She stared at her reflection, in the free standing mirror before her. The bodice was a simple design, the underside was a pearl white, while the overlying side and lacing was a pail pink it was almost white. Small pearl beads where sown into the neck line and down the sides of the bodice. The wide flowing skirt draped around her a pool of silken fabric.

Fawna her lady’s maid, stared at her watching her reaction in the mirror, shifting nervously, her delicate hooves making a genital clik-clak on the cold stone floor.

Lady Silis turned to face her maid, and smiled. She was humans shaped, with long slender legs that ended indelicate cloven hooves, her arms and fingers where just as long and slender and ended in delicate thin black nails. She had a slender build, and long neck. Her face was long and sharply pointed, giving her the same wild beauty that belonged to all the Animealas, the Wild Ones. Her ears were rounded but tapered to a point, sprouted near the top of her head. Her skin was a soft brown, like earth mixed with sunlight, she had a dappling of white spots down her neck and over her shoulder’s, Silis knew the spots flowed down the girl’s back, down her arm, over her hands, and down either side of her legs.

Clasping the other girl’s hands in her own Silis’s smile grew border.

“The gown is wonderful Fawna.” She said gently, staring into the girl’s soulful brown eyes, as she brushed back a lock of hair, the same sunlit brown as the maid’s skin, that had escaped from the tight braid she usually kept it in.

As a child of one of the Cervidae Clans, Fawna was still young yet, her spots would being to fade in a few years, becoming the dark reddish brown of her father’s or the soft light brown of her mother’s.

Silis saw a fragility in Fawna’s eyes, that had the girl dancing with nerves. Many Animealas that didn’t belong to one of the hunter clans, had that same fragility in them that Fawna had.

But not all, Silis amended. Sergeant Pudu, Fawna’s father, led the provost’s guard under Sir. Galahallt of Turnmont, he was anything but fragile. The man had a eight point rack of antlers mounted on his head. The sharpened horns could gut a man as easily as any knife.

Fawn’s mother and two of her siblings, worked in the family bakery. No mater the profession, Silis thought, anyone with arms that thick with muscle, would be a formidable opponent to face.

She had seen knights with arms like that, but the bakers got their girth from hard labor rather then weapons work.

She embraced the girl tightly once before turning to face the merrier once more. She liked the contrast of the soft colors against pail skin and night black hair. Her face was sharply pointed giving her a cold beauty, that the dark cloths she normally wore accented. But this dress with its soft color’s and gentle curves, softened the cold, into a worm kind of beauty she didn’t know she possessed.

“You have a gift, Fawna.” She said kindly, still smiling, enjoying the worm fluttering in her heart at the thought of Daegan seeing her in this dress at supper.

“Really Lady?” Said the made tentatively.

“Absalutly.”

Fawna smiled. “Shall I get your cloak, Lady?”

“Pleas.”

The maid scurried off to her task, as Silis swishing her hips from side to side, watching the gown’s skirt moving in a wave of silk. Her smile broadened, oh look on Daegan. She couldn’t wait to see, she thought with a giggle.

Oh he would be so surprised, she could just see those dark eyes of his that normally held love and longing, widening in surprise.

The genital clik-clak of Fawna’s hooves announced her maid’s return. Silis dawned the cloak and quickly left her chambers heading for the stables and the armed guards that would escort her from the castle and into the village waiting below, and Daegan.