She is several bounds away before she hears the panicked cry—the sound of a young boy and not the monster that she had presumed him to be. It cracks through her like lightning across a summer sky, startling her into submission, her forward motion halted abruptly as her spindly legs find purchase on the ground once more. Her heart flutters wildly in her chest, a trapped bird beating against its cage, but she finds the courage to not flee—battles her prey instinct to turn the doe’s head backward at the source.
When she sees the small boy, made of ivory and onyx, something in her drops.
Without thinking, but not without caution, she begins to make her way back toward where she had been when she had first leapt away—her dipped legs flashing as she steps through the branches and leaves. When she is several feet away again, she pauses, her wide golden eyes set against the head of silver.
“It’s not too dark,” she promises in her breathy voice, the sound of bells and chimes. “Not when you ask for it not to be,” she glances up with a brilliant smile and pulls the light of the waning moon down on them, showering them in its silvery light. As she does, she shifts back into her normal form—turning from young deer into young filly. Her lengths have begun to lengthen, the childish curves of her beginning to find its edge, but she is still made of youth and she looks childlike in the milky glow of the moon.
When the area around them practically pulses with moonlight, she finds his gaze again.
Looking through the silvery strands, she smiles.
“My name is Cressida.”
@[Benjamen]