Jared let the thought go through her head for a long time. Days past as she nursed her fawns. What exactly was waiting for her back in her previous life?
She missed her freinds and family to be sure, but there was a certain contentment to life in the woods. She didn't have to worry about high school, college or any of the other thousands of worries that she would have looked forward to as Jared the young man.
As the weeks past into months, and the fawns began to grow stronger and more independant, she started to become more content with the life that she seemed to have drawn.
Sometime in the middle of the summer, she found herself on the edge of a campsite in the forest. As she hid in the shadows and grazed, she watched the small family squabble and fight as they stumbled through their routines, cooking dinner and working as hard as they could to relax. After she left, she traveled deep into the woods, laid down and slept next to her young bucks. Being a doe wasn't so bad.
Summer started to wane, and her young charges started to get a bit more adventurous. After a few more days, she began to realize that it was time for her two bucks to move out on their own, have their own fawns. Over the coming days, they slowly drifted away from her. She would see them occationally, and scent them on the wind, but they were on their own. Two lives that she had created.
It was only then that she realized that she'd never given them names. Strangly, it was such a human concept that hadn't occured to her.
Now, as the last days of summer gave way to fall, Jared had to really think. There were no longer two lives depentant on her anymore, she was free to return to her home and try to become human again, even if now that felt as foreign to her as being a doe did just a year ago.
One evening as the sun started to set and the leaves started to change, Jared stood on a small bluff overlooking the forest and found herself deep in thought. If she didn't return to her home and try to reclaim her humanity now, she never would. She would turn her back on it and never return.