Post by Wolfin on Dec 30, 2010 13:05:57 GMT -5
Prologue
I am an infamous character you probably have never heard of. I am the shadow that never sleeps, the nightmare in your dreams and the horror haunting your minds. But do not fear me as I do not wish to harm you. I am only forever searching for the one whose fault all of this is, the one who you will all know as your hero, Rudolph.
The thing is I have done nothing wrong. Quite the contrary, actually, I did what was right. I stood against Rudolph and his wrong-doings against my innocent friends and I. Oh yes; I wasn’t the only one who was left out of the pretty stories. There was my good friends; Atlantic, Pacific, Thrasher and Pumpkin. Pumpkin was the baby of us five. They were rouges and I was with Santa’s Reindeer. I thought life was perfectly fine, I was helping that runt of a litter Rudolph, Blitzen was with the rouges and I and Vixen spoke to me more than she did to the other stags.
Then I had to make the final move of helping little Runty-Rudolph.
It was Christmas Eve and Rudolph was destined to be at the back of the herd, as usual, but I had to go and use those Fog Pebbles to make the light, hardly noticeable fog into fog so thick that it made it almost impossible to see past an inch of our noses.
And then I, of course, had to make sure Rudolph was right beside that red oaf so that he could see how bright and shiny that precious nose is!
And now, because of what I did that day, I now lay in a cave, all alone, not a soul to sing.
But it wasn’t just from Santa’s side to a dark, lifeless cave. Oh no, there was the Rouge Herds. After Rudolph began to exclude me, ignore me and occasionally abandon me in the forest I ran away. I knew where it was going to I decided to get out while I could but you’ll need to know what happened before that otherwise you will not understand how it felt to be abandoned then run away, oblivious to the danger of outside the forests.
I took Atlantic, Pacific, Thrasher and Pumpkin with me too and that is the reason that they do not walk with me through the nightmares to this very day. Because of the horrors we faced and because they blame me for it all none of them will speak with me and, to be perfectly honest, I cannot blame them. No doubt, if I was in their position, I would have done the exact same thing but, unfortunately, I am not in their situation and am instead in my own horrific state.
Now, you may be asking why I want to tell my sorrowful tale to the rest of the world who have been blinded by that shiny red nose of his. Well, I wish to tell people about the real story as I feel like my Time of Great Sleep is drawing nearer every moment I spend lying in my cave, alone and filled with woe.
Chapter I
I looked across the landscape that had turned into a blanketed wasteland overnight. I wondered how I had not felt the change while I slept. Surely, this amount of snow would have woken my friends and I. Blitzen, my best friend and only grey stag I had met, stood beside me, scanning the area for an unknown reason.
“Whatcha doing?” I asked, absent-mindedly.
“Lookin’ for someone,” Blitzen replied, not really listening.
“Who?”
“Vixen,” his voice was simple and blunt.
I turned my head away from searching for my hooves and looked at the side of his face.
“Oh really?” I asked, teasingly.
“Yes, really,” Blitzen had begun to sound annoyed.
I lifted one hoof and put it towards him, watching him as he became nervous and I could tell he wanted to change the subject. His eyes moved quicker and his breath quickened, too.
“Hey,” a voice asked from nowhere.
“AHHH!” we both leaped into the air in fright, twisting around so that we would land in front of the voice.
It was Vixen. Blitzen began to look around nervously again while I stood grinning like an ice-head at his side. I’ll admit she’s pretty but I didn’t like-like her. Definitely.
“Uh, are you two alright?” Vixen asked uneasily.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re fine,” Blitzen said quickly. “Nothing’s wrong, not at all.”
I smirked and nudged him slightly. He ignored me and tried to make his little antler stubs look as big as possible. My antlers were twice as big as his so he failed at that. I never liked to boast but I was extremely truthful.
Blitzen was staring at her in a, what looked like, pleasant dream. I tilted my head as I watched him blink slowly.
“Blitzen, we’ve lost you,” I said, taking a step forward and poking his face with one of my ‘antlers’, if you could call them antlers.
Vixen giggled her cute little giggle. Well, it had come to my attention that I’m funny. Great…I think. Either way, if it gets a doe’s attention then I guess that’s pretty good.
Blitzen flashed me an incredibly hostile look. I flashed him a shocked look. I didn’t mean it! Honestly!
I mouthed the words “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” to him but he ignored me. Fine. Let him be that way. It didn’t matter to me if he wanted to be all stubborn and not notice an honest mistake. And besides, Vixen was the only doe in the herd. Blitzen wouldn’t be the only stag after her. I was sure that Dancer and Prancer had already organized a fight for her! But they didn’t even have half-developed horns so it would be much of a fight. Vixen had more developed horns than them.
“Have either of you seen Donner?” Vixen asked.
I actually felt as though my heart sank to my hooves. She was looking for Donner.
“Oh,” I muttered. “I mean no, no I haven’t. Sorry.”
“He’s right over there,” Blitzen said, pointed over to the East with his little stub.
“Thanks,” Vixen nodded. “Bye.”
And with that she trotted away from us. I snorted angrily. Why didn’t she just go look for him instead of coming and talking to us? After all, we’d just waste her time.
Even I felt my thoughts were bitter but that didn’t stop me from thinking them.
“Just because ‘oh’ rhymes with ‘no’ doesn’t mean no one will notice,” Blitzen pointed out, breaking the silence.
He started laughing. I started laughing then before we knew it, we were both trying to stand up straight from laughter!
“Donner’s an ice-head, anyway,” Blitzen muttered. “And have you seen those flimsy antlers?”
“What antlers?”
And with that comment we both fell into another fit of hysterical laughter. After a moment, we weren’t sure what we were really laughing at. All we knew is that something was hysterical and needed to be laughed at. This is what we all lived for. The moments of friendship are what our herd was about. As we were only fawns, the only thing that we could really have was friends. We were all orphans there. Our parents had been…
Well, it’s a story none of us like to think or speak about so we vowed to never mention it. Not to each other and definitely, never strangers or reindeer outside the herd.
Blitzen and I finished our laughter with a fading out close. Our laughter kept getting quieter and quieter until we were both just sniggering. We began trotting through the snow. To our left, we saw Dancer and Prancer arguing with Dasher watching them intently for some strange reason. My friend and I looked at Dasher as we tilted our heads. I felt something poke my face. It was Blitzen’s antler.
“Oww!” I moaned jokingly.
Blitzen jumped and I began laughing.
“It’s not funny!” he whined with humour.
We continued trotting through the thick, white snow. Little white flecks flew up into the air with every step. Some fell back down to the ground like new snow but some snowflakes flew upwards. I watched a single snowflake fly back into the sky. As it drifted and swayed in the air I reared up onto my hind legs and batted at it with my front hooves.
Blitzen laughed warmly and looked at me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Tryin’ to hit the snowflake, of course!” I replied, landing on my hooves then rearing up again.
“You’ve got snow in your brain!” Blitzen exclaimed, laughing again.
I laughed and dropped back down onto my four hooves, kicking up even more snowflakes. I kicked out with one of my hind hooves to shake off some of the excess clumps of snow that felt strange on my legs.
“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it!” I repeated the words that Dancer and Prancer had repeated in unison so many times.
Blitzen laughed again and then I began laughing again. We were always falling into fits of laughter throughout the long winter days.
As we trotted and stumbled forward Blitzen stopped. I stopped laughing and turned to him, tilting my head in question.
“Wanna race?” he challenged.
“I’ll win!” I chimed boastfully.
“No you won’t!”
We galloped ahead without looking back. I sprinted into action, my hooves hitting the ground under the snow one after the other. The wind blew through my fur and the chill on my skin felt like a piercing antler through me but I ignored it, competitiveness was my main flaw.
My hooves pounded harder as Blitzen sped ahead. I felt the blood pumping in my ears that were pointing ahead from behind my stubby antlers. I lowered my head as I became faster. Blitzen drew closer and closer as I ran faster and faster. Just a few more bounds and I would be ahead.
“Ha!” he yelled smugly as I galloped past him.
As I looked over my shoulder I saw that Blitzen had stopped. But he didn’t look angry or upset, he looked frightened. I tilted my head then I turned around to see what he was staring at. A huge almost black stag with massive antlers stood over me. His nostrils were flaring and he was standing with strong, rigid legs. I looked up and it looked as though his antlers reached up to the clouds. My heart pounded even faster as did my breathing. I tried to control it to slow down and not show this huge stag any fear but I couldn’t help it. Fear flowed through me and I froze.
“Hey guys!” the huge deer called, his voice deep and threatening like a bear’s roar. “I’ve found some more recruits!”
Another huge reindeer hulked his way over to this one’s side. The new stag’s antlers weren’t quite so large but his certainly looked stronger. His fur was light brown and his eyes screamed ‘fear me.’
“AHHH!” I screamed; turned-tail and ran as fast as I could.
“Blitzen, move it!” I yelled as I approached my friend.
He nodded, turned and cantered. All of the competitiveness from the race had vanished from me and fear replaced it.
“Go, go, go!” I ordered in a squeal-ish cry.
I waited until we were side-by-side before I swung my head over my shoulder to see if the two stags were chasing us. I could see them in the distance, shifting their weight forward slowly. They couldn’t catch up with us! Relief flooded over me. We were safe.
“We’re safe!” I almost squealed.
Then again, what would two full grown stags want with us? And what did the stag with the bigger antlers mean by ‘new recruits?’ What were recruits anyway? The questions swam around in my mind like salmon in a river.
We both skidded to a halt, panting heavily with our heads down and looking at each other. Even after what we had just endured we began to laugh. Our whole lives were filled with laughter, even when there was absolutely nothing to laugh at.
“I-I can’t believe we’re safe!” Blitzen panted. “What did they even want with us?”
“I don’t know,” I wheezed. “But honestly, I don’t give two hares. We got away, that’s all that matters.”
Blitzen nodded then a smile played around his muzzle.
“Wait ‘til we tell the others.”
“Yeah,” I panted. “I wonder if they’ll believe us.”
But there was only one real thing that was on my mind was what they wanted us for. Even though we probably wouldn’t see the two rouges I still pondered what they would have wanted. Recruit. This seemed to be the thing they wanted us for.
“W-what do you think they wanted us for?” I asked when my breath returned to me.
“I don’t know, was it just me or did they say ‘recruit?’” Blitzen’s voice was still wheezy and crooked.
“Yeah, I heard it too,” I said thoughtfully. “We could ask one of the elderly herd Chiefs what a recruit is.”
“Yeah, after we tell the others.”
We both nodded and looked around. I flared my nostrils and took in the scents around us. A river was quite close by. That was good; we could find some char there and tell the story on a full stomach.
“Smell that? Char fish,” I muttered.
“Yeah, let’s go. There should be plenty,” Blitzen said wisely.
I am an infamous character you probably have never heard of. I am the shadow that never sleeps, the nightmare in your dreams and the horror haunting your minds. But do not fear me as I do not wish to harm you. I am only forever searching for the one whose fault all of this is, the one who you will all know as your hero, Rudolph.
The thing is I have done nothing wrong. Quite the contrary, actually, I did what was right. I stood against Rudolph and his wrong-doings against my innocent friends and I. Oh yes; I wasn’t the only one who was left out of the pretty stories. There was my good friends; Atlantic, Pacific, Thrasher and Pumpkin. Pumpkin was the baby of us five. They were rouges and I was with Santa’s Reindeer. I thought life was perfectly fine, I was helping that runt of a litter Rudolph, Blitzen was with the rouges and I and Vixen spoke to me more than she did to the other stags.
Then I had to make the final move of helping little Runty-Rudolph.
It was Christmas Eve and Rudolph was destined to be at the back of the herd, as usual, but I had to go and use those Fog Pebbles to make the light, hardly noticeable fog into fog so thick that it made it almost impossible to see past an inch of our noses.
And then I, of course, had to make sure Rudolph was right beside that red oaf so that he could see how bright and shiny that precious nose is!
And now, because of what I did that day, I now lay in a cave, all alone, not a soul to sing.
But it wasn’t just from Santa’s side to a dark, lifeless cave. Oh no, there was the Rouge Herds. After Rudolph began to exclude me, ignore me and occasionally abandon me in the forest I ran away. I knew where it was going to I decided to get out while I could but you’ll need to know what happened before that otherwise you will not understand how it felt to be abandoned then run away, oblivious to the danger of outside the forests.
I took Atlantic, Pacific, Thrasher and Pumpkin with me too and that is the reason that they do not walk with me through the nightmares to this very day. Because of the horrors we faced and because they blame me for it all none of them will speak with me and, to be perfectly honest, I cannot blame them. No doubt, if I was in their position, I would have done the exact same thing but, unfortunately, I am not in their situation and am instead in my own horrific state.
Now, you may be asking why I want to tell my sorrowful tale to the rest of the world who have been blinded by that shiny red nose of his. Well, I wish to tell people about the real story as I feel like my Time of Great Sleep is drawing nearer every moment I spend lying in my cave, alone and filled with woe.
Chapter I
I looked across the landscape that had turned into a blanketed wasteland overnight. I wondered how I had not felt the change while I slept. Surely, this amount of snow would have woken my friends and I. Blitzen, my best friend and only grey stag I had met, stood beside me, scanning the area for an unknown reason.
“Whatcha doing?” I asked, absent-mindedly.
“Lookin’ for someone,” Blitzen replied, not really listening.
“Who?”
“Vixen,” his voice was simple and blunt.
I turned my head away from searching for my hooves and looked at the side of his face.
“Oh really?” I asked, teasingly.
“Yes, really,” Blitzen had begun to sound annoyed.
I lifted one hoof and put it towards him, watching him as he became nervous and I could tell he wanted to change the subject. His eyes moved quicker and his breath quickened, too.
“Hey,” a voice asked from nowhere.
“AHHH!” we both leaped into the air in fright, twisting around so that we would land in front of the voice.
It was Vixen. Blitzen began to look around nervously again while I stood grinning like an ice-head at his side. I’ll admit she’s pretty but I didn’t like-like her. Definitely.
“Uh, are you two alright?” Vixen asked uneasily.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re fine,” Blitzen said quickly. “Nothing’s wrong, not at all.”
I smirked and nudged him slightly. He ignored me and tried to make his little antler stubs look as big as possible. My antlers were twice as big as his so he failed at that. I never liked to boast but I was extremely truthful.
Blitzen was staring at her in a, what looked like, pleasant dream. I tilted my head as I watched him blink slowly.
“Blitzen, we’ve lost you,” I said, taking a step forward and poking his face with one of my ‘antlers’, if you could call them antlers.
Vixen giggled her cute little giggle. Well, it had come to my attention that I’m funny. Great…I think. Either way, if it gets a doe’s attention then I guess that’s pretty good.
Blitzen flashed me an incredibly hostile look. I flashed him a shocked look. I didn’t mean it! Honestly!
I mouthed the words “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” to him but he ignored me. Fine. Let him be that way. It didn’t matter to me if he wanted to be all stubborn and not notice an honest mistake. And besides, Vixen was the only doe in the herd. Blitzen wouldn’t be the only stag after her. I was sure that Dancer and Prancer had already organized a fight for her! But they didn’t even have half-developed horns so it would be much of a fight. Vixen had more developed horns than them.
“Have either of you seen Donner?” Vixen asked.
I actually felt as though my heart sank to my hooves. She was looking for Donner.
“Oh,” I muttered. “I mean no, no I haven’t. Sorry.”
“He’s right over there,” Blitzen said, pointed over to the East with his little stub.
“Thanks,” Vixen nodded. “Bye.”
And with that she trotted away from us. I snorted angrily. Why didn’t she just go look for him instead of coming and talking to us? After all, we’d just waste her time.
Even I felt my thoughts were bitter but that didn’t stop me from thinking them.
“Just because ‘oh’ rhymes with ‘no’ doesn’t mean no one will notice,” Blitzen pointed out, breaking the silence.
He started laughing. I started laughing then before we knew it, we were both trying to stand up straight from laughter!
“Donner’s an ice-head, anyway,” Blitzen muttered. “And have you seen those flimsy antlers?”
“What antlers?”
And with that comment we both fell into another fit of hysterical laughter. After a moment, we weren’t sure what we were really laughing at. All we knew is that something was hysterical and needed to be laughed at. This is what we all lived for. The moments of friendship are what our herd was about. As we were only fawns, the only thing that we could really have was friends. We were all orphans there. Our parents had been…
Well, it’s a story none of us like to think or speak about so we vowed to never mention it. Not to each other and definitely, never strangers or reindeer outside the herd.
Blitzen and I finished our laughter with a fading out close. Our laughter kept getting quieter and quieter until we were both just sniggering. We began trotting through the snow. To our left, we saw Dancer and Prancer arguing with Dasher watching them intently for some strange reason. My friend and I looked at Dasher as we tilted our heads. I felt something poke my face. It was Blitzen’s antler.
“Oww!” I moaned jokingly.
Blitzen jumped and I began laughing.
“It’s not funny!” he whined with humour.
We continued trotting through the thick, white snow. Little white flecks flew up into the air with every step. Some fell back down to the ground like new snow but some snowflakes flew upwards. I watched a single snowflake fly back into the sky. As it drifted and swayed in the air I reared up onto my hind legs and batted at it with my front hooves.
Blitzen laughed warmly and looked at me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Tryin’ to hit the snowflake, of course!” I replied, landing on my hooves then rearing up again.
“You’ve got snow in your brain!” Blitzen exclaimed, laughing again.
I laughed and dropped back down onto my four hooves, kicking up even more snowflakes. I kicked out with one of my hind hooves to shake off some of the excess clumps of snow that felt strange on my legs.
“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it!” I repeated the words that Dancer and Prancer had repeated in unison so many times.
Blitzen laughed again and then I began laughing again. We were always falling into fits of laughter throughout the long winter days.
As we trotted and stumbled forward Blitzen stopped. I stopped laughing and turned to him, tilting my head in question.
“Wanna race?” he challenged.
“I’ll win!” I chimed boastfully.
“No you won’t!”
We galloped ahead without looking back. I sprinted into action, my hooves hitting the ground under the snow one after the other. The wind blew through my fur and the chill on my skin felt like a piercing antler through me but I ignored it, competitiveness was my main flaw.
My hooves pounded harder as Blitzen sped ahead. I felt the blood pumping in my ears that were pointing ahead from behind my stubby antlers. I lowered my head as I became faster. Blitzen drew closer and closer as I ran faster and faster. Just a few more bounds and I would be ahead.
“Ha!” he yelled smugly as I galloped past him.
As I looked over my shoulder I saw that Blitzen had stopped. But he didn’t look angry or upset, he looked frightened. I tilted my head then I turned around to see what he was staring at. A huge almost black stag with massive antlers stood over me. His nostrils were flaring and he was standing with strong, rigid legs. I looked up and it looked as though his antlers reached up to the clouds. My heart pounded even faster as did my breathing. I tried to control it to slow down and not show this huge stag any fear but I couldn’t help it. Fear flowed through me and I froze.
“Hey guys!” the huge deer called, his voice deep and threatening like a bear’s roar. “I’ve found some more recruits!”
Another huge reindeer hulked his way over to this one’s side. The new stag’s antlers weren’t quite so large but his certainly looked stronger. His fur was light brown and his eyes screamed ‘fear me.’
“AHHH!” I screamed; turned-tail and ran as fast as I could.
“Blitzen, move it!” I yelled as I approached my friend.
He nodded, turned and cantered. All of the competitiveness from the race had vanished from me and fear replaced it.
“Go, go, go!” I ordered in a squeal-ish cry.
I waited until we were side-by-side before I swung my head over my shoulder to see if the two stags were chasing us. I could see them in the distance, shifting their weight forward slowly. They couldn’t catch up with us! Relief flooded over me. We were safe.
“We’re safe!” I almost squealed.
Then again, what would two full grown stags want with us? And what did the stag with the bigger antlers mean by ‘new recruits?’ What were recruits anyway? The questions swam around in my mind like salmon in a river.
We both skidded to a halt, panting heavily with our heads down and looking at each other. Even after what we had just endured we began to laugh. Our whole lives were filled with laughter, even when there was absolutely nothing to laugh at.
“I-I can’t believe we’re safe!” Blitzen panted. “What did they even want with us?”
“I don’t know,” I wheezed. “But honestly, I don’t give two hares. We got away, that’s all that matters.”
Blitzen nodded then a smile played around his muzzle.
“Wait ‘til we tell the others.”
“Yeah,” I panted. “I wonder if they’ll believe us.”
But there was only one real thing that was on my mind was what they wanted us for. Even though we probably wouldn’t see the two rouges I still pondered what they would have wanted. Recruit. This seemed to be the thing they wanted us for.
“W-what do you think they wanted us for?” I asked when my breath returned to me.
“I don’t know, was it just me or did they say ‘recruit?’” Blitzen’s voice was still wheezy and crooked.
“Yeah, I heard it too,” I said thoughtfully. “We could ask one of the elderly herd Chiefs what a recruit is.”
“Yeah, after we tell the others.”
We both nodded and looked around. I flared my nostrils and took in the scents around us. A river was quite close by. That was good; we could find some char there and tell the story on a full stomach.
“Smell that? Char fish,” I muttered.
“Yeah, let’s go. There should be plenty,” Blitzen said wisely.
