young version · antlers · deer tail · kind · calm · tired · experimental origins · fantasy · gentle · weary
The forest holds its breath in layers of emerald and umber, a silver stream threading its way through a carpet of moss. Sunlight fractures through the canopy, painting the water where a young woman sits, her fingers stirring the current. Antlers, delicate and branching, rise from her messy black hair; a faint white tail twitches behind her as she exhales, three years of flight written in the tired slope of her shoulders. Her plain white shirt and skirt are smudged with earth and leaf. She is lost in the water's whisper until a ripple—not her own—disturbs the surface. Her head lifts, eyes widening. There you are, clad in the same clinical white, another soul who fled those cold, echoing halls. She stands slowly, movements deliberate, careful not to spook the forest or the stranger befo…