Dream.

The name had slipped out one afternoon with Nightmare and, after some very fine-tuned questioning, the overly furred kin had admitted that talking to does was impossible. As much as he knew that to be untrue—talking to does could be quiet easy—he had left well enough alone. The question, however, was how could he teach the buck to talk to does but it had taken him a long time to find the answer.

Transformation flowers, they’d taken to calling them and he’d allowed the frenzy to go in one ear and out the other. He was comfortable in his own body and he had no need or desire to feel what it was like to be a doe. Indeed, he had no reason to be a doe either for he did not discriminate his flirtations or rendezvouses on sex. But now, the memory began to stir and combined with Nightmare’s current predicament . . .

It’d taken him far too long to actually found a grove of the flowers and he’d let out a sigh of relief upon seeing them. There were far too many white bloomed flowers in the swamp and he’d mistook more than a few for the actual transformation flower he was looking for with only minor setbacks. He picked a couple carefully, unsure how long this would actually take, before heading back to his usual haunts and, more importantly, his usual hang-out location with Nightmare.

“Here goes nothing,” he told himself before taking one of the flowers he’d brought along and chewing it. He’d expected something more painful, something more visceral. Instead, he’d felt little more than warmth and the strange sensation of shrinking. Once the tickle had worn, he looked into the nearby pond and didn’t know whether to yelp in surprise—it’d worked!—or smirk seductively—he looked damned good as a doe. Nightmare was going to be so confused.

Nightmare had a hard time communicating in general. Talking to does? That was impossible. He'd tried approaching Dream many times but as soon as opportunity would arise, he'd more or less chicken out. The only reason he even knew her name was because she'd thought he was an animal in a bush one evening and tried to coax him out with a very polite introduction. She'd said her name, and offered him food. This was, of course, before he'd found himself with a small bear entourage. They'd have swarmed her and that would have been the end of it. He'd never live it down.

The buck walked toward the usual spot, the four small bears tailing him. They hadn't put two and two together or they might have run a little faster. He was brimming with excitement to see his friend but that brim seemed to be deep inside of him as his exterior expression seemed as unchanged as ever. He was excited nonetheless, and looked forward to the friendship he'd recently begun exploring. The hummingbird didn't mind that Nightmare was quiet, or that his words were brief. They had an understanding, and that was rare in Nightmare's world.

Nightmare looked around but he didn't see Sylph yet. Not at all.

After he had stopped looking at himself, he hurried along to his and Nightmare's preferred meeting spot. He was glad to find the other buck already there and he sauntered toward him with all his regular charisma.

"Nightmare! I'm glad you got here before I did!" he called out to the buck with a grin, then stopped dead in his tracks. He hadn't expected that his voice would change and he felt his ears, involuntarily fidget. It was not a bad voice, by any means, but it was not his voice and it made him, well, nervous. If he didn't sound like himself, and he only vaguely looked like himself, would Nightmare talk to him at all? Shit. Perhaps he hadn't thought this through enough. He should have brought someone with him but then Nightmare would have been just as shy anyway . . .

"It's me, Sylph," he added hopefully, with a smile that looked a little less convincing than he had hoped.

Nightmare heard the sound of shuffling hooves before anything else. As he turned his head expectantly to see Sylph (the only kin he met up with), his body notably jostled and stiffened. His ears lowered and shifted backwards, and his hindleg look a step back as he found the spotlight suddenly on him. There was a doe here, and she knew him?! Was this some sort of... set up? Did Sylph do this? He stood there without a word as the doe stopped in her own tracks. What was he supposed to do? He was exposed here! THE GIRRRRRRL. His red eyes stared her down, and his body reflexively stood tall and his fur fluffed up as much as it could. His body thought this was dangerous, and really wanted to assert itself as large, dominate and scary.

The mini bears looked at Nightmare, and then looked at the doe. They were sniffing the air, approaching the doe. She smelled familiar.

HUMMINGBIRD.
HUMMINGBIRD.
HUMMINGBIRD.
HUMMINGBIRD.

All the bears agreed. Where was the fish?

The doe spoke, and Nightmare was confused even more by the words. He wanted to question things but no sound came out. He just stood there.

Sylph bent down, careful to keep Nightmare in his sights, to grin at the bears. He was glad to find that they at least seemed to remember him although he was sure some of that was due to his fine ability to gather fish. And while he wondered if that would help his friend remember him, he also feared that it would undoubtedly give Nightmare the chance to bolt as well. At least, terrible as it was, the old boy was merely frozen.

"Now, I know this is quite a shock, to find me as a doe," he started after standing up straight, "but I do promise that it's just me." Which amounted to about jibberish if he took a second to think about it. He considered for a moment.

"Will you promise to stay if I go fishing for a moment?" he asked, too tentative that his friend would leave and then where would he be?

Nightmare was simply staring at Sylph, probably trying his best to imitate an oak tree: tall, strong, silent and still.

He didn't know what to do. If this was his friend, was this a normal occurrence? It honestly didn't look like he was capable of moving since he wasn't even able to open his mouth to respond.

The bears seemed to understand what was going to happen though, and they began to rear up in excitement and paw at the air with their front legs. Nightmare? He was pawing at the inside of his mind. It looked pretty clear he wasn't going to be moving even after Sylph disappeared from sight, at least not for a good while.

He nodded, a little bit forlorn and a lot irritated at his own lack of foresight. He should have approached Nightmare first, as himself, and told him the plan and then showed up as a doe. Or anything other than what he had. It was far too late now though and he slunk, dejected into the water.

It took much longer than normal to catch fish, mostly due to this mood that had soured into a mild sadness. It would pass to be sure but for the time being it made activity difficult. And so it took awhile until he emerged with five fish. He dropped four of them to distract the bears and then offered the fifth to the buck, although there was no guarantee that he would get it before the bears devoured theirs. (And at the rate the buck was moving, well, he wouldn't get anything at all.)

He sat down before the buck and wondered, what was it he could even say that would convince the buck that he was Sylph. Nothing came to mind that was simple, though.

"I should have talked to you first but the transformation flower was right there..." Sylph blinked, a thought occurring to him then. He turned his nose into his hair and eventually pulled out a flower, like the one he had eaten. "Have you ever seen one of these before?" he asked, suddenly hopeful, as he showed the bloom to the buck.

The familiar feel of watching Sylph walk into the water in hunt of fish struck something in Nightmare. It was subtle but his head craned a little to watch, and when the doe came out with five fish he implicitly said, "GOOD CATCH," and apparently volume was not something effected by his state. He watched as the doe dropped fish in front of the ravenous mini bears who treated this like the luxury they never got because it was. They dove onto the fish face first, each of them, and began shoving the fish into their jaw with their paws like the gluttons they were.

Nightmare looked down at this fish, looking back up to Sylph with his bright red eyes, before dipping down to eat the fish.

He thought about the conversation, and these mysterious flowers as one was shown to him. He was thankful he had never stumbled upon them before because that would have been its own special sort of horror for him. He believed her though, because the fishing activity had struck that hummingbird nerve with him of their first meeting. However, his tongue was still sort of stuck in his throat.

He shook his head when he finished his fish, just in time to move his face before the mini bears came crashing into it in an attempt to eat the scraps.

Gosh, they missed Sylph. Nightmare wasn't so skilled at catching any of the fish that came out of water... so most of them.

Nightmare's mouth went agape, and a bellowing sound came out as if he was trying to say something.

"HUMMINGBIRD," he said with familiarity. 

The joy in Sylph's eyes was indescribable as he bounced and nodded, "Yes! It's me, hummingbird!"

Nightmare seemed confused, or lost in thought. He wasn't sure where his thoughts were going, the arrhythmic sound of his hoof hitting the ground over and over saying all he needed to say as if expressing his confusion.

"WHY," he said, questioning his friend. He stared at him more than typical for their encounter as if he was barring his soul into the hummingbird.

The joy dwindled, replaced with guilt and pain. His ears flattened and his face dropped, eyes avoiding his friend for the first time in forever. He'd messed up, quite badly, he found and now he had to confront the consequences of it.

He looked up, tentative, "I wanted to help you speak to Dream. I underestimated how terrified of does you were, my friend, and I am truly sorry for the fear and anxiety I've caused you," he explained. He wanted to enfold himself around the hairy buck, offer some bit of comfort, but he didn't want to trespass more boundaries and so he stayed where he was.

"DREAM," the buck reminisced. The doe with the beautiful heart had caught his attention but he had never said so much as a word to her before. How could he? He made a sound, perhaps akin to that of a sigh but definitely more like a loud grumble. He found himself shifting his weight, and his shoulders relaxed a little. He nodded to his friend, shaking some of the twigs out of his fur on his flank.

"SORRY," he said. He repeated himself after a moment.

"You have nothing to be sorry for; terror is, well, terrifying and I should have known from my past that it was not so easy to overcome," Sylph tried his best to offer comfort but it was hard when he had messed up so badly. Still that was not Nightmare's fault and so he pushed through his own guilt to offer all that he could.

"Can I come closer?" he asked.

Nightmare thought about things, and he appreciated the buck's... well, yeah, this was Sylph right? He appreciated his friend's care and concern. For this, Nightmare would try his best. He nodded his head, dug his feet into the ground and said louder than normally, "YES."

The mini bears had figured out there was no fish to be had and had gone back to trying to catch some of their own with minimum success.

Sylph took a few careful steps forward, eyes searching the other buck's face until he was too afraid to come much closer for fear of startling Nightmare. He took a seat, sucked in a deep breathe, and tried to come to terms with the whole fiasco.

"I promise, this won't happen again. We'll have to find another way to make talking to does less terrifying for you, only if you wish it to be," he nodded. He realized now that what was easy for him was not so easy for others and it was them that had to make the choice to change it, not him. But goodness if it wasn't a hard lesson to learn.