One thing that Hannah had found out relatively quickly, while the park goers didn’t suffer from heat cycles, women still found themselves facing their period all the same. Hannah of course had panicked like an idiot, thinking this was a dear related disease or something. Of course, being the first male who had lost his Y chromosome due to the random button, Hannah had no one to turn to directly. Beginning to wonder frantically while none of the park staff has come to help her and if they had chosen for mysterious reason to let her die (she was still in her ‘getting used to being female stage and not thinking straight at all), she was rescued from her overactive imagination by one of the already female park goers.
There was only one other doe in the park at the time, a fresh out of collage girl who had chosen a white tailed deer just for laughs and could abuse the pun on her name to no end. Hannah had been sure to memorize Bambi’s phone number and e-mail address when the lass’ vacation time ran it’s course a month before Jackie’s arrival, Hannah had been sad to see her go.
She had to make it a point to warn Jackie sometime about that ‘time of the month.’ She had meant to at their normal support group, but seeing Jackie and Keith hit it off had thrown everything out of whack. Hannah wondered if Laurie had warned Jasmine. With all the emotional drama the two had been forced to endure, it could have easily slipped a mother’s mind. Hannah would have to make it a point to tell them both.
“Hannah!” Lateisha snapped her hooves. “Do you always have to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Space out and contemplate your place in the universe right in the middle of something?”
“Oh! Sorry, just comes naturally to me I guess.”
“It’s okay.” Jenny said, “We’re all just hanging out anyway, so no big deal. So what were ya thinking about?”
“Oh.” Hannah REALLY didn’t want to discuss that, “Nothing important.” She thought quick on how to change the subject. “Don’t you think it weird how we’re talking about bucks and does as if we’re always been them or that’s how males and females have always been split?”
“No, not really.” Su Yin said, “Since we’ve effectively become our own culture inside the park. With our own rules, nuisances and dos and don’t that aren’t directly effected by the outside world. Yes, we’re all just passing through, but since we don’t leave or enter at the same time, we pass on cultural habits we’ve learned from others onto new arrivals before we leave ourselves. Not really that different from any other culture, no matter on how small a scale it is. The sentient mind seeks orders in its life.”
“If not for the huskies.” Jenny joked, “We might as WELL be our own little world in here. If world war three happened and the park didn’t get nuked, the huskies no longer showing up would be the only real clue we’d have it happened.”
Hannah snorted as best as a doe could, “Thank you! I so did NOT need that image in my head!”
“Oh, sorry!” Jenny smiled guiltily rubbing the back of her head, “Just trying to lighten the mood.”
“So ladies,” Hannah said, “We were talking about bucks and us?”
++++++
John (yes, John deer, it was Lance’s idea the frat all chose the same species! So don’t laugh!) didn’t believe it, then again, he was a half-human dear naked in a park full of his buddies who were also naked half-human dear, so maybe it wasn’t that shocking.
“Man! Did you see how Jeremy turned Lance inside out?! He sure grew a spine fast! Not that I’d want to be in his shoes when we vacation time is up, but still, whoa! It might be safer for Jeremy to just say here naked with antlers!” Indeed, Lance had gone from treating Jeremy as his torture toy to acting as though Lance had lost a pair instead of the beauty queen Hannah. And at the same time, while their sentient thinking knew how Lance would act once they were out of the park. It felt perfectly rational and reasonable for Lance to see Jeremy as his superior after having lost to the younger frat member. And fantastically, Lance also found it utterly logical now to see Jeremy now as his higher rank officer so to speak.
It had to be the deer instincts, but the thing about instincts, you had a super hard time convincing yourself they could even possibly be wrong!
Robbie, another frat boy who was just happy he hadn’t lost in the first round commented calmly. “Actually I heard about it from one of the park staff that the management is considering a program for that.”
This got John’s attention. “Eh?”
“Yeah. The husky mentioned it after me and Jack got our antlers stuck together the other day prepping for today. Good thing they showed, or we might have had to break them off to get loose.” That was the funny thing about antlers, or tails for that matter. They didn’t have them on the outside of the park, but losing them now, while they were their current species, seriously felt the same like losing an arm or a leg.
“Forget your six pointers and talk to me.”
“Huh? Oh yeah! The husky, I think her name was Katie, “ A dog named Katie, oh brother, “commented that the management were considering offering a program for some people to become permanent members of the park, but with some very nasty restrictions in the works.”
Did he have to keep trailing off like that? “Which where?”
“Oh, really creepy stuff, legally severing all ties with the outside world, all of it, signing a legal contract that says you won’t try to develop the land by building yourself a log cabin or a veggie garden, and that you’ll no longer be on the Huskies’ ‘rescue if seriously injured list’ and of course your original human DNA pattern is erased from the archive, for good.”
“In other words, live here with the fantasy of it totally stripped away. Who’d agree to something like –that-?!”
“I don’t know, hippies who still think nature is all rosebuds and butterflies? Someone who doesn’t think they’re serious? A criminal whose looking for a permanent hiding place?”
“Naw, not that last one, that would be the same as trading one prison for another.”
“You really think of this place as a prison? Last time I checked you’ve been living it up.”
“What makes a prison a prison is any place you can never ever leave.”
“A lot like your parents’ basement?”
“Hey! I’ll move out when I’m good and ready. And at least I didn’t lose to a dude who used to be a chick!”
“Hey! And that hot piece of doe used to be a dude so don’t go pulling that card.”
“Okay granted. Still, back on subject, you think anyone would be crazy enough to give up their lives and live here for good? Give up everything they’ve worked for up until that point?”
“The world is full of all kinds of people.”
+++++++
“Check that out.” Said Keith looking down from a high down at a clearing where some bucks were engaged in a contest of skill and strength that focused greatly on head bashing.
“Looks like the bucks are acting like… bucks.” Jackie shook her head, she had just gone around on all fours and killed a wild animal and eaten it raw, who was she to judge?
“Wanna stay and watch?” Keith asked.
Jackie opened her mouth, then burst out laughing. “Men and your football!”
Keith had to laugh too, “Ladies and never letting their mate enjoy a good contest between men!”