Isk explores

Isk was going exploring. He was! Mother had said so. She had said he could go out and explore. Dad was out being a guard which was really important and better than anything that anyone else's Dad did. Isk wasn't big enough to be a guard yet, Mother said. She said he would have to be at least five before he could be a guard.

Five! That was... that was ages away! That was more than he could count! He was supposed to be learning to count. Mother said he needed to concentrate more instead of thinking about what Dad and the other guards were doing. She said once that she'd get the Oracle to come and tell him off if he didn't concentrate, but Isk didn't know what the Oracle was when she said that and then she was cross that he didn't know what the Oracle was and then she'd told him and then he'd said that wasn't as exciting as being a guard and then she'd told him she gave up and gone off in a huff.

That had been aaages ago now though. At least two days. Mother was less cross today, because he'd told her all about the Oracle and how the Oracle was supposed to be more important than guards. So she said he could go exploring! At least he though that was why she'd said he could go exploring. It didn't really matter anyway, because he already was exploring and the caves were exciting and there were funny glowing things on the walls and there were other fawnlings everywhere and it was all really really really really exciting!

But if there were other fawnlings around, didn't that mean that it wasn't really exploring? The two month old fawn tilted his head to the side and thought. No. It probably meant that he wasn't exploring properly - where could he explore properly? There were lots of caves. So he could explore some of those.. there! A tunnel. It looked dark... but there was something glowy! Something glowy and moving.

It was purple! Purple and glowy and moving and near something green and glowy that was staying still... HEY! The moving thing was a fawnling! And it was a girl.. ew. But she was big, so she wasn't really a girl. Mother had said there was a word.. doo?

"Are you a doo?"

She turned around and blinked at him.  

"What's your name, Mrs Doo?"

She blinked again. What on earth was this little fawn doing wandering around the tunnels all by himself?

"I am a doe, not a doo," she said softly, ignoring the fact that she wasn't actually 100% grown up herself yet. "My name's Mindelan. What's yours?"

"My name's Iskanisk and I'm going to be a guard. What are you?"

"I'm going to be a shaman," she replied. Well, hopefully she was. The Oracle had to choose her, didn't he? All the things her aunt had taught her couldn't simply go to waste..

"Why are you all shiny?" he bleated.

Wow. Fawns were noisy as hell sometimes, weren't they?

"Because Oakferns live in the caves, and the caves need us to be shiny so we don't get lost. Why aren't you shiny?"

This. This was new information. If he was going to be a guard and go exploring, he couldn’t get lost. He needed to be shiny.

"I don't know why.. will you make me shiny?"

Ok, noisy, but those were some seriously large eyes. And there were some suitable mosses around...

Five minutes later, a very proud Isk trotted back down the tunnel to the Moonpool, all shiny and one crucial step closer to being a guard.