The Moment's Truth

Doe was padding silently through the forest, just as The Ranger had taught her. Her ears stretched out between the trees around her, seeking and searching for the dinner she was supposed to bring back. Her eyes travelled slowly over the foliage around her but she paid little attention to them. They were too easily fooled in the forest.

Too easily wooed, The Ranger had told her.

He was immune, of course. For he had burned his heart and it was black. The forest held no beauty for him, only treachery and death. And it was his job to make sure that the forest claimed no more victims than it had. Keep the trods clear. Shepherd the vicious things from the paths of Men. Rescue the fools that wandered from the path, and became lost.

It was this that Doe was learning from The Ranger. But she refused to learn his hate. She paused in her search for a moment, so that she could open her eyes. Really open, and see. See the forest for what it was.

The colours, the patterns. The life that was, that is, and that is budding to be. The ancient and the new, intertwined at her feet and for miles around. The ever continuing motion, the immemorial stillness. It was beautiful to her. The Ranger could no longer see like this, and she pitied him for it. He had cut himself off from the majesty of the forest so that he would not be consumed by it. But Doe would not be consumed. Doe would walk The Ranger's path, but she would not be bound by it. Doe would not become the hate that The Ranger wanted her to be. Doe would learn all that she could from The Ranger, and she would learn all she could from the forest. And then she would be ready. So she revelled, for a moment, in the beauty around her. The majesty was intoxicating.

But distracting, she admitted. She closed herself to the beauty, and forced her eyes to see only the truth. Her truth, this moment's truth.

The tracks.

Dinner had passed through here not long ago. Doe smirked to herself.

It would pass back this way before long, on her shoulders. Less than an hour out hunting, and she was almost ready to return with enough food for days.

Let him find a problem with that, she thought to herself as she slung her bow off her back and slid silently into the trees in pursuit of her prey.