be humble, for you are made of earth
Fur is a ghost in the trees; the way she moves holds the implication of grace but it is a farce in comparison to the grace of the deer that raised her. Like them, she can never move as quietly or quickly in leaps and bounds as they do. She still adopts their mannerisms as much as she can, small hops here and there over a snowy log or an iced over stream, but she is still gangly and too much Other - too heavy, too horse, despite the fact that she is nothing more than skin and bones, and the antlers on her head.
Today, she is brave.
Adventurous, even.
Fur is not supposed to be here; not amongst the pines anyway. She did not ask permission from her keeper to leave his forest, but she needed more space from the Others - they did not understand her, stared her down, made her feel small and shameful. Her need for the deer trails and snowy thickets had become too great to ignore, so she gave in to her baser instincts and snuck out of the stallion’s redwood forest. Maybe he knew, maybe he saw her go and did not stop her, allowing her this small freedom but she did not care, did not think overly long on it because she felt no remorse for not asking him beforehand - Fur did not ask to do things she felt necessary to her, like breathing, or trail-walking.
She finds a thicket that holds their days’ old scent, but these are not deer that she knows - just that they passed this way long ago. Their stale smells comfort her, even as she noses each bed of grass that belonged to a fawn or doe. The rushes are crackly and brown underfoot, making too much noise until she grows bored of their old places and moves back down along the snowy disused trail. Sometimes, she reaches out to the bracken and mouths it, her flat teeth hardly stripping away the bark from the twigs. If she’s lucky, she finds a lonesome berry and pops it back onto her teeth, enjoying the tartness of the juice as it splashes her tongue.
Fur is happy, sort of.
In a lonely one-of-a-kind way, she supposes.
It is like the forest knows her heart, knows what lies within it - deer, and simple grace. The forest gives him up in soft noise and a call that makes her heart stop for a moment in her chest than start up again, thumping fast and happy. He is impressive and calls to her, and Fur goes to him because how can she not? The stag summoned her, and she could only be obedient to the throaty noise that made her ears stand upright and her black eyes shine brighter than before. She answers him in a farcical high-pitched mew typical of fawns, but comes from the thin column of her horse’s throat instead and it sounds all wrong.
Fur stops just short of him, her head low but her eyes never leave his face, asking.
But for what, even she cannot even begin to know the tangled up secrets of her own heart.