How the mountain valley deer survived
Once upon a time in a partially forested mountain valley lived a heard of deer. Life was good. In the spring mothers gave birth. The grass and herbs were soft and plentiful. The warm seasons were long enough for everyone to eat in plenty and the winters were mercifully short.
But then a change came over their little part of the world. The warm seasons grew shorter and the mountain winters grew longer. Every year the change grew stronger. Before long the weaker of the young and old did not live through the winters. Their bodies were too weak to run from predators, some were just skin and bones and could not keep warm enough in the icy winds to hold onto live, or they just lay down in the snow to die.
The mother deer, though they do not have a humanoid?s feelings, still were saddened by seeing their babies die.
But the lean times were far from over. They got worse. Soon even in the view months that the grasses were not hidden by feet of snow, the grass was sparse. No longer did the mothers have the rich milk the babies needed to have any hope at all to survive the winters. Nor was the harsh grass around long enough for the young to gain any defenses against the cold before it returned.
The mother deer did as best they could, living of tree bark and when they could digging into the frozen ground to perhaps get a root. But even that was not enough. And with no healthy young they would soon all be dead.
One of those icy winter days a mother was trying to coax her half grown youngster into eating some off the bark she had pulled off a tree for the weak one. But he would not. As she watched live slipping from the young deer she wished she?d just see one of her babies make it through a winter to adulthood. She wished it with all her being, felt it as much as deer can feel.
A fairy heard that wish. It was so strongly wished; it reverberated and echoed within the fairy. Even though the fairy felt the chill of winter just like the deer did, the wish was not to be ignored. But one fairy by herself could not warm the valley or make the grasses grow luscious. She thought long and hard of what she might be able to do to make the wish come true. She thought and observed for the rest of the winter and she stayed with the deer through the spring.
The mother had another baby. She did her best to find the richest grasses to have milk for her little one. But there was very little to be found.
The fairy watched the wolves and bears at the yearly feast. She thought how unfair life could be, providing for those that would kill off the last of the weak deer, with such a feast of salmon.
The salmon, as they had done for centuries, came up the stream as soon as the ice on it broke and the snows started to melt. They came up the stream in great numbers. There were so many of them, the bears and the wolves only took a bite out of each before turning to the next fish. Though there were lots of birds to eat the leavings, the banks were littered with pieces of fish. In parts the river, usually of the clearest mountain water, ran red with blood. What a waste of food that was.
But deer did not usually eat anything besides plants. And they certainly would come near the bank while bears and wolves frolicked in the water. The fairy remembered a wisdom she had overheard, about a mountain moving if a prophet didn?t. She did not know what a prophet was, but that is beside the point.
She collected the freshly killed and abandoned fish and brought it to where the mother deer and her baby were. It did take a lot of coaxing, even after she had given the dead fish the appearance of tender grass and herbs. But eventually the deer tried it. Perhaps because she was very hungry, but she did eventually eat it. The milk the baby got to drink that day was rich.
The fairy continued to do as she had done the first day the salmon appeared every day that the salmon were there. She used a little less magic every day, too, and then none. The deer by then had gotten used to the odd sort of food or had found it to be usable despite its odd smell. But the salmon eventually had moved on and there was no more. Two weeks of plentiful were a start in fulfilling the wish, but far from enough.
It so happened, not much later, that a wolf took to harassing the mother. The wolf was young and not very smart. He should have gone hunting with his pack. An idea formed in the fairies mind. When the wolf came close and snarled and flashed his teeth and generally tried his best to intimidate the mother into making the mistake to leave her baby, the fairy guided the deer?s sharp hooves.
The young wolf lay dead. The blow to the head had slain it; the blow to the middle had opened its belly. The wolf that thought to have deer for supper now lay there, ready to be eaten by someone else. It took some time, but eventually the fairy succeeded in making the mother taking a few bites of the still warm meat. Convincing the curious little one to lap at the blood was far easier.
The fairy continued to find easy pray for the grass eaters. Not only during the short warm season, but throughout the winter, too. When the next snow melt finally came, the mother and the youngster were still alive - skinny yes, but alive. And when the salmon came up the river again, the mother and the young buck found ways to take the dead fish off the bank. The bears and wolves were too busy biting fish to even notice the deer.
The wish was fulfilled. But that is not the end of the story. Eventually all the deer of the mountain valley learned to supplement their diets with fish in the spring to regain some of the weight lost during the harsh winters. And they learned to eat what they may have killed in defense. The very young and the very old still died during the harsh winters, but not so many of them that the deer would disappear from the valley.
