[=darkgreen]
I'm such a fool. Such a fool. A fool. A fool.

Let me start at the start. The start? Where would that be, you ignorant sap? Where do you put the start, huh?
I love her. That is the start; like any good start, that decides the end. The end is that she's gone, like Payton before her...And I'll likely never see her again, not in flesh and not in truth. I knew this would happen. This is why I never wanted to be in love with her; this is why I never said anything.
Fool that I am, it changed nothing.

And so the end is I sat among the flowers, weeping like a child. I buried my head among the flowers, and I wished I was never born a deer. I wish I had never seen deer running, because then...Then she'd have gone through her life happily, never having known that I existed. I'd have never known of her. All my feelings would have had another end.
Take me back, blossoms. Take me back. Let me abandon all this petty social existence to the tracking of seasons with my sap, the endless waiting for spring -- but a spring that comes! A spring that will always return (I could have waited forever, if I had the hope, of a certainty one day)... Let me abandon heatache for the softly-scented world and the certainty of shuffling with the wind in my leaves. Please. Please. Let me rot and devour me.

Leaves and flowers fall off my antlers in droves, flash-freezing in a private winter.

Deer wandered by; I wanted them to leave, and tried not to engage them much. They indulged me, and left...Still, I felt it was too crowded. Too public, too intrusive. I went to de drinkplaats, where very few deer go, for one reason or another, and hid myself in the fountain.

Reed came to see me. I...I didn't want him to see. He must have snuck up on my while my head was down. I didn't want anyone to know. Be a squirrel, make him think it's OK... Plunge my face in the water, taste the magic running onto my tongues, pretend that the wet spots on my cheeks is simply water...