He was getting older, he had realized. With his children gone and the love of his life filled with wanderlust and purpose and thus hardly home, it was time he did something for himself. So here he was - in somewhat of a mid-life crisis but at least enjoying himself.
“Tell us,” the surrounding kin encouraged.
“It’s a story from the plains,” Once Forgotten began, casting his mind back many years. His family had always been outcasts on the plains but every now and then a herd would let the youngsters join their fire, and on one such night an old doe had scared them right to their bones.
“There was once a buck who found a pool of still water. Not a ripple on the surface. With a grey sky above, when he peered over the edge this buck saw his own face mirrored back. When he smiled, it smiled. When he frowned, it frowned.
And he was a handsome fellow, so looking upon himself was quite pleasing.
But he wasn’t so enamoured that he would stay there all day. There were does to woo and fights to be won and food to eat. So he carried on his way.
A few days later he returned, strolling curiously past that same pool on the way home... and unable to resist the allure of peering within.
His face peered back... somehow different.
The eyes seemed tired and bloodshot, the expression grim.
He left frowning and asked the next Kiokote he saw if he looked a bit ill.
‘You look fine,’ they said.
For a long time he avoided the spot but curiosity got the better of him again and he eventually returned to the pool, shuffling up the edge and looking down. The sky was overcast and there was not a single mark upon the clean surface.
His face stared back.
Changed.
Sunken and hollow, as if he hadn’t fed for days on end. The whites of his eyes yellow and sickly. The skin on his cheeks slack.
Panicked, the buck raced away from the pool. He returned to his herd and fretted. They all said he looked fine. But maybe they were lying? Had he lost his looks? Was he ill and didn’t even realize it? Caught up in his own anxieties, the Kiokote stopped eating.
For many days, he weakened. Refusing both food and water, unable to be consoled.
‘Come and see,’ he begged his best friends, and he took them to the pool and showed them his reflection.
‘It just looks like you,’ they said, concerned and puzzled, sharing glances back and forth.
But the face within was bloodied and covered in sores, swollen in odd places.
This was a kin who was close to death, a walking corpse. This was him.
His friends shook their heads and tried to convince him to leave but they couldn’t coax him from the side of the water. So they left him there, maybe to find help from others, or maybe because they saw madness in his eyes and were afraid.
Regardless, they left him there to be consumed by what he could see and they could not.
He stood there for hours.
When the buck touched his face, carefully rubbed his cheek against his leg, there was nothing there but smooth skin. Was this madness? He wondered. Had he lost his mind? Was there a curse upon him?
In frustrating he finally lashed out, his hoof breaking the surface of the water. It tore his reflection apart, ripples rolling outwards to lap at the edges of the pool.
And something was revealed, a dark mass lurking below.
In horror, he stared.
His knees trembled.
His heart raced in his chest.
But he could not move.
As something with many arms and grasping claws rose out of the water and reached for him. It wore his face, as it truly was, handsome and grinning, and he could not look away as limbs curled around his legs and shoulders, dragging him down, down, down and away.
He was too weak to fight, too scared to struggle.
The buck was taken into the pool.
And not a ripple was left behind.
Only still water reflecting the skies above.”