White Stag

Nature often provides prime examples of the ephemerality of beauty and/or life. Chase after your dreams and never give up; often, our dreams are all we truly have.

   It was late at night and the moon was a big white spot upon the black velvet blanket of nighttime sky, shining soft moon-rays through the bent and broken boughs of oak and maple trees. The forest floor was littered with dead leaves that crunched underfoot but for an accomplished woodsman such as the hunter, it was of no difficulty avoiding them and traversing silently through the strands of trees. In his left hand he clutched the yew bow tightly till his knuckles hurt. In the right was a single arrow, oddly fluid and elegant in it's appearance, crafted out of the finest alchemist quicksilver. Out of respect for the beasts he tracked and killed, the hunter used only the finest ammunition; ones that would grant the beast a quick and painless death. He never spoiled his kills with poisons or traps; those were for the cowardly and the inept.
   It was the hunter's last arrow and this night would be his last hunt. He was dying. While he was no longer the young, lithe man he was, the hunter still would have at least another few years left of life. But this was not the case. He was stricken by illness that ravaged his body, leaving him a shambling, huffing shade of the man he once was. But he was determined, come the cataclysm itself, that he would hunt the one beast that had eluded him with his final hours; the white stag.
   The hunter had encountered the creature earlier in his life. He met the stag during a midnight hunt years ago, when he was still a young man. He cupped his hands and drank from a pool when the stag appeared on the other side of the basin. Intrigued, the hunter notched an arrow and fired - a sure shot! - but missed and the arrow sent the stag skittering away. It was the only shot he had ever missed and it had haunted him like the disease that ate away at his body. Now would be his chance. He tracked the ghostly stag across plains and the forest, using arrow after arrow in attempts to kill it. No matter how many arrows loosed into it's hide, the stag continued to trudge on. And the hunter followed.
   Wheezing, the hunter crested a slight rise bumped with tangled and gnarled roots of old trees and used his hunter eyes to scout the forest below for movement. Nothing moved in the moonlight save for a faint white glimmer. It was no doubt the stag he had tracked for so long, so he slid down the face of the rise and dashed off in pursuit. His boots splashed in faint streams and puddles but the noise did not seem to disturb or alert the stag ahead of it's pursuer.  The stag galloping several yards away directly ahead of him, the hunter notched his last arrow and let it free. The quicksilver missile embedded itself into the left flank of the beast and, with a bellow, it collapsed. Letting out a cough, the hunter raced to the scene of his kill. He tossed his bow and quiver aside and got to his knees to examine the beast. The last arrow was the one that had killed it, yet there was an impressive seventeen others bristling from the white hide, staining it an off-red. The eyes were open wide, frozen in tranquility.
   Elated, the hunter let out a rattling cough as he examined his kill over. Seeing the stag up close and the sheer number of arrows stuck into it, the hunter became awash in sorrow. He no longer had anything to live for; the stag had been one of his longest goals and desires. Now that it was dead at his feet, he felt empty. His chest ached and he coughed again, struggling to breathe. His breath leaked out of him and his lungs felt as if they were aflame. His body screamed for oxygen but his lungs could not bring in the needed amount. His vision swam in wild angles and convolutions.
   With one final gasp for breath, the hunter collapsed, his body draped over the corpse of the white stag.