The Little Doe
Kai Rajesh

       Noctiluca phantasma. Common name Ghost Silk. It grows at the bottom of long-forgotten ponds, glowing an ethereal blue when the night arrives. Left alone, it does nothing but exist, fated to wither away as it needs far more nutrients than it can get. Alone, without a host, it cannot survive. But if given the chance to grow, the moss is more resilient than any other of its kind.
       Odocoileus virginianus. Common name white-tailed deer. It roams thick-wooded forests, a gentle beast until they face the deepest of animal instincts: the drive to survive, thrive, and mate. Its food varies on the season, from fallen nuts to woody vegetation to berries to land and aquatic plants. It is shy and reclusive, avoiding contact with others whenever possible. 
       ​Parasite and prey. On their own, both destined to die, whether out of neglect or violence. But the two species are bound together in a blood pact that neither deer nor moss knows.
       In a single moment, the pact will begin anew for a little doe exploring the forest on a breezy spring day. She exists in a transitional state between fawn and adult; old enough to have parted ways with her mother but young enough to miss her. She has reached maturity, but is not full grown. Not yet. She is still changing rapidly, coming closer to her final form with each breath.
       This is the first Spring she has experienced. She was born in the sweltering heat of Summer and has only known the world to grow colder and harsher with time. But she has proven herself strong enough to survive Winter, and the gentle breeze now feels much like a sigh of relief from the forest. 
       ​The little doe is careful of the ground where she walks, avoiding brambles and twigs as best she can. (She learned of stealth in Autumn, when the sound of her hoofs on fallen leaves attracted a snarling fox, who she is lucky to have escaped.) 
       Her eyes scan the bushes and trees for food while her ears remain pricked for the sound of pawsteps. She learned of hunger, true hunger, in Winter and knows now to seek out food wherever possible. 
       Twice she stops to quickly gulp down patches of forbs, galloping away at the slightest sound of danger. The little doe is not bold. She learned of caution in Summer, from her mother. A doe that was brave was a doe that would die. 
       She has yet to learn of anything in Spring. At peace, she enters a clearing in the forest surrounding a small pond. The setting sun’s rays glitter on the water’s clear surface, making a gold and orange wave. The light obscures the little doe’s vision, but she knows that there must be plants she can reach in this shallow pond. 
       She dips her muzzle into the warm water, taking a few grateful sips before finding a patch of moss to sate her hunger. She does not remember tasting this moss before. It feels like silk and tastes of contradiction, things the little doe could never put into words. It is achingly sweet and yet carries a metallic tang, the scent of predators and the fallen. The little doe hesitates at the taste, but it is clear after a moment that there are no predators here. She drinks and eats her fill. 
       Days pass, and the little doe feels safe in Spring. With this new food source, the shadow of hunger has lessened slightly. She returns once, then twice, and there is always enough moss to satisfy her hunger. And, as time after time no predators come near, she realises the pond is not a place of danger. 
       She regains the strength she lost in Winter, and with it roams further and further into the forest. With every rest, she is able to move farther than before. She encounters a fox one day and a coyote the next, but her legs are strong and swift as she flees. 
       But despite her new range, she returns to the pond often. The water is somehow far more satisfying for her thirst than the rains and puddles she used to frequent. It grows sweeter with each sip.
       ​All is well, until the day the little doe arrives at the pond to see that another creature is already there, drinking from the pool. A buck, who looms large in comparison to her petite frame. It is the first time the little doe has seen another of her kind since Autumn. She hesitates—the buck smells strange. Even from this distance, the scent of violence and fallen prey fills her nostrils. But this predator-scent no longer alarms her. The scent is the same as the moss’s taste, and the moss is safe. The moss gives her strength. She approaches the pond.
       Faster than she can blink, the buck spins around, and the little doe cannot understand what she is seeing. Rather than fur, bone covers the buck’s chest like the shell of a turtle. There is no time to think on it. The buck raises his antlers threateningly and snarls. (His teeth are very large and sharp, the little doe notices. Much larger than hers.) The little doe has made a mistake. In Winter, Autumn, or Summer, she would already have fled as fast as she could. But right now her hunger for the moss drowns out any fear she might have had. She stares the buck dead in the eyes and flattens her ears to her head aggressively. Slowly, cautiously, she steps closer to the pond to drink.
       The buck lunges, crashing into the little doe with enough force to knock her off her hooves. Primal fear takes over and she is aware of nothing but her heartbeat in her ears. She scrambles, trying to stand and run before she is gored through by the buck’s antlers. 
       But he doesn’t charge. His lunge was that of a fox, not a deer, and he now leans in and bites savagely into the little doe’s front leg.
       It feels as though a fire had been lit under her skin, burrowing deep into her bones. The sunset red of her blood spatters the buck’s exposed bone, and more drips from his muzzle. The buck pauses, tongue flicking out. Lapping up the blood—a chance to escape.
       The little doe kicks wildly out and finds to her shock that her strikes carry far more weight than expected. The buck staggers back and she runs, ignoring the pulsing fire that attacks her leg whenever she puts weight on it.
       She does not know how long her world is just blood, and fear, and the pounding of her heart. She runs and runs, trying to outrun the predator-scent, the scent of blood. But it does not fade; of course it does not, the scent is coming from her.
       ​Deep in the trees, the little doe comes to a halt, trembling legs barely able to hold her weight. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong. But her heart slows down faster than she thinks it will. Slowly, a hazy calm wafts over her. The buck is gone. She is safe, and she notices with this realisation that her leg no longer hurts. 
       She glances down. There is no blood. The wound is gone, but in its place the little doe sees bone, not skin. Perhaps her fear should continue at the sight, but instead it brings her calm. No sharp teeth will find purchase on her leg again. She is secure, safe from further pain. The bone shell does not worry her so much as the fact that so much of her remains unshielded.
       The adrenaline fades. Deep exhaustion and hunger set into the little doe’s body. She has never felt so tired. This was beyond the energy needed to flee the terrifying buck, this felt as if part of her had been used up, and now she is a little emptier.
       The little doe leans against a tree, though her ears remain ever-pricked for danger. She is so tired. It would be so easy to just lie down and let the hunger take her away.
       As her eyes close, her nostrils twitch. The smell of her own blood is all around her. It is very dangerous; the scent will bring yet more predators. But the scent does not spark the little doe’s fear. Instead it sets her hunger aflame. In a daze, her tongue flicks out and licks a little patch of her blood that has seeped onto the tree. 
Her eyes snap open. The taste seems to wipe her exhaustion away, letting her focus on her surroundings. She sniffs the air more carefully. There is her blood, yes, but there is another blood scent. Squirrel.
       Her legs move of their own accord, carrying her to the source of the scent. There, at the base of an oak tree, is a plump squirrel with matted grey fur, turned rust-coloured from a bite wound. It breathes heavily, more blood spurting from its side every time it does.
       The little doe doesn’t think. She shoves her head down and greedily laps up the pool of blood. Each lick sends sparks of joy and energy through her body. Her vision goes hazy with ecstasy, until the blood is all gone. She blinks. The squirrel is dead now, with a second bite mark on its throat.
       The squirrel does not sate the little doe’s hunger for long. The next day she is wandering the forest again, looking for the dead and the dying, chasing off predators after they have brought the prey down for her. 
       She gets a finch this way. A crow. A mouse. Not enough, not enough. Though each satisfies her for a time, her hunger always returns deeper than ever before.
       The little doe walks the forest with confidence, now. Her chest, legs, and back are now all safely encased in bone armour. The thought of a bear scares her far less than the thought of being unable to get the sustenance she needs. She returns to the pond every day, but the moss now seems to only whet her appetite. 
       The moon grows large, then shrinks again until it is only a cat’s claw in the sky. The little doe has run out of patience. She has been so hungry for so long that this time, when she sees a fox stalking a mouse, she does not settle for the mouse. She creeps up from behind and waits for her moment. There. The fox wiggles its haunches, ready to pounce on its prey. In one bound, the little doe leaps and bites down, her teeth crunching on the fox’s neck bone. 
       The mice dashes into a bush in terror. The little doe lets it go. Mice are too small to satisfy her. She drags the fox’s body, still in her mouth, back to her wonderful pond. She has not seen the buck again, to her disappointment. She itches to defend her territory. The little doe drops the fox at the bank of the pond and has the most satisfying meal of her life. She does not waste this time. All that is left when she is done are bones, sucked clean of marrow. 
       She lets out a little huff of contentment, licking blood from her muzzle. Full for now. This was what she had needed all along. Predator-scent no longer means danger. No, this is prey-scent, the scent of the injured and weak whose ghosts predators carry on their fur. All creatures who cross her path are meals in the making, each more invigorating than the last. 
       The little doe dips her muzzle into the pond to drink. Reflected in the pond, a mask of bone gazes back at her. 

Kai Rajesh (HMC '24) is a senior math major at Harvey Mudd. His main hobbies include video games, planning with his cat and Wikipedia deep dives.