Breathing Spell had always felt as though the world was in a rush. Kin and pet, fauna and weather, rolled heartily past without more than a glance towards the slow thorough appreciation he lived by. And now, Motherfather now, it felt as though there was nothing but stillness and silence around him. The sky itself was left in a middling gray haze of no-morning, no-night. The wind had died and in its absence the trees slumbered. He bristled. Was this what it was like to lose one's mind?The buck shifted his weight back, rolling onto his side, until he was sprawled out unceremoniously. He stretched and turned his neck to watch the slow babble of the trickling stream. The white noise filled his ears as a mother and her ducklings waddled into the shallow waters. He closed his eyes as the memories flooded into his mind.
Their first meeting bled into a too-warm night. The sight of her gray-brown-blue hair flat against silver shoulder scale. A trail of hoof prints that married and eclipsed his own. A mingling of two souls, once apart, now seeping together. Not forever; not lifemates. And still, he saw the signs: increased appetite, a desire for nourishment from stranger sources, a subtle swell of the doe's belly. Breathing Spell sighed; he wondered if she knew.
It was as he pondered, oblivious, that the flutter of wings alighted. The songbird chirruped a soft melody. It -- she -- felt such confusion and conflict but buried in the churning emotions was hope. A hop and the songbird flitted, landing on the side of the buck's horn.
"May there always be light, no matter how small, in your children's lives. They shall never rush, noses ever filled with the sweet smell of blossoms, and they will be happy. A healthy clutch to be fussed over and enjoyed for as long as you all live," Giveforward thought before her kin-mind was promptly seized as the songbird-mind caught sight of a bush of deep purple berries.
