be humble, for you are made of earth
Fur is neither deer nor horse;
She is the berry hanging fat from the branch, dangling in mid air, caught between suspended animation and an innocent temptation - berries sway and dance in the breeze, or they fall and break open, leaking tart juice and the sweet innards of themselves all over the earth.
Fur feels like the berry being eyed by the toothy bear, the stealthy wolf, the curious crow - his look says it all, but mostly - life, being alive, growing fat and rich off blood rushing in veins and breath in the lungs. She feels like she is being squeezed, tested, reshaped - and she is! He remakes her in his image; in ropes of magic and stag’s cries, and then a scent sharpens the air, rankles her nostrils and she draws her eyes to the price he pays as the skin splits just that much more on his shoulder. He bleeds, and she stares at him from eyes more slanted and set in a doe’s face, and she can feel how her bones and skin are different but somehow familiar, just not her - as she had originally been, but the her she ought to have been yet never was.
Until now.
Because of him.
She tries to look down at herself and the legs are slenderer (and quicker, she knows how swift those legs can be!), cloven in hoof rather than rounded like small half moons that leave shallow impressions in the earth. Her shape feels lighter - more airy, as she turns in a half circle to regard her spotless hide and small flicking tail that is all fur, no long tangle of burr and hair. She ends up looking at him, looking out of eyes that feel familiar but strange, these doe’s eyes keep his stag’s gaze, green and imperious and she is unable to look away, feeling the pinprick of awareness that runs down on her spine.
Curious, she thinks, mistaking it for a hunger that accounts for the brightness of his gaze that forces her to look down and away, her nose suddenly snuffling through the grass for either a scent or an acorn. Moments later, she lifts her head to look at him again, her eyes as bright and curious as his own. She was not sure if their throats were capable of speech like her odd horse-throat had been, but she tries to ask him why - why her, why this, why? It seemed too good to be true, too impossible to be possible for all that the cells in her body screamed deer and not half-deer half-horse (mutation!). Fur cannot believe this will last, even as she turns in a tight circle before looking at him - he was captivating, but had to be something more than stag for all that his blood and his smell said he was.
Magic, her feeble brain mumbled. Magic and the very things the forest told her about - gods and mysteries, like seeds that sprouted into great trees and those few that were more than what they seemed, like him. What are you? Her big dark eyes seem to ask.