A Lightning Curse

The buck Mabon killed has been dressed finely--mostly because Mabon knows enough about acting like a normal Man to know that they don't like their meat in ragged, bloody chunks, and that delivering it in the form he or Firekeeper would enjoy would like as not elicit a negative reaction from this Man Mabon has decided is his.

Dressing it to perfection, however, does not stop him from abandoning it in front of the door to Kay's room. Mabon is of the firm opinion Kay will know who left it there, and that's the part that really matters to him at all.

Winter is mildly annoying in that most of the animals that are Mabon's have gone to sleep, and he's much inclined to do the same, but that men's bodies aren't given to sleeping three months at a go.

He's quietly in the Mansion's kitchen, cutting up a freshly-killed tom turkey with one of his knives and dividing it into parts. Every now and then he eats a little, but on the whole the concentrated effort is going into making it presentable. He has, after all, Men who are His, and most of them don't eat the way he does.

The first frost was two nights ago, and Mabon has changed beautifully for the season: his hair is the pure-white of an ermine or a hare, to blend in with what snows will come. His already dark eyes have turned black, and his skin is mottled darks and browns, like leaf mould on the ground.

He settles on the terrace at the Mansion with a huddle of raccoons on his lap, and looks at the people who pass by with quiet interest. The raccoons mutter a little. They know that he's peaceful within him right now and therefore safe. They know that at the slightest change in him he will no longer be a haven, and they will scatter.

If one looks around closely at the countryside surrounding the Mansion, one may find that the snakes have come out of their holes and the undergrowth to lie stretched out on the warm stones.

Mabon is lying on the back terrace of the Mansion, where the stone is hot, not half asleep but ever alert, and very quiet, and very comfortable.

Due to this crackplot, there is now a bewildered and small god wandering around, wondering how on earth he got out of the tower. He's been there for nine years without ever having seen anything (there are no windows in the tower), and suddenly here he is in the light, walking barefoot on grass, and absolutely he would be joyful except that he doesn't understand.

Except that the animal part of him, the hunting part, is singing, and after a moment he gives into it and rolls in the earth like a dog.

Greatly awearied, he sits by the lake to catch his breath again--it annoys him that he needs to catch his breath, but to run faster than a soul that goes to death is to run very fast indeed, and to ask for help from the Morrigan for a life not lost in battle is a difficult request to make; and he takes consolation in that.

After a moment he starts up again, cradling the soul carefully, and seeks for the person it belongs to, whether the body it came from or the man who asked him to retrieve it.

There's been a whisper on the wind suggests that someone wants to hunt with the Hunter, and he is therefore standing conspicuously in one of the Mansion gardens, his ever-present bow on his shoulders, smiling secretly at something you can't see. In the wind--where did it come from? elsewhere it seems still--his red-brown hair is blowing, and his dark eyes are warm with pleasure and a wild light.

Mabon has a very large deer slung over his shoulders, its legs hanging down on either side of him, its head hanging behind him limply. He isn't breathing heavily, hardly seems disturbed in any way, but he's been enjoying the long hunt immensely, letting it be long on purpose.

He comes into the Mansion kitchen looking for her, without seeming to notice or care that he's out of place, with his tall boots and his knives and the dead deer. There he stands and waits for her.

Mabon is kneeling in a clearing quite close to the Mansion, skinning a deer. His hair half falls in his face, but he disregards it; his hands are slick with fresh blood, and he has the look of something wild about him, something untamed and untouched by humans.