Black hooves sank into the thick and cool mud of the pond’s shallows, carrying the deer a short distance into the water. He lowered his head and drank calmly, deaf to the steady approach of another. The air was coldly still and the water chilled his throat as he swallowed it. Silence filled the atmosphere, interrupted only the distant twittering of finches. And so the abrupt splash of quick hooves behind him caused the stag to look up uneasily and turn his head to the sloping bank, turning his ears forward. Another stag was sprinting towards him boldly, kicking up mud and pond water with his back hooves.
When he was close enough to distinguish the luminescent pictogram hovering above his head, Fledermaus was struck with a sudden alarm that tightened his throat and his heart skipped over a beat. But he hardly had time to react before he was rammed in the side by the intruder’s large, curling rack of golden antlers. Icy water enveloped the brown stag’s body as he collapsed sideways into the muddy shallows, disturbing the still surface into heavy ripples. Wincing, he looked upwards at the stag standing over him, the black of his pelt starkly contrasted against the bright gray skies and his ribbon-like antlers curling about the sides of his head.
“Well, would you look at who I’ve found.” Breathed the standing deer, his head lowered hostilely and his heavy exhales rising up in dissipating clouds as he spoke. It was a short while before the fallen deer gathered the nerve to stand again, neglecting to even shake his coat of the heavy mire. He began to falter a response.
“Wh-who are-”
) 
