Of Hooves and Antlers

Growing up is tough, especially when you're half-deer

“Meri! Meri! Where are you, dear?”

On the shores of your hidden, tree-covered island, a familiar voice calls your name.

You watch the woman from within a bush, stalking her as she lowers her mask before calling your name again. Her brows seem to furrow as she squints into the treeline. A few years ago, while listening in on conversations between strangers whose faces have been hidden to you, you learned that her name was “Light”. This sounded right to you, for she was the one that brought you out of darkness. The woman’s blue eyes, framed behind two rectangular panels of glass, scan the vegetation one last time, widening when she finally finds you. She waves to you before lifting her mask back over her mouth.

“There you are! Come on, I've got another story I want you to read with me.”

Another story! For this reason, you liked Light; not only was she one of the only faces you could name, barring your father and bookish uncle, but all three of those named faces brought stories with them, and seldom did their words ask of anything in return.

So you approach and sit comfortably in that spot in the grass that she specifically cleared for you, where she can observe your reaction and not strain herself to show you the pages. She places a hand on your head, and you cringe as she tries to gently comb through your knotted hair, careful to mind the sensitive roots of your antlers but not careful enough to avoid them entirely.

You frown at this, but you sit in silence, realizing that Light never greeted you. From observation, you noticed that greetings were common starts to conversations between people. As you have not received one, as was usual for these visits, you wait until she’s satisfied enough to remove her cloth-gloved hand from atop your head, placing it instead on a rather thick-looking book dotted with colored tabs.

“Now that you’re getting older, it’s important that you know about some of the changes your body will undergo. Most parents have this talk with their kids around your age.”

Parents.

That was a word you knew, yet you only knew your father. Light’s words filled your head with confusion.

Why wasn’t he here?

“Where is Dad?”

You dryly croak out the words, nearly startling the woman.

“Your father won’t be here until his visit in October, dear. Besides, the sooner we have this conversation the correct way, the less scary it will be for you in the long run.”

Scary? What’s going to happen to me that’s so scary?

As you try to piece the words together to ask another question, she thumbs over to the first tab and opens the book with a soft crack, as if someone half-heartedly tried to break a still-living branch. From the reflection in her glass, you can see a word: “Puberty.”

“Alright, Meri. I’m going to begin reading now. If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask.”

She clears her throat, momentarily turning away from you to take a sip of water. After a drink, she turns back, rotating the book and placing a finger on the diagram covering most of the page.

“Puberty is characterized by both development and growth in primary and secondary growth characteristics. In males, this means the development of the—”

“Why is he not wearing clothes?” You turn your head and look up at Light.

“This is a diagram, Meri. It’s supposed to show what normal development looks like so you can have a general idea of what to expect.”

You pull your woolen blanket closer to yourself as you begin to process the woman’s words.

“He does not have hooves and antlers. That is what a regular person looks like, not like you.”

The cold, biting wind cuts through you, causing the hair on the back of your neck to stand up. Your ears begin to flick and turn, trying to find the shadow you know is there, just somewhere out of reach. The woman, whose voice during this was nothing more than mumbles to you, pauses and looks down to you.

“Are you alright, Meri?”

You continue to scan your surroundings, muscles tense. In a moment’s notice you could run away, hide somewhere to lose the shadow. The woman closes the book, using her hand to keep her spot, and adjusts her glasses.

“It’s okay to be afraid, dear. I remember having this talk with my mother and being terrified afterwards. It gets easier as you grow, I promise.”

Fear. A feeling you were acutely aware of in your secluded paradise. Fear showed itself at night in the howling of wolves, in the cold winter’s lack of berries, in shadows that lurked in the night. Most of your fear was in being alone, being isolated here in this silent place.

Why am I here? Why are they keeping me in a tower?

The woman’s words echo in your mind. Normal.

“Am I going to grow up like you?” You point to the woman, who pauses as if the question had knocked her offbeat.

“What do you mean, Meri?”

You shakily stand up and motion to the book. She opens it back to the diagram, and you point at it and then back to her.

“Oh! I see.” She flips through the pages, stopping at another diagram, pointing to it and back to her.

“Puberty is different in females, but we can talk about that on another visit. In short, you’re not going to grow up like me because we were born differently. You’re going to become your father, though. Outwardly at least. Big and strong. Or maybe like your Uncle Luca, tall and fast.”

“I love father. I love Uncle Luca, too, but Dad said: 'don't be like him'.” You pause. “I love you, too. Can I grow up like you?”

Light hesitates, taking a moment to think. You ball your fists.

“Why am I different?”

She takes a deep breath and exhales, patting the log next to her and motioning for you to sit.

“You’re… special, Meri. You have characteristics, like your antlers and ears, that aren’t found in other people. That’s not a bad thing, just different. I know it’s confusing, but one day it will make sense. I promise.”

The words hang in the silence between the two of you, growing louder each minute as she waits for your reaction.

Why were you different? It's not just that you're different; the antlers are a part of you, even though Dad and Light and Uncle Luca don't have them. You're just wrong.

You think back to the stories she tells you, fictions and fantasies of far-away kingdoms and places. There, everyone was normal: princes and princesses and knights and hunters seeking love and glory. You know they would get their glory but killing monsters, ones that often lived in caves or in the forest away from everyone. They had scales and horns and sharp teeth, terrifying to the people of the kingdoms; different.

Just like you.

You feel a tugging in your chest, a sadness at the realization. Any words you have to say disappear in the ever-growing pool of tears forming in your eyes.

A series of electronic beeps sound from the woman’s wrist. She brings it closer to her face, presses a button on the side to silence it, and places the heavy book in a leather satchel bag.

“It looks like we’re out of time today, but I’ll be back soon to continue this. Oh! You’ll be happy to hear that you're going to have more visitors soon! They’re going to bring you medicine to help you feel better, okay? Then I won't have to wear this mask when I visit you.”

She kneels down, awkwardly pulling you into a hug. Your arms hang limp at your sides.

Feel better? What’s wrong with me? Does the mask protect her from me? Is this going to make me less different? Am I going to be normal? Do I want to be normal?

These thoughts linger in your head as the woman turns and leaves for the boat, leaving you alone on the island once again.

➹ ➸ ➹

Later that day, when the sun had just dipped below the horizon, you take to the still-lake water to clean yourself. Even in the winter you kept this ritual; it was almost as vital to you as life itself, even if it left you shivering for the remainder of the day. This ritual was taught to you not by the visitors but by following the example of the large birds that would preen themselves at the water's edge. There was something freeing about being clean— it was grounding, as if you felt more connected to the world after losing the coat of mud and thorny seed pods that stuck to your furry arms and legs.

Tonight felt different, something new weighing on your mind: you were overwhelmingly aware of your fur. Hair was no stranger to you, and you were always much hairier than the visitors, but now there was something wrong. You think back to the diagram in Light's book. More hair was not something you could fathom, let alone that it would soon spread to your chest and face. You imagine yourself in this new form as you look at your reflection in the water.

“Have you come to see yourself for what you truly are?”

“What are you?”

The mirror figure laughs, causing the water framing it to ripple.

”I am you, Meri. Do you not recognize what you are? What they see you as?”

Dread overtakes you. In fear, you call out to nature, eyes and antlers and spots on your fur aglow, but find no answer. Again and again you try to bend reality to create blinding miasmas or mounds of dirt or disturbances in the water, but the figure remains with each shrink and fold, grinning at you with fanged teeth.

”There is no fighting it. No matter how hard you try you will never get rid of me. I am your nature. I am you.”

Its words burn into your head, searing mockeries and distortions into your deepest insecurities. Out of desperation, you ball your fists and scream in frustration, picking up a nearby rock. You pay no mind to the slugs and worms beneath it as you heave it into the water, seemingly shattering the shadow’s aquatic visage.

Silence.

In the aftermath, only you remain, teeth-bared and panting in the soft, reflective surface of the wake. Fear and anger and sadness paint your face, and you struggle to regain your composure, fighting away the ever-encroaching feeling of your tightening chest. Your eyes look to the water’s surface, clouded by tears, as you see what’s waiting there: it’s you.

Disgustingly you.

To try to clear your mind, you slowly immerse yourself in the frigid water. Bit by bit you gently let the water swallow you until only your starry eyes and winding antlers are bared to the world. Even now you can’t shake the feeling that you aren’t quite alone. You feel a familiar clawing at your chest, and your ears seem to turn in a million directions to try to find this unwanted companion. Crimson eyes seemingly watch you from the cattails and the trees and the distant hills, peering at you and your imperfect form but disappearing with a blink.

The moon glows softly in the night sky when you resurface, and you trudge back to the shore. You shiver for warmth on the cold ground as you wait for your fur to dry.

Why is it so long now? Was it always like this? Why do I look like this? Why me?

You gather a clump of damp fur with your hand, inspecting it. Sand and dirt have already begun to stick to it. Unclean. You gnash your teeth as you think about your hopeless situation: either return to the water to clean yourself and risk another potential encounter with the shade, or try to find other ways to clean yourself that don’t involve the water’s reflection. A shiver runs through your body as you deliberate.

I cannot become that. I will not become that.

With all the strength of juvenile defiance, you decide to act. Nature crafts everything just as it is meant to be, form following function. Although nature may have decided to craft you like this, you were no stranger to warping it to your ideal. You take a piece of slate in your hand and, with glowing antlers and eyes, call upon nature to craft the tool to make you right. You hear several cracks as the edges chip and fall away, forming a makeshift shear. You hold out a length of fur taut and place the shear slightly above the hair’s start. You begin trimming.

Regret.

The stone is not nearly sharp enough, so instead of a clean cut through your matted fur, you feel the pulling tear of every strand. Tears cloud your eyes as you look at the patch of hair torn from your leg. Under the watchful eyes of the stars you toss the rock far into the water, grab your clothes, and run as fast and far as you can into the forest.

I am not ready to do this yet. I am not ready. Maybe when I am braver, but I cannot do this now.

You don’t go to the water anymore; you think the stars look much nicer from under the canopy of trees.

➹ ➸ ➹

It’s June. You know it’s June because your antlers are wrapped in a velvety sheath. In the heat you watch helplessly as insects begin to land and take flight from the parts of you that are covered in what feels like a new, thicker coat of fur. Arms and legs, even new sprouting spots on your chest and face and back, all covered in a burdensome layer of fur. You try to brush it back with pinecones and porous stones, slick it back with honey and sap, all to no avail. In the long months since the winter, you gave up on trying to keep yourself clean; you couldn’t bear the thought of exposing yourself to the water again. There was nothing there, stars nor self, that you wanted to see.

The visitors appear more frequently now in the warmer weather; their unknown faces wear bewilderment and fear as they examine you. During their ventures into the dark heart of the forest in which you now reside, while not prodding your body or poking you with countless needles, it seemed they were waiting for you to prove right the darkest anxieties in their mind.

“Reality bender” they call you just out of earshot, words dripping with the same sickening venom that fills their needles.

You don’t prove their anxieties right, of course. You’re far too sore from their medicine to do much most days, and you feel weighed down by your damp blanket of fur caused by the long, humid days. A visit means a temporary end to the fantasy that you could be normal; the visitors anchoring you to reality during their long examinations. Normalcy is a wonderful dream, one that almost makes you smile on the days you aren’t sore or sick enough to do so.

One day the visitors find you passed out near a collection of stones covered in iridescent mushrooms. You never liked the rations the visitors provide to you. They possess a smell like animal droppings and taste nearly as bad. Until the berries bloomed, however, the mushrooms were the only thing able to quiet your stomach. Mushrooms were a fresh treat for you, and you knew all the spots they grew: the sides of trees, rocks, even on logs fallen in storms. This time, however, you found them growing along one of the trails your hooves carved in the forest, and you couldn't shake your hunger as you passed them. They cause you more pain than you could ever dream of.

Oddly, in that pain was the desire for more. Something draws you to these specific fungi in the same way you heard that sailors are drawn to the rocks of sirens. They taste better than anything you tasted before, and the smell, both sweet and savory, wraps you snugly with the comfort of a filling meal. It makes you drowsy, comfortable, before slowly drifting you into a dream-like state, a place not so different from where you are now. Here you felt no fear, no hunger. You could simply just be.

Your body feels different, too. In this serenity you walk to the water. You feel the comforting cool of the waves wash over you, and you notice a change as well: your fur no longer spirals out in every direction in the waves, and the other parts of yourself, the ones you were made more aware of by the diagram that cause a newfound sense of nausea, were nowhere in sight.

It was beautiful, it felt right, a place you could escape and truly belong.

The air was cool; a warm breeze carrying the scent of ripe fruit over the short grassy hills. You could sit here for hours, days, just taking it all in. But like all days, the sun sets, and as the light slowly disappears you feel it: a winding pain in your abdomen, causing you to curl up. You're thrust out of the mirage, made fully aware of yourself again, and you nearly gag. You're hit with an overwhelming wave of tiredness, and your eyes close, casting you fully back into the darkness.

➹ ➸ ➹

You finally wake up in a cold, unnatural room. A sharp scent burns your sensitive nose, and with recovering strength you try to take in your surroundings. You’re splayed across a table, all matter of what looks to be clear and colored vines winding around you. A patch of shaved hair sits on the inside of one of your elbows, nestling a needle gently within its crook, delivering to you some clear liquid from within the connected vine. Several small pads line your chest, sticky discs of material that causes your skin to itch. You try to scratch it but find your other arm strapped to the bed; kicking your feet produces similar results.

You call upon nature to free you, but nature does not answer. The atmosphere around you is heavy, weighing you down as if stones were pressing down upon you. You're able to hear the gentle hum in the corner of the room, and you see a light repeatedly flickering red as your frantically try to bend reality to free yourself.

After some time the visitors check on you. You freeze as their gloved hands comb over you, poking and pinching and prodding, failing to acknowledge you. Light’s book comes back to your mind. Here you were, frozen in time to be observed, pointed at. Prying eyes able to observe every part of your disgusting form. Your skin crawls at the sensation, and your heart drops at your thoughts.

I am not dangerous. Why would they tie me down? I do not want to hurt anybody. I want them to leave me alone.

The examination drones on, and the visitors pore over sheets of paper for what seems to be hours, discussing your 'progress' and 'how far you've come.' Their words are muffled, but you hear them talking about 'mushrooms' and 'dehydration', that you're 'lucky to be alive.' All you can do is look up at them silently from the table.

The needle barely leaves your arm before you're able to successfully kick off the table, bolting to the far side of the room, red blood dripping off your fingers as you cower in the corner of the room. The fur around the wound begins to stain a deep crimson, and you close your eyes in an attempt to return to the dream-like paradise that the mushrooms brought to your unconscious mind. The door on the other end of the room opens, and you hear the laughing of the cold wind.

”Now you get it, Meri. You may try to hide from it, from them, but their prying eyes will always find you. Even now they look at you like a wounded, feral animal.”

You don’t look back as you flee into the forest.

➹ ➸ ➹

That night, you sit atop a log, idly brushing your fingers through the shaved patch of fur on the inside of your elbow. Although it was another awkward patch in the displeasing quilt that comprised you, for once it was a pattern you liked. It was long enough to keep you warm in the night, but also short enough to not allow insects and sweat to cling to it during the day. You can’t help but think how much more bearable your fur would be if it were that short, how much better you would enjoy your form.

Something still doesn’t feel right, though.

Your brain goes back to your mushroom-fueled fairytale. Although it had caused you so much pain it was the closest you felt to contentment in… anything really. There you felt not the shame of your form, felt not the piercing eyes of the visitors or shade that haunts you.

I have to get back there. I need to learn how to live in that place.

You can just barely smell the faint aroma of fruit in the distance, a reminder.

Tomorrow I will go search for a way back. There will be people to save me if I get hurt. This dream is worth the pain.

Droplets of rain begin to darken the soil before you, and you decide to rest before your morning hunt. You sleep soundly knowing that just maybe you are one step closer to happiness. One step close to belonging.

Elsewhere on the island, where fungi form scaled-plates on rocks and moss roots dig into ancient stones, a single raindrop causes a flood. As if by divine design, the rocky façade cracks away, revealing floral depths beneath. Wind roars out of the cave, casting an enchanting aroma outwards to the rest of the island, calling for dreamers to approach. The cycle begins somewhere new, now set to a minor tune.