"'Kay," was her answer, and her eyes went back ahead. After a moment's walking, testing out her legs, she decided that she was relatively okay; she had no way of gauging injury but, though her knees stung just a little, it didn't feel awful.

"Not hurt," she informed Pride, after trotting along for a moment.

She turned, then, peering up at him. "What is--story?" Then her attention was caught by something else: the pale, branching tines on his head. "What those?" she asked, and snorted a little as she realized she didn't know the words to indicate what she meant.

"On-... head?" was her hopeful guess. She rubbed her own head briefly on his leg as they walked, wondering if she had the same--but she found only two little nubs. "I have, too?"

She wasn't sure if she wanted antlers, or not; they were impressive, intimidating maybe, but sort of looked like they'd get stuck on stuff.

Pride glanced down with some amusement, watching the child headbutt his leg. Ahh, he realized; she means--antlers?
He studied the nubs for a moment, trying to remember how his own head had looked at that age. He had a faint, distant memory of watching himself in the Eyes of Eridanus, alongside another young deer friend who'd hatched out with a gemstone antler; he, though, had far more stubby antlers that had only grown with age. "Perhaps," he offered, looking Acheron over again.

"Mine were very small, too, when I hatched. But they grew with me. You will get bigger," he added. He didn't know how big, exactly; Styx hadn't seemed small, in those visions, but it had been difficult to tell. A tad smaller than Fireheart, perhaps--but still not small. So Acheron, by extension, was likely to be large but not very much so--certainly no larger than Pride himself, and he was no giant. "I do not know how much bigger. A story," he went on, circling back to her prior question "is... Well, I will tell you about other places, other Gembounds, though sometimes it is only-" How did one define 'story' without using the word 'story?' "...dreams, or for fun. You'll see," he explained.

True to his word, once they were settled by the throne--the child relaxing near his hooves, chewing on a rock (not good for her teeth, he thought, but ahh well)--he began.

"Long ago, in another cave far from here, there was a magic bird." He kept his voice gentle, fluting, as he wove a new story from nothing: a bird which could see others' hearts' desires, and which offered magical advice.

He told of a sad and lonely little snake that visited the bird, wishing it could fly. "The bird thought and thought," Pride went on, "but could think of no advice to give. It knew of no way to promise the snake new wings, or magic to teach it to fly. And at last it realized: advice was not the best thing for the little snake. But the magic bird could help directly. It picked the snake up in its claws, and took flight, and carried it all over the caves--to see each and every corner of it, and lend a helping wing."

He glanced down--but the pup was drifting off, as he'd expected. Pride had never quite figured out if his stories were soothing, or simply boring, but the kid did need her sleep--so he leaned back, a little, and kept a quiet, drowsing watch.

red deer img credit - dan seagrave

exit Pride

Acheron flicked her ears, the little lesson settling somewhere in her memory, not yet understood. Maybe some day, but for now, she was already drifting off, and Pride's quietly musical voice was only making her drowsier.

Within minutes of his finishing, she seemed close to drowsing off--but then she lifted her head, intent on asking questions. They swam in her mind only briefly--who was the snake, who was the bird? Could she find them, somewhere, and which cave did they live in? Were they still where they'd first met? Where was that-?

And had the snake ever really gotten wings?

But she realized quite quickly that she didn't have the language to form these questions, yet, and it was too taxing to try and figure it out. With a soft huff she settled her chin back on a hooved leg, closed her eyes, and let herself drift off to sleep to the sound of pattering rain.

exit Acheron