Galactic Antlephore
SuffolksI came into the world in a dark barn. It was cold on my wet skin and smelled of many animals, but I felt safe as my mother licked me clean and a short elf rubbed me down with soft towels. I quickly gained my feet and was up and about in a matter of minutes, making my mother proud with my first steps. We became the best of friends. Over the next few days she told me stories of my kind and helped me master the art of standing and resting gracefully. After a week or so, we were let into a huge indoor arena to run and play as we wished with other newborns and their parents. The wind howled cruelly in the frigid darkness outside but we were safe and warm in our barn. The elves came every day to let us play, leading us out with halters and teaching us to walk politely on lead ropes. It was always the same elf for each calf and mother. Eventually spring came to the frozen lands and we were let out into huge pastures to all play together and I met my father, a proud buck who always looked out for me and my mother. We ran and jumped and played together and I got to know the other young Antlephores. The skies were sunny and the winds calm, and the sparse grass was good to eat once I got my teeth.
One day, everything changed. The elves came more often and we youngsters began to be worked on long lines in the arena. It felt good to be worked. They introduced us to leather harnesses that covered our bodies. I didn't mind the harness as it didn't hurt and when it was put on meant a good hard workout. Once I had mastered the harness by myself, they also harnessed my mother alongside me and she taught me to run in step with her. We were worked every day as a team. Eventually a small sled was brought out and we were hitched to it, my mother once again teaching me to pull in step with her. Soon other young deer replaced my mother next to me and a team of eight formed, each of us getting a chance to lead and follow. The sled became a large sleigh and we all learned to pull it around the arena together, each deer with his or her elf on their backs, murmuring instructions and correcting our faults. Eventually the sleigh was so big that it needed at least six deer to pull it, but since there were eight to a team it didn't matter. All was glorious in the ranks.
A special day dawned. It started out with much more hustle and bustle than a normal day. Spring and summer had passed and I knew there was hay and grain to be stored for winter but most of that had been done a few months ago. A massive red sleigh was at the far end of the arena, being loaded with gifts of all sorts in a huge sack. As night fell, my mother, now in the stall next to mine as I had grown too large to share hers, and her team were brought into the aisle and tacked up with a beautiful black harness adorned with silver bells that sang whenever they moved. Once harnessed, they were brought into the arena and hitched to the sleigh. I noticed that my mother and father were the leading pair and was proud. A big fat man came out and hoisted himself into the sleigh, calling instructions to the scurrying elves and stamping deer. Then it was time. The double doors were opened at the end of the arena, letting in a blast of freezing air, swirling snowflakes and dust everywhere. The fat man snapped the reins with a laugh and the team moved. They were perfect, every deer in his place moving as a wave of water, pulling the sleigh effortlessly behind them. By the time they reached the doors they were sprinting full speed. The burst into the night and took off into the air, quickly disappearing. The doors were closed and the elves went back to their business, calming the old deer who were too excited to speak. I tried asking what was going on but the old ones ignored me and chattered excitedly amongst themselves. As dawn broke above the winter world, the team returned, exhausted and proud. My mother was led back to her stall after a good rubdown and fell asleep after eating and drinking deeply. I felt so proud of her as my elf had come by while they were gone and explained what they were doing that night. I congratulated her and fell asleep myself, my dreams full of flying the world.
Training resumed as normal over the next few months. We were introduced to flying once spring had come again, swooping in circles on the long line first without a harness and then with one. We began flying long distances with our elves on our backs, sometimes alone and sometimes with others, mostly my mother but sometimes with Donner, another youngster and my harness-mate. My mother was never harnessed now as her job was done. She had flown her last run and was now happily retired to a life of eating, sleeping, following her son around, and occasionally just laying in the sun with my father. They were best friends and enjoyed each other immensely. No more babies for them, though, as they had produced their replacement on the team and were probably too old to do so anyways. My teammates and I were once again harnessed together but this time it was in the sky. We learned to take off, land, hover, and roof-jump together. We were hitched to the small sleigh again and learned to fly with that before graduating to larger and larger sleighs until we were flying with one that was the same size and weight of the big red one.
Winter came and our chance to prove ourselves came near. The special night seemed to come fast. Suddenly it was there and we were being harnessed into the beautiful tack and hitched to the red sleigh with the fat man at the reins. Donner and I were the leading pair. Our takeoff was awesome, not one trip or misstep, and just like that we were up in the air and ready to run the world in one night. Run the world we did, fast and furious. We made the entire run without a mishap and were almost home as the sun crested the mountains when suddenly a blizzard hit. It smashed into us from the north, blinding us and driving us towards the mountain ranges that bordered the Northern Territories. The peaks of the range were literally as sharp as knives and many a deer had been lost to the labyrinth-like passes. Once a team had even flown into the range accidentally and their very harnesses were shredded from their bodies. All but two made it back and the sleigh, a small training one, was lost forever. It was a miracle that the driving elf had also survived, caught at the last second by a brave deer. The treacherous peaks grew closer and closer, and no matter how hard we fought the wind was stronger. The fat man directed us upwards, trying as a last resort to possibly top the clouds and wind. It didn't work. I was thrown like a rag doll into a snow-clad peak, my stunning harness ripped from my body. I saw the team recoiling and Donner yelling at them before finally getting an angle into the wind and pulling the sleigh out of reach of the mountains. I heard his voice reaching back through the whipping wind, screeching my name and his loss to the world. The rest of the team realized what happened and there was a chorus of voices, all with my name on their tongues. They thought I was dead already. I either fell asleep or unconcious, stunned and stuck in a snowdrift on top of the world.
I awoke to the sun shining directly into my face. I lifted my aching head and looked about, blinking and trying to think through the throbbing. I knew I was lost and alone, and I knew that I was high in the air. I noticed red snow all around me and looked to my legs which were suddenly full of feeling. They burned and hurt. I could feel cuts and scrapes all over my body but one on my shoulder hurt the most. An ugly gash, deep and still bleeding, greeted my gaze. I could see bone. It hurt to the point of numbness and beyond. I couldn't move for the sudden agony. I lay there for hours, occasionally licking the snow around my head and groaning to the sky. Night came and went and still I lay there. Silence was my only companion. As the next day dawned, I summoned the courage and strength to look around again. I was surrounded by nothing. The drift I was in was on the precipice of a gorge, so deep I couldn't see the bottom. I thought about how lucky I was to not have fallen to my death. I heard a sound, creeping through the air to my sensitive ears. It was a sort of crunching, crackling sound and I vaguely associated it with romping in the snow. Then it hit me. The drift was moving. It was sliding steadily towards the edge, taking me with it. It reached the edge and fell. I tumbled through the air, my injured leg flopping uselessly, snow cascading all around. Then I remembered that I could, in fact, fly. I stretched and pulled with all my might, trying to fly with only three legs. I felt the air slow around me and then I was hovering, the snow racing past and into the gorge. My leg was like fire but I kept hovering, my instinctual fear of death overcoming everything else. Slowly I began to move forward and up, out of the pass and into the sunlight again. Wind gently buffeted me but I flew faster and faster, away from the mountains and towards my home.
It turned out that I wasn't heading towards home at all. I was heading away from it. I landed clumsily in a meadow surrounded by leafless trees. I had seen a human standing at the far end and decided it was a good place to rest until I could fly home again. The human, followed by a strange horse, ran to me. With the help of the horse he put me on its back and started off. I was too weak to do anything about it and just lay there like a sack of potatoes. I couldn't feel any part of my body except my mind. The boy brought me to a small house and a herd of humans came rushing around, washing me and examining my wounds. A large female, presumably the boy's mother, brought out a needle and thread and began sewing my gaping wound. The horse-thing sat on me to keep me from thrashing and hurting her. When she was done, I was offered water, which I drank, and fell asleep on a huge cushion.
That kind family cared for me through the winter, washing my wounds and helping me heal with laughter and potent herbs. The horse-thing, which called herself a Hikei, sat with me and shared stories of how she was born and raised here with her mother and father and siblings, who came and sat with me too sometimes. Everyone was so nice and it amazed me that the Hikei were allowed to come and go from the house as often as they pleased. I suddenly realized that I wanted a family like this. I wanted my mother to be able to sleep in a warm house with a caring family and not have to worry about her son flying off around the world. I wanted her to enjoy watching all types of children, both human and Antlephore, run and play together. Most of all, I wanted her here. I wanted her to not worry like I knew she was. It was time to leave.
I flew north once my would was closed and my muscles back in working order. I flew hard and fast, making my shoulder ache and the world race past underneath me. I reached the snow-covered north in a day and found the elf village the next. I flew straight to the barn, past my bewildered teammates and their trainers, and charged in. I ran to my mother's stall, calling her name and announcing my return. Her stall was empty. I ran to the pastures to see if she was laying in the sun with my father. She was not. I hurtled to the training fields, desperately hoping that she was helping another youngster with his training. She was nowhere. I stood in the middle of the field for a while, thinking furiously as to where she could be. An elf came running to me, tears streaming down his face. It was my trainer. He threw himself onto my neck and cried. I could not understand why. I knew he had seen deer lost before and my return was nothing to be this upset about. Then Donner arrived. He was in harness and he trotted right up to me and asked quietly to come with him. I followed, starting to feel a creeping loss infiltrate my heart. He led me to a field not far from the barn that was covered in bumps. I knew this was a burial ground for many of my kind and was starting to realize what was going on. Donner explained to me that as soon as the team had arrived back, tattered but alive, my mother had rushed out because she saw that there was only one leader. The fat man told her that I had been lost in a sudden blizzard near the mountains and she had gone wild. My father too was insane with loss. They both bolted out the doors before anyone could do anything. They flew straight to the mountains, knowing where they were from years of flying the route, and searched all day. As night began to fall, my father insisted they go home and resume the search tomorrow. They came back but my mother had gotten sick. She said she was only sick from worry, knowing that I was out there somewhere, but by morning it was apparent that she was gravely ill. My father led search party after search party into the mountains, only to return day after day with no results. He spotted something at the bottom of a deep gorge one day. He flew carefully down and discovered blood-soaked snow covering the riverbed below. He returned and told my mother the sad news and she immediately insisted that she go and check it out. The elves tried to calm her, saying that she was too sick to fly so far and that she couldn't make the descent into the gorge safely. She ignored them and immediately took off with my father to see the gorge. She saw the blood and made it back, but the elves had been right. Her sickness worsened and she died the next day, leaning on my father and crying for her lost son.
I stared at Donner. He couldn't be right. She must still be alive. My beautiful strong mother couldn't have died from a cold. There was hollow nothingness swallowing me from the inside out and I looked to the grave we were standing by. It had a small new plaque with my mother's name on it. Donner was right. My mother was dead.
I went to see my father. He greeted me with empty eyes and a sad smile. His true love was gone, taken by the pain of losing her only son, and now here I was again. I could tell he was glad to see me deep down but just didn't have the heart to show it anymore. I left that sorrowful place after that, flying back to the warmer climates. I would find a home and maybe even a mate, but I would never be a sleigh puller again and neither would my children. I wandered for a year, going from house to house and home to home, trying to find a place to rest but never being able to truly settle.
As I was flying through one day, I heard a sound that was familiar. It was the sound of a tortured soul crying his pain away into the sky, just as I did every night. I landed and searched the lost soul out, finally stumbling upon a broken Endeavor sitting on the edge of a gully in the woods and crying softly to himself. His wings were broken and his body rusty, but his eyes were still burning with the familiar color of pain. A tiny mouse sat on his lap, dutifully polishing his claws and repairing small wires that stuck out from his joints. He saw me and creakily stood, introducing himself as Osgiliath and the mouse as Scrub. We chatted a while and I told him of my desire to find a home to stay. He said that his owner was very kind and let him and Scrub stay in the house all they wanted. She knew of pain and knew to let him grieve the loss of his people alone and he respected her for that. I let him lead me to her. She groomed me, fed me, and gave me a bed, all without asking about the scar or my past. I told her my name and she told me of a children's story about the fat man's deer. Apparently my name had been misheard when the fat man called it out and I was "Blitzen" to the rest of the world. I even have some plush toys now and a new little friend to keep me company. That is how I found myself here, in a warm house, telling my story to my new owner and finally the world.
