The next few weeks were anything but easy. Jared was saddled with the instincts of the doe, but never wanted to give into them totally, fearing ending up a mindless animal forever. She did let her nose tell her what was good to eat, and slowly she began to pack on the weight. Ceder leaves, nuts, berries, bushes, everything went into her stomach, filling out her delicate frame even as her belly began to grow.
It helped her that the snows didnt' come early. She reconized the days getting shorter, and even though she lost track of time, she reconized that it had been at least three months before she saw the first flake of snow. It was the first day, she found, that the fawn kicked in her stomach.
The late snow let her pack on a lot of weight, and also gave her some breathing room to figure out the dangers of being a deer. She managed to sniff out at least one mountain lion, though she'd never seen it.
As the snows came and piled up, she found herself digging through the thick crust to find anything to eat. She ate bark off the trees, desperate for a little sustinance. She started to feel hungry all the time.
At night, Jared dreamed he was warm by the fire in his home, only to wake to the cold of the forest. Though it all, the fawn kept kicking.
At times, she didn't think that she was going to make it, but she always managed to make it one more day. Finally, the weather started to get warmer, the snows started to melt. Jared woke one cool morning to find that a few blades of new grass were poking out thought the forest floor.
She'd made it to spring.