Deer

The deer is the most wild animal that one can imagine. Oh no, it’s not enough to just have hooves that could cleave a man’s skull in half, but they have antlers too? This is why they are dangerous. A tiger or a lion are too sure of themselves to have that desperate energy that a deer can when cornered. Off my party went.

It was myself, my page, and my troupe. I was not so sure about the amount of noise we were making, but I let them do their thing. After all, where would they go if they weren’t being paid by me. Or heaven forbid, they stop creating. Or hell forbid, they go to a rival knight.

I heard the distinct sounds of hooves. “Quieten down you lot.” I attempted to shout above the chorus. Yet, they did not relent, still trying to sing my praises. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I shouted. That got them to stop.

They shot a look as if I had been offended by their playing, but not willing to console them I hopped off my horse and listened closely.

“What is it my l—” My page began.

“SHHH!” I hissed. Still nothing, there was no sound, no taste. I don’t know why I’d be able to taste a deer from a distance but it’s a knight thing. The crunching of a leaf signalled that it was nearby. Probably here to investigate what that noise was all about and seeing a posse of statues. That was, to it, what we were. So still we were that I could feel my joints setting in place.

Sniff, sniff. A nose emerged in my sightlines and it took all my spirit to not move my eyes even. Out of its field of view I quite slowly reached for my sword. The time it took to take it out of the scabbard would be more than enough time for it to disembowel me, so I was struggling with that conundrum. I was sure at a certain point this creature would get sick of this, but no such luck.

It seemed to revel in my discomfort, sniffing and pacing looking for any signs that we were who we were. A sniff coming from my page drew its attention away from me. I glanced at its antlers, or lack thereof. It was a doe.

“STOP!” I shouted, “STOP SIMULATION.” As soon as I said that the walls melted down and we were all in a barren, dusty field. I looked around in disbelief at my cohort. “What in god’s name was that?” I asked, incredulous.

“What?” The page said, now more boastful than he ever had been, “That’s what you wanted, right? A great hunting target.”

“I said deer…DEER. Not a doe, they aren’t worth expending the sweat to kill them.”

He was taken aback. “Deer, doe, what does it even matter. I would have programmed them the same anyway.”

“That’s not the point! A deer has antlers, a doe does not. How do you even mix them up, anyway? Didn’t you use the reference pictures I had.”

“These!?” He shouted, tossing a pile of grainy, washed out images at me. “These are the kind of cameras you would use to snap cryptids, not an honest to god animal. What did you want from me?”

As this argument heated up I noticed the others slowly begin to back away into the orange-yellow haze of the wasteland. I was too fired up to notice.