A skeletal stag standing ten trees tall
Hanging moss adorning His wide antlers, patches of rocky lichen covering His driftwood bones
Large cloven hooves stepping carefully yet purposefully among the bleached remains littering the forest floor
He alone reigns here, in this place beneath ours
Even the pines fall silent as He passes
Even the stones
The air is old here
Thick with a power lost to time
Only He is left; a dimming flicker in a collective consciousness
Keeping a lonely vigil in an ancient forest a thousand miles deep and a hand's width beside us
No breath is drawn here
The soft rattling of His timber ribcage is the sole sound as He moves
Ceaselessly
Without rest
To a place always changing, never quite there
The ossuaries lay in a heavy silence
He assures the eternal slumber of all who rest here
The hollows in His skull seem to observe them, undisturbed
He moves on
His name has been forgotten for millennia
This sacred ground has become but a fleeting memory
Few old gods remain, lost to the quickening of time
He remembers, as He stands keeper of this place
Of an age before ours
When they would polish the skulls of the hunt with holy oils in His name
Dancing wildly and unburdened around towering flames
Primal sounds ripping raw from reverent lips
Now He is all but a wavering in the annals
He pauses in His endless march
Raises His great antlers to the thick canopy above
He listens
Feels the shift -- another one has faded
He will most likely be the last of His kind
A somber sentinel tasked with ensuring the dead wake not from their final sleep
Ensuring the silence is suffocating
A deep, weighted vibration
As if the place under ours was itself thrumming with power
Though none remain who once spoke His true name in fearful whispers
He will outlast
For all will eventually come to know
The one they now call death