Deer character

Lorebuilding Part:

the part that sets the fundament for the fawn's story King Aspen once sent a delegation of deer to the Crystal Empire asking them to take care of a forest at the bottom of the mountains of the Frozen North. It was all good and fine in the first few years (around a decade or two), but the delegation soon started to face unusually many deaths over the years. They tried to find the reason, but couldn't solve the mystery. They were close to returning to the City of Thicket, when the Grifix migration stopped at their forest and told them about what happened to the Everfree Forest. The deer were shocked to hear about that (and secretly kinda happy that they hadn't been there, although whether facing that many deaths was better is highly debatable) and they decided to continue carrying out their task and protect the forest. The Grifix migration stayed there for a little while as they were unsure of where to go and while the Grifix were there, the deer thrived. They didn't have a single death. Eventually, the Grifix left them go migrate further up the mountains, while the deer stayed to continue taking care of the forest and again, they would have no deaths during the first two decades or so afterwards, before again, the unusually many deaths appeared. It's also not like they're mysterious deaths or anything like that, they're all natural and explainable, but they just happen unusually often. Again, they tried to investigate to find a reason for it, but never did.

Morana's Deer:

the part that leads up to the fawn's story The deer from Morana's story (The Swan Palace) is actually a deer that was born in that delegation. She was born rather soon-ish after the Grifix left and many would talk about how prosperous and peaceful the time has been while the Grifix had been in their forest and the deer thought to herself that if the Grifix had bestowed such a good time upon them, then she had to find out where they were. She listened to the stories about the Grifix and when she heard enough to be able to find the Grifix in her opinion, she set out to actually find them. She indeed found them at some point and settled near a frozen pond that would be part of the Swan Palace many centuries later. She was too shy to get closer to the huge city of Grifix (somehow, the stories never told of that many Grifix), so she'd try to become friends with the animals around her. She sometimes contemplated going back to the deer, but she didn't want to return before she hadn't seen a Grifix. One day, she wanted to get a flower covered in ice and carefully skated over the frozen pond to get it. Just before she was there, she suddenly got her hoof stuck and couldn't get it out no matter what. She panicked, when suddenly a Grifix glade over to her and helped her out. The two became friends over that and shared many happy moments with each other. One night much much later, she wanted to go out to meet Morana, her Grifix friend, like usual when suddenly a wolf preyed on her and chased after her. The deer ran, terrified of her life, and tried to escape over the lake. The wolf followed and that was when Morana appeared at the lake as well. Her friend saw the danger she was in right away and ran to help her out. She melted the ice under the wolf with her torch, but the wolf took her with her before she could get out of reach and before the deer could return to help her dear friend. She waited at the lake, sobbing and crying, hoping that Morana would appear, but she never did. She mourned the death of her friend and would often blame herself for it. If she hadn't let herself get chased by a wolf, Morana would've never died. She started to avoid the lake, but she didn't only have memories of Morana at the lake and eventually couldn't take it anymore. She decided to return to the deer settlement. She was welcomed back with mixed feelings, but let back in regardless. She started telling all the memories she had made with Morana as stories and the yound deer would always love to hear her stories. She eventually found someone she loved and even had a child or two with him, before she eventually died.

Glory of the Snow's Story

the fawn's actual story lmao Glory of the Snow was born many, many, many years after that. Many years later. She was born during a time where especially many deer were dieing and they gave Glory this specific name in the hopes that the forest would stop killing them off like that. Glory was their last hope, for she was the only one born after many stillbirths. She seemed to thrive and grow strong and pretty much the entire settlement would gather around her. Her mother often told her stories about the old times, about fluffy pegasus-like creatures who had once lived in the forest and who had helped them survive all those centuries. But one night, not even a full month later, Glory just died. The deer couldn't find a reason for her sudden death and saw it as a sign to finally leave the forest. They had already debated on that before and the debate had gotten more and more heated lately, but when Glory died, they all agreed on one thing: they didn't want to lose any more of their friends and family. So, even if it hurt (or not), they decided to leave the forest. Glory returned as a ghost to the forest a few days later. For her, it felt as if she had been asleep for a few days and she was devastated to see everyone gone. Why was there nobody to comfort her? Where were they? Why had they all just left her behind? She tried finding them, tried finding her mother whom she could barely remember anymore. But she could remember the warmth of her mother, the omnipresent warmth that had always made her feel safe and welcomed. She also remembered the warmth of the other deer, even though it wasn't as fierce as her mother's warmth. She wanted to find that warmth again, so after a while she set out to find it since the deer didn't seem to return. She followed the warmth of other animals which never had as much warmth as she remembered from her memories, and eventually ended up in Yakyakistan. She had never seen such creatures and she was afraid of them, but they also had a ton more warmth than all the other animals she had seen. She stayed with them for a little bit, while confused why nobody ever interacted with her and ran back to the deer camp when a yak smashed something right next to her. She was terrified; that could've been her! She ran back to where it was safe - maybe the deer had returned! But they hadn't. She was still all alone. And when she wandered around the camp; instead of finding other deer, she found herself. Found her dead body laying in the snow. They hadn't even properly buried it before they left. She threw her in a small crisis while simultaneously understanding why the yaks (of which she doesn't know that they're yaks) never interacted with her. After she got to terms with being an apparent ghost, she returned to the yaks because their warmth was still something and they couldn't hurt her anyways it seemed. But she was never truly happy there, she always felt restless. She also remembered the stories about the Grifix she had been told while still alive (she remembered them from the get-go btw) and she realized that those weren't the creatures. She wanted to see them, wanted to feel how their warmth felt like, and so, after a while, she decided to set out to find those creatures. She eventually did, ending up in the Empire, and was overwhelmed by their warmth. This warmth was different than from the yaks, but still not what she had been looking for. But she still stayed with them, for their warmth somehow felt more "right" than the yak's. She stayed with the Grifix and took part in their everyday life, even though they never saw her. But eventually, after many, many years (maybe even decades or centuries), it finally happened- She finally felt the exact same warmth coming from a Grifix that her mother once emitted. She started following that Grifix around and never wanted to leave the side of them again. And when the magic of the Grifix manifested around her, she was finally happy.

Once she became the Grifix's sphirix, she lost all of her memories, except for one - the one about the warmth of her mother. The memory changed a little because she firmly believes that the Grifix's mother is (also) her mother and you can sometimes hear her quietly whisper "mother" in her sleep.

Oh! And I also had a cute lil funny n random thought: I was thinking that when the magic manifested around her and she felt truly happy, a tear fell down Glory's face which fell down on the ground and a snowdrop started to grow there. I like to imagine it randomly grows in the middle of the street of the entertainment district, always blooming. You can step on it as much as you want it won't falter or wither, it will always come back up. (Like weed that breaks through the street xD)