Winter
Part 1
When you inherited the farm the idea of land stewardship did not really appeal. What had been several fields producing cash crops had been put under scrutiny a few years back and the complicated paperwork that old government departments shuffled around declared all of it to become a border between nature and the actual farms owned by your neighbours. Your uncle had all the seed oil plants harvested for the last time and then strategically dumped a truck loaded with a carefully formulated blend of wildflower seeds on it all.
On the one hand, this meant you did not have to do much manual labour, or suffer waking up early and going to bed late. On the other hand, it got very boring during the winter, which it was right now. It was already dark outside, the nights having grown long. Your single government mandated job today was to look at the automated report generated by some box out in the field and record the result on their website. A tiny variance, as always. How boring. You fall back onto the sofa, put the TV on to nothing and begin to vegetate on your phone. It’s a nice enough house, early 1900’s which had been slowly modernized over time to ruin the style to give it indoor plumbing and wifi. A slice of suburbia in the middle of nowhere.
Your phone dings, a little popup saying there’s irregular activity near the barn. You click the link to the camera, which flicks between useless live feed colour (featuring nothing but black) and a slightly delayed nightvision green. Sure, land stewardship contracts paid less, but no-one could steal livestock you did not possess. Even so, it could be tool thieves after your quadbike. The camera flicks back to fizzy green, its not humans. It’s a Deer, with a capital D. Your farm shared borders with their own, a sort of reserve-cum-micro-nation thing, your uncle had called it the “Hoof-Vatican” with not a lot of goodwill behind it.
You’d seen them before, in the distance, on the cameras, on TV. They did their own thing, you did yours. It wasn’t a hard border, just a legal thing to know where the farmlands and postcodes stop. Even so, they never came onto the farm as far as you knew. The Deer had an impressive set of antlers, which was nearly all you could see because despite crouching in the lee of the barn, snow was beginning to pile up on him. The screen went back to black live feed.
What to do? Shoo him away? They weren’t aggressive, but you didn’t speak Canto to know for sure. Okay, that wasn’t strictly true, living here meant you did do thirty minutes of it a week in school for one year when you were ten years old. You knew how to say ‘My name is Anon’ and ‘I went to the shop’ but that was more rote memory than understanding.
The screen flicked back to green after a long minute. More snow. It really was piling up out there. The antlers shook once, dislodging a flurry of powder. His face looked miserable before he put his head into his knees and drew himself tighter together. He had fur, but then again, they didn’t really “do” clothing outside of an occasional rucksack (it was always odd to see them use modern donated human things like that, it never looked good on them). But even you are starting to suspect he’s in a bad spot right about now.
The screen goes black. You quickly do an image search for how they lived. Communes in yurts, apparently. Not out in the open like he was right now.
Green. No movement now. Damnit. If this was an elaborate means to rob you of your TV, you were going to be so annoyed. You grab a large blanket and the shotgun. Two barrels, one under the other, it was mostly for clay pigeon shooting and for brandishing at teenagers with beer bottles than this. Still, no reason to abandon caution. Open palm with one hand forward, clenched fist with the other behind.
You go outside and bloody hell is it ever cold. Your front door light flashes on and the light strikes the flurrying snow and makes the world seem like old TV static. Your footsteps crunch and squeak as you wade through the snow and the wind is repeatedly slapping one side of your whole body.
‘Hello?’ you call out as you approach the barn, ‘hello?’ Nothing. You trudge around the corner, wide enough to have some distance to not get jumped, before seeing no other individuals hiding. You wave your hand at the camera and the device turns its awkwardly positioned light on, just slightly catching the snow-swathed Deer. You stand directly in front of him and thrust the blanket out. ‘My name is Anon,’ you recite the words. Canto is terrible to teach because a lot of it involves tongue clicks and a few hand gestures. For you all you know you just told him your hovercraft was full of eels. No response. You unfurl the blanket because maybe it’s hard to see what it is right now and blithely wave it for emphasis. Still nothing. You swallow and reach a hand to brush snow off where his face is to see if it needs more eye contact or something.
He makes a muted sound in what you think is Canto, but even you can tell it’s muted from exhaustion more than anything else. What to do…what to do? If he dies on your property, well, the cameras see everything. But then you’d have to look at the footage and say to yourself each morning you liked your TV more than a stranger’s life. Waiting was bad, your nose already stung and it had been less than ten minutes. Interference wasn’t illegal, leaving him alone wasn’t either. The other farmers wouldn’t even bat an eye if you left him out here. They did, on occasion, steal crops. Racism made that sound like they stole whole fields, in reality passing hikers pilfered more corn than the Deer ever did.
To hell with it. If this was all a misunderstanding you can feel stupid about it later in the warmth. You plunge an arm into the snow and with a lot of heaving and encouragement get him onto his feet…hooves. Its like the last little burst of strength you get before collapse as he takes the blanket from you and makes his way with you back into the house. He weighs a tonne. His shoulder comes to your head, his antlers need to duck low to pass the doorframe. Powdery snow is turning to steam and water all over your carpet, white fur is revealing itself to actually be brown.
Without any fanfare he sags to his knees, allows himself to fall onto his front and plants his face onto the rug. ‘Nai'ke [tongue click] uma-th’ he says quietly. You quickly re-open the internet browser on your phone and do your best to repeat it.
‘I unknown verb sleep th,’ the translator proudly showed back. You could have guessed that one, he was snoring. Like setting the table, you billow out the blanket and just lay it over him. He was like a loud, face-down corpse and was ruining the carpet just as effectively. It was dark, but you were not tired. In fact, you were wide awake now. The snow had really perked you up in an unpleasant way and you absolutely did not want to just casually fall asleep with this massive guy in your house.
Part 2
You couldn’t just leave him unattended, even though you are now fairly convinced he is sound asleep and thus no danger to anyone. You go to the adjoining room – the kitchen – to keep line of sight on him and attempt a crash course in Canto. First thing to do was get the important phrases right. You open up a Canto website. A naked Deer (the lower half carefully cut off by the video for decency sake) and a human woman in mono-colour clothing beam at you. ‘So you’ve decided to learn Canto, the language of Northern Pecora People,’ she said, before the Deer said and gestured it all presumably in their language. This was going to be tough. They had three different mouth click sounds and the while the hand signals seemed intuitive sometimes they suddenly made no sense. ‘The lateral click is done with the-’ you skip ahead, at least you knew how to do those. The website had a translator, naturally, which needed a low-quality .gif of the Deer to do the hand gestures alongside the text.
I am not going to hurt you.
‘Nai'ke thara-[lateral click]in-th keh,’ came the reply, the Deer .gif stuttered showing an open palm gesture. It repeated a few times as you read the meaning in the descriptor text ([deliberate peace gesture]). You repeat it a few times to yourself.
Are you okay?
‘Keh [roof of mouth clucking] osa-ma?’
You do your best to get that click sound right, you had done it in the past, you were sure of it. How did your uncle get this far without ever once saying a single word of it?
The next one was surprisingly easy.
I don’t speak Canto.
‘Nai thara-mek Canto.’ Which came with a sort of shrug like gesture and crossed arms with palms on shoulders (I lack ability).
Do you speak English?
‘Keh mek English-ma?’
This one however was deceptively tricky. The looping .gif of the hand gesture was a bit scuffed up. Well, how bad could it really be to get it mostly right?
You watch more videos; the voice of the woman was – for a lack of a better word – painfully saccharine. The people who put the tutorials together seemed convinced you were going to discuss colours and where you went on holiday, and not anything remotely to do with a medical emergency or an intruder. Well, if all else failed, the website did have a primitive voice to text (and image), as well as text (and wrongly selected image) to voice. You load up a bunch of tabs on the browser and decide wait out the next few hours.
After about thirty minutes you instead slump back on the sofa a few feet away from him. The kitchen was a little chilly and you had no idea what else to do with yourself. Every window was steamed up, all the powdered snow had run onto the rug and turned to damp spots and you could only really sit there. It didn’t matter whether you were in here or the kitchen, the guy was bigger than you in ever respect and so the unlockable door wouldn’t stop him. Plus, you were not going to cower in the bathroom.
Halfway through a video he suddenly snorted and jolted awake. You jolted with him and scrabbled to extract your earbuds from yourself to avoid catching yourself out. ‘Um... keh [roof of mouth clucking] osa-ma?’ you fumble out just in case he thought this was a kidnapping as you put the phone on to translate whatever he said.
His voice was deep, a natural basso that would have made any soul singer envious. He could have done a cover of The Sound of Silence with laughable ease. ‘Nai [lower sounding click] eko-lo-ma? Itha-shen-ma?’ he wobbled his palm about as he rolled over on his back, the blanket only obscuring one half of him now.
The phone tried it’s best. ‘I [unknown word]-location-QUESTION? Event-PAST-QUESTION? (see sidebar for useful hand gestures!)’ Even so, it was going to be the same questions everyone would ask: where am I, what happened?
‘I don’t speak Canto. Do you speak English?’ you offer back, complete with bad clicks and gesturing. Even so, he realised you didn’t have the shotgun and he wasn’t restrained, so he chose to sit up instead. He cleared his throat and slowly enunciated in voice that was so deep and thick it could have trapped dinosaurs ‘My name is Then[tongue click]neka.’ Then’neka obviously had also learned all of about three phrases in a different language which he had also never used. He offered his hand out and you feel the social urge to shake it before you realise he’s asking for your phone.
‘Do you know what this is?’ you wiggled it slightly for emphasis.
‘Long speak [worked/knapped] obsidian. Tribe do not pay. Long speak [legal/law/agreement] cost much,’ came the phone as he spoke at it more than at you.
You guess it was a bit racist to think he did not know what a phone was, considering no doubt every human he ever saw had one firmly in their grasp at all times, especially on a hiking trail near where he lived where they took photos. They probably just didn’t want cell towers inside their land and all the infrastructure required to keep it running.
‘Why are you here?’ you recite. He chuckled once and then caught himself before repeating it back to you facing the phone’s camera to help it see his gestures. His hand did a minutely different gesture as he said the phrase back to you twice.
The phone promptly showed that you had asked ‘You are why “here” is.’ Implying, you supposed, that he was some deity of creation in some philosophical sense. The second verbalisation did the meaning properly. Then’neka steps closer hands ending with blunt fingers reaching out to grasp your own. You recoil instinctively before you realise he meant to show you how to do it properly. It was a more tactile language.
‘Sorry,’ he says in English this time, head dipping and taking is hands away. He suddenly looks around again and at you. He speaks something quickly, before slapping his own forehead and saying it again, but more firmly to the phone. ‘Is this your yurt?’
‘Yes,’ you say back, this time in Canto. It’s an easy word: “shai”. This causes him to look around until he spots your front door and quickly go and open it. He stands there, butt naked with his ass to you as the wind and snow immediately barge their way in and send the curtains into a terrible fright. You can tell immediately he really does not want to step out into the snow, but forces himself to do so before you can say anything to this sudden change in events. One step later, he immediately turns on the spot to face you and you clench inwardly as he crouches down and his genitals touch the elements and puts his head onto the snowy ground, the powder already beginning to build up around him.
‘Nai [palatal click]-rest-th lo-ma? Shai'ko?’
‘Requesting permission for presence here? Please (general usage)?’
You look down upon him. He probably wouldn’t die, but you would feel terrible all winter. ‘Shai,’ you give in.
He immediate gets up, shakes the snow off on the outside this time and then purposefully taps his forehead onto the base of the doorframe. That one you did recognise from the cutesy pictures – it was the Northern Pecora People equivalent to taking your shoes off before entering a house. Lower meant more respect, basic minimum was to tilt the head to the side to bonk the closest bit of doorframe. You repeat the phrase again, this time with the proper gesture.
‘The man (husband equivalent) told me his wife would take longer to come home.’ You give him a slightly puzzled look. He makes another gesture, timidly, with another word equally as timid. Translation: infidelity. ‘She scary, big like angry thundercloud, say to me not come back until snow gone to take my sin with it.’
This guy was massive with a voice you could sharpen hatchets upon. Whoever this matriarch was could probably split logs with a look.
‘Will she come here to…?’ you type in the next word because you don’t know how to articulate it. It turns out they had a lot of words for vengeance. Yet, it also turned out the same word was used to describe ‘birthday present’ and ‘blood money’ for some unknown reason.
He shook his head, antlers swinging quickly. ‘No, no,’ he said in English. Well, what now? You’re both standing there awkwardly waiting for the other to do something. A solution comes to mind and you go back to the kitchen to dig around for a spare phone. There was little point sharing just the one and he clearly knew roughly how they worked and that it could be used for translation. So, you stick it on to charge and you sit there watching old cartoons. The advantage there being only small amounts of dialogue and a mixture of humans and animals, so the appeal was largely universal. What caught you completely off guard wasn’t when Then’neka laughed at the right moments, but when he seemingly knew what was going to happen on the odd occasion.
‘Have you seen this before?’
‘We had yurt with small picture obsidian. It older than all yurts. Mr Bean used to show young human can do stupid thing too.’
‘What powers it?’
‘You want picture obsidian you turn handle many times. We took turns and sat together. This picture obsidian much better. They do Canto shows on air wave 405.’
You are suddenly really curious as to what a Canto-language show would even look like, so you flick up the channels to it, going past the popular initial 100, the indie 200, the religious and telemarketing of 300 until you got to foreign languages 400.
You couldn’t pronounce the words in the title without the website, so you didn’t bother. It was like some bizzarro backwards world because there was just the one human amongst a cast of various Deer and he was at best a background supporting role who sold…things? It was hard to tell. The main plot seemed to largely concern some retelling of some mythical event, which was incomprehensible because of the poor production quality.
‘It the 1980’s remake of Theft of Springtime. This one,’ he pointed when the obvious lead role came on screen again, ‘he called Toosokk, from around here. Dyed his fur for this movie I am told.’
‘Is that bad?’ your face must be a picture with how weird this evening is going. The huge guy took up your largest armchair like you would a school chair.
‘Big thing back then. Could not come back. Dead before we changed our minds. Good movie though, like mother told it.’ Then’neka leaned back as he fondly reviewed the memory.
You look up the internet article about it. It had one measly paragraph: The Theft of Springtime is an epic poem from the Northern Pecora People (see Pecora Anthro) retelling the journey of Lunnsied (see Canto language) to steal back the season of spring from the mountain kin. At this point you just embrace it. You put the subtitles on.
The best way to describe it was wooden. The acting, the location, the lack of budget. Wood, wood, wood. Deer did not attend prestigious acting guilds, or have a huge budget and at the time CGI was still expensive and it very much showed. If this was the remake, you had no clue how bad the original was. The mic boom was practically a character in on itself with how often it could be seen sneaking into shots. The camera was surprisingly good, but whoever was holding it clearly was losing their strength as the film went on. You watched as Lunnsied, as played by Toosokk, fought the same five or so other Deer in different costumes several times as your guest spoke along with the dialogue at key moments and then laughing to himself. There were no adverts, so cheap was this channel that they couldn’t even afford that. Besides, who would they advertise to? these people without internet and a TV older than a significant amount of the world’s population? They probably collectively had one bank account which saw government money go in, only to go out to pay that same government. Even so, everything was filmed on location. You could, in theory, hike there (come spring) yourself. You had not picked up a single new word of Canto however.
Part 3
The credits roll, a Canto song starts playing, sung by voice you don’t recognise from amongst the cast. However, Then’neka leans back in his seat to straighten his back and begins to sing along with it. You couldn’t understand a single word, but you got the sentiment immediately. In his deep basso tones, powerful and sonorous, he joined in with the TV’s own score seamlessly and then stole the spotlight from it as easily as the protagonist had stolen back springtime itself. He rose from his seat at the crescendo, now able to fully use the entire range of his voice, reaching deeper still until the tone had almost vanished below perceptibility. Raw talent like this was like a butterfly, beautiful in a magnitude of ways, morosely transient, and too pure to pin down and sell. When he left here, he would take with him a bardic talent of such wonderous proportions you would never experience again.
He suddenly remembered where he was. ‘Embarrassed. Modesty (I lack ability).’
‘I liked it,’ you offer, ‘you sing well.’ Your eyes flit back to the TV, then back to him, which means they’re at directly the same height as his groin. You cough and avert your gaze. Deer knew what nudity was to humans but never seemed to really get the significance. ‘Hungry?’ Anything to change the subject.
‘I am not worthy,’ this seemed to be closer to him saying “if it is not too much trouble” in a more polite way to say he has nothing to offer in payment.
There were lots of different phrases around this sort of thing, unsurprisingly Deer hospitality had various little rituals surrounding it. You scrolled through potential responses and it implied he would have to ask and be given discreet permission for basically everything. You did not want to have to tell him directly that he could take a piss for the next twelve hours only, so you scroll down a few of the presets until you find the equivalent of ‘you are my guest (general usage, friends, family, non-formal)’.
He visibly relaxed, you hadn’t realised he had been tense still. ‘I was told about older home owner here. He not here anymore?’ He asks as you hand him one of those cereal bars. Regular deer did eat meat, and Deer ate more, but it was something easy to pass to him without putting together something more substantial.
‘My uncle,’ you began before the translator briefly pause to explain that ‘uncle’ had no translation and older male relatives used to just mean ‘potential mating rival’ but no-one used it that way anymore and so just glued the word ‘father’ together in quick succession for human stuff. ‘My father-father gave me this yurt. He no longer works,’ you explain after starting again.
‘You (are) better. I must offer you water.’
‘Huh?’
‘It is home ritual. I cannot pay, so must offer service.’ So, you find yourself awkwardly once again doing something seemingly easy that you were not prepared for. Then’neka took the glass from you carefully, filled it from your sink and then offered it to you. He watches you closely as you take a small symbolic sip and seems satisfied when you put the glass back down. ‘Until I leave,’ he says and apparently that is enough to explain whatever this was.
You hand him the phone now it is charged, plus an old stylus to prod the screen with. His blunt fingers had no accuracy and only the edge of his smallest finger had a chance of hitting the right button. You couldn’t fault phone manufacturers, if a toddler with a bad parent could operate one, then native Deer certainly could. Especially when in Canto-language settings.
You show him around the house briefly. He effortlessly glides around, hardly making a sound despite the hooves and antlers and massive frame. Your uncle had a small family but you lived here on your own, so the spare rooms were storage and an office now. Then’neka tilted his head at the paperwork. ‘This is farming?’ he enquires, looking at government letter-headed paperwork. It was soil pH submissions for record keeping. It has been easier to talk to him now he has his own phone to mime and click at.
‘I look after the area. Keep it healthy.’
‘Who look after you?’ he gestured around at the obvious lack of other residence.
‘No-one, it’s just-’
‘I look after you.’ He pats your head with one massive hand jovially. ‘I move sacks maybe. Farm has lots of heavy things. You only so tall.’ He levelled a flat palm at his own chest to mark the difference.
You were not going to have a native doing work for you without any pay. That was almost certainly illegal and would be very hard to prove otherwise. ‘No work!’ you quickly wave him away.
‘Free guest?’ he tilts his head again, ‘honestly?’
‘No work! You are a guest.’
‘I am not worthy,’ he says again, and once again prostrates himself but this time at your feet and clicks the tip of an antler on each one. In this position his whole curled up back is on display, it is an exquisite example of muscularity. Even through the fur you can see all the signs of every single cord and sinew. He was still bowed in front of you a long moment later and you realised he wasn’t going to get up any time soon. You frantically search for the phrase to ask him to get up before realising it’s a wordless gesture instead. You put a hand on his shoulder and your fingers sink into the fur.
‘Other shoulder,’ he says.
‘Oh, sorry,’ you put a hand on his other shoulder. Maybe it had another meaning that way. He still did not get up.
‘Other shoulder again,’ he says. You detect a hint of humour in his voice.
You put both hands on his shoulders and shake him. ‘Come on, get up.’ He rises once more, standing directly in front of you, looking down his chest as you look up it. How does one person have so much pectoral all to themselves? As impressive as it all was, he did smell mostly of damp and wet fur, but also the outside in all its myriad complexities. ‘You need a wash.’
You push him into the bathroom, with him only slightly resisting. He kept shrugging his shoulders and causing your hands to shift up and down his back. He was too big for the shower and his hooves would ruin the bathtub, so his only option would be to perch next to it and work one limb at a time.
You sometimes had trouble operating the showers of other places. Then’neka had no hope here. As you fiddled with the faucet, it was hard to keep your eyes on the task at hand. Then’neka was best described as a specimen, the same way people would describe the object of the artists marble render as the specimen in question. He seemed completely at ease with his existence, despite it intruding upon your own on your own home turf. Inevitably you slightly scald your hand testing the water inspecting him. After quickly turning it to a more reasonable temperature you knew it was already too late, he had seen the entire exchange. You quickly hand over the shower head to him. Unfortunately, he hands it back.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I am the guest.’
‘So?’
‘So…you should wash me?’
One furious round of internet searches later to Then’neka’s apparent amusement showed it was just the reverse of your expected customs. Humans got other humans to bathe them as a luxury, Deer assumed that those being washed were either socially lower, that or it was like you needed a handmaiden of sorts who did it for the superior. Unable to wash himself without causing a fuss? Then as far as he was concerned he had to yield to you to do it for him and that was the socially acceptable next step. The idea of not washing or making do with another means seemingly did not cross his mind. You did not want him to keep that amused expression on his face. You fetch a stool for him to sit on as the water heated up and bid him to sit upon it.
The next half an hour was an experience. Beginning was a small trial in on itself, as you navigated your hands around his head and antlers to lather in the shower gel, occasionally making him lean over the tub to keep it all splashing around. But what made it strange was not the fact you were doing it, but how easy he made it for you. He did not complain, or make any comments except little hums and huffs someone would make being compelled to move the way he did. His people probably had a single spigot plumbed somewhere centralized if natural sources of water were not available, and hot water would also a chore to get a hold of as well. This much hot water was no doubt a luxury at the best of times and doubly so during this blizzard.
There was no denying to yourself you were using this time to explore his body. Everything about him was bigger, but also oddly proportioned. Things were elongated, like his arms and legs, or tapered with more pronounced accents, such as his chest and waist. The brown fur was darker on his back, the colour of tree bark, but the underside moved towards creams. It was becoming more vibrant as the soap took out the dirt. All the while he made almost no effort to intervene, simply accepting the situation. Then’neka was avoiding eye contact because each time he did he could sense your embarrassment and had obviously decided to not intentionally make you uncomfortable. Your hands moved downwards, massaging the neck and feeling the knots stress had put in, which you tried to take back out. The vast expanse of his back got many large circular sweeps, swirling the fur and sticking it in place with the soap suds. You watched his buttocks clench and spine straighten as you got to his tail, a small flash of colour as it jittered.
‘Sensitive,’ he said once, but otherwise did not move to stop you. This time it was his turn to be embarrassed for a change, because “sensitive” was causing a stir. Then’neka may not care about his nudity, but this, it seemed, was different. You touch it again, more gently this time, a few gentle strokes to get the soap in, base to tip. His butt clenched each time.
Next was the moment you had both been building towards. All of this so far was on his back, modesty somewhat hidden. But his front was as dirty as the back, so with some coaxing you had him turn around and lean back over the tub. It was a very compromising position, as he had to place his arms above his head to maintain balance and also spread his legs as he sat on the stood in front of it. Suddenly it was less like cleaning a deer and more like bathing a Deer. His chest was on full display, being supported but his muscular arms, abdominals tensed above his…manhood. The soap suds were not hiding anything, not matter how much you lathered up under your fingers which dug into the fur. His body clenched again and he became stiffer when you found his nipples under the fur, if only for a moment.
You did not think he could become any more exposed until you had to work on his legs. One side in the tub, so that the other could support the weight on the bathroom floor without cracking the tub, meant the other dictated where his genitals went. Both times the fading and then regrowing erection seemed to find itself on full display, unavoidable from your sight line. Even when you twisted the nozzle to blast the dirt from his hooves everything there seemed to make itself known. Then’neka had steadily grown even more quiet, making fewer soft sounds of contentment in favour of ones someone might make from inadvertent pleasure instead.
You were not going to touch his genitals. His ass had received a brief visitation from you, if only as a continuation of washing his back. There you knew the dark fur would yield to the lightest tones, your mind’s eye was being a filthy traitor with implying imagery. You give them a brief spritz with the shower to communicate ‘that’s all you’re getting’ before rinsing everything down and begin towelling him down with the largest one you had (an ancient beach towel). This went well until you realised you would, in fact, have to touch his genitals, even if it was through the barrier of the fabric. Like a humans, it too had an extra mass of hair there. Do not cop a feel. Do not cop a feel. Do not cop a feel. You copped a feel, even through the inflexible old fibres, you could feel the veins. Goddamnit.
Part 4
Then’neka tried to say something, but gave up as soon as he started. His tone of voice was baritone enough that any other inflection, like the one he was about to use, told you all you needed to know. Even without the phone on hand the Deer had felt something extra just then. You make him sit back down on the stood, which you immediately realise was a mistake because as he thumps down onto it the look on his face suddenly went wide briefly. It was the look of ‘do that to me again please’. You had to break eye-contact, it was impossible to win with this guy.
You dug through the single little drawer in the bathroom, pushing aside little plastic toothpicks and tiny soap oddities until you found the comb. ‘Let’s see you laugh this off…’ you think to yourself and picked a spot on his back and began working. Combs are ancient inventions, so you cannot imagine Then’neka has not yet had someone comb out his fur, but even as you snag the knotted hairs out and find yourself even clipping little clumps of matting away with a pair of simple scissors when they stubbornly refuse to budge he seems to enjoy it. Sure, it snagged and pulled and he would slightly flinch in pain, but the Deer only seemed more elated by this turn of events. He was still a little damp by the time you had gone over what you could. At this point his nudity had ceased to be a novelty. It had been displaced by the fur that had come out of him. Not as much as you thought it would be, but the mixed brown mass filled the tiny little foot-pedal bin all the same.
You gesture to your feet. ‘Hooves,’ comes your deft command, which context supplies the translation. He stands and kneels a leg on the stool, so his hoof sticks out like a horse ready for a farrier. Here was where delicate balance met the rest of his powerful frame upon something more slender than what a horse had, yet more refined than the bovines you had attended to in the past. You didn’t even know what you wanted to do, commanding Then’neka had simply come naturally at this point. You had already scrubbed, towelled, and combed him, what else was there left to do apart from this? Slightly uncertain, you inspect the appendage. Then’neka leans forward to speak and gesture into the phone, which puts him in quite a striking pose yet again. There is a flash of white from the inner fur of his buttocks as he reaches and returns.
‘Strange feeling. Small hands.’ He holds out one of his own, splayed flat for you to compare. There is little dark brown – almost black – pads, which have little calluses on them like a manual labourer might have. You cannot resist the urge and place your hand against his own from this invitation. The pad is oddly textured, yet soft and pliable, with a curious firmness to it that a human one did not. It went without saying it eclipsed your own, but Then’neka’s head made its way around to see the difference for himself. He is most curious about your finger nails, which are entirely different shape to his own more ‘hoof’ inspired ones. They seemed less conducive to modern living, less flexible, less dexterous. Stronger perhaps, more resilient certainly and accompanied by the finer fur and pads, but he seemed almost envious of yours. ‘You comb poorly, but your hands make up for it.’
‘Hoof,’ you say, not wanting another distraction this close to the goal. He changes pose, but the way he does is to give you another flash of the inner edges of his ass, the cleft there just barely hiding what little modesty he had left. The tail above it made a very brief and almost plausibly deniable ‘come hither’ gesture with a single flick. That did not need a translation either. Go on, the Deer was saying, have a little feel. You focused on the hoof instead to fight down whatever was happening to your nether-regions. Clearly the prospect of a month long exile had yet to impact upon Then’neka and his lax attitude. The snow touching his bollocks clearly had little effect.
You couldn’t see or feel anything obviously wrong, like a stone that would tear up your carpets, so you let him stand. He needed a little while longer to dry out, so you crank the heating up and you both return to your living room. He was obviously finding it a paradise and was briefly amused as his fur began to puff out. You spend this time doing some more covert research, less on language and more on cultures. Now with his own phone (and an old rubber-tipped stylus to operate the touch screen in Canto language-mode), communication had shifted from stilted voice to awkward text instead.
‘You will have to sleep in my bed,’ you send him. You had a guest room with a single bed, but anyone could have told you he wouldn’t have fit in it. You could, so you would.
‘I did not want to impose. I am fine with the floor,’ came his response. It was amusing watching this dignified force of nature carefully prod the screen.
Well, that solved that problem. You hand him the remote and head upstairs. This was all very tiring. A shower for you, then bed. Tomorrow you could resolve this much more easily with a full night’s rest. It was all going fine and dandy until you opened your bedroom door and it bumped against Then’neka’s frame laying on the floor next to your bed, fluffed up from the warmth and once again totally out cold. The door hadn’t even gotten close to stirring him. You watched him for a long moment, his repose was on his back, the antlers clearly limiting his options like this. To hell with it, you go to the guest room and slide the pillow from it under his surprisingly heavy head and throw a blanket over him for good measure. Now you can sleep soundly.
It’s morning. You know this because your phone’s alarm went off. However, your brain is still trying to wake up and has forgotten that there is a Deer on the floor next to your bed. He is also evidently struggling to process these facts, because he jumps in shock and gets tangled in his bedding too before remembering the situation. He’s babbling something in Canto and doing the whole ‘It’s okay, I remember why and how I am here now’ plaintive hand gestures. This is important because without them to you a massive furred thing had suddenly displaced the sleep paralysis demon from its usual spot at the foot of your bed. He…oh yeah, his name is Then’neka…is confused as to how the pillow and blanket came to him before putting two and two together.
‘Thank-you [in the gift-giving sense] [palatal click]-mura thara [palatal click]-thenna,’ he said. You only remembered the different form of thanks, but you could guess he meant the pillow and blanket. Your voice got deeper when you woke up, but his was already at the lowest octaves, so it hardly shifted as he stretched out. He had erected a sizable tent in the blanket to say the least and the tent pole had no issue holding the weight up. Maybe that was why he was here? Not enough blood in his brain at times like this might have been the cause of his trouble.
‘Blanket,’ you shook the duvet. ‘Pillow,’ you gave it a slap.
‘Thank-you blanket and pillow,’ he replied. It was close enough.
He stood up. Good grief did he ever stand up. You can practically hear the sound of bones fighting the tendons as he stretches and makes a weird braying noise in place of a yawn. He makes folding the blanket look effortless, simply by the size difference between you two. He sort of gestures as to where it belongs, and you point towards its home in another room. Gambling on the brief window to get yourself dressed, you reluctantly slide out from under the sheets. Alas, you gambled unwisely, for his stride was much longer and so he catches you before you can even get a shirt on. Then’neka returns whilst you are still only in your underwear to pick up the spare phone from next to where he had slept. It was one thing to change in a place like a gym or swimming pool, but it felt a lot more intimate when it’s just a single nude Deer casually scrolling the phone next to you, leaning against the door frame nonchalantly.
‘The weather is still bad,’ came the artificial voice of the phone’s translator. ‘But if you wish for me to leave, I will.’
It wasn’t going to cost you anything more than a bit of extra food and water. You look out the window and see the snow is still thick outside, blanketing the world in pure white. Every hard edge has been removed, smoothed out by the gentle trenches and drifts of snow. It is like the hand of god descended and had added sugar frosting haphazardly to a world-sized cake. You catch a glimpse in the reflection in the glass, the Deer is covertly looking up from the screen to appraise your ass. You repeat the phrase from last night. ‘You are my guest.’
Even so, you have work to do. Then’neka sort of tags along, curious as to what you actually do, and also to attempt to help repay some part of the nebulous debt he implies he owes. Beyond the range of your wifi and in the countryside otherwise, the phones cannot help translate. So, it’s mostly watching and interpreting gestures. With this much snow out, no-one would be coming by and seeing you with a Deer. And even so, you didn’t care. It was practically an unspoken requirement for this new job to keep up good relations with Northern Pecora People. Your uncle had done this by ignoring their existence, but you had already watched the 1980’s remake of Theft of Springtime so you were basically a native and thus dead to him already.
Your laptop had told you that one of the soil sensors had stopped working, so you and the Deer were trudging through the shin-deep snow to where it was buried. You had a full set of cold weather clothes on and tall black riding boots in place of wellingtons. Then’neka just strode alongside you, the height difference making it easy enough for him to walk the terrain as if it was not there at all.
You had explained what the general purpose of this outing was before you left. Then’neka had said his people sort of mixed the words for a shaman and blacksmith to name someone who did what you did. They weren’t very nomadic, so they farmed, so soil management was a job within his people’s society. These days it mostly meant just buying composts and dispensing fertilisers, which everyone was better for, though you mourned the lack of mystique the act garnered.
You recalled the brief conversation you had before you set out, because you were curious as to what Then’neka would have done if you had not let him in? What would he have eaten. He had said he’d have to dig through the snow at random, making an educated guess where something edible was. He could eat grass, sometimes he had a craving for it, but the way he described it suggested it would be like eating just poor-quality potatoes. You’d eventually get sick of it.
You find the spot the sensor was. A thin piece of wire with an orange flag stuck out from the snow for this exact reason. With a foldable shovel you clear around it and take a look at the inconspicuous device of black plastic. It was as you had suspected, the snow had blocked the solar panel and the batteries had run dry. It didn’t take long for you to replace them, clear a little more snow around it, and go trudging back. That was it, the only task for the day. Soil management could be like that sometimes. There was no point clearing the snow out, because the whole idea was to let the natural cycles go about their way. There would be creatures sleeping under the blanket of frost, hibernating away the cold, or a myriad of plants waiting for the right moment to sprout. It was not for touching.
The walk back was brief, but you did watching Then’neka’s ass all the way. The guy had this peculiar grace that belied his size; it reminded you of a woman in high heels. How the legs and hooves were more ‘pointed’ or directed, but had an easy balance. The cleaning of his fur from last night had puffed the fur up, and it was still fluffy now, perhaps more so now it had sort of settled back into its ‘natural’ repose. His chest had acquired the best glow-up, puffing up and giving his already triangular frame only a more pronounced outline. Combined with the way he walked from your perspective, it was almost like there were breasts hidden under there. If not for the deep voice, you would say he could have passed readily for some exotic feminine figure when his antlers came off. With your legs having to dig a small trench to pass, whilst his own instead punctured the ground like a needle into white cloth, you wondered if this was how a dwarf felt next to an elf. You, scrabbling at the ground, he, seemingly above it and hardly touched by it.
Home beckoned and welcomed you both back in. There you were once again the dwarf, shucking layers of coat off whilst Then’neka did a much more elegant version of a dog’s shake-dry and the snow that had departed him came free without much fuss. Lots of him shook, all the good stuff. He bent over, all the way down, to touch his lower legs and sweep the rest away. The distance he had to travel was impressive yet he easily managed it like an acrobat. The stiff and cold Deer you had first met had been replaced by this much more invigorated specimen. He turns his head to your own, then stretches down further to touch the floor, a tiny bit of tongue peeking out mischievously. No wonder he’d been chased out with devilry like this. He says something you don’t understand in a tone that suggested many things. And then stands back up, dragging his hands up his shins, thighs, waist and chest before stretching back up and extending the arms towards the ceiling. Fur raked the opposite direction in his wake. It’s a magnificent side-profile. All of a sudden you really want your phone to reconnect to the wifi to know what he just said.
You shake a little, but that’s from the cold still upon you. Then’neka’s arms are around you, the back of your head sinks into the fluff of his chest. He speaks again, a little teasingly. You attempt to wriggle free from this indignity but he holds you fast, huffing a hot puff of breath down your neck to warm you. ‘Haaaaaah.’ It sends goosebumps everywhere, racing outwards like a shockwave from the nape of your neck.
Your phone in your pocket begins to translate as best it can. ‘Little human. So cold. Needs big friendly Deer to [unknown verb] him.’
Part 5
You attempt to wriggle free from this indignity but he holds you fast, huffing a hot puff of breath down your neck to warm you. ‘Haaaaaah.’ It sends goosebumps everywhere, racing outwards like a shockwave from the nape of your neck.
You mildly elbow him in his fluffy ribs to get him to let go, which only prompts him to hold on tighter in response to the challenge. You slip your arms free of the coat and escape. Then you swiftly turn around to give him a shove that would have unbalanced a human but was merely playful for him. Even so, he dramatically swooned backwards, expertly avoiding colliding with any of the furniture in obviously fake distress. Even this was to his favour, now on the floor he is looking at you down the length of his body, resting on his elbows and giving you yet another inviting look. ‘You have been watching,’ the phone says from the stolen coat’s pocket as he fishes it out so it can see his gestures and speak more clearly.
‘So have you,’ you respond, hands on hips, looking down at the Deer. ‘You are not very subtle.’
‘You are kind. You look nice too.’ That felt odd, to be told you looked nice so casually. ‘I liked/enjoyed/admired your hands. On that thing in the field, on my back. Why do you not want to touch me?’ He didn’t sound offended; it was more like a cultural curiosity. It seemed to Then’neka that since you already had breached that social barrier that he was unsure why it had gone back up again.
You were unsure what to say really. You did want to touch him, but it still felt like it was taking advantage of him somehow. ‘Do you want to be touched?’ was all you could think to say. You tried to make it sound assertive without authority. He nodded and did a gesture to indicate the same. He was very enthusiastic about the idea.
So, this was how you found yourself sitting on one end of the sofa with a Deer laying sideways over your lap looking up at you as his antlers hung over one end whilst his legs went over the other. The sofa’s cushions were all bending towards you, keeping you firmly in place. However, Then’neka was absolutely melting to your touch – his chin tilted all the way back as your hands stroked the fur from his chest up to his neck, until you are idly feeling the contours of his jawline. The deep rumbles of contentment are physical sensations that tickle your fingertips with the fine downy fur. Sure, the TV was on, but that was just providing ambient noise and light, you were both far more focused with the task at hand.
As much as a softy he was being, Then’neka was still an inescapable weight which was intent on extracting as much of this moment from you as possible. You thought this was going to be a bit of chest rubbing with perhaps a little bit of cheeky nipple action thrown in, but he had other ideas. Then’neka turned onto his front, briefly towering over you before sliding you towards the middle of the sofa (for which you were mostly powerless to prevent) before placing himself back down so that his back was directly in front of you with his ass very much within reach. ‘There is a trophy under my tail,’ he says, the words are accompanied by it perking up.
In a few ways, it is fun to be the one playing hard to get. You now see the appeal in pretending to have no interest despite obviously doing so. Still, you also preferred being in charge, so you give him a firm and loud slap on an ass-cheek, which immediately stiffens his tail to the full extent and sends a ripple up and down his flank. ‘Did I get it?’
‘Try again, human.’ Another spank. He arches his back into the sting of the pain. ‘Mmm,’ he hums in pleasure. Pain won’t work, but you know what will – you gently, soft as a whisper, begin to stroke his tail and slowly begin increasing the pressure. That got him to properly tense up and go quiet. Just when you feel he’s acquainted with the sensation you suddenly strike out and spank him again. He tenses up again, more so than any time before and his whole frame curls. ‘The human…is a skilled hunter,’ he releases a held breath and takes in a gulp of air to replace it. ‘Does he want his prize?’
You were about to say something, something ‘sexy’ to imply an aloof yes, but clearly Then’neka wanted to skip the preamble. If you were willing to spank his ass and stroke his chin then you were willing for what came next. ‘Follow,’ he said, rising from you to his hooves and taking a hold of your wrist to ensure you did. You are half led, half dragged, to your bedroom, where the Deer subsequently begins to divest you of your clothes. As unfamiliar with wearing them himself as he is, there is no hope of your hoodie and shirt resisting his blunt hands in the inexorable force they apply to them. He kneels then, his head just level with yours for a moment before it dips down to play more breath upon you. Your neck, your chest, your torso. Heat washes over, then he kisses the skin there and the goosebumps he is causing. You don’t know what to do with your hands, is it rude to touch the antlers? The phones are in the other room, so you had no hope of knowing. The kisses are passionate, and are rising back up. He’s smelling you too, that much is obvious, and it seems pleasant to him. The head rises again. ‘Nai bii shai-ko,’ he says in a very sultry tone before the mouth meets your own. It is tender, despite the size difference, but even so he uses this moment to covertly take a hold of your hands to put them on his antlers. Okay, maybe it was a sexual thing in this context. It certainly felt like a thing a submissive wanted. He wanted you to take control, so you did.
Down further onto his knees he went, his nose pressed against your groin. The trail of hair you had to your navel flutters under the breath, getting faster as you undo your trousers. He wanted to tease? You could tease too. You drop them, but leave your underwear on. He could almost see everything, almost smell everything, but not quite reach it. His breathing quickens, trying to get that smell in. He pushes forwards until you are against the wall and his hands thump onto the surface on either side of your legs to brace himself for what is coming next. Its immediately apparent to you that he really wants to touch you, but is trying to restrain himself to avoid rushing to the prize or appearing any more dominant than possible. You hold his antlers to keep his head in place and grind your cock against his nose, the fabric between the two rubs against the both of you, keeping his cold nose at bay from your hot flesh.
He's loving every second of it. A hand goes to touch you – to remove the pesky barrier – but you swat it away. Suitably chastised, it thumps again against the wall. Even so, you were rock hard, and he was too. But rushing to the finish was not on your agenda. Then’neka needed an object lesson in delayed gratification. You tilt his head so that he is facing up into your eyes, and gently put a hand on his downy-covered chin to open his mouth. He makes an ‘aaah’ noise in doing so involuntarily and you take two fingers and slowly insert them into his mouth. His lips close around them gently, a little moment passes where you let him know this is just a warm-up. If he does well here, he can have the real thing. Plus watching the spit build up was erotic in its own way as the mighty creature was brought low to a drooling pleasure tool.
You extract the fingers, wiping them on his fur. Both hands now on his antlers you haul him up and backwards onto the bed. He folds back onto it as you push forwards and over him. His height is enough that he easily spans the width of the bed so that his head is upside down as you place your balls on his nose. Heat huffs upwards from his breathing, his fingers grasp and bunch the bedsheets and his dick is standing tall at the far end, stiff as a rock from it all. You pull away briefly to remove your underwear, then open his mouth again. His tongue lolls out, the chin and long tract of his neck are on full display and you watch them move as you guide your cock past his unresisting lips. The throat contracts with each of your combined movements and the antlers are giving you ample leverage to really start pumping into him. His eyes are closed, perhaps to keep the spit out, perhaps to enjoy the sensation more fully. You don’t have words here, only the feedback from each other’s bodies. Your bodies repeatedly join and make a lewd sound as they impact. From his nose come hot huffs of air, around your cock his moans reverberate from deep within him. When you pull free, his tongue does not stop and you find yourself acting like a living salt lick.
This close to him in this confined space you can appreciate the smell of his fur more readily, unburdened by filth yet accented by the brief activity from earlier. It is the smell of freedom, the air, the outside, the earth. An uncomplicated but difficult life, to which you have temporarily granted a reprieve. And it’s all so plush to the touch, every inch of it. The flat of your hand upon his throat – and the Adam’s apple which undulates with his swallows – leads onwards to the proud confluence of chest fluff which you bury your hands into. His hands come now to steady your thighs and buttocks, easily taking a hold of everything there and encouraging you to drive yourself ever deeper. He seems to love becoming a mess, as though being pristine is anathema to him. Then’neka wants to be used.
He also has his own ideas about how he wants to be used. With impressive core strength, he sits up and takes you with him. For a brief moment the world is inverted and your ceiling swaps places with the floor before you come crashing down onto the bed and bounce once before Then’neka is upon you. Now you’re thoroughly lubed, Then’neka sways his whole body to align his hole to the tip of your cock and you find that you are entirely engulfed between his legs. From your new view from your back he seems now even taller and grander, haloed by the light from the window. You can feel the space where there is no fur press against you. A large hand can be felt guiding you in and through. He may be big, but he is still plenty tight enough for you. His abs, barely visible through the browns of the fur, roll as each inch of you goes in. But now as the last of you enters his heat, he leans forward and his form eclipses the ceiling. The creature is over you now, slowly gyrating its waist for both your pleasures with a smirk upon its muzzle which has been wiped free of spittle. The huge legs close in around you, locking you in place via your hips. He leans in, nose just barely touching you.
You retaliate. A hand finds a nipple amongst the fur and pinches. His nose leaves yours so that his forehead can touch it instead and he lets out a hiss, the sort that people make when they realise to their delight they’ve been outplayed. You feel his testes leave your groin and a drip of his hot precum. You give it a slight twist, he responds by moving his own hips faster. The antlers make a noise as they briefly snag on the headboard. The bed is already now a mess; this would hardly make a dent in it. He uses one of the hands supporting his frame to grab your free wrist and place the hand against the other nipple. You give both of them a gratifying bit of stimulation. The bed is now joining in with making noises as he picks up the pace. Occasionally a half-word escapes one of the two of you, none of them from a real language. Even so, when Then’neka keeps saying a short phrase in a tense voice, it didn’t take a genius to guess what it meant. You could only hope your face wasn’t in the direct firing line. Closing your eyes and tilting your head to the side, you do what you can to thrust up into him as his legs clamp down around you. The synchronisation begins to break down rapidly as the two of you start to sprint towards the finish.
Something wet impacts the headboard. There’s a moment of silence from ragged breaths before you recognise the Canto words for an apology and presumably the words for asking where a tissue was.
Waking up the next morning was a new experience. Some huge fluffy thing had you in its soft embrace and was sleeping soundly because of it. It had also stolen all the pillows to support its head due the antlers and given you a muscular arm as compensation. The radio comes on, informing you the weather would improve over the next week, which now seemed almost unwanted. He couldn’t stay, not forever. But the arm draped over you like a heavy plush cushion could remain a little longer for now at least. The little huffs of breath down your back tickled the skin, so you turn the radio off and draw back in closer. Just until the snow cleared, at least…
End.