Friends

Summer, Year 744 of the New Age
Glenmore, Glenwood

All of the young fawnlings that had been playing in the small clearing, which was close to the glade around the Great Oak where the royals gathered, stopped their play as the angry voices got louder. It was that odd dark one again, which everyone said was weird (and thus had to be) and that was believed to be by Blackwood blood. She had ended up in some confrontation again. Some of them nodded and simply agreed about what was said, who really knew what her mother had done. They only could go after what they had seen. The older doe was the one more recent to arrive. Her golden coat shimmered in the sun and she had just started to get some stray white hairs on her head. She had become worried when she saw her youngest son that she had such high hopes for, talking to ‘that dark one’ so she had as soon as she could stepped in between them and then quickly sending her son away.

“You shouldn’t be here…” the doe said sternly to the young doe “…not this close to the Great Oak…the cooling shadow of Earrann, only royals-“

“I'm royal, I have the right…” the young doe interrupted, not caring it might be rude to do so towards a princess doe “…my mother was a Lesser Royal doe…my father is within the Royal gu-“

“Nonsense…” The golden doe flattened her ears in annoyance “…you aren't more royal than a stone and you don’t have more value than one!” The older palomino doe laughed like if it had been a funny joke “Now leave…if we are lucky the crown prince might come here today…” the doe seemed to muse at the thought and continued to speak like the dark young doe actually had been someone suddenly worth talking to…or simply just to rub things in “…and I have plans to have my mate introduce my son as a possible future royal guard, to take his place…so you do understand that we cant have anyone with tainted blood spoiling his gleam.” The pride the doe felt about her son shone as brilliant as her golden pelt did in the sunlight.

The dark young doe narrowed her eyes as she lowered her head as in shame, but then a smile started to play in the corners of her mouth and she looked up at her elder. "Well, I AM more royal than you; because I don’t sneak away during the rut to meet Blackwood stags in secret!"

The older doe gasped, at first slightly taken back at what the young doe had thrown in her face, looking around to see who else could have heard it. What else had she seen? But then again – who would believe someone of tainted blood? Anger filled her and the doe rushed towards the young one, ears flattened and she gave the young doe a swift kick with a foreleg on the rump and a verbal warning not go get near the doe’s sooty buckskin son again.

Elita looked back for a moment, saw the other young fawnlings continue to race around in the games of the youth, heard the laughter and the first shy attempts to approach in something else than just play. They all acted like she had never been there. Noone looked or called after her, defended her and said she had the right to be there…no…nobody…not even her aunt’s fawn that she had grown up with. The dumb dove brained scrawny thing probably kept her tongue in hope not to be associated with her, to have a chance to…climb higher…There was plenty of young stags there that had the promise to be royal guards…and who wouldn’t want to be a mate to a stag in the royal guard? The pale bay doe that in a way had been like a sibling to her had hardly dared to look at her as the older doe had talked to her that way. Not even a word as comfort after. Sometimes the young ones forgot who she was and played with her…despite that she sometimes said the wrong things…but then when an adult came…it all change and none dared to stand up as a friend.

Her ears went back, tightly against her scull, felt the tears sting but swallowed them down, her lips tightning instead. "Friends…is overrated anyway... Who needs them...?”

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ELITAs JOURNAL