Naming Dream
The elder buck was alone in a flat field, earth wet and cold, a thin blanket of brown ice crunching below his feet as he pressed onward. There were no trees in this land, nor were there vines or vast pools of brown water. There had never been a sun or a moon, only the calculated pulsing of the stars. Above the sky stretched onward, submitting to the earth at the foggy horizon like a black waterfall. All was silent in this dead land, save for the chattering of old bones.
The nameless buck raised his weary head and the many hollow sticks decorating his antlers made empty, familiar sounds. His eyes were wide and contemplative, long since white with age. For many moons he had wandered, singing his questions to the night but finding no answers. Only his echo found him here, galloping forth simply to return from unseen barriers. Sometimes he thought he heard the wind, it would whisper to him in an unfriendly manner, you are not yet ready...
He called to the darkness, and again he went unanswered. Broken and defeated, the old buck lowered his nose to the earth. A warm hand lifted the buck's weary head and he saw, trapped between the stars, many figures - all of which spoke to him in a singular, knowing voice. "Be not broken, seeker - come to me. Let your wings and you shall know all that we know." The eldest of the signs, a selection of stars that embodied themselves as a tangled, endless Mangrove, shone the brightest upon him. Before this sign, he wept.
There were many more behind the feminine Mangrove, carved into the sky and connected by the flickering lights. A wolf with a crocodiles head, a single feather, and countless others made themselves known to him. The buck was not afraid, and he reared back, hooves catching the light of the figures as they swayed and flickered. His back feet, firm upon the ground, did not part from the cold mud. Again he reached for them, and again he fell to the cold earth.
But he longed so for their knowledge, and rattled his heavy head, chanting all that he had ever known with a heated passion that melted the ice from his coat and silenced the mocking wind. He became a dark blue bird, neck elongated and graceful, wings magnificent and strong! He took to the sky in desperation, abandoning his blind, earthly form.
But it was too late, the signs had melted into the sky, and again became just stars...
