A Manipur Eld's

This was not home.

The smell, the movement of the air, the way the trees were interspersed, the texture of the grass. He had wandered, and though it hadn’t been far, he had ended up farther away from home than he could have ever expected.

He felt different. For a moment, he could not put a word to it. And then he could, and that was it.

There was a sinking feeling in him as he thought. Really thought. With words and emotions. He could count. These things were foreign to him, and yet, there they were, as if they had always been.

He stumbled backward, hoping he’d step back into home, into the bog, where his herd was. But it did not come. The trees loomed in on him, the sky too bright—pale blue like the eyes of a blind man. Man, that was the name of the beings at home, who would sometimes hunt them, and more often feed them, but mostly left them alone respectfully and at a distance. He did not know why he knew that, how. He knew he did not want to know. He knew there was so much now that he did not want to know.

There was the face of a man on one of his kind—not his kind, but like it. Foreign, something from far away. A distant relative. He was an Eld’s deer. His species was one of three subspecies—he was a Manipur Eld’s, of the region Manipur in a country known as India, on a planet called Earth. And now, he did not know where he was. And he did not know how to go home.

He had known species, but not “species.” He had known his kind, his herd. Had known the stags he had challenged, the does he had mated with, the fawns he had fathered. He had known the phumdis, the swamp-water. He had known the rise and fall of light and dark. But these things now had such detail, such texture. No longer the wordless thoughts of an animal—he was now experiencing the intelligence of man. And it was so wrong to him. Surely this feeling, these thoughts, this awareness, was meant for some. But it was too much, too fast, far too deep. He longed for the serenity he had experienced just moments earlier, the blissful ignorance which was his existence. There had been just enough, the perfect amount of complexity and vibrance. This wasn’t right.

He found a body of water and waded in, belly deep. It soothed him, cool but not cold. It reminded him of home. He was calmed; not completely, but enough. He began to graze at the lily pads and water lettuce which floated too close on the shallow water, becoming absentminded in the muscle memory, in the atmosphere of this new place. So there was peace here, that old serenity from home. He did not know when—if—he could return. But, if he could not, at least there were moments of respite here. And this place was not so bad.

He kicked over a river-stone on the pond’s floor—heard the distant, water-muted clack of the rocks hitting together. Hooves splayed over a pile of these stones, he took a special interest in them. 

He collected them at the muddy edge of the pond without having a reason. He was full, and in the distant company of something almost like a herd. He felt content, but that was no longer enough to keep him fully occupied. He found a nook in the trees and kept the stones there, piled up on one another. As he collected, he noticed how they could sit atop one another, and he thought that was beautiful. So he began to stack them, two high, or even three if he was very careful. The evening came quickly this way. This place was alright, if he could do such things to occupy himself.

He grazed into the night and settled silently among a group of brightly coloured deer, and maybe other animals as well. They were at ease, so he was as well. They were warm.

He fell asleep listening to a sound he’d known only from man. He recognized it in his thoughts—words, sentences. This was language. Two deer were talking. He felt his body run cold with the wrongness of this new life, but it was short-lived, and the herd which surrounded him lulled him into slumber.