The Deer are the Eyes of the Stars

2-Mad Lands

Wind blew through the trees, leaves whispering in the soft summer breeze carried on the night air, stars painted across an indigo sky lit by a silver moon, and a lone white tail stag- young, healthy, and with ten points on his antlers -stands at the edge of the forest with his eyes trained on a bedroom window of the farm compound. Inside the room, a young woman lay awake in bed, staring at the dark grey wall that looked pitch black in the dark with tired eyes that refuse to stay closed and a mind that refuses to turn off. There's a quiet moment where the world seems to hold its breath as the stag walks towards the house, not at all afraid or cautious of the people inside, he has one objective in mind that has to be completed.

A soft tap against the glass of her window, the woman slowly stands with a confused frown on her face before peeling back the curtains of her bedroom. Without question, when her eyes meet those of the animal staring back, she goes outside through the front door and follows the stag as he walks back into the forest. She knows the trails, she knows the way back home, she knows the names of the tall grasses and flowers they walk past, she knows the names of the trees that create a canopy of silver leaves above their heads. As she follows the stag, she listens to the silence; no birds, no frogs, no nightbirds or insects, and while unease slowly builds within her, she can't turn back now, she can't turn back at all, that choice having been taken from her the moment her eyes met those of the stag.

They stop in a clearing where a fresh offering of spread corn litters the ground, spread by her father to bait the deer and feed them before the time of slaughter, and the stag disappears into the trees, leaving her standing barefoot and barely clothed in silver moonlight and tall grasses matted down by wildlife traffic. A moment after the stag vanishes, a tall man with skin that's grey from beneath the knee and elbow to the hands and feet, as though smudged with charcoal and never completely washed clean, skin fair and silver as the moonlight around them, eyes an intense shade of stormy blue, long wavy wisps of raven black hair frame and flit about his face and head, tousled by the whisper of a soft breeze. His most striking feature, however, are the antlers upon his head; the same ten point rack as that of the stag.

She knows then why she's here, can feel the way her heart beat quickens as he draws closer, the scent of wet earth, petrichor, cut grass, and the softness of wildflowers wafts over her like a warm embrace. She calms when his fingers meet her chin, tilting her face up to look at him, hazel eyes staring back into stormy blues, an unspoken agreement, no, commitment, forged between them as they lay together beneath the moon and a blanket of stars. As he walks her home, he looks at her with such sadness in his eyes that it breaks her heart, and she knows then that while she had just lain with and met the love of her life from a world far beyond her own, she understands that her suffering is only beginning, and that while something special has just been placed inside her and has taken root, she won't see what it becomes when it's time.