Deer pawed away remnants of the passing of winter; searching for the timid seedlings birthed by the fresh coming season. Erum shrugged off the drowsiness that lounged across his shoulders like an indolent house cat. The stallion paused to run benevolent eye over the foraging deer. Some would calve soon.
He did not remember the last time that he had slept well; to do so he would have to go back to a place only within reach through the passage of memory, to friends only to be found in the fog of fond remembrance.
Only a weary doe lifted eye at the stallion's lingering presence.
Quietly Erum trod on.
The forest would recognize his footstep long before the sound of his voice.
He mulled over his position. A warrior of Denocte. His was a life supposedly pledged to those he neither knew nor trusted; to those that knew not of him. From deeper in the wood, a bird called to the rest of their flock with song. Erum listened as the others responded in chorus.
Traveling such a distance from his native land had weakened his magic. It was reduced to a faint throb. Diminished to a yearning that set root in his breast, and unfurled throughout his entire being. He was caught in-between; no longer able to join the beasts and unsure of how to return to living alongside those of his own kind.
Solitude wore upon him. It affected Erum in a gradual manner; in such subtle way as to leave him unsure of why it was that he stayed in Denocte. Leaving the cover of the forest Erum made way to the lake. Many times had others traveled through this land. Erum had been shadow to the passerby that caught his interest. He had followed them. He watched the kinship that they shared with one another. Where their shoulders brushed against the warmth of another his brushed against the familiarity of nature; against the steady stance of the trees.
Erum waded into the cleansing water. Dirt was lifted from his body by the soft current. I still protect. He was a warrior for Denocte. A kingdom is more than its people.
It was the delicate saplings that pushed through the firm ground.
The cascading song of the birds.
It was the deer and the young that they would birth.
It was the mountains that cradled the valleys and the rivers that cleansed.
Erum was guardian to Denocte's wildlife.
It was to the land that he had pledged himself.
