it over a bush to dry, then hopped into the water to clean myself, watched the whole time by the bathing bear.

"Where are you from?" He asked.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I don't remember. Anything."

"You don't remember anything at all? How did you get here."

"I washed up." I had a sudden flash in my mind. A ship. A terrible terrible ship filled with darkness and screaming. I'd been on the ship. "I-I think I was on a ship. They said I was a slave. I don't know." That silenced him temporarily, at least. I washed the filth out of my fur, being careful around my healing wounds, but longing to feel clean again.

The bear, Sandy, made a pathetic cub-face at me. "Wash me?" he begged. "Pweeease?" I looked at him. Who could resist a face like that? I went over and scrubbed soap into his fur, then rinsed and kneeded and scrubbed him clean. I don't know if that was what he expected, but he submitted to it meekly enough.
I was about half way through when Bundy showed up. "There you are, Fawn. I've been looking everywhere for you!"

"She's giving me a bath," Sandy said, grinning.

Bundy gave him a look. "Fawn, I just wanted to say sorry. Shadow is a male and sometimes he thinks with his you know what. He should have had a bit more consideration."

I offered her a wet and soapy hug, which she accepted. "I'm sorry too. I don't know what came over me. It was the smell of blood, I just couldn't stop running. I knew you didn't mean any harm, but I was so scared I couldn't stop."

"So you ran here and started giving this guy a bath?"

"Um.... Yeah." It made more sense than anything I could come up with.

Sandy put his paws behind his head and layd back against the stone, his expression smug. "I think the tribe has found a new Temple Maiden," he declared. He wasn't actually a local, or a member of the tribe, he was just a wanderer who showed up now and then to use the facilities. But it turned out he was right about the Temple Maiden thing.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 22, 2011, 04:01:40 pm: Naurel must have forgotten her promise because she didn't come and see me the next day. Or the one after that. It was many months before I saw her again. Or maybe she was busy: Tibur returned to the island with wounded and prisoners, so her services must have been in demand.

Bundy became my best friend on the island. People warned me about her, she even warned me herself: she was reckless, impulsive, inclined to wild acts. That wasn't what I saw. I loved her for her for the joy she took in life, her brightness, her loveliness.

Shadow, her mate, was much more reserved. He was a trader, people whispered, a smuggler. I couldn't have imagined what he might have smuggled, and I didn't ask. As far as I could see the only forbidden goods here were slaves, and even that only on this side of the fence. Shadow spent a lot of time away, over the border. He didn't talk about his business, and I didn't ask.

I got to know the tribe over the next few weeks. The Ferals, as they styled themselves, were a very loose collection of animals ruled over by a chief, Taliesin, who was sick and never left his hut. The real leader was his mate, the High Priestess Amber, who was kind but distant. She was a satyr, she had hooves and legs like mine, but a body above like that of a human, a fantastic creature of a kind I'd never seen before. She must have been some kind of hybrid. She had startling green eyes and a mane of fiery red hair.

She had a great reputation as a healer, but when she laid her hands on my head she had no more success than Naurel. She was more philosophical about it, however, just smiling and saying "Sometimes these things are the will of the Gods."

She inducted me into the Feral tribe when I timidly requested it. It wasn't a big deal, they were happy to get newcomers. I just had to swear not to betray the tribe or break the laws. That was no hardship for me, since I wasn't planning to do so. Membership in the tribe was optional, but without it anyone could drag me across the border and declare me a slave. With it, the tribe would defend my freedom, I hoped. Anyway, people seemed pleased with me.

The pirated paid the tribe in food and goods as rent for the land they occupied. They had paid for out new temple and they resented it. At some point in the past the tribe had made a deal with the devil. When you sup with the devil you better have a very long tongue!
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 24, 2011, 01:44:27 am: Every day I helped the cooks prepare the food. I didn't touch the meat but there were plenty vegetables and greens to be chopped – and lots of offcuts and waste that was yummy to a deer. Some people don't even like to eat tomato leaves or potato peelings, for instance.

Every day we would take hot food and fresh bread to the workers building the new temple. It was an impressive structure, much smaller than the old temple must have been but still a solid stone building dedicated solely to the worship of the God and Goddess. I would never have conceived of such a thing, a stone or a statue in a forest glade was enough for me, and what kind of a god needed a house to live in? But it was the greatest thing the Feral tribe had ever attempted.

Actually the tribe worshipped many Gods. Priestess Amber tried to tell me about them, but I found it too hard to pay attention. The main Gods were the Great Father and the Great Mother, they seemed familiar to me, I felt a special shy affection for her. Both temples, old and new, were mostly dedicated to them, although the entire pantheon was honoured.

Deep in the forest, however, I found a clearing and an old wooden statue, more a vague shape, a pregnant female carved from an old log. Some of the older women of the tribe still left offering there. When I passed by I felt she was smiling at me. I didn't know why. I kept the feeling to myself.

The old temple must have been far greater than the new one, but it was just ruins. The locals said the Gods had knocked it down to punish impiety, but to me it looked like the results of an earthquake, but who am I to say? The new site was on a hill at the northern end of the island. The ground had been levelled and filled, stone foundations laid, now pillars and walls were being raised. Every day stone blocks were being robbed from the ruins of the old temple and hauled across to build the new one. Most of the workers were hired from off the island, but quite a few were enthusiastic tribal volunteers.

My favourite was Aeon. He was a mule, one of the hired workers. He had a big, flat grey face with a long broad snout, and a white blaze down the centre of his muzzle, He had kind of shaggy black hair and mane, and a sweet smile. He was surprisingly shy for such a big male. And strong! I loved to watch him hauling the wooden sleds loaded with marble block, and lifting them into place with rope and pulley. He was so strong.

I tried hauling on the rope, trying to move his sled, and I couldn't budge it. My hooves skidded on the ground and I heaved and strained and grunted, but the stone moved not one inch. Aeon just about ruptured himself with laughter watching me.

Then he took the rope and showed me how it was done. His muscles moved and bulged under his grey hide, he just set himself, heaved, and the stone moved. He could move anything. His strength that made him valuable as a builder.

I used to sit on a block and watch him eat his lunch and we would talk. We soon ran out of my history, and started on his. His family were farmers on the distant mainland, but he'd had the urge to travel. He apprenticed to a builder in a far of city and built warehouses and homes and palaces. When he heard they were hiring to build a temple here he thought it might be fun, so he shipped out. He said it as if it was nothing much, just ordinary. That was Aeon.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 25, 2011, 01:58:38 am: Weeks melted into months. Summer faded into Autumn. I was aware there was something wrong about the seasons, but I couldn't have told you what it was, it just felt wrong. The feeling faded as my body recovered, after a few weeks I wasn't sleeping all day I didn't feel tired all the time. Life settled into a routine and the routine felt good. I had a place now, a home, and I belonged.

My nights weren't quite as untroubled.

Darkness. I lay in darkness, unable to move. It hurt, I thrashed, trying to free myself, but I couldn’t. "We're in Hell," a voice whimpered. "We're in Hades. We're in Hell." It was my own voice, I realised.

In a sudden flash like lightening a half naked lemur screamed at me. "Shut up! Shut up!" He swung his machete and my head exploded. He dragged my body to the side and threw it off the ship. I sank down, down down...

"Fawn," a voice whispered in the darkness. "I love you, Fawn. Let me take you home." Darkness. I was standing in the darkness in the forest clearing, full moonlight shining on the pregnant form of the Great Mother, a rough shape carved out of wood. She was smiling at me. "Fawn. I love you..."

I jerked awake in the darkness of the tent. Bundy was asleep, snoring softly. I got up as quietly as I could. The moonlight was bright and clear as I sat by the fire, listening to frogs singing. If I went to the clearing, would the statue be smiling? Would it speak to me? I shivered. It took me a long time to get back to sleep.

*

I took to sleeping during the day, taking little deer naps by the fire as and when I felt like it. I was most active in the morning, and around dusk. One evening I awoke to great excitement in the camp. Everyone was running around, gathering weapons and armour. A small crowd were gathered up on the hill near the border. I walked towards then hesitated, the situation smelled strange, bad. Should I run?

Then I saw Bundy, and I ran over to her, she was in another female's arms, and she was crying.

"Bundy, what's wrong?"

"It's Shadow! They've got Shadow!"

"Who's got Shadow? What's going on?"

Captain Tibur had arrested Shadow. The other female and I tried to argue with Bundy as she went to get her bow and arrow. Jeduh, that was the other female's name, begged her to stay in the camp until she heard from Amber. Bundy agreed, and I knew she was lying.

Jeduh left.

Bundy waited until she was out of sight, then grabbed her weapons and sprinted towards the boarder. "Bundy, wait!"

At the border she stopped. "Fawn, don't follow me."

"Please, Bundy, don't do this. Please."

"I have to."

I got took her paws and fell to my kneed. "No good will come of this. I'm begging you, please. Don't go!"

"Fawn, I don't have time to argue. I have to go."

"Then... Leave your bow and arrows behind."

"What? Are you crazy?"

I had no answer for this, as I'd begun to wonder the same thing. A voice came up from inside me and spoke for me. "Right Action is to refrain from violence and killing."

Bundy just looked at me. The pain in her eyes was like a knife. "I'm sorry, Fawn," she said, then she turned, and vanished into the deepening night beyond the border. I waited there for her as it got dark, full night. The moon rose, hours passed. Finally a dark shape came up the hill from the pirate settlement, but it wasn't Bundy. It was Aeon.

"Aeon!" I collapsed into his arms and he embraced me. "Bundy's gone into pirate country with her weapons, I don't know what she's gone and done. I'm so afraid."

"I'm sorry, Fawn," he said, and he nuzzled my hair with his snout. His big, broad snout, it felt so soft and velvety, just like I'd imagined it would. "Your Amber did everything she could."

"What happened? When is Bundy coming back?"

He sighed and held me tighter, blocking my view of the world with his big, strong body. "She's not coming back," he admitted. "She's dead. Tibur killed them both. They're not coming back."

He held me till I cried myself out, then he took me back to camp and put me to bed.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 27, 2011, 02:11:58 am: In the days that followed I fell in with a group of girls called temple maidens. There was Hecuba, and Naina, and Di, oh half a dozen or so in all. They danced in honour of the goddess, naked before her altar. They welcomed guests, served them and gave them baths, I fell into helping them with this, it was fun. In fact they were a fun bunch of girls, they were like pets of the tribe, kept and pampered because they were pretty and fun. Nobody expected the temple girls to do any real work. I liked them. They were so alive. They seemed younger than I was somehow, not in body, but in spirit.

There was an unwritten rule that they might give themselves to a visitor if they wished, but their favours must not be bought or taken. The sacred gift is given freely, or not at all. There were monks as well, some visitors preferred to be welcomed by a male. None of this particularly fussed me because it wasn't my time of year. Those who knew said it would likely be in Fall, but I'd been sick and I didn't know if my body was likely to be ready this year.

Most temple maidens ended up married. There was never any shortage of suitors, they were considered very desirable and blessed with fertility and good fortune.

They were all very excited about the new temple. The whole tribe was, but the maidens especially. It's hard being a temple maiden without a temple. The temple rose apace on it's hilltop. Great kilns burned wood and baked roof tiles. The red tiled roof rose, row by row until it floated above grassland and forest. The second great temple was complete.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on November 28, 2011, 02:43:42 am: The day of the opening had come. Priestess Amber led the people into the new temple. Hymns rang out to the God, and Goddess, and all the other gods and demigods. Baths and fountains spurted and bubbled. Then it was time the feast. We had worked for days preparing food, there was so much meat roasting that the smell of it drove me out onto the platform at the rear of the temple, where the fresh sea air revived me.

This was to be a herb garden, but now it was all trampled earth and builder's waste. I sat on the temple steps and enjoyed the sunlight. The steps were warm and comfortable, and faint sounds of distant revelry drifted down from above.

That's where Aeon found me. He passed me a loaf of bread and a mug of black ale. "I saw you run off and thought you might need something."

"Oh, thank you. You shouldn't have."

He smiled his broad smile. "You've fed me often enough."

"Well, thank you."

I broke the bread, handed him half, and sipped the ale. It was bitter, but not as bitter as thistles or dandelions. It tasted good. We sat and ate and drank in companionable silence for a while.

"I suppose you'll be leaving us soon," I asked.

"Hmm.. What do you say?"

"Your work is over. The temple is finished. I suppose you want to travel on, see the world, isn't that what you said?"

Aeon chewed thoughtfully and sipped his ale. "Mayhap," he said. With a male like Aeon a girl has to read a lot into a few words, or else fill up the silence with her own talk, which is generally the easier approach.

"Well I will miss you if you go. You are a good male, and a good friend."

"Might stay. Least for a while. Get some work."

"Work? What would you do? The temple is finished." It would be many years before the tribe built anything so huge again, if ever.

Aeon just shrugged, unconcerned. "Talk is they want to put up a dojo over on the other side."

"The pirates?"
"Yep. Reckon they'll need builders."

"Aye... Reckon they will." I looked out towards the horizon. If what I'd heard was true the pirates knew everything there was to know about fighting, and killing, and raiding, and slaving and burning. If they'd ever built anything I'd never heard of it. "Would you really go over there? I'd be too afraid."

Aeon shrugged his massive shoulders. "See the world," he drawled, with a faint air of teasing. "Reckon... Might not live over there, just work."

"You could live here! With us!" I beamed at him. The temple wasn't just a holy space, it had baths and a kitchen, and up beneath the tiled roof, dormitories and sleeping rooms. It was a home for the whole tribe. "You built the temple, it's only right that you should live in it."

Aeon hrrumphed, and shook his head mulishly. "I ain't one of the tribe."

"You could be our guest!" I prattled. "You could be my guest!"
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 01, 2011, 02:15:08 am: "Eh," he grunted "Mayhap." And with that I had to be content. It takes a male like Aeon a long time to make up his mind, and they will not be hurried.

We sat and looked out at the horizon some more. The ale had gone to my head and everything was spinning around pleasantly. Was this the first time I'd ever had ale? Many people here drank it every day, but they'd never warned me how powerful it was, and how nice. I loved the taste of it, I loved the way it sharpened my vision to a warm crystal clarity and made everything glow. I loved how good it made me feel.

I would have gone and gotten more, but I was suddenly too tired to move, and sitting beside Aeon in the sunlight was too nice. I rested my head on his arm.

"You know," I said after a while. "I think I might be starting to remember."

"Eh? That's wonderful, lass. What do you remember?"

"Well, it's not so much actual memories as dreams... But they keep coming back, and they feel like they might be memories."

"What are they about?"

"The Great Mother."

"Yes..." He sounded doubtful.

"Well, I think I was on a ship. A slave ship. I was chained in the hold. That part was horrible."

"Ah well," He put his arm around me. "You are free now."

"Thanks. Well, anyway, I was chained up in the ship and there was sickness on board, and then I died."

"You died?"

"They threw my body overboard, and I sank down under the sea, and I met the Great Mother..."

"Now, look, lass. I don't think that can actually have happened. It sounds like a dream to me."

"No! It wasn't a dream. It felt so real!"

He stroked my hair and spoke gently. "It can't have been real. If you had died then you couldn't be here talking to me, could you?"

"But the Great Mother brought me back to life!" I was almost convinced it had really happened.

"Lass... Fawn, Gods don't come down on clouds and bring people back to life. Dead is dead."

"There wasn't any cloud!" I protested. "It was under water!" I was starting to get angry now, frustrated, and so was he. Why couldn't he just believe me?

He held my shoulders in my hooves, gnarly hoof-fingers extended and gripping my arms, as he tried to set me straight. "Fawn! You had a terrible life as a slave, I get that. If you don't want to remember it then fine: Don't. But don't make things up!"

I leapt to my feet, glaring at him through a stinging mist of tears. "I'm not making anything up! Don't tell me what to do! You have no right!" I pulled away from him and leaped down the steps, my hooves skidding on the stone, and then I was running: It was run or fall, and I was running, running, running like I might never stop.

"Fawn!" His cry might have been from another word, and I ignored it as I plummeted down those steps, leaping from one to another like a mountain goat until I hit the sand at the bottom. I sprinted across the beach, sand and water flew past, sunlight flashing in my eyes. My speed amazed me.

I heard Aeon pounding after me, but he was a big, slow mule and I was a frightened, angry, exhilarated deer and there was no way he would ever catch me. I left him far behind. Eventually I stopped and fell to my knees facing the sea. I had come from somewhere out there. Why couldn’t I remember?

Gradually my breathing eased, and I thought nothing at all, just kneeling on the beach, just existing. Right Mindfulness is to exist in the moment, to be gently and compassionately aware of all things inside and outside ourself, a voice seemed to say, but who's voice was it?

Time passed. I was aware of Aeon approaching, plodding across the sand, and I felt bad for him. I'd really led him quite a race.

"Hades, lass," he panted. "Hades. You flew! You're faster than you look."

I turned and smiled at him sadly. "I'm a deer," I murmured. "I was born to run."

"Aye, I can see that." He flopped down beside me, spent. "I'm sorry, lass, I shouldn't have said what I did. I had no right."

I sighed and shook my head, turning to look back out to sea. Was the answer our there, somewhere? "No, you were right," I admitted. "I'm sorry. I don't even know if they are memories, or just dreams. I want to know so badly, but I'm just not sure."

"Aw lass, don't beat yourself up."

"Why can't I remember? I don't know who I am. I want to know what happened to me!"

Still breathing hard, Aeon took hold of my shoulders again, but more gently, putting his arms around me. "I know who you are. You're Fawn. You're my sweet Fawn." Then he kissed me.

You could have knocked me down with a feather. When he finally broke off my fur was standing end all over my body. I pulled back from his embracy. "But, but, i-it's not that time of year!" I stammered.

Aeon smiled his broad, slightly lopsided smile. "Aye, lass," he said, "But it's not that far off, is it?"

With a shock I realised that someone had been counting the days more closely than I had!
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 02, 2011, 07:09:01 am: The temple maidens loved to dance in the nude before her altar, because they said the Great Mother liked nothing better than to see her children sing and dance. I was too shy to join in, but I watched them carefully, and tried to learn some of the steps. I thought it was something I could learn to do, I just needed somewhere private to practice. The logical place was the Great Mother's clearing in the forest. Hardly anyone ever went there.

It was a bright clear morning and I'd gathered a basket of mushrooms which I set down in the shade of one of the trees. The Great Mother's idol seemed to be smiling even more than usual as I stripped off my sack dress and laid it next to the basked. "Well, here goes nothing," I muttered.

Actually the dancing came a little easier than I expected, the leaps and twirls are natural for a deer, and sharp hooves make it easier to keep your balance on landing, at least on the soft earth. I'll never be a great dancer, though, my body just isn't the right shape: things tend to flop. After a few minutes I stopped, panting, and rubbed my breasts which were getting sore. I fashioned a rough binding for the m from the cloth basket cover, but I obviously needed something better.

But perhaps I could now try putting the moves together and doing a bit of a dance? And singing, well, as I moved, slowly going through the steps, putting them together, a song came to me, so I sang it:

You love my love my spots,
my lovely fawny spots
on the back and on the front
you love my love my spots!

You love my fawny spots,
on the back and on the front
my lovely lovely spots
You'd love to touch my spots!

You'd love to touch my spots
my lovely fawny spots
on the back and on the front
but it's not that time of year!

Have you ever been alone and suddenly got the feeling you're being watched? I turned and standing at the edge of the clearing was a white male jungle cat, actually I could see he had lovely spots too, he was a snow leopard, a sneppie.

"Um, hello," I said, blushing. "I'm sorry, I didn't think anyone was here. I'm Fawn."

"Don't stop," he said, "You're a great dancer. I'm Glassere. I'm new here."

I looked down and scuffed my hooves. "I'm just learning," I admitted. "I'm not very good. I'm too short and um, well built."

"You move well, and your singing is great."

I risked a peek up at him, and he was smiling, seemingly genuinely interested. A male interested in dancing? Obviously it must be a dream. "Thanks."

"Are you a Temple Maiden?" he asked. "Was it an offering?" He nodded and made a gesture of reverence in the direction of the Mother. She just smiled on benignly.

"Um, no, not really. I just like to help out. I don't think I'm, um, beautiful enough."

He giggled.

"I'm serious!" I protested. "They're all young and beautiful and free and slim and they sing and dance and and....Do stuff! I don't think I could ever be like that. What do you think?"

He shrugged. "Maybe you should ask her?" he said, nodding again to the idol.

"Yeah, maybe," I muttered, terminally embarrassed now that I'd said all this stuff, and to a male. I changed the subject. "I haven't seen you around before, are you new?"

"Yeah, I just got here. I'm trying to find my way home."

"Where's your home?"

"A little village on the mainland. I'm a fisherman. I got blown out to sea in a storm."

"And wound up here?"

"Eventually, first I got taken as a slave." He held up these bracelet things around his wrists, and gestured to the collar around his neck. I'd taken them as jewellery.

"A slave?" I stepped closer and grabbed his shoulders. "Where? Was I there? Am I familiar to you? Do you remember me?"

He smirked at me and stepped back. "No, I don't think so. I'd remember you. Trust me, I would. There was no-one like you there."
I stepped back, blushing and muttering apologies, looking down. He must have thought I was coming on to him. Dancing naked, singing that ridiculous song, and then throwing myself on him: whatever must he think of me? "I'm sorry, I didn't mean... I'm sorry. Forgive me. I was a slave and I just so much want to remember. I thought you might have known me."

"You want to remember being a slave? Can't you remember anything?"

"Nothing. I know my name and that's really all. The only way I know I was a slave was because of these. I showed him the healed scars around my wrists and neck, and the brand on my arm. He tutted sympathetically.

"Oh that's cruel, that's terrible. Maybe it's best you don't remember?"

"Maybe," I muttered sadly. But my heart wasn't in it. Why couldn't I remember?

"At least you're free now. We're both free. Let's stay that way."

"I certainly intend to stay that way. Stay away from the pirates on the other side of the island: they'd catch you and sell you in a red hot minute. Why don't you take your collar off?"

"They're locked," he admitted with a grimace, tugging on it to shop me. "With magic. They can't be cut off: They're made from adamantium."

I looked at them more closely. This elegant filigree slave jewellery was made of metal worth more than everything on the whole island, metal that could never be taken off. His owners would never stop looking for him, never stop hunting, he was worth the price of a small kingdom. Pirates or slavers, I knew, would just his head and paws off just to get the metal, although what good locked slave collars would do anyone was debatable. Better still to take and sell sneppie and collar and cuffs as one piece. He was worth an unimaginable amount of gold.

"Goddess, be careful," I murmured. "Can't you cover them up or something? There are people who would kill to get hold of you."

"I know," he muttered. "Believe me, I know." There didn't seem to be anything more to say on the subject. "Can I see you back to the temple?" he offered.

"Sure!" I smiled at him. "Just let me put my clothes back on."

"If you insist!"

I thought I had made a new friend, but it was not to be. A few days later I heard he'd been abducted by the pirates and shipped out to be sold back into slavery. They said he... Actually it doesn't matter, nobody with any sense believed what they said, but he wasn't a tribes-member and nothing could be done. I thought I would never see him again.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 08, 2011, 01:15:39 am: The front steps of the temple were just as warm and comfortable as the back ones were. I took to sitting there and greeting visitors as they arrived. I had finally admitted to myself that I wanted to be a temple maiden, and this was one way I could demonstrate my usefulness. And I had a hidden motive: I could ask everyone I met if they remembered me. No-one did.

It seemed to me that we needed some greeting that summed up the Temple's creed of peace and welcome. I started off saying "All are welcome who come in peace," but it soon got shortened to "Welcome in peace." That stuck.

My life consisted of grazing, sleeping, and welcoming people to the temple. I would give them tea and tell them about the baths and meals we offered, the sleeping rooms. I would explain about Mother's sacred peace.

I didn't take Aeon lunch any more: he was working for the pirates, over the border, but every evening he came home and sat with me on the steps as the sun set. I worried about him. I never crosse the border myself as I was too scared of what might happen. Wouldn't it be simpler for the pirates to enslave Aeon and make him work for them? They weren't exactly in the habit of paying people in any case. But Aeon wasn't concerned, and lots of pople crossed the border every day and nothing bad happened to them. Perhaps Aeon was so big and strong that nobody would dare bother him. I hoped so. I tried to put it out of my mind.

*

One day I woke up feeling different somehow. It was late, mid morning, I'd overslept, an unusual thing for me. I wandered the temple's stone halls in a daze, noticing patterns and grains in the stone that I'd never seen before. Then I picked up a sent I didn’t recognise: warm and spicy, it called to me. I followed the scent to the front room where Jeduh was talking to a stranger, a buck. The smell was coming from him.

I think I've mentioned Jeduh before, but never properly introduced her. She was a green tigress, her body studded and glittering with jewels. She was a scout, one of the people who protected the tribe. She claimed to be a nature spirit, and perhaps she was one. Or perhaps somewhere there's a village of green tigers who all claim to be nature spirits. After all, in a sense we are all children of nature. People said she had great magic, but I never saw it.

When she learned I didn't carry a weapon she offered to train me, but I refused. There was no way I could ever bear to hurt anyone. I said "Right Action is to refrain from violence and killing." After that she became especially protective of me.

She was talking to a buck. He wasn't a particularly big buck, but he smelt incredibly manly, strong, and delicious. I walked over to him and threw my arms around. "Hello," I crooned. "You smell lovely."

"What?! Get off me!" He pushed me back, but I wasn't going to be pushed away, I moved foward and started nuzzling his chest, as he skittered backwards, fetching up against a wall "Get her off me!" he wailed.

Jeduh grabbed me around the middle and hauled me back. I bawled my disenchantment at the lovely smell being taken away. Not fair!

"Fawn!" she said. "What's wrong with you? What in hades is going on?" I was too incoherent to tell her, but she could smell it on my. "Goddess, you're in heat, aren't you, rut? Isn't that what you call it?"

"Y-yes, please let me go to him!"

"Rut?" He looked up as he suddenly got it. He sniffed me and his eyes widened. He turned away and pawed the stone floor with his cute little hooves. "Oh, well, bring her to me and I will deal with her." Really, he must have been a terribly inexperienced buck.

Jeduh just shook her head. "Fawn are you sure about this? Do you really want to go with 'Baby Buck' over there?"

"Please, let me go," I answered hoarsely. "I must go to him. It is my destiny."

Judah sighed. "Yeah. Right." But she let me go.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 09, 2011, 04:15:55 am: He pushed me upstairs to one of the sleeping couches in a daze and shoved me down and fell on top of me. I... wasn't thinking very clearly at the time. For one thing I was quivering and panting with desire which tends to cloud a girl's reason rather. And also I had these foolish romantic notions that a doe's sexuality and pleasure were all about submitting to the strength of the buck, who was strong and dominant and masterful simply because he was male. Ridiculous, I know, but I hadn't had very much experience of the world since I had come to and found myself in Naurel's hut.

The little buck pushed me down roughly and thrust himself into me painfully. It didn't take long for the gloss of "submitting" myself to him wore off, despite the hormonal daze I was in. You know, he was probably just inexperienced, and didn't know how to give pleasure to a female, but at the time it felt like he was deliberately being rough and trying to make it hurt. Along with the biting and pinching it started to be really unpleasant.

But you know, I had wanted it, and asked for it, so I gritted my teeth and waited for him to finish. Which he eventually did. Then he wouldn't get off.

I waited, but he wasn't shifting. I was frustrated by this time, well, angry, really. I shoved him. "Get off me!"

"No." He resisted my struggling and held me down.
"Get off!" I screamed at him. I probably would have thrown him off eventually, I outweighed him. But before I could Aeon and Jeduh were there, charging up the stairs and Jeduh hauled him off me.

I got up and found my sack dress and put it back on while Jeduh launched the interrogation, firing questions at the buck and me. Aeon just looked at me with hurt in his eyes. I couldn’t meet his gaze.

"What did you do?" Jeduh demanded of him. "Why was she screaming? Did you rape her?"

"No!" He protested. "She wanted it! She was begging for it! I just gave her what she wanted."

"He wouldn't get off me," I snapped. "He'd finished and he wouldn't get off. That's all."

"Did he rape you, Fawn? Did he make you do anything you didn't want to do? Would you like me to charge him?" Behind her I could see Aeon clenching and unclenching his hooves, and I shivered. Was he going to hit me? I deserved it.

"No," I said to Jeduh. "No, no, no, no. It's not that, he just wouldn't get off me. He's not worth it. Just let him go."

Reluctantly she did. He straightened himself up gathered his clothes and spat a couple of choice insults in my direction. "Whore" was one of them. I wasn't really listening. Aeon just kept on looking at me, saying nothing.

"Get out of here," Jeduh told the buck. "You're not welcome any more." He protested, but she grabbed him and hustled him away downstairs. I never saw him again, and you know, in all the excitement I had never even asked his name.

That left me alone with Aeon. He held out his hoof to me, reaches out to touch him, extending my hoof-fingers. "I'm sorry, Aeon," I whispered. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," He said tersely. "I should have been here to protect you."

"You're not mad?"

"I am not mad with you," his tone was flat and his face was like a thundercloud. He was very mad with someone, that was for sure. I shivered.

He sighed and put his arms around me. "Oh, Fawn, Fawn, Fawn..."

"I'm sorry." His scent surrounded me. I was starting to feel all dizzy again, tingly, despite the pain down there from Baby Buck's roughness. He nuzzled me, speaking softly now, "Let's get you cleaned up." He took me downstairs, bathed me with infinite tenderness, and then he made love to me. We didn't have sex, we made love, and that made all the difference.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 10, 2011, 05:14:51 pm: Two days later rut was over. Aeon stayed with me the whole time, and we didn't get much sleep. Finally we collapsed in an exhausted heap, cuddling each other. When I woke up I felt different. For one thing I felt embarrassed. What had I been thinking? I couldn't remember much, just flashes, rut always takes me that way, but what I did remember was mortifying. Why did my sexuality have to be like this? Why couldn't I be like everyone else?

For another thing, I ached. I felt dirty. Rut always takes it's toll. I disentangled myself from Aeon gently, trying not to wake him, and went to the baths and scrubbed myself clean. When I finished I toweled myself dry, feeling more myself again. It was only one week of the year, after all, and it was past now, until next year. Now if only I could find my clothes and get dressed I felt I could get back to normal.

"Fawn. Just the person I wanted to see. Do you have a moment?" It was the high priestess, Amber.

I felt a sudden stab of fear. Had I done something wrong? Had Baby Buck, or one of the males I'd bothered put in a complaint? Was I going to be beaten? Thrown out? I showed it down deep and forced myself to smile to her. I was being irrational, they didn't do that here.

"Yes, High Priestess, of course, um, I just wish I could find my sack-dress, I seem to have um, lost it, and I don't have anything to wear..."

She laughed. "Oh, don't worry about it. You don't need it. I often go naked myself - it's liberating."

I wrapped the towel around my shoulders and followed the priestess, who let me out of the temple, down the back steps, and onto the beach, where we sat. She smiled at me. "You've been with us a while now, Fawn, and I've been very pleased to see you helping out in the temple. Would you consider becoming a Temple Maiden? I think you'd be good at it."

"Me?" I gasped, blinking. Despite having been working towards it for months it still came as a shock. Somehow I'd never believed I'd be asked. "But, but, are you sure? I'm not... I'm not.. I mean, am I allowed?"

Amber laughed. "Oh Fawn, of course you are, if you want to. That's the only thing, do you want to?"

"But, but, well, Yes!" I sputtered, blushing. "But I mean, I-I, Am I worthy to serve the temple? I don't know who I am, or where I'm from, or what I've done. What if I'm a bad person?"

"Oh Fawn, you're not a bad person!" She laughed again and put her arm around me and squeezed me. "You're a very good person. I get a feeling about you, the Great Mother loves you. She is smiling upon you, I can sense it."

I looked around, but of course there was no-one there. Or was she talking about the statue in the forest? But didn't she smile on everyone? Wasn't her smile like, carved on? "I accept," I babbled. "Thank you! Thank you for giving me this chance! I won't disappoint you! Either of you!"

She laughed and shook her head. "Oh Fawn, you're like a ray of sunshine around this place sometimes. If only you knew. Now there is one thing: I'd like you to emphasise the Great Father a little more when you talk to people. This temple is dedicated to them both, you know."

"Oh, yes, I will do my best." My mind raced. The Great Father? I hardly knew him, he seemed so remote and stern and distant, a punishing and destructive god at time. I'd have to ask someone to tell me about him.

"I know you will. Here, please accept this little gift." She reached over and fastened some feathers into my hair. "Welcome to the Temple, Maiden Fawn. Welcome home."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 13, 2011, 01:23:36 pm: Sitting on the front steps of the temple in the sunlight, acting as temple greeter, I got to meet a lot of people. There was the trader, Brad, a fox. To me he's a slim, handsome male with red whiskers and ears, tail neatly combed, he likes to wear natty clothes to emphasise his prosperous status.

People tell me he's a shape changer, people tell me his other form is a little four legged orange fox, but I've never seen it. Actually that may not be entirely true: magic has a strange effect on my memory. When Glssere grew the temple in our new home I blacked out for three days and I remember nothing, although people tell me I was walking around and talking like normal... But I'm getting ahead of my story.

People tell me they see glows and auras and beams of magical light, and I see nothing.

Actually that's not always the case either: I did see Naurel's paws glow when she attempted to heal me, but that's one of the very few times I have ever seen anything magical. I don't see ghosts or spirits either, people tell me there's a ghost in the room and I have to be careful to ask them where it is so I don't walk through it. Ghosts don't bother me: the dead have never harmed me.

With shape shifters it's slightly different, I always remember them as being in the form they are now. To me Brad has always been a dapper little red fox with green eyes and a foxy smile. It's the same with Naurel, whatever form she is in is the one I remember her always having. It's hard for me to remember that she's said to be a shape shifter at all, although people swear it's true. When she changes my memories change with her I guess it's all something to do with having been touched by the Great Mother.

I remember Brad sauntering up to the temple one morning in early winter, carrying a large crate. My baby bulge was just beginning to show. Actually he says we met before this but I don't remember. Magical people can be hard for me to catch hold of in my mind, the memories tend to swim away like fish.

“Welcome in Peace,” I said. “I'm Fawn. What's your name?”

“Fawn,” he set down the crate and came over and gave me a hug. “I'm Brad, you know that.”

“I do?”

“Yes, you do.”

“I'm sorry, I don't remember.”

“It's alright, we've been through this a couple of times already.”

“Oh.”

He gestured expansively to the crowd. “Does anyone need anything? Anyone want to trade.” I giggled and he sighed, turnin towards me. “What is it now?”

“Well, it's a fine box, Mr Brad, but I can see from here it's empty. Unless you were planning to trade your clothes, I don't see that you have anything to offer.”

“Fawn, you've seen me do this before.”

I shook my head. “Seen you do what?”

“Just watch. Does anyone need anything?”

“I need some coal for my forge,” a badger spoke up.

“I can let you have a couple of sacks for the right trade. Just come into the box and help me get it out for you. They both climbed into the box and, one after the other, vanished. I walked around the box, peering at it. It was just an empty wooden box, with a plain wooden floor. It wasn't even big enough to hold two people: One person might have climbed in and squatted down, that was all. Where had they gone?

I must have looked puzzled, or maybe I asked the question aloud because a rabbit man called “They're in the box,” He came over and looked in. “There's a room down there, you can see it. You can hear them talking.” I looked into the box and saw a wooden floor. I saw nothing. The rabbit buck climbed into the box and vanished.

After a few minutes the three of them appeared one after the other and climbed out of the box, carrying sacks of coal. I was dumbstruck.

“Anyone else need anything?” Brad asked.

“You just got out of an empty box,” I said.

“Yeah.” He tried to ignore me.

“It's not big enough for the three of you.”

“Fawn, you've seen this before. You always do this.”

“You got into a box not big enough to hold you all, and vanished. Then you climbed back out of the box carrying huge sacks of coal that weren't here before. How did you do it?”

“It's magic.”

“Magic? It's freaking unbelievable! It's, It's, It's... the AMAZING crate of DOOM!”

He turned to me and patted my head. “Fawn, are you feeling alright?”

I paced around the box, gesturing. “No, No, you don't get it, it's... You see before you a perfectly ordinary box. Ordinary in every way, made of ordinary wood and perfectly empty!”

“Um, yeah...”

“But this is no ordinary box. This is the AMAZING crate of DOOM!”

“Will someone fetch a healer? I think the temple maiden is having a brain meltdown.”

“Healers have no effect on me. No, I'm fine.” I gestured to the box. “I place a fox in the box. I wave my hooves. Presto! The fox vanishes!”

Brad looked at the box in confusion. “There's no fox there,” he protested.

“The fox has vanished into the AMAZING crate of DOOM!” I gasped, rolling my eyes. “Once again the amazing box is completely empty!”

“Of course it's empty, there's nothing there.”

“There's nothing there because the fox has vanished into the mystery that is the AMAZING crate of DOOM!!”

“There is no fox!” Brad said. I don't think he ever got it.

“There is no fox now, but now I make the magic gesture. I incant the three sacred words: Thistle! Vinegar! Presto! The fox is returned completely unharmed!” I took a bow and there was a smattering of applause, even though I hadn't actually done the trick.

“You're crazy!” Brad protested.

“Maybe,” I said with a smirk. “Crazy like a fox.”

For me the Holy Island of sanctuary was a paradise because of the food that grew there, the succulent thistles and dandelions, and because of the people and the friendship we shared. For most people what was special was the intense magical field of the place: powerful magic was possible there. I wouldn't know as I never saw it, or I don't remember.

For some reason this is one piece of magic I do remember, maybe because I made such a fuss about it. For all that it was apparently a very pedestrian form of magic, not worth commenting on. I was amazed by how matter of factly people took it. Box that's bigger on the inside than the outside: So what?

It's a pity Brad was away on a trading mission later on or we could all have ridden off the island in his AMAZING crate of DOOM. Or something. I never went in it myself. I didn't think it would work for me: I couldn't see the room people said was there and I couldn't hear people's voices inside. For me it might as well have been a perfectly ordinary wooden box. Besides, what if the magic failed when I was halfway in or out?

The Holy Island was an amazing place. It could have been paradise for us all. A place where we could have been ourselves, and been free, if only we had learnt to live together in peace.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 17, 2011, 07:39:35 pm: "Hello."

"Welcome in peace." The response was automatic. The voice sounded familiar. I looked up and did a double take. I was looking at a black male feline, some kind of panther perhaps, yet the voice was familiar. I sniffed his scent. "Glasere?"

"Shh," he said with a smile. "I go by Glaz now." Obviously finding renewed captivity not to his liking he'd lost no time in escaping. His fur was now jet black, and he'd covered the indestructible collar and bracelets with beaten copper. The ridiculous thing was that even in disguise he looked exotic and expensive.

"You'll have to do something about your scent," I said. "Maybe a cologne?"

"I'll look into it, Sister Fawn. By the way, congratulations."

"Oh, you heard about that? Thanks. So are you just passing through? On your way home?"

"No, I've been back there, but it's not safe. As of now I'm Glaz, a simple fisherman who's been blown off course and is seeking refuge."

"Well you're welcome here, in peace. How may I serve you?"

"Actually Sister Fawn, perhaps you can answer a question for me. I've heard that slavery is illegal here?"

"Yes it is, well, that's the law, anyway."

"Fine, so tell me, how do I go about joining the tribe?"

I smiled and got up, dusting off my sack. "I think we'd best go and find High Priestess Amber, Mr Glaz." I led him into the temple in search of the priestess.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 20, 2011, 12:48:16 am: So Glassere became a member of the tribe, in fact he soon became a monk of the temple – much quicker than I had. He was popular with everyone, and he brought in a lot of food, mostly fish. He had a small boat and he would take it out and catch fish, bolstering his story of being a simple fisherman. His brother Kvit soon joined him on the island, also dyed black. They looked almost like twins, but Kvit was quieter, retiring. I've hardly ever heard him speak.

Glassere could read and write, and soon Amber asked him to study to become a priest.

There were plenty of other arrivals on the island in this period. One that stands out is a human woman with a cat's ears and tail, some kind of a hybrid. She was a delicate little thing with striking red hair, her name was Kidd. She wore this enormous sword strapped to her back, I don't think she could have drawn it, let alone wielded it. She used to visit the island from another place, sailing her little boat. We used to spend her visits laughing and giggling and gossiping on the Temple steps.

Someone less like a warrior would be hard to imagine, so why she carried the sword is a mystery. Maybe she thought it would keep her out of trouble? Kidd's main claim to fame is that she introduced Novaku to the island. He was a red and black fox, he joined the scouts. I didn't have very much to do with him at this time as he mostly stayed on the military side. Later though, he would become important.

Written down like this it may seem that my life was a constant stream of terribble, frightening, and violent events. In fact it was often quiet and peaceful, even boring. I never sought out danger, and whenever there was an attack or a fight I would run away and hide. Meanwhile my babies grew in my belly and the weather got colder.

*

One day I was grazing on the plain near the temple when I looked up to find a couple of furs watching me. I got up, brushed the grass off the skirts of my sack dress and greeted them with a smile. “Blessings and Peace. My name is Fawn.” They were strangers, a tiger and a bear.

The male grinned at me. He as the tiger, dressed in a white tunic, expensive looking sword prominent. “Greetings, Fawn,” he purred. “My name is David, but you can call me Brisbane. This is my sister, Ursa. Tell me, is this the island they call Sanctuary?”

I smiled at the female, and she gave me a guarded smile in return. She was smaller then, thinner, and she wasn't wearing the long ladylike skirts she chooses today. Instead she wore a simple working woman's tunic not much finer than my own sack.

“Yes, this is sanctuary. I'm a temple maiden here. May I offer you a meal? Do you need somewhere to stay?”

The male spoke for them both. “We are looking for somewhere,” he said. “My sister and I have been travelling for some time.”

I looked between them. Tiger. Bear. Bear. Tiger. An unusual sort of family. I nodded towards the temple. “My own family is just as diverse, I suppose. We have a hoses, Typhoon, a panther, Brother Glassere, a satyr, foxes, felines, and me!”

Brisbane glanced up towards the building. “You are, pacifists, are you not?” His paw strayed towards his sword and stroked the hilt.

“Yes, we celebrate peace in the name of the Great Mother. Peace is sacred to us.” I was not sure I'd exactly call us pacifists, however, so I tried to clarify: “I'm a pacifist, I don't carry a weapon. Right Intention is to do no harm to anybody, to have good will and compassion for all.”

“Noble words,” he said, a sceptical note in his voice. “Noble. But how practical?”

“Brother,” Ursa murmured. “Everyone is entitled to their beliefs.”

“We need somewhere to stay,” he said, more to her than to me. “Somewhere safe. There may be people looking for us. A bunch of pacifist back-to-nature nuts are going to be no protection at all. We need to find people who are strong.”

I looked down at my hooves and breathed in and out. I wasn't sure that I would call myself a pacifist back to nature nut, but the accusation was hard to deny.

“Brother, there is no need to be rude to this kind lady.”

“Ahem, I'm sorry.”

I looked up and smiled at them gently, nodding. “Rudeness should certainly be saved for when there is a need,” I said. “Or else one day you might really need to be rude and find you have none left?”

The tiger looked at me with wide eyed for a moment, then he laughed. “None left? Hahahahahaha!”

“Please don't worry,” Ursa said smoothly. “My brother always has plenty of rudeness left.”

“Females. Hrrmph. So what about the other lot? Are they nature freaks too?”

“You mean the pirates? The border is to the south, you will see a line of stone posts. I never go across it myself as they take slaves. Certainly they are not nature freaks.”

“Possible, then, what do you think?” he asked the bear.

“Possible, brother.”

“They welcome fighters,” I said. “But please be careful. They are not... gentle people.”

David laughed. “We are not gentle people either, and we can look after ourselves.” His sister nodded, her expression grim. "But I thank you for your caution."

They moved off in the direction of the border. It was an odd encounter, but no odder than many others I had in that time.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 23, 2011, 11:41:51 am: And then something terrible happened. One day I was sitting with a group of people, including a cub, under the Great Mother's tree, talking. I don't know who's cub he was, he was a tiger or some kind of a feline, no more than a couple of seasons old. I can't for the life of me remember his name, if I ever knew it.

His mother was nowhere in evidence, but, if he wasn't safe with me, a servant of the Great Mother, beneath Her tree, then there was nowhere on earth he was safe. Our Mother is kind and gentle, but she reserves her anger for those who harm children.

In any case I was sitting beneath the tree when a fox came up from the direction of the border. He sat and talked with us. He was a newcomer to the island, a pleasant chap, he talked engagingly about himself, where he was from, what he wanted to do. The others moved off, leaving me, the cub, and the fox beneath the tree.

Then a couple of other people came up from the direction of the pirate settlement, there was Komodo, a female jungle cat who had joined up recently. I'd seen her around before but she hadn't made much of an impression on me. She was accompanied by another female soldier – I forget who.

This is how it happened: Komodo called out something to the fox, our visitor. He got up, smiling, and walked towards her. She had her pistol drawn. She fired, and shot him through the head, killing him instantly. The report echoed across the landscape.

Then I threw myself on the ground, and the cub, wailing, tried to burrow under my pregnant belly. I lay there, frozen, not running away because even a deer cannot outrun a bullet. At any moment I expected to hear the thunder of the gun, the last thing I would ever hear.

Instead they approached the body, chatting to each other, and began to discuss the best way to remove his tail to take back as a trophy. They hacked his tail off with a knife, and walked back over the border with it. I got up, grabbed the cub in my arms, and ran back to the temple.

The whole thing must have taken about five minutes.

I ran into the temple, sobbing, holding the wailing child in my arms. Naturally people moved to comfort us and find out what was wrong. "Pirates!" I gasped. "They shot a fox. Right in front of us. Shot him down, at the Mother's tree!"

Glassere was there and he shouted for help. "Healers! Someone's been hurt, shot, at the Mother's tree!" A party of scouts and healers quickly assembled. Someone took the child from me and comforted him.

"He's dead!" I sobbed. "It's no use. He's dead."

"You don't know that, Fawn," Glassere said kindly. "He may only be hurt. Let the healers do their job."

But I did know. I'd seen the bullet tear his head apart, and nobody can heal you of that, except possibly the Great Mother. I closed my eyes and muttered a desperate prayer to her. Please let it be alright, Mother, please.

Glassere handed me across to Aeon, and he engulfed me in his embrace. I sighed, closed my eyes and tried to relax. I couldn't stop shaking for a long time.

Of course it didn't all come out alright. The fox was dead and they brought his body back to the temple, covered in a sheet. A few days later Priestess Amber interviewed me about the attack. I fully expected something would be done, that Komodo would be charged with murder or assault.

Days went by and nothing happened. The pirates said the visitor had insulted their Captain, Tibur. He'd gone down to their docks and they'd had words, then he'd left and Tibur sent his soldiers to kill him. Komodo came around the temple, threatening and intimidating me. I was pregnant: I felt incredibly vulnerable, but there was no help for it. After it happened a few times I learned to bury my fear down deep and not show it, and then she lost interest.

That was when I started to lose faith in the leadership of the tribe. They didn't arrest her, or ban her from our lands, or even make a speech denouncing the blatant sacrilege of killing an unarmed man beneath the Mother's tree. They did nothing. I had thought I could rely on the tribe to protect me and my babies, now I was not so sure.

It seemed the only person I could rely on was myself.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 25, 2011, 12:32:08 am: Winter deepened and darkened, the days grew shorter. Snow fell and lay on the ground, then more fell, and more and more. Winter seemed to go on forever. I hadn't expected this as I had no memories to guide me. I hadn't harvested and laid aside any hay, and grass grew more and more difficult to dig out of the snow. I stubbornly persisted, not wanting to be a burden on the tribe.

One day Aeon found me shivering in a hole in the snow, and carried me inside and held me till I warmed up beside the fire. After that I ate the temple bread like everyone else.

It was a dark time for me, the darkness seemed to crowd in around my pregnant belly. I was siezed by the irrational fear that the pirates were about to invade and enslave us all. I couldn't be dissuaded. The sense of impending doom grew deeper as the nights darkened, and the fear went on and on until I wished they'd just do it and get it over with.

Aeon slept with me every night, curled around me defensively, but he couldn't keep the bad dreams away. In one of them males with swords burst into the temple, cutting people down with swords. They were led by a dirty looking hyena, his eyes burning yellow.

“Kneel!” I screamed, falling to my knees. “Kneel and they won't hurt you!”

But that wasn't the worst dream. In the worst dream I came home from grazing one day and the temple was silent. Everyone was dead. Bodies lay everywhere, slaughtered. I ran from room to room, calling, but nobody answered.

Through my darkness Aeon stayed with me. Eventually the darkness lifted and the days started to grow longer again. The snow melted and one day I found green shoots growing up out of the ground. It was spring.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 27, 2011, 03:11:25 am: Priestess Amber announced that Chief Taliesin had died and been buried in a private ceremony. The tribe was shocked, we'd hardly known him, and now our leader was gone. People felt stunned, denied a chance to grieve and say goodbye. Amber announced that there would be an election for Chief of the tribe, to be held immediately.

Three candidates put themselves forward: Brad, the trader, Novaku the black fox, and Will, the human. Brad I think I've mentioned, Novaku was a Guardian, one of the tribe's soldiers, and I had very little to do with him. People regarded him as very competent.

Will... was an oddity. In a tribe of animals of many different species he was a rarity, a human. People regarded that species with suspicion. They were all crazy, it was said, destroyers, you couldn't trust them. They were different. There were no other humans in the tribe that I knew of, there were the occasional hybids, like Amber, or Kidd with her cat's ears, and there was Will.

Will was unusual, I think, even for a human. He disarmed suspicion by making it a joke, by being funny. Even now remembering him makes me smile. He always carried this big wheel thing around on his back, I don't know what that was about, was it some kind of a shield? I didn't get it then, and I don't get it now. Still, out of loyalty I was going to vote for him. More than any of the others he was my friend.

The election was set for three weeks time.

*

I cast my vote for Will, but Novaku won the election. People said it was very close, a couple of weeks later Will and Brad announced that they were leaving the island on a trading voyage, and began making preparations. People began drifting away, it seemed as if the elections that were supposed to unify the tribe had only split us further apart.

Amber took leave as High Priestess and left to visit her sister on the mainland. I know she intended to return to us, but perhaps something happened, or perhaps she just let it too late. Waving goodbye on the docks was the last time I saw her.

That left Glassere, a young an inexperienced priest in charge of the Temple as Acting High Priest, and second in command of the tribe. He did a surprisingly good job and people began to look to him for leadership.

I paid these events scant attention.

My time had come upon me. I was frightened. My belly was huge, I knew it was any day now, and I was frightened. Suddenly I felt I couldn't really be sure if these people were my friends, that they cared about me, or if they'd been lying to me all along. Everything seemed like a threat, even Aeon. His great strength that had seemed like protection was now a danger. What if he tried to hurt me, or my babies? What defence did I against his great power? Only one: I ran.

When I felt my pains starting I ran out into the night, into the darkness. I ran into the woods and hid behind the statue of the Great Mother. I tramped down a nest in the brush and squatted, alone, to do what I had to do. I shrugged off my dress and threw it away.

I was frightened to be by myself, but other people frightened me more. I felt incredibly vulnerable, as if everybody was going to hurt me. I panted for breath, and slowly, slowly, regained my sense of self, now that I was alone. By now the pains were on my for real. My waters burst, and then there was nothing but the pain and the need to get this over with.

I gave birth to twin girls.

In the morning the babies were walking, and sucking strongly, I staggered back to the temple feeling cold, numb, empty. They called Aeon and he came to me and held me and my new family and I let him. He was crying, bawling actually.

"Don't ever do that again, Fawn," he begged. "Don't run away from me. How can I protect you if you keep running away?"

It came to me that as long as I'd known him he'd been giving to me and I'd been taking. I kept letting him down and he kept coming back for more. I was a prey to my irrational, fearful instincts and a darkness I couldn’t even remember and he.... must be hopelessly in love with me.

"I won't," I whispered, ashamed. I was crying to. He had been so kind and I had been so selfish. I was dirt. "I won't run away from you again, Aeon."

I named the girls Isis and Ashara. They looked like deer fawns, they smelled like deer. Sometimes I think I catch a glint of mulish stubbornness in their eyes, a set of their jaws that reminds me of Aeon. But the truth is that in all likelihood they are the Baby Buck's children.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 30, 2011, 02:47:01 am: It took me a few days to begin to recover from the birth. I slept, mostly, curled up by the hearth in the temple. Aeon stayed with me, not going to work across the border. One night he held me and spoke to me softly, his broad grey face lit by the red of the coals. "When you get well, when the babies are strong enough to travel, I want you to come home with me."

"Travel? On a boat." The notion of stepping on a boat made me shiver. "I don't know." I glanced at the sleeping babies where they lay curled up in a basket by the hearth. They were safe.

"You'll like my home. You'll like the farm. It's a very gentle, very green place. We can grow things. The babies can run free and grow up in peace. You'll like it."

"But, but, this is my home. Maybe a visit..?"

"No, not a visit, Fawn. I want you to come home with me for good."

"For good? But your family, they don't know me. What if they don't like me? What if they don't accept me? I'm a deer, not a mule! What if they don't like me?"

"They'll like you Fawn, as I like you. There are horses, and donkeys and mules in my family, we're a lot more broad-minded than you might think. They'll accept you as my mate."

"As your mate? You want me as your mate?"

"Yes, Fawn. I want you to come home with me as my mate."

I swallowed, thinking of all the terrible things that awaited me: Leaving my home, the only home I had ever known. Getting on a ship, a ship of all things that scared me the most, but with Aeon by my side I could do it, couldn't I? And facing his family, his frightening unknown family, Aeon said they would accept me but what if they didn't? What if they threw me out? What if they threw us both out?

It would have been easy to say no, to give in to the fear, or even just to play for time, and delay. But that would be running away, wouldn't it, and I'd promised. I took a deep breath, and screwed up my courage. Aeon needed my answer and there was only one answer I could give him:

"I'll come with you Aeon, as your mate."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on December 30, 2011, 02:47:39 am: Next morning Aeon went across the border to resign and collect his wages. I had a twinge of apprehension, as I did when anybody went over there: Too many people had gone over and never come back. Still, Aeon was stronger than me and much more experienced. He didn't seem to have any apprehension at all, so I pushed my fears down and got on with my work, cleaning the temple.

It was nearly noon when Brad and Novaku and Glassere came to give me the news. I could tell something was wrong by the looks on their faces. My heart leapt in my chest. "What is it? What's wrong? Is it Aeon? What's happened?"

"Fawn," Novaku said. "I'm sorry. Brad just came back from trading over the border. There's been an incident. Aeon got into an argument with Captain Tibur over money. The pirates beat him up and they claim he is their slave now."

My vision went red and a roaring filled my ears, I staggered against the stone wall of the temple, but kind hands caught me and held me up. "NO!" I screamed. "NO! NO! NO! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" After that the silence seemed shocked. Then I burst into tears, my hide was burning up, but I was shaking.

"Fawn," Glassere said. "Be brave. We're doing everything we can. Please, please, don't... do anything foolish. Think of your babies."

He meant don't go crazy, or at lest don't go crazier. "I've got to... I've got to get him back. I've got to go to him. This is my fault. None of this would have happened if not for me. It's my fault!"
"It's not your fault," Glassere said. "Aeon's a sensible man. He knew the risks."

"He took those risks because he wanted to be with me!" I wailed.

"That was his choice."

I turned to Novaku, and grabbed his tunic with my hooves. "Help me, please!" I begged, actually I suppose it was more like demanded. "Please! Get Aeon back for me! Please! I'll do anything!"

"I'm sorry, Fawn, but it's difficult. Tibur claims Aeon owes him money..."

"That's a lie! He lies! He always lies! He owed Aeon money, Aeon went to get it. He lied about Shadow, he lied about Glassere, and now he's lying about Aeon! He's lying!" I looked from face to face at the serious, gentle, sad expressions. They were sympathetic, but they weren't going to help me.

"It's difficult," Glassere reiterated. "If we push Tibur he'll push back. He'll claim it's a matter of principle and refuse to back down. We need you to be calm for a while."

"No! I've heard this too often, calm down Fawn, wait, Fawn, be sensible, Fawn, and then nothing gets done!"

Brad shook his head and stroked my arm. "Glassere and Novaku aren't like that, Fawn. They'll get the job done. It just isn't the right time. In a couple of months Tibur will lose interest and we'll be able to spirit him out of there, or even just buy him quietly."

"No! You must free him, you must get him free now! I can't bear it!" I sank to my knees, sobbing.

"Have faith, Fawn," Glassere whispered. "Trust us. We won't let you down. But we can't do anything yet because Aeon isn't a member of the tribe. Under the treaty we've got no legal right to him."

Other temple maidens came and cleaned my face and tried to comfort me or interest me in my babies. The males went away. I got very quiet, withdrawing into myself. I prayed and prayed to the Great Mother, begging her over and over for her help, for a miracle. Of course nothing happened: gods don't come down on a cloud to save us.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 03, 2012, 05:45:32 pm: So Aeon remained in captivity while I fed the babies and tried to do my work. Perhaps if I'd had money I would have dome something stupid, tried to go over there and bargain for his life or something. But were does a deer get money? I knew how Bundy had felt now, and there was nothing I could do. I stuck close to the temple, too scared to graze outside. It seemed to me that the pirates thought they could do anything they liked and get away with it with impunity. The border meant nothing any more. There seemed to be no safety, anywhere.

And so I waited. And waited. And waited.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 03, 2012, 05:46:18 pm: Then came a day I am not proud of, when I broke my vow to my mother. For several week a hulking grey short faced hyena had been coming around the temple. He wore a really silly hat: black felt, with teeth stuck into the band. I don't know who's teeth they were. His name was Growler.

I felt rather sorry for him, actually, he seemed sad and lonely. You couldn't offer him kindness, he wouldn't accept it. In his tribe, he said, any kind of kindness or love or affection was regarded as weakness, and the weak were torn to pieces and eaten.

He also refused to bathe. Maybe he regarded cleanliness as weakness too, or perhaps he just hoped it would make him taste bad. He acted tough and gruff and mean at all times, but I got the feeling he didn't like being who he had to be very much. I got the impression he had been exiled from his tribe anyway, but he clung to their ways grimly, afraid to change.

So he'd been hulking around seeming more hostile and angry than usual, seeming to focus his anger on me more than usual. I'd probably done something to offend him like greeting him or hoping he was well or something. He went off for a bit and then came back, dragging a bloody kill behind him. He ripped the head off and threw it at me, screaming something like “That's you!” or “That's yours!” or something.
I naturally panicked and started screaming. The smell of blood terrifies me, it's an instinctive reaction in a deer, and anyway I've been subject to panic attacks for years, maybe forever. Growler went away again and Jeduh came out of the temple and comforted me, while others took the bloody piece of flesh away.

The fact is that I don't really remember the incident clearly. Not only because it was so long ago and I was in a state of terror, but also because it happened several times and I get them mixed up. There were a number of carnivorous idiots in my time on the island who thought it was funny to terrify the temple maiden by throwing gobs of bloody flesh at her. Even Shadow did it once, but I believe that was an honest, thoughtless mistake. Some of the others were deliberate bullying. You get very tired of it after a while.

Jeduh begged me to press charges against Growler, not just for my own sake but to protect other people in the tribe. Eventually I agreed and she went off to arrest him. I don't know what he would have gotten for disrespecting a temple maiden, probably a night in the stockade at most. That made what happened even more distressing.

Although I've never seen it people said Jeduh had strong plant and nature magic. They said that after she had fought and defeated Growler she caused thorny vines to grow and hold him, but he kept trying to run. The thorns cut him up pretty badly, and cut his eye before they could get him to the jail.

When she came back and told me I was distraught, well, I'd been pretty distraught all along, probably. “I never wanted him harmed!” I wailed. “I never meant any harm!” It made no difference: Growler lost his eye because of me. I had broken my vow to my mother never to harm another living being.

Right Intention is to do no harm, to have good will and compassion for all. Easy words to say, harder to do. I'm sorry.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 11, 2012, 09:32:21 am: My babies were growing incredibly fast. Deer babies grow up like weeds. Within fifteen minutes of giving birth they're able to stand and walk by themselves. You can hide them and go away to graze and they will remain where you put them and stay curled up, quiet and hidden till you return.

Other species babies seem different sometimes, louder and more dependent. Fawn's can't afford to be noisy when predators are on the prowl, and they can't be to clingy if mother must leave them alone when she goes to graze or lead away hunting predators.

Maybe this is why in later life so many of my babies took to wandering off by themselves for months at a time? Or was I unable to give them enough love? Maybe the fault is with me.

*

Lying awake in the middle of the night, the fear gripped my stomach and pounded in my head. There's nothing wrong, I told myself. I'm safe. I'm in the temple, my babies are curled up beside me. I'm safe, we're all safe. Why can't I make myself believe it.

I wonder where Aeon is. Is he awake or asleep? Is he afraid too? Are they hurting him? I wish I knew. Finally I get up and make myself some tea and watch the sky begin to brighten in the east. Eventually towards dawn I doze again, but I know the sleeplessness will return the next night and the next, the fear pounding in my head and gripping my stomach, the sleeplessness making me dopey and slow all day.

Why am I so afraid? I'm safe, I tell myself. I'm safe. I'm safe...
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 15, 2012, 10:17:04 pm: I was terrified that someone was going to hurt my babies. Someone, males, pirates, slavers. Someone, some shadowy someone that lurked just beyond the edges of my vision, waiting to pounce. If Aeon was here he would protect us, but Aeon was gone. I took to hiding them, and myself, putting them to sleep in linen cupboards and laundry baskets, curling up with them in the cellar below the temple, hiding under furniture, keeping my little family out of sight.

I would wander the temple late at night, looking for them. I had lost them. Where had I hidden them? Where were my babies? Where were they? "Marduk! Tiamat!" I would call. Wait, were those the right names? I couldn't remember. "Marduk! Ashara! Tiamat!" Voices called me from the shadows. "Help me, Fawn!" A female voice. "Help me!" And a male mutter, filled with hopelessness: "We're in Hell. We're in Hell. We're in Hades..."

"Shut up! Shut up!" I told them. "Please, leave me alone!" But the memories would not leave me alone. Then I would come upon their bodies, crumpled and broken, lying at the foot of a wall, above them that terrible arc of blood, and I would sink to my knees and wail. "Noooo!"

I woke up, drenched with sweat, desperately reaching and searching for my babies and the cycle would begin again. "We are safe," I whimpered. "We are safe, safe, safe..." But my stomach didn't believe it and my heart told me to run. I wasn't getting much sleep, and I was finding it harder and harder to tell the dream from reality. I was loosing control and it terrified me. What would become of me? What would happen to my babies? Waking took on a floating, dazed, dreamlike existence, sleep was full of searching and calling and wandering the halls of the temple desperately trying to find safety from fears I could not name.

I wasn't paying full attention when people started saying that Cale had been captured. Cale was a fox, a scout. I didn't know him very well, and I tended to keep away from him. People said he was crazy, he heard voices and was unpredictable. Perhaps, given my own mental problems, it was unfair of me to judge, but he was a solider, a scout, he carried weapons and people said he was insane. That combination made me afraid, so I stayed away from him. I am a fearful doe at the best of times, and these were not the best of times, I was alone, trying to protect myself and my two babies from irrational, feeling hopelessly inadequate to the task.

My first reaction when I heard Cale had been taken was one of relief: That's one more thing I don't have to worry about. This was followed instantly by guilt.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 20, 2012, 02:01:26 am: People started to gather on the temple steps and talk about what had happened. I sat there cradling my babies in my arms and listened. Cale had gone over the border and shot someone with a bow and arrow. Then he'd come back and the pirates had come and captured him and taken him back. Nobody was too sure what was going to happen. People said the woman he had shot would probably live, they had got her to the healer Naurel in time.

Nobody knew why he had shot her, but people seemed to accept that he had done it. They were a lot less happy about the idea of the pirates taking our people on our side of the border without so much as a by-your leave. If they could a scout then who couldn't they take? Was anybody safe any more? I'd been feeling that way for a long while, maybe forever.

Then Glassere and Novaku came out and joined us and it became more or less an official tribal meeting.

Some were in favor or charging over there en-mass and freeing Cale, even if it meant starting a war, but in the end cooler head's prevailed.

"They have cannons pointed at the temple!" A scout pointed out. "They have muskets and powder to our bows and arrows. They have more fighters than we do. If it comes to a fight we can't possibly win." That cooled things down a lot.

"What can we do?" someone asked. "They come over here, killing and capturing whoever they like, and it's like there's nothing we can do about it."

"We just have to enforce the treaty!" A male shouted. "When they break it they get punished!"

"But they break it all the time!" I protested. "They killed a male right in front of me, right in front of a cub, under the Mother's tree, and nobody even protested the sacrilege!"

"He wasn't a tribesmember. That doesn't matter!"

"The took Shadow and Bundy," I started.

"She attacked them! She set fires! She deserved it!"

I ignored the interruptions and went on. "They took Glassere. They shot a guest down in cold blood under the Mother's tree. They took Aeon. They came and took Cale. How long will you wait before you do something? Will you wait till they come for your family? Will you wait till they come for you? How long?"

The meeting exploded in the same arguments, over and over, again and again. Some were in favour of fighting. Some wanted to negotiate. Some said we should leave and start a colony somewhere else, somewhere with no pirates.

Novaku hated this last idea: I think it felt like giving up to him. "This is our home," he said. "We've fought for this place. We've bled for it. We were here first. We can't just leave." Unexpectedly he turned to me, I guess he thought I was about the most stay-at-home tribes-member, and would support him. "What do you think, Fawn?" he asked. "We can't just leave our home? Our temple? Our sacred island?"

I scowled and looked down at my hooves on the marble and muttered my answer. Nobody could hear, they called for me to speak up.

"I said Aeon wanted to leave!" I shouted at them, suddenly angry. "He asked me to go with him! And I said YES!" This woke the babies up, of course, and they started to wail. So I took them inside, fed them, changed them, and hid them securely in a laundry hamper. I tried to let the familiar routine calm me, but I was sweating and my heart was pounding.

I went back out to the steps to watch. The arguments went on and one. Nothing was decided. No consensus was reached. Eventually the meeting broke up into little knots of people, then they started to drift away. Novaku in particular was fuming. I think the inaction galled him. The indecision. The weakness. I think he longed for action. He stalked off into the gathering dusk. That was the last time I ever saw him.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 21, 2012, 02:00:04 am: In the morning there was utter chaos. The pirates rampaged across the island tearing things apart, demanding to know where Novaku and Cale were. The guardians tried to stop them but they were in disarray, leaderless. Nobody knew where Novaku was.

I hid in the cellar with other temple staff. Pirates came and dragged us out of there demanding to know where the fugitives were. We protested we knew nothing, and they started shouting at us. At this point a few scouts showed up and then the arguments started for real. It turned out that Novaku had gone over there alone and freed Cale. They'd fought with Tiber and both escaped. But if so, where were they? The pirates were sure we were hiding them.

Without anyone to tell them what to do the scouts were totally disorganised. I think Tiber could have taken over the island then and there if he'd realised how paralysed everyone was. But I heard they had their own troubles over there.

While the shouting was going on I crawled away quietly, clutching my babies to my breast. I hid us behind the storage jars on the lowest shelf of the kitchen pantry and curled up and slept.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 24, 2012, 02:38:42 am: Bad dreams. I was being chased by a snarling hyena who wanted to eat my babies, I gathered them up and ran, heart pounding in my chest. I had to get away... And I woke, trotting along the stone parapet at the edge of the temple's roof. I froze, and skidded to a stop. What was I doing up here?

Far below the waves surged and crashed against the rocks at the foot of the cliff the temple was built on.

"Fawn? Come down from there? Please?" I turned to look, and everyone was staring at me, heads poked out of a windows set in the temple's roof. Scouts, guardians, monks, Glassere, Jeduh. Staring. Ashara awoke in my arms and bleated at me, hungry. I hopped down from the stone lip and climbed up across the tiles and a dozen hands pulled us in through the window.

"What were you doing? You could have fallen!"

"What's going on?"

"We're you trying to kill yourself?"

"Why were you screaming?"

"What's going on, Fawn?"

I put Ashara on the breast and let her suck. "I had a bad dream, that's all," I muttered. "I was asleep."

"Was she going to throw herself and her children off the roof?" One maiden whispered to another.

"She's been acting weird for a while."

"I was asleep!" I protested. "I must have been sleepwalking." Even now none of it really seemed real to me somehow. I seriously wondered if I was still asleep.

Then Glassere seized me in a tight hug that was completely unexpected. "Fawn, don't do that again! You might have fallen, you and your babies! We were terrified!"

I flushed, my snout buried in his furry shoulder. "I'm sorry," I mumbled. "I'm sorry. I don't know why it happened."

As if it was a signal everybody began talking about me, not to me. Glassere released me and turned to the healers. "Can't you do anything? Why has this woman been left unsupervised?"

"She has a head injury!" one of the temple healers protested. "Nobody on the island can heal her?"

"Has the healer Naurel looked at her?"

"She was the first one."

Glassere reached out and took my shoulders and held me in his paws. For some reason I felt like crying. I was a failure as a mother. "Well as anyone tried talking to her?" He asked.

The male drew himself up. "We are healers. We use our magic to heal the sick and injured. We don't have time to talk to people: That's a priest's job!"

Glassere sighed and shooed everyone away and led me down to the priests room and made me sit, in a chair, something I never did. "I'll send for some tea," he said.

"I can't get that!" I tried to get to my feet. It's kind of difficult, these chair things really take practice.

"No, Fawn, sit," he commanded. "I'm sending for someone else to make it. You sit here and drink it."

"Yes, High Priest," I murmured, looking down.

So he sent for another temple maiden to make the tea, and bring it, and serve it to us. I'd never been so embarrassed!

I put the babies down to sleep in a chair and we waited for the tea. After we'd been served and sipped it in appreciative silence Glassere asked "Fawn, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Please, Fawn, I can see you're unhappy and I want to help."

"It's nothing. I'm just... having trouble sleeping. I'll get through it."

"Fawn, I don't think anyone says this enough, but we all love you. You're family. The temple is a family. You can't crack up on us, we need you."

"Aeon needed me. Aeon cared about me. Nobody else here really needs me, and they wouldn't notice if I was gone."

"People look up to you, Fawn. They listen to you because they know you care. People know that they can come to the temple and get a cheerful welcome and a cup of tea from you, no matter how bad things get. The fact it we need that more than ever right now. Whether you believe it or not you're important to this tribe and it wouldn't be the same without you. You're important to me."

I blushed and looked down at my hooves, and swallowed. It's surprisingly hard to hear that people care about you.

"So what's wrong?" Glassere asked.

"I don't know. I can't get it worked out, it all goes around and around in my head. Aeon. No sleep. My babies. The pirates. Bad dreams. I dream that I can't find my babies, someone's trying to hurt my babies and I can't get away, the pirates are invading, males with sword and there's a terrible smell of blood and fire... I'm running and trying to find them and calling and calling, the blood, the terrible blood, my babies, they'll hurt them and the pirates and my babies and my babies and my babies and my babies..."

This stream of words just poured out of me. I didn't know what I was saying through the tears, but but Glassere reached out and stroked my shoulder with his furry paw and eventually I ran down or drew a breath or something and he asked.

"Fawn... Who are Marduk and Tiamat?"

"Who?" I just looked up and blinked at him stupidly. I didn't recognize the names, and yet, I did, it felt like a chasm had opened up beneath me.

"Marduk and Tiamat. You said those names, and you shouted them before when you were walking in your sleep."

"Marduk and Tiamat? Oh Goddess! They're dead! I'd forgotten: they're my babies and they're dead, they killed them. They killed my babies and I forgot!" And I collapsed into tears, grieving for a loss so old and so deep I'd forgotten all about it.

Things were better after that. I still had trouble sleeping sometimes, but the dreams retreated now I knew what they meant. Sometimes I still felt terrible fear, but I curled up into a ball and tried to breathe deeply until it passed over. Some days I still didn't feel like going on, but I worked through it. I put on a smile for my babies and my tribe, and carried on and eventually I started to feel better. I have sleep walked once or twice since that I know of, always in times of great stress and anxiety, but it's very rare for me. My daughter Gaia does it all the time.

I could now remember a little bit about my childhood and my life in the forest. I remembered Marduk and Tiamat and the attack of the slavers. After that though, it was a blank until my vague dreamlike visions of the slave ship and meeting the mother goddess. I supposed I would never know what had happened in between: my life was a mystery to me.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 31, 2012, 12:17:40 am: Next morning trouble arrived at the temple. I was sitting on the temple steps enjoying a cup of tea and trying to collect my shattered thoughts when it limped up. David (the tiger who was called Brisbane) and Ursa, his sister the bear. Between them they bore grim looks and the hybrid caline healer Naurel. She was covered in bruises. I put my cup down on the steps and got to my feet and hurried over to them, "Welcome in peace, um, do you need a healer?"

"Yes."

I turned back to the temple and shouted. "Healer! We need a healer here! We have a casualty! Healer!" That soon enough had tribal healers scurrying to our side. Tutting, they gathered up Naurel and bore her off for treatment.

"Who's your leader now, girl," David gruffed. "We need to speak to them."

"Um, that would be Glassere, the high priest, I guess. He was second in command, and now..."

"Fetch him."

But there was no need, because Glassere had already appeared at the top of the steps, priestly staff in hand. He bowed and smiled at the two new arrivals, his fangs shining whitely in his black face. "Welcome in Peace, how may I be of service?"

"We seek sanctuary," Brisbane said. "Will you give it?"

"Hmmm. We will if we can. All are welcome here who come in peace." He ushered them into the temple and guided them towards the door of the priest's room. I trailed along behind. We stopped outside the door, and Glassere turned and asked: "Last I heard you were members of Tibur's band, living over on the other side. What happened?"

Ursa now spoke up for the first time. "We had to leave. I found Barabas, one of Tibur's lieutenants, abusing Naurel and I killed him." The bear must be a lot more fearsome when roused: Tibur's lieutanants were all grizzled, seasoned veterans, yet she spoke of killing one like it was an everyday occurrence.

My stomach recoiled in horror and I gasped. "Right action is to refrain from violence and killing!"

David turned to glare at me. "What would you have done?" he demanded.

"I would have run away."

"And what if you can't run away? What if someone you love was being beaten and tortured?"

"Then I would suffer."

"Bah! You're useless! Pathetic!"

"I am what I am," I murmured sadly.

David turned back to Glassere, fellow carnivore, and snarled. "Do we have to talk in front of this crazy deer?"

"Fawn follows the path of peace," Glassere said, "And I respect her for it. If she wishes to participate in the conversation she is welcome."

So of course after that I stood and looked down at my hooves in silence for the whole time that they talked.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on January 31, 2012, 12:19:13 am: The next couple of days were surprisingly calm. Just when you expect the sky to fall in, nothing happens. Ursula expressed an interest in learning more about our beliefs, she said, rather shyly, she'd often wondered about becoming a priestess. After talking with her Glassere lent her some scrolls.

I was dumbstruck. It made no sense to me. She was a killer: how could someone like that possibly have a religious vocation? I guess Glassere saw something in her that I could not.

I was feeling more myself, but I was still anxious. The presence of the newcomers didn't help, and the ever present threat of the pirates and their cannon across the border was like a black cloud over me. It's hard to get well when the world around you is going crazy.

So I continued to hide myself and my fawns in out of the way corners, especially when it was time to sleep. We'd curled up in the bottom of the laundry hamper in the priests room underneath a pile of dirty linen and I'd quite drifted off when I was suddenly awoken by voices nearby.

It was Glassere, and the newcomer, David. Glassere didn't bother me, I knew he was alright, but David was more worrying, and that tugged the thread of my anxiety and stopped me from immediately drifting off again, so I listened.

They were talking about Tibur, his guns, his soldiers, his agents buying gunpowder and recruiting fighters in other nearby ports. He was going to attack, David insisted. He was going to strike soon.

Of course, I thought, snuggling into a tighter ball. Surely everyone knows that? Surely anyone can see it. I'd been living with the certainty they would attack and kill my babies for months now. Surely everyone felt it? I sighed silently and let my body go limp.

Glassere was unconvinced, he was asking questions, probing details. Yes, but.. What about... Surely you don't mean...

David's words slowly drifted into my dreams and I saw them, the smiths beating at the hot metal, hammers ringing night and day. Ploughshares beaten into swords, guns, canon, the metal pouring, pounding, hammering, beaten into weapons, beaten into fighters, beaten into soldiers. Soldiers marching, shouting, fighting, explosions, the roar of battle.

She turned to me in the darkness and tears were streaming down her face. It was the Great Mother, no, it was Ursula. "Oh Fawn, do you see?" The flames lit her face with flickering yellow light. "It's on fire! It's burning! It's all burning."

In the morning I convinced myself it had all been a dream.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 01, 2012, 12:25:49 am: I was sitting on the steps in the sunlight drinking tea when Naurel appeared. "Hello!" I said, smiling. "Welcome in peace. Would you like some tea?"

"Yeah." The healers had excelled themselves, working on one of their own. Her fur glowed, she was the picture of health, and there were no scars, but her eyes looked empty. Haunted. I shivered and poured her a cup of tea. The mental scars take longer to heal than the physical ones, I should know. We sat on the steps and sipped tea in silence for a while.

"Thanks," she said after a while. She had finished the tea, so I took her cup and set it on the tray.

"Another cup?"

She just shook her head. I poured myself another cup and thought hard.

"You know that some of my memories returned, in dreams?"

"Yeah?" Her voice was dull, lifeless.

"Yes! I never got to say thank you for your healing."

She twisted her mouth. Maybe it was meant to be a smile? "My failed attempt."

"You cured my sunburn – I was in agony! I actually saw your paws glow. I've never seen anything like that before. Or since, really. I um, seem to be kind of magic blind? I can't even remember magic. I introduced myself to Mr Brad about six times before he caught in my mind. He's a shape changer, so they say."

"Really? So am I. In fact I'm a bit surprised you recognised me in this form."

"But you've always had this form? Haven't you? I've never seen you looking any different."

"Really? You don't remember me having a different shape?"

"No. You've always looked exactly like this."

"Bizzare!" she laughed. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, you have the most amazing aura: absolutely no magic at all. Whatever you're doing it's not magic."

"I don't understand? When did you have a different form?"

"When I healed you I was in my dragon form."

"No!" I blinked, then stopped and sipped my tea to calm myself. "I don't understand."

"What do you remember?"

"You looked just like you do now."

"Bizzare."

Isis woke, stretched, and bawled for food. That woke Ashara and she joined in. I undid the button on the snoulders of my sack dress and pulled it down to expose my breasts. Then I gathered up the babies from their basket and put them to suck. "'Really, these children are getting old enough to wean. They'll be talking soon."

"Really? I thought they were only a couple of months old?"

"Yes, they are. Deer grow up fast. We have to!"
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 02, 2012, 02:32:00 am: Ursula came out and joined us then, and I went quiet, looking down at my hooves and listened to them chatter. When there was a break in the conversation I offered her a cup of tea, but by that time the pot had gone cold, and before I could offer she took it and went in to make another.

"You don't have to be shy around her," Naurel said. "She's the sweetest, kindest person you'll ever meet."

My head was filled with the thunder of a gun, while a cub wailed and tried to bury himself beneath me and the Mother's tree arched into the sky overhead, serene and peaceful and indifferent. "She's a killer," I whispered.

"It was the only way to make him stop. If she hadn't killed him I believe we both would be dead by now. There was no choice."

"There is always a choice."

We were spared from any further painful conversation on this topic by Ursa's return. I accepted a cup of tea from her and whispered my thanks, but I couldn't meet her eyes. I listened to their chatter, lost in my own thoughts and feelings.

"Oh no!" Naurel exclaimed, getting to her feet. "They're coming!"

Ursula stood as well and put her arms around her mate. "We'll be alright. I won't let them hurt you."

A party of pirates in armour we coming across the green, led by a huge black hyena. With a start I realised it must be Captain Tibur. I'd heard about his of course, he dominated our lives like an evil shadow, but I believe that was the only time I ever saw him.

Suddenly Glassere, David, and Jeduh were there with us. "Jeduh, get the scouts! Fawn!" Glassere said. "Take your babies. Run and hide, now!"

He didn't need to tell me twice. I ran to the tapestry and pulled it back, revealing he hidden door, I went through it into the storage room behind. There was a pantry in the corner but I pushed it aside, grunting with effort, then pushed past into the space beyond. It was too heavy to drag back into place completely, but but I managed to pull it a few inches, straining with the effort. It would have to do. I crouched down into the space in the stonework to wait.

I didn't have long to wait. There was an almighty crash, like an explosion, that made me jump, then shouts and screams, and the clash of weapons, then very quickly things fell silent. And stayed silent. Had they gone? What had happened? I stayed in my hidey hole. I forced myself to count to a hundred, then a hundred again. It was utterly quiet out there. Normally I wouldn't stir out of hiding until I was certain it was safe, but perhaps I should take a peek.

I put my babies down on the floor, squeezed out past the pantry and quietly opened the door a crack. Then peeked past the curtains. The only person I could see was Glassere, kneeling on the floor. I couldn't hear or smell anyone else. More important it didn't feel like an ambush. It didsn't make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. They had gone. I snuck out.

Glassere was kneeling on the floor over David's broken body. There was blood and shattered glass everywhere. Glassere looked up, there was blood all over his white robes. He cradled David in his arms and tears streamed down his face. Had they been a lot more intimate than I'd realized.

Jedah ran up from the direction of the barracks with a squad of armed and armoured scouts, and skidded to a stop at the top of the steps.

"They killed him, Jeduh," Glassere said. "He tried to stop them and they killed him."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 02, 2012, 01:15:13 pm: We built a fire and burned David's body on the temple green. Most of the tribe attended. There was nobody to speak for him except Glassere, Naurel and Ursa had been taken by Tibur. Word was he had put slave collars around their necks.

Glassere closed the border after the funeral, and ordered the scouts and guardians to patrol it night and day. He was frantically busy, talking to tribesfolk and traders and guardians, making plans. It was all very secret, but quickly the rumor arose that he was planning an evacuations. Some of the scouts denounced him furiously. They wanted to fight, even against guns, even against cannons, even against overwhelming numbers. A female with small babies doesn't feel this way, of course, but who will listen to her?

One afternoon scouts summoned Glassere up onto the roof. I followed along to see what was happening. They pointed out to sea: Sails on the horizon. The pirates' great ship was returning.

"This is it, then," Glassere said. "Send the word. It's tonight."

Surprisingly enough nothing happened that night. It was quiet. I tried to stay awake, but I was tired. I fed the babies then curled up and fell asleep by the hearth. In the morning it was chaos, scouts and healers and temple maidens running back and forth, everyone talking at the top of their voices. Naurel and Ursa had been rescued! The slaves had been freed in a daring raid! Naurel sand Ursa and....

"Aeon!" I shouted and I rushed to his side, kneeling by his cot. "Aeon, Aeon, oh Aeon! I'm so glad you're home. I was so worried about you. I tried and tried to think of any way I could free you but I couldn't, Oh Goddess, Aeon, I'm so sorry!"

He put his arms around me and he held me. "Tha tha, lass," he rumbled. "Do na greet. Its alright."

It was not alright, of course. They had whipped him and beaten him and his body was covered in filth. I went and got a bucket and some soap and a cloth and I washed away the worst of it, but he really needed a bath. That would have to wait until he was treated, though, my washing kept revealing more cuts and welts under the matted dirt. They had used hm terribly.

Someone had given him a mace, a fearful war club, and he kept picking it up and fingering it nervously.

"Aeon, you're not thinking of fighting the pirates, are you?"

He had a coughing fit, then, but aftter he said "Nay, lass. Nay. But if they come to take what's mine then I will fight."

"Right Action is to refrain from violence!" I exclaimed. "Let's just go away to your home like we planed. Please, Aeon, please don't fight."

He glowered at me and ground out his words like he was chewing oats. "I got a right ta protect what is mine, lass: My mate. My children. Anyone that tries ta harm ya is gonna have ta go though me first. That's all." And that's all he would say. There was never any arguing with Aeon once he'd made his mind up.

The healer came then and chased me away. "I cannot work if I am continually distracted by your crying, woman. Go and wait in the kitchen." He was a healer so I had to obey.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 02, 2012, 01:17:19 pm: After that it was all a blur of activity. Giving Aeon his first proper bath and first proper meal in months. Carrying boxes and bundles down to the beach. The arguments over what to take and what to leave behind. Waiting for the boats. A huge crowd gathered on the beach and the first boats were almost swamped until scouts were pulled off the border to keep order. It was a terrible press and I hung back with my babies, frightened that we would be crushed. All that long afternoon boats came up, loaded, and sailed off, but the crowd never seemed to get any less.

The sun set. It was twilight. There were still a few boats waiting on the shadowy water when Aeon and Jeduh found me. "Dammit, Fawn," Aeon growled. "I told tha to get an a boat."

"I won't go without you!" I said. "I can't bear to lose you again!"

"Dammit, Fawn.."

"No time for this," Jeduh pointed out practically. All hell was breaking loose up on the island, we could hear the roar of battle, the crackle of musket fire and the boom of cannon. The Pirates were finally attacking. The crowd surged around us, then surged back, unsure of what to do. Aeon pushed through it like a plow and we followed along behind. "Females and children first!" Jeduh shouted. "Let Fawn and the babies through!"

There was only one boat left at the end of the quay. Ursa was standing on the deck with an oar in her paws, beating back those who tried to clamber aboard and swamp the already overladen vessel. "Get back there! Get back! Wait for the next boat! This boat is full!" Those who failed to heed her warning felt the pain of her oar. I winced as I heard it crack against one poor fur's skull. People just wanted to escape from the road and screams of battle going on up above, but the boat was too full, it couldn't take any more. If more people tried to get on board the boat would sink and everyone would drown.

"We should wait for the next boat," I whispered, but I don't think anyone heard me.

"Women and children first!" jeduh shouted. "Let Fawn and the babies onto the boat!"

"No, I won't go without you," I shouted, but nobody was listening.

That got Ursa's attention. "What, hasn't they already gone? Hand Fawn and the babies up here!" She commanded the crowd, brandishing her oar. I was siezed by a hundred paws and propelled up over the rail onto the deck, clinging onto my babies for dear life. I would have fallen but Naurel caught me in her arms.

"We'll get the next boat!" Aeon shouted up from the dock.

"Cast off! Cast off! Haul!" The sailors were already pushing us away from the dock with poles and oars and a gap of water opened up between us and the crowd. I saw Aeon and Jeduh confer, then they turned and made their way through the dispersing crowd to the steps that led up on to the island where the guns still boomed and roared. That was the last I saw of them. Somehow there had been some kind of a mix up and there we're no more boats.

They raised the sails and we moved away from the island. The night got darker. Suddenly a great gout of flame went up on the headland where the temple stood, bright enough that we could see each other in it's light. "It's on fire," I said. "It's burning. The temple is burning!" I could hardly see through my tears, and Ursa wrapped me in her arms and coforted me. We stood there by the rail of the overloaded boat, moving up and down on the waves in the darkening night and watched as flame rose up above the headland and the temple died in it's own funeral pyre.

As we got further away the flames disappeared below the horizon, but we could see the glow on the bottom of the lowering clouds. Then it got further away, and fainter, and dimmer, and it was gone.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 03, 2012, 04:30:58 pm: PART THREE: SURVIVOR

Of course we sailed straight into a typhoon. For three days the sky was black, we were drenched with rain and the waves were like black mountains towering over us. I was wretchedly sick the whole time. I hate boats. The crew threw everything overboard to lighten us: tools, money, food, clothes... There were so many people crammed on that overloaded boat that if they hadn't I'm sure we'd have gone to the bottom. Then Glassere rigged a sea anchor and for three days we rode out the storm.

At least they tell me there were days, we never saw the sun and it seemed like a single endless howling night to me. Finally the sun did come out and the clouds blew away and the seas eased. The storm was over. The men put up sails and we moved across the waves. Everything was blue, blue sky, blue sea. We were alive.

We sailed for at least a week, I lost track of exactly how long. There was very little food left, and my milk dried up. After that Isis and Ashara had to eat ship's biscuit like everyone else, and they complained bitterly. They were just beginning to speak and their favourite word was "No!"

We were on short rations and we all got very hungry. By the time we sighted land I was found myself eyeing the ropes and sails and wondering what they would taste like. Some of the other passengers were eyeing me.

"Land Ho!" It was a tiny island, lush and green, a single peak sticking out of a cloud. We sailed around it, looking for a way through the coral reef, and finally made landfall on a pristine white beach. The men dragged the boat up out of the water, and we all hopped out, marvelling as the land seemed to move and sway beneath our feet because we'd been at sea so long.

Most of the males immediately disappeared into the bush, hunting. I put Isis and Ashara in their basket and walked along the beach, venturing into the forest to look for grass and flowers to nibble on. I found a stream and we all drank, then I had the feeling I was being watched. A furry face with large brown eyes poked up out of the bushes on the far side of the stream.

"Hello," I said, but he or she disappeared and scurried away through the bushes.

I found some yams, and dug up the roots. They were delicious. Isis, Ashara and I all ate our fill. Then I went back to the boat, where the carnivores were roasting meat. I kept well away from that.

The island was occupied by a tribe of friendly otters. We didn't have much to trade, but the brought us fish and crabs and a strange fruit called coconut. The babies liked the milk.

We spent a couple of weeks there, repairing the boat, replenishing supplies, regaining our strength and arguing over where exactly where we were. When we left quite a few people opted to remain behind, it was that lovely. I sailed on with the boat. The tribe, I decided, deserved my loyalty, wherever we were headed. I had no idea where Aeon might be, there was no going back, and my children needed a new home. Really, what else could I do?
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 05, 2012, 12:37:18 am: We sailed for another three weeks. There were no more typhoons, but Glassere said the wind was being very unhelpful. I didn't understand that: It was a sailing boat, I thought the wind was what made it go at all? Anyway it seemed to me that we just sailed back and forth across the same patch of ocean for weeks, but Glassere said we were making progress. He said he could tell be looking at the sun. That didn't make any sense to me, but what would I know? I'm a forest creature. It's true that he did use some sort of a tool to look at the sun several times a day.

It must have been some kind of magic, and it must have worked, because eventually we arived.

Lismore. Glassere had told us the name of the island before we left. It was remote, far away from the pirates, and it's lord said we were welcome to settle there. We sailed into the bay late one afternoon. It was a low lying land, all forest with hills beyond, and a marble city with shining golden dome. It was beautiful.

The others had arrived weeks before us and we pulled our boat up next to the others on the beach. We were the last to arrive. It was a joyful time of reunion with old friends, and sadness at the faces that were missing. And many were missing. Many had been left behind and some of the boats never arrived. The tribe was just rags and tatters of what we once had been.

One reunion was particularly touching: I saw Glassere embrace his mate Cloudchaser, tears streaming down both their face. Glassere had sent Cloudchaser ahead on the first ship. He was a handsome grey tabby, heavily pregnant. Others had begun to think we were lost, but Cloud never lost hope. He spent all his time down on the beach, waiting for his mate. He was there when we arrived.

Yes, he was a he, and yes, he was pregnant. I don't know how the boys did it, I heard it was some sort of magic. The thing that always exercised me was how they got the babies out safely at the end, but I was too afraid to ask. Besides, it was none of my business. However they did it it must have worked because Liam was born a few months after that, a fine healthy boy.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 06, 2012, 12:39:24 pm: The ruler of the island was Lord Ashtyn, a fox who was said to be about two thousand years old. I didn't believe it at first - deer only live a couple of decades - so I thought it must be just a story, but everyone assured me it was true. Glassere had met him during his time as a slave and they'd been sending each other letters. He encouraged us to settle the unoccupied southern part of the island which was covered in forest.

There were a few other groups: Lord Kabul led the Zenko monastry, a group of warrior monks who lived behind their walls on the highest part of the island. Years ago a portal had opened there and strange beasts and enemies had poured through, threatening the city. The monks had arrived and helped defeat the threat, then they'd build a shrine to their Goddess on the spot to keep the portal closed, and built their home around that. It all sounded like fantasy to me, but there was a hill and a monastery and a big tower which was the shrine. That much was fact.

Finally there were the gypsies who'd recently moved into the caves under the hills. For centuries the caves had been occupied by dragons, until they'd moved out, complaining of climate change. The island was getting too cold and rainy, and the lava in the caves smelt bad. They left, and a motley band of wandering gypsies moved in, led by their queen, Titania.

The next day we walked down through the forest to pick a site for our new temple. The woods were lovely, dark and deep, and full of delicious clovers and thistles and mushrooms. We came upon some tumbled old stones. The others moved on but I stopped to look at them. They were columns, foundations, part of a floor, these genuinely looked to be hundreds or thousands of years old. We were not the first to build a temple in these woods, I judged, but what what folk had built it, or what gods they had worshiped I could not say.

Eventually we came to the southern shore of the island, a pleasant grassy clearing by a stream looking down to the shore. Standing in the middle of the clearing was a great big solitary tree, much larger and older than any others we'd seen. We stopped and gazed up at it in silence for a while. It was massive, and serene, branches waving in the breeze. A gap in it's base formed a kind of cave or shelter. There had been one such tree on the holy island which we called the Mother's tree. Mother holds all trees dear, but the rumor was she'd planted that one herself. Who knew for sure?

"This is the place," Glassere said. He'd been letting his natural color grow out so he had white fur roots and black ttips. He'd ripped the copper off his collar and now wore the filigreed adamantine i all it's jewel like glory. He still looked exotic and expensive. "Aren't you afraid someone will abduct you again?" I'd asked, but he'd just laughed. "My magic will protect me." I didn't remember him having any magic, but people said he was now quite powerful. I couldn't remember any of the stuff that they said he'd done, but well, that's magic for you.

We built a fire and Glassere and Ursa and Cloudchaser walked back and forth across the site, making plans. I curled up for a nap beside the camp fire.... and woke up three days later.

*

When I woke up everything had been transformed. The mother's tree was the same, but all around me were the most amazing building. They weren't really buildings, they were trees! I walked in wonder and gazed at them. Later, up at the monastery I saw monks persuading little trees to grow into pretty shapes using pruning, and wires. They called this art Bonsai. This was similar, but these were full sized trees that grew and bent and twisted around one another, and threw branches and leaves and roots in places to make roofs and walls and floors. And none of it had been there when I'd fallen asleep!

At first I didn't believe that days had passes, but people assured me they had. Then I thought I'd slept for three solid days, but everyone said I'd been awake and preparing meals and making tea and caring for my children, and making suggestions and sarcastic comments for the whole time for the whole time the temple had been growing. I just couldn't remember any of it, the whole time was a blank. People who saw it said it was something you'd never forget: Glassere planted seeds and summoned the trees up out of the ground. Ursula sang to them and they danced and grew into place. Glassere whispered words to them and they did what he asked. What Aeon and the other builders had taken months to achieve in stone, Glassere and Ursa did in days with the wood and bark of living trees.

The temple is one of the wonders of the island, and visitors come to see it and marvel and I tell them the story of how it was grown. I just wish I could remember it myself.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 12, 2012, 11:17:23 pm: Lord Ashtyn visited, and I served him tea and sat nearby while he talked to Glassere and Ursa. He was impressed by the temple, or at least he acted impressed. How impressed can such an old being really be with the doings of mayflies like us? We were impressed by the temple, but in two thousand years of life what wonders had he seen? I suspect that was one reason he'd liked having the dragons around: he could have a decent conversation with them without them suddenly dying of old age. In appearance he seemed a very ordinary fox, and his speech was considerate and gracious, not like a ruler at all. We'd all known much worse rulers, Lord Ashtyn was a relief.

Can I convey how relieved we felt generally? We had a new home, and nobody was threatening us. The threat had been like dark clouds hanging over us all for so long, and now the sun had come out and I had forgotten how bright and cheerful it was to live in the sun. I could simply lie and look at the sky for hours at a time and not worry about a thing. There was still sadness: everyone had lost somebody, we felt grief over how much we had lost; but there was also hope, finally we had a place we could live and grow in peace.

Of course there were still fears. One of our first visitors was a slaver, Svart, a black wolf with wings. We got into quite an argument over slavery, I had to remind myself that my Mother didn't put me here to argue with people. His presence made me feel anxious. I was safe enough in the Temple, it was under our control. But could I be taken if I grazed in the forest, or walked in the forum of the town? Uncertainty brought anxiety. I still bore a slave brand on my shoulder, anyone could claim me as a runaway slave and the law here might favor them.

Later I was to learn that slavery here as different to the brutality practiced by the pirates, slaves here must consent to their bondage, and an abusive master could be stripped of his property. Frankly it didn't sound much like slavery at all to me, and I couldn't see why anyone would consent to the kind of horror I had been through. It made me feel angry, I don't know why, as if what they called slavery here somehow took away from the suffering and deaths of thousands, and distracted from the callous uncaring of those who benefited. I felt angry and hurt and confused, so I stayed silent and I watched.

But gradually I learned it was safe to graze the forests and visit the forum and the inn, brand or no brand, nobody would bother a freedwoman here. Eventually I began to have some confidence in who I was here, my identity. Here's one thing that helped build this confidence:

One of the new arrivals after the Temple was grown was a silver wolf named Lone. He liked to wear long blue coats, very fancy. He took a great deal of pride in his possessions, his wealth, and the power it gave him. And he was very into power. Lone was a deal maker, a go-between, a middleman. He liked to hang around the temple and I had ample opportunities to watch him work. manipulated people's needs, their desires. He would talk to people, find out what they wanted, then worm himself into the process between them and getting what they wanted.

In this way he acquired a lot of power over people. People would do whatever he wanted to get the things they thought they wanted. He was gaining power, becoming the indispensable man, the go-to man for anything anyone needed; and every transaction ended up enriching and empowering Lone.

He strictly ignored me at all times, acted as if he couldn't see me or hear me. I think he sensed that none of the things I wanted: Aeon, freedom, sunshine, clear clean water, luscious clover and milk thistles; none of them were anything he could grant or deny me. He had no power over me. Early on there was one time he didn't ignore me: We were in the Inn, I enjoyed visiting and sitting on the floor watching the people go past, and they didn't throw me out although I had no money. Lone was there, and Asha, a city guard.

Somehow the conversation turned to slavery and I must have said a few things against it. Lone, that jealous lover of possessions, of course saw nothing wrong with it: he could never see himself as other than a possessor, a Master. I tried to justify my opposition: I showed my brand, although it was years ago in another land and so much had happened in between someone out there still felt they owned me, and worse, owned my children although they had been conceived and born in freedom, and no matter who I was or what I did they could never ever be made to respect my freedom.

That got his attention. That got his complete attention. He stared at the slave brand on my arm like he'd never seen such a thing before. Then he turned to the guard, Asha, and asked her to arrest me. "You heard her, she said it herself, she's a runaway slave!" Now, I'd considered there was a chance he might do something like that. I'd calculated my safety before I'd ever set foot in the town, and concluded I was pretty safe. Yes, slavery was legal here, but not the kind of slave raiding I'd been taken in. Lord Ashtyn had spoken to me very cordially, assuring me I was welcome in his domain. He'd assured Glassere that the temple had complete authority over our own people, and by our laws tribesfolk could never be made slaves. So I was safe.

Still as Asha looked at me and hesitated, deciding what to do, and Lone demanded that I be held as a confessed runaway slave I felt the fear. You may escape, but you never quite escape the fear. Asha refused of course, and Lone argued with her while I sat there and smirked at both of them. It had been a fine way to tease him. He never spoke to me after that, never looked at me, never heard a word I spoke. I was property that had somehow escaped it's proper ownership and such a thing could not exist in his universe.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on February 13, 2012, 12:19:29 pm: As soon as we arrived on Lismore Glassere and Ursa began making plans to return, arranging boats and supplies and voluteers. A few weeks later they sailed off, taking Naurel with them, and leaving Cloudchaser in command. I had high hopes they would bring back Aeon. They were gone for about a month, and returned disappointed.

Very few of our friends were left on the holy island, they had either been killed or else sold abroad as slaves. In addiion the pirates had brought in hundred and hundreds of slaves from the mainland and other islands, and set them to work clearing the forest and building a town. Finding the survivors was a matter of combing through camps of strangers, most of whom were strangers eve to each other. It was dangerous work, they were betrayed and ambushed and had to flee. The pirates chased their boats and only nightfall and a fortuitous squall prevented them from being blown out of the water. In the end they brought back more of the new slaves than our people There would be no more expeditions to our old home.

They did, however make contact with Brad, the trader. He'd returned to the island only to have his cargo confiscated by the pirates, who were not interested in trade. When he complained Tibur threatened to take his boat an crew as well. A few weeks later Brad sailed into the harbour at Lismore with new cargo, and soon he was crying his wares in the marketplace. I sat on the manhole nearby and watched.

"Hello, Fawn, remember me?" he asked.

"Hmm, let me see. Could it be Bran, or Brad, or Rumpelstiltskin?"

"Brad! I swear your memory gets worse and worse every day. Here. I bet you remember these." He handed me a salt cube and I sucked on it.

I did remember them, I think they had seaweed in them - delicious! "Fank Goo." I mumbled around the cube.

"Not pregnant anymore, I see."

"It's not that time of year. In fact it's getting on towards Fall."

"Fall?"

"It's a very special time for me."

"Er, um, right... Er, Where are the babies?"

"Ashara and Isis are running around somewhere. Grazing. Ashara has taken to visiting the gypsies in the caves. I went in there once and it's all stone and rock. Nothing to eat. There are pools of funny smelling fire. I don't like it so I came straight back out."

"Those gypsies can be dangerous."

"So everyone says, but Ashara is quite taken with them. She says they are teaching her things. Magic. She says she wants to be a healer." I shrugged, rather doubtful about it. I really only half believed in magic and I couldn't remember smelling anything like that about Ashara, although she insisted she'd healed my hoof once when I hurt it. Still, I had resolved to be a better mother and decided the way to do it was to be proud of my children, whatever they did. So I was proud of her, and I made sure to tell her often. It actually felt pretty good.

Bradley sold his cargo and won an interview with Ashtyn, who was impressed with his cunning and business acumen and awarded him a contract to supply the city. We began to see his ship in the harbour more and more often.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on March 05, 2012, 12:03:36 am: So then there was rut. I don't remember very much about it, I mated with Solarius, that much was obvious, and I think a couple of bucks came out of the woodwork. I remember teasing Cloudchaser, but I don't think anything came of it: he only mated with males.

When I came back to myself I was pregnant again, and life was rolling onwards. Growler arrived and sat around mumbling threats about eating me. I wasn't seriously worried as I'd put up with worse for ages on the Holy Island and I knew that the predator who talks big is generally less of a threat than the one who remains silent. My daughter Ashara freaked out, however.

Ashara had been hanging around with the gypsies in the caves, who were turning out to be a bad lot. They'd executed a young male from the city for trespass which had caused bad blood. They didn't seem to object to Ashara's presence, but I worried about her. I knew better than to try to forbid her from the caves, her stubbornness reminded me of Aeon, or myself. She would only have disobeyed. As much as possible I tried to encourage her to develop other interests.

Healing was one. Ashara was convinced she had the power to become a healer if only she could find someone to train her. There were Healers around the temple, of course, including Naurel, but Ashara took to visiting the Zenko monastery, and her talk was all about Lord Kabul. Better, I thought, the monastery than the caves.

About this time she showed me a weapon she had designed and built herself, a fantastic thing like a crossbow that fired whirling blades. I shuddered to think of the damage it would cause if she ever shot anyone with that thing. I tried to convince her that healers don't hurt people, and don't use weapons, and she acted reluctantly convinced, at least while she was in sight, but she kept the weapon.

So into this situation slouched Growler, the hulking short faced hyena who didn't like to bathe. Where he sprung from I don't know, perhaps the pirates threw him out because he smelled bad? His threats quickly earned him a ban from the temple. We'd tightened up since the bad old days on the Holy Island where you practically had to murder someone to earn a ban. He could see that I wasn't impressed by his bluster, so he started "teasing" Ashara about how he'd like to eat her. We were in a group of people talking on the slope below Zenko at the time. Ashara freaked out and ran into the monastery, while Growler laughed.

A few weeks later Growler was exiled from the island for something he did in the town: I don't know the details. But by then the damage was done: Ashara was convinced that only Zenko could keep her safe and teach her magic. She was going to live there, and she wanted me to go with her.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on March 05, 2012, 12:50:45 pm: There comes a time when a mother must choose between turning her children away and telling them to go and live their own lives, or putting her own needs aside and living for her children. I chose the second path. My farewell from the temple was heart breaking. I cried as I told Ursa and Glassere that I had to go away. But family is family. Then I left.

I was greeted at Zenko by an interview with Lord Kabul and his lady, I'm sorry, I foget her name. I hadn't expected any such honor. They'd clearly heard of me, and tried hard to impress. I was just feeling uprooted, stunned. Moving home is never an easy thing for me. I excused myself as soon as I was able.

Zenko was a constant temptation for me. Aside from the black stone tower that dominated the island, the whole place was made of rice paper, bamboo, and grass mats. Rice paper is a delicious confection that melts on your tongue. Bamboo is a kind of grass, giant chewy grass. Grass mats are yummy. It was like living in a gingerbread house, I had to exercise constant self control. In I the yard there were these straw men that the soldiers used to hit with sticks and blades. They called them dummies. I called them dessert: they were old armor stuffed with prime quality straw, well dried and aged. At the end of my time there people were commenting how thin they were starting to look.

I confined myself as much as possible to old and worn out straw matting, there was a storeroom full of it. Maybe a few bamboo and rice paper screens looked a little bit nibbled around the edges. I don't think anyone noticed.

My time at Zenko was a lonely one. Ashara was away more and more, learning magic, she said, including healing. She didn't really need me at all. I was left alone. The monks and warriors had no time for me. I would sit in the courtyard for hours and watch them exercise, and look down at my hooves. I was pregnant, babies growing in my belly, it was easy to sit and dream, and when I got bored with that I'd go and make a pot of tea, drink it, and then sit some more.

The monastery was abuzz about something. It had been founded originally, centuries ago, to keep some kind of a gate closed. I'd never fully understood what that meant: it was variously described to me as a sacred fire, or a pool, or a shimmering portal. In truth I don't think anyone living had ever seen it, it was buried under that tower of black stone. Now the magic users were talking about a prophecy from their Goddess, a way of using the portal safely. I don't think they meant to talk about it in front of me, but I was quiet and they'd gotten used to be being there, part of the furniture, and deer have excellent hearing.

Still, I didn't know what to make of what I was hearing, they were all excited by the direction Lord Dartun's investigations were taking. Nobody spoke of danger, there wasn't even a note of caution, it was all wide eyed wonder at the possibilities. I know nothing about magic, and for the most part magical beings ignore me as beneath their notice, and I believe that is the safest way to be. I had no idea of the consequences that were about to unfold for Lord Dartun, and the whole island. Even if I had I don't know what I could have done about it: he was the great magician, I was just a deer.

It started with an earthquake, a low, low groaning deep in the ground that made me leap to my feet and prepare to run. There was nowhere to run to, the gates were closed, they had been for days. I had been sitting in the courtyard, thinking nothing, hardly present at when it began. The ground trembled, then shook. I clung to a tree and waited for it to end, but it didn't end, it just got worse and worse. The ground began to roll like waves. There were cracking sounds and one of the buildings just folded up on itself and collapsed. Then I ran, even though there was nowhere to run to I ran anyway. Other people were running too, they were running towards the tower. I ran away.

When I reached the gates I had to stop. They were solid wood and iron and even through they now leaned at a crazy angle they blocked my path. Stones were tumbling down the walls and thudding into the dirt, and still the waves in the ground rolled on and on. I turned and looked at the tower, and it was falling, it was leaning over towards me, reaching for me, and pieces were breaking off as it fell. It seemed to happen very slowly. Then pieces of stone were raining down all around me and I ran. I ran for the broken walls, even though they were broken to bits and the tumbed rubble was no refuge. Something hit me hard, like a lion, I went sprawllng onto the rocks and there was an enormous crash, and then it got very dark and very quiet and the only sound was the clinking and sliding of settling rock.

I tried to move, and agony shot through my leg. I was jammed into the rocks and I couldn't move enough to even feel what was wrong or how bad it was. It just hurt and it kept on hurting. It was black under the rocks. I realized that I had been buried alive. I called and called, but there was no answer. I think I slept.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on March 07, 2012, 12:55:06 pm: Darkness. A voice whimpered, "We're in Hell! We're in Hell!"

I groaned, and croaked, "Shut up, oh please shut up," but it had been my voice, I realized. My throat was raw, parched, I was so thirsty. When would they give us water? Oh, please, Goddess, let them give us water soon. "Water, please, water..." I croaked.

"Wait," a faint voice called. "Hold up, listen." A faint sound sound I'd been aware of on the edge of my hearing stopped, and it was silent. I strained to hear, the silence stretched. "Hello? Is there anybody there? Can you hear me?" the voice called, muffled, a long way away. Suddenly it hit me. I wasn't on the slave ship, that had been years ago. The tower had fallen, I was buried!

"Hello," I croaked. "Help me."

"Is there anybody there?" He called again. "Call out if you can hear me."

"Help!" I screamed. "Help Me!" Well, I tried to scream. It came out more like a rasp.

"There's someone there. Someone's alive. Hold on, we're coming! Hold on!" The scraping sounds resumed. It was digging. They were coming to dig me out. I held on: there wasn't much else I could do.

When I woke up I was lying on a bed in the temple. My leg didn't hurt any more. I'm told it took them two days to find me and dig me out. In the end they had to use magic to lift the stone off me, it was the only way to move it. Then they used more magic to heal my broken leg. I don't remember any of it. By some miracle my unborn babies had survived,

I thank the Goddess for that. Ashara was among the missing. At first I thought she must be dead, buried under those piles of rubble, but it turned out she'd been seen leaving the island with the Gypsies. A few days after the quake Lord Ashtyn had expelled them from the island. He'd finally had enough when they refused to help in the rescue efforts or share medical supplies. We have our own wounded, their queen had said, it's none of our affair. By the time I woke up they were gone, and Ashara with them. There was nothing I could do.

Lord Kabul and his acolytes were never found, they just vanished. Personally I think some of the bodies were just so deeply buried as to be unrecoverable, but people say, well people say all sorts of things. Some claim they were sucked through the portal into another world and trapped there. The most popular theory is that he had angered his Goddess and she came down and struck down the tower and punished him.

I was there, and I didn't see anything like that. However, I was running away at the time, so it could have happened. Most people agree that Lord Kabul's pride and magical experimentation was the cause of the disaster. It's true, I think, that he was doing some kind of experiment with the portal buried in the heart of the tower. I don't think it's ever been proved, however. It's possible it was just an ordinary earthquake that struck at the worst possible time. They are not unknown on Lismore.

Whatever the cause, the results were the almost complete destruction of Zenko, with the portal glaring nakedly among the ruins. Lord Ashtyn placed guards around it, he expected an attack, but none came. The city was badly damged, repairs went on for months. There had been rock falls in the caves, and new chambers had opened up. The temple was largely spared.

I ate and drank and slept again. They'd healed my leg and all my cuts and bruises, but for some reason I still felt weak. When I woke up I went and laid by the fire and watched people numbly, moving about and doing things. It all seemed faintly unreal. Then a male strode into the temple, a wolf, he carried a staff and wore a traveling cloak. His clothes looked dusty and sweat stained.

"Hello?" he called.

I sighed and got to my feet and went over to him. "Welcome in peace," I said. "My name is Fawn. You look like you could use a bath..."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on March 10, 2012, 05:07:56 pm: Although no attack eventuated through the portal, Lord Ashytn was still concerned. He recruited soldiers and reformed the monestary, and he chose Cloudchaser to lead it. Cloud's moving out was either the cause or the effect of a quarrel with Glassere, and I think they didn't speak to one another for months. Cloud took the baby Liam with him when he left. Soon he was calling himself Lord Cloudchaser.

What else happened in this period? David Chronos... reappeared. It's all very strange to me in my memory. One day I got up and started making porridge for breakfast and David was there and everyone was making a big fuss over him and I couldn't see why. Everyone was saying he'd been raised from the dead and it was a miracle, whereas I remembered him having lived with us for months and months. And also... having died.

It was strange, I now had two contradictory sets of memories. David had been killed by Tibur and David had defeated Tibur and seriously injured him. Some moments it seemed one thing was true, another moment, especially when David was present, the other memory would predominate. It really messes with your head remembering two different things at the same time! Anyway, David was back. He seemed different, gentler, less hostile. He had changed.

Svart, the slaver wolf, was around a lot more in those days, he seemed to like our company. The first indication of just how much David had changed was when he took a collar and became Svart's slave, voluntarily. Ursa was furious, of course, and snapped at him for being a fool - and then snarled at anyone else who dared criticize her brother. I kept very quiet.

The truth is I'd never understood slavery in this land. When we first came here and I'd heard there were slavers roaming around and slave ships in the harbour I was terrified, thinking I could be taken as I grazed in the forest. Later I gained more confidence and realized this wasn't true, I was protected by the Temple. New slaves could only be made in Lismore if they sold them selves into it, or if Lord Ashtyn ordered for debt or other reasons.

Foreign slaves, however, could still be bought and sold in the marketplace. As well, a slave in Lismore had the option to put aside some money to work towards buying their freedom, and in theory their Master was not supposed to touch this. Slaves could also be freed by Masters grateful for their service, and this happened more often than you might think. Lord Ashtyn could order the freeing of slaves who had been abused or neglected. In all it was very different from the slavery I had known.

David received money from Svart for becoming his slave, and he used it to buy the Inn in the marketplace, which he then gave to his Master. They both went and lived there and ran it. Svart renamed it the Slave's Gift.

Ursa had been away for a long time. After the trip to the Holy Island with Glassere she and Naurel went on another journey to her home land, a place called Rome. They were away for a long time, making peace with Ursa's family. When they returned they brought fine gifts for everyone, and the temple. It was the first time I realised that Ursa's family were wealthy. It must have been about this time she started wearing the ladylike dresses she wears today.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on March 12, 2012, 02:24:25 am: Deep in the forest is a place sacred to Her. She is our mother Earth and there are always places to worship her if you know what to look for – caves, grottoes, and forests themselves. Most people are just not looking.

In the heart of the forest, far from temple and city there is a place where rocks come up out of the earth and a spring comes out of the hillside. Beside the spring is a gap in the rocks, almost a cave, and in the cave there is a small statue carved out of rock. She's just a rough shape, head bowed over swollen breasts and pregnant belly, half buried in the earth. You can't even make out what species she is, sometimes I think rabbit, sometimes fox. Or deer I suppose.

I'm not the only one who worships there, although I've never seen anyone else go there, sometimes I find fresh flowers laid before Her. I don't know how old this place is, but something in my heart whispers very old, and very secret.

This day I slipped into the cave and knelt, murmuring my prayer quickly: "Heavenly Mother, please look after my daughter wherever she travels and bring her back to me safe." There was no sound except the dripping of water, and when I looked up Her stone face was hidden, gazing down at her breasts, or her hooves.

But as I crawled out of the cave the hair on the back of my neck lifted and I knew she was smiling at me. I turned, but she was already lost in the darkness, hidden, but I could feel that smile all the way home.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on March 13, 2012, 02:16:16 pm: A couple of days later I went up to the bar to see David, but he wasn't there. The place was deserted, filled with mid-morning sunlight, and I wandered across the marble floor wondering if I should wait for him, or just leave. There was a doe stretched out on one of the rugs asleep, pretty deeply asleep if I could sneak up on her like that. I extended my snout towards her, moving softly so as not to wake her, and sniffed her scent a couple of times.

She smelled vaguely familiar. I looked her over, noting the slave collar and her long, willowy body. Then I settled down by her, thinking that a nap might be just the thing, when her ear twitched and she opened her eyes and woke up, and just about jumped out of her skin. "H-Hello?"

I smiled. "Hello. My name is Fawn."

"Fawn? Mother!"

We just blinked at each other in shock. "I'm not your mother, dear," I told her gently, thinking the poor thing's mind must be a bit touched. "I'm Fawn, from the temple here. I'm guessing you've newly been brought her, by Svart?"

"M-Master Svart, yes. I'm Demeter."

"Welcome in Peace, Demeter."

She kept looking at me with those big, big eyes, following my every movement. She extended her nose, tentatively, to take my scent. I nuzzled her cheek and sniffed her scent again. She did smell familliar, I felt some kind of a stirring inside. Could she have been of my people? Was that why she thought I was her mother? Demeter frowned at me, looking more and more troubled in her mind, it was clear she still thought so.

"I-I can't be your mother," I protested. "I would remember. Um, I think I would remember. Well, probably." She just gazed at me then with a look full of pain, and I felt.. confused. "I-I was injured, I guess, I think I died, and a large part of my life is a blank, but I would remember... wouldn't I?"

"Mother, you got sick, you were taken from us. We thought you were dead!"

I got to my feet. This was too much. I had to run, I had to be free! "I, I, I have to think about this! I'm not sure. I don't remember. I'm confused! I'll come back tomorrow!" And with that I dashed out of the Inn. I trotted home through the woods in a panic, my thoughts in a whirl. Was she really my daughter? Try as I might I couldn't dredge up any memories of her. She did smell familiar though, her scent made me feel confused, sad, protective. It came to me suddenly, she smelled like Ashara, my little lost fawn, gone with the gypsies.

"Oh my Goddess," I whimpered. Could she really be my daughter?

*

Next morning before dawn horns blared from the Zenko ruins. The temple scouts and guardians raced off into the darkness, later a messenger came back: bugs were attacking, stay in your homes.

"Demeter!" I thought, "I must go to her!" Glassere tried to stop me. "I promised," I explained. "I have to see her." So bugs or no bugs I raced off through the forest.

When they said bugs were attacking I thought it was something like a swarm off bees, not acid spitting creatures the size of oxen, covered in chitin and mandibles. Bees, though, were worrying enough: What if they stung my new daughter? Some time during the night I had accepted the truth. I found Demeter lying in the slave cage in the marketplace, the barred iron door open: Svart told her to sleep there. With some difficulty I persuaded her to come into the Inn.

"Bugs are attacking! Bees! You must come inside!"

"But Master said..."

"What will he say if you are hurt? Svart will probably thank me for protecting his valuable property," I said bitterly. With much agonizing and persuasion I got her inside. The thing about slaves is they never do what you tell them. Daughters too, really.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on March 21, 2012, 01:13:52 pm: I got Demeter into the Inn and we went down to the room where David and the other inn slaves were sheltering and we hid with them. The inn rooms are built into the hillside and the inner rooms have no windows, so by barring the door and stuffing the cracks with vinegar soaked rags I reckoned we were safe enough from bugs or bees or whatever it might be.

David was clearly in a state of anxiety, and Demeter was rolling her eyes and starting at ever sound so I was occupied at first just trying to calm and reassure them. Svart was away, David reported, and he didn't know when his master would be back, but it would be soon. I didn't know David very well. He'd always had an antagonistic, sarcastic manner towards me, and then he'd died suddenly. The others claimed to have seen his ghost, but I never had, and that may have just been talk based on fond memories, I don't know. Now he was back, and the new David seemed very different: submitting to Svart and becoming his slave where the old David had fought everyone and everything. Was he even the same person?

But you have to take people as they are: you can't change them, and in truth I wouldn't want to. I'm quite sure our Mother doesn't want to: she loves us the way we are and wants us to love Her and do the right thing of our own free will.

i curled up with Demeter and we slept. We huddled in the stuffy room until the all clear was given, then we staggered upstairs. Svart still had not returned and David was growing more and more anxious, but what can you say to a person in that situation, beyond "I feel for you." Then we sat down and waited. As the days wore by I thought about what I would say to Svart, feeling more and more hopeless. What could I offer him in exchange for my daughter?

I had no money, and no prospects of getting any. It wasn't likely he would swap me for her: Who would want a worn out old slave woman in exchange for a young one? The only practical idea I could come up with was that I would have to get a job and help Demeter to pay off her freedom a bit at a time, which would take years. Maybe he would give me a job serving at the bar? The problem was all the Inn slaves, serving and cleaning and cooking and laundering all without pay. And it was the same in every other profession on the island, everywhere you looked there were slaves fetching and carrying and working. How could a freedwoman compete?
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on April 01, 2012, 02:30:58 pm: And so we waited. It was another two days before Svart returned. He took one look at us and grunted: "Oh great, what is she, sister? Cousin?"

"Demeter is my daughter."

He went away muttering about his luck and the Gods.

Shortly after Ursula arrived, and wrapped us both in a great, warm bear hug. "Fawn I've been so worried! The temple was attacked, perhaps it's just a well you were here. And this is Demeter? Welcome. Swart sent me a message. No, don't worry about all that Mistress stuff, I was a slave too. I'm just Ursa." She went away to find Swart, and as she put it "Sort him out."

Ursa bought Demeter and freed her. Her family was much richer than I'd thought, and she'd started a "foundation" to free slaves. Demeter was one of the firsts. She cried, I cried, Ursa cried, David cried. I think even Swart had a tear in his crusty old eye.

Demeter and I returned to the Temple, for more tears and hugs, and then we went grazing in the forest, for peace. There were so many questions I should have asked her, but i couldn't remember them. I still couldn't remember anything of my time as a slave, so I listened as Demeter told me about the wolf clan and the fear they'd felt when I was taken away. I knew in my heart she was my daughter, she must be, and that had to be enough, didn't it? Still, sometimes it got in between us, that I couldn't remember anything about her at all. Maybe that's why she left, eventually wandering away to find her own destiny?

But I'm getting ahead of myself, and anyway, all of my daughters are wanderers.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on April 02, 2012, 02:38:24 pm: And so Demeter joined us and came to live with the tribe. A bit later my other daughter Persephone turned up as well. That year I gave birth to triplets: Cernunnos, Gaia, and Nimue. It was obvious that Solarius was Nimue's father: She had scales, and wings. They grew up fast as all deer children do, and soon they were talking and wandering off by themselves. For a few months I was gloriously not pregnant.

One day Radem arrived on the island. He was a slave, brought from overseas by a woman owner. Radem is a buck rabbit, grey and white in colour, but with a strange purplish cast to his fur. His story is that he stole something and was enslaved as punishment. He seems to come from a good family: they own a farm, and they're not dirt poor either: they read and write and from his words seem well respected, so it's hard to say why he went wrong. His people say that purple rabbits are bad luck, and from Radem's own story you could be forgiven for wondering if it was not true.

But this all came out later, at the time he was just a slave brought to the temple. The woman had tired of him and she sold him to Lone. He was worried. If I'd been in his fur I'd have been terrified. Lone was not a nice wolf. Ursa had tried to buy him but Lone wasn't selling, he just smirked, enjoying his power over everyone. There was nothing he liked more than making people dance to his tune.

So Ursa and I were in the kitchen, trying to give him advice on how to cope with slavery. "Make a place in your mind where you can go," I suggested. "A place they can never find or destroy. No matter what they do to your body, inside your head you can be free."

"Smile and be agreeable to whatever he says. Learn to be invisible - keep your head down and your eyes down and escape notice. To be noticed is to invite punishment." Ursa said.

Ursa and I looked at one another, and smiled sadly. It was obvious we'd both been there. "I was a slave once too," Ursa admitted.

"You were?" I stared at her. How did a girl from a rich family become a slave? I shook my head. "I never knew." Maybe she'd been captured in a raid like I had, that can happen to anyone. Maybe her family had spent years looking for her, and found her at last, like some romantic tale?

"It's not something I talk about too often."

Radem was just kind of staring at us gob-smacked as we reminisced. "You were both slaves?"

I shrugged and smiled. "We offer sanctuary to runaways and abused slaves, so what do we get? Runaways and abused slaves."

"Most of the temple staff are former slaves," Ursa added.

"We will do whatever we can to help you," I assured him. It turned out that wasn't much. Lone came and collected him and took him away. Radem and Lone soon became a fixture around the island, Lone squirmed his way into everyone's affairs, and Radem did as he was told. He's a nice boy with a hard-bitten, realistic view of the world. After his experiences that's no surprise.

*

I few weeks later I was sitting by the jail chatting to someone when a male walked by. He was some kind of a canine. He carried a weapon, a crossbow. I said "Hello," or "Welcome in Peace," or something like that. If he replied I don't remember it. I returned to my conversation. A few seconds later bang everything went black.

*

Blackness, I was swimming upwards through the blackness. Or was I swimming down? I opened my eyes and emerged into the light. I was lying on a bed by the fire, in a courtyard. I tried to sit up and failed, I groaned, my head hurt.

"Easy, Fawn, easy. Just take it easy." A male said. He was a white leopard, with blue eyes, I'd never seen such a thing. He was a slave, he wore a collar, a silvery jeweled thing. He looked expensive.

"Fawn?" I asked. "Is that my name?" I couldn't remember.

"Of course it is. You're Fawn. I'm Glassere. You were shot in the head with a crossbow bolt. Don't you remember?"

"I was shot?" I raised my hoof gingerly to my forehead, then reached for my throat, and rubbed my hooves and stared at him.

"Sister Naurel healed you. You've been asleep for days. What's wrong, Fawn?"

"The collar, the manacles, they're gone. The ship! I was on a ship! Where am I?"

He sighed. "You're safe, you're safe and well. You're free."

"I'm free," I just stared at him, gobsmacked. Free, after so many deaths, so much blood, so much darkness and suffering. Suddenly I was free, delivered from the hold of that terrible ship, I was free. "Thank the Goddesss," I whispered. "Thank the Goddess I'm free at last."
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on April 04, 2012, 02:35:50 pm: Glassere was a wonderful conversationalist, I could easily see why some rich old male had decided to clap a diamond collar on him. He told me the story of my life as he knew it: I had washed up on the shore of an island: a different island to this one. I had joined the tribe and served in their temple, giving people baths. I had given birth to two children, now grown, Isis and Ashara, and two more still babies, Cern and Gaia. Then I had been struck down by a male firing a blunted crossbow bolt. Unfortunately I could remember none of it.

The children were sweet, timid little things, worried if their mommy was alright. They were strange to me, but they smelled like family. Cern, the little buck, was mute. People said he spoke in their heads - his sister especially - but I didn't hear anything, it's possible she was just telling stories. Gaia, the doe, was a frail, sickly little thing. She would sit by the fire and stare into space for minutes or hours, and once she fell over had had a most alarming fit, shaking and foaming at the mouth. I tried to help but there was nothing I could do. Glassere said she had done it before, she was touched by the Gods.

I don't think either one of them would have worked out on the plantation. The masters would have sold them or gotten rid of them, one way or another.

One day Glassere came to talk to me about my attacker. I could tell him nothing. He said the male had claimed to be an assassin, that he had shot me because I'd been kind to him. The story made no sense to me. "What kind of an assassin would attack a slave woman? Who would pay him to do that?"

Glassere shook his head. "I don't know."

"Sounds like a lunatic to me."

"Maybe."

People had been asking for the male's death. I shrugged. "Nobody was killed," I pointed out. "There's no need for a death. Just keep him away from me."

Glassere went away and the attacker was eventually released. I don't know what happened to him, I never saw him again.

A few days later a white female came up to me in the temple. "Fawn, how are you feeling?" I didn't recognize her.

"Um, better, I think. Still getting some headaches, though. Look, do I know you?"

"I'm Naurel."

"Sorry, it doesn't ring any bells." She was a curious thing, some kind of hybrid, she smelled cattish and doggish. The white colour was pretty though, as a slave she would have been delegated to some kind of decorative role. Here she was a healer, apparently.

"May I?"

She examined my head gently, then made me lie down. She laid her paws on my forehead, as I watched the damndest blue glow formed around them, and grew and grew, and then... pow! My head exploded and filled with burning blue fire and I knew no more.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on April 17, 2012, 02:48:20 pm: Darkness. I opened my eyes. Someone was bending over me, a white figure, Naurel. "Did I fall asleep?" I asked.

"Yes, um, I think so. How do you feel?"

I sat up. "Better."

"What do you remember?"

"I was sitting and talking on the grass near the smithy, and then, wham.. I was attacked! And, and... Demeter and Persephone, and the ship, and the plantation, I remember.. everything!"

"Do you remember the last week?

"Yes. It's like I was another person. I couldn't remember you or Ursa or the Holy Island, but now I can. Have you healed me?"

"I think so. The crossbow wounded your head again. Lucky that idiot fired a blunted round or I don't think you'd be here now. This time I was able to heal you." She shrugged. "I don't know why." She had healed my head? I could almost remember it, her paws wreathed in a blue glow, reaching towards me, a flash, a bright light, a voice... But no. It was gone, there was just nothing.

"Thank you Naurel," I whispeered. We hugged.

"That's alright, Sister. Don't you go worrying me like that again. I thought we'd lost you."

"I'll try not to get in the way of any more crossbow bolts."

"See that you do."

So that's how I recovered my memories, with a blunted iron bolt smashing into my skull, and a flash of blue fire. When I say I remember everything, it wasn't everything, of course. Some parts are still very strange and dreamlike, my last days on the ship and what happened afterwards, for instance. My childhood in the forest seems like a quaint fairytale, a story told around a fire, memories so old and repeated they've become tales, fogotten tales. It almost seems like it happened to someone else. My real memories start with the slave raid, although that is more like a nightmare, perhaps because that's how it came back to me. I remember my time as a slave distantly, as if it happened to someone else. The memories seem to lack colour and flavour, and I get confused about the details. It's impossible to say what happened first and which events come after which others, and some things are just disconnected.

I remember Shadow, though, sitting in the darkness inside the slave shed, her dark eyes reflecting the red light of her little fire, speaking about her life as a slave. I remember it as clear as I'm sitting here telling you about it. But I can't remember what she said, exactly, I've got the gist of it, I think, all the rest is a reconstruction.

At last I knew who I was, where I came from, everything I had done, good and bad, all the questions that had tormented me sitting on the beach with Aeon. It seemed so long ago. Know the truth, they say, and it shall set you free. But what if you don't remember what you know?
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on April 19, 2012, 11:07:10 pm: PART 4 - MOTHER

There's not really much more to tell. The children grew up rapidly, Nimue flew off to join her father. By this time Solarius was banned from Lismore, so they both left my life almost completely. So Solarius did not join in my rut that year, which brings me to Lance.

Lance was a black and white Sergal, random, boisterous, a troublemaker by all accounts. Some say all Sergal are. He came to the island and promptly got into some sort of fight and was killed. And that's where the story gets... interesting. A necromancer raised him back to life as part of some plot, although his soul was lost. The plot failed and Lance was left wandering around Lismore, well, like a lost soul. He was banned from Zenko and the Inn and unwelcome in most places, but allowed in the temple - we don't turn people away unless they break the peace.

His behavior was bad, he was constantly provoking people and trying to make them angry. He was a sore trial to Ursa and anyone could see that wasn't going to end well. However for a time he was welcome, and that time co-incided with my rut that year. The children that year were Areon and Despoina, a buck and a doe. Despoina had long, silky black and white fur, like a Sergal. Like Lance.

*

Radem, meanwhile, was owned by Lone, the black wolf. We'd been having troubles with a half feral wolf attacking people. He walked on his hind legs, but didn't speak or use weapons. He couldn't or wouldn't talk and couldn't or wouldn't understand that he mustn't attack people. He could neither be reasoned with like a sentient or trained like a beast. In short he was a problem. For a few days he was chained up in the Temple by the Mother's tree. I took him bowls of food and water and kept out of his reach while he lunged at me, brought up by the chains.

I don't know if he ever had a name, I suppose he was given one, but if so I don't remember it.

There was a great debate about what to do with him. Many were in favor of killing, I said he should be taken a long way from Lismore and left there, so he wouldn't wander back. This was rejected as being irresponsible, so I suggested using magic to transform him into something peaceful and useful, like a tree. It happens all the time in the old stories! This was laughed off and declared to be impossible. I swear I don't understand magic at all: it's fine for killing people and raising the dead and changing shape and sex, but a simple useful thing like turning someone into a tree is impossible.

In the end he was given to Lone. That was never going to work out well, Lone was a cruel and abusive male.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on May 12, 2012, 02:53:47 am: One day Radem came to me in an unusually glum mood. He wanted to talk about something, but it took a while to get it out of him: Lone had given him a knife and made him castrate the savage wolf he'd been given, and Radem felt bad about what he'd done. Not that he had any choice, as a slave, I pointed out, but Radem had been born free and he felt the responsibility of free action, even when his weren't.

The wolf didn't last much longer after that, maybe it died of it's wounds, or maybe Lone sold it or had it put away, I don't know. He'd broken his toy and now he didn't want to play with it any more. It's a shame to imprison wild things, wolves and deer are born to run, but to cut them so they can't run away is worse, and all you end up with is a twisted, bitter and broken thing that can never be wild or free again. And what do you gain from that?

Lone himself wasn't free, he was enslaved by his need to possess, owned by his possessions, because he could never let a single one go. He didn't last much longer after that, he overreached himself somehow and... the say Glassere killed him. I find that hard to believe: Glassere is a gentle soul, but that's what is said. They say Lone died by magic and it was terrible. I wasn't there, I only heard about it later, indeed it's not the kind of thing I wasn’t anything to do with. Whatever Lone did, in the end, must have been terrible for Glassere to do something like that, to pervert hi power... I, I, no, I still can't believe it.

Radem was taken by the city and sold to a trader female a feline, Svetlana, who had bought the inn from Svart. She quickly became a fixture around the town, Svetlana and her parcel of slaves, she had about three slave girls and Radem and soon acquired more. I mistrusted her on principle: slavers are not to be trusted, but she was kind to me, and kind to her girls, and after a while I started to feel a sneaking sense of liking for her.
Title: Re: Fawn: A Woman of the Deer People
Post by: fawn on May 16, 2012, 03:52:03 am: Cat. Well, Svetlana brought Cat to Lismore, she's not much to look at, a black and white striped feline, named, um, Cat. A bit like a deer named Fawn. I scarcely noticed her at first because she kept her eyes down and never spoke. I think her former owner must have abused her.

Svetlana bought a few girls like that over the years, my memory blurs a little, I mean your sister Demeter was much like that, she wouldn't look at me, uncommunicative, until we eventually worked out who we were. Svart said I didn't want to know where he had found her, and she didn't venture to tell me, so I never asked. Was that wrong?

But Cat, Cat... I spent a lot of time sitting around on the floor of the Inn, Svetlana didn't mind me being there. I didn't have any money, I've never really understood now it works. These days I go and find and dig up pennies dropped between the stones of the forum when I want to buy a bowl of milk. In those days I preferred ale, but it made me act silly, taking off my clothes and dancing on tables and I'm too old for that now. So I stick to milk.

You know slaves are invisible to many people? I sit in the Inn and watch the slaves go back and forth with meals and pitchers of ale and wine, and many people just don't see the slaves who are serving them. But I see them. I know from experience a slave quickly learns to become invisible, to attract attention is to invite a beating. Cats are naturally good at invisibility, sitting and moving silently, escaping attention. So are deer.

So I have often sat quietly in the Inn and listened, and learned. And sometimes I would speak quietly to Cat about my life, about our Heavenly Mother and the life she wants us to have. I never learned very much about Cat's life: she never spoke very much about herself, but she paid attention to what I said, and one thing seemed to particularly catch her attention.

I'd been thinking about needs. "Everyone needs three things: Something to do, something to look forward to, and someone to love." It was something someone said to me once. I live in a temple, I talk to a lot of wandering sages, and so pick up lots of bits and pieces of philosophy which must be tried on for size and fit, but it caught Cat's attention.

"Like I love Mistress?" She asked.

"Yes," I blinked a little bit. "Yes. You need someone to love, and for you that is your Mistress."

She considered it, and nodded, seeming quite happy to make that identification. I took it a little further. "And Mistress Svetlana... loves her girls. Because she needs someone to love as well."

Cat frowned at this, and she was right, it was a little presumptuous for me to say so, but at last she nodded. "It seems to me," I murmured. "You serve her as much by being there for her to love, as you do by loving her. You both need someone to love."

And that was it. I sense this will cause trouble for some people. Some people feel a slave should despise and hate those who own them for their cruelty and injustice. I understand that point of view. Others will say it's wrong for two females to love each other in that way. I guess... Love should never be despised. Love is too precious a flower to be trampled on, no matter where it grows.

Our Heavenly Mother wants us to love one another, that is all she has to give us. While ever we care about each other we should never condemn love.