the deer bone clanked dully along his eager teeth.
he had found it, had found it;
mine mine mine mine
he had found it in the frozen ground. it had come to him, the piece of ivoried deer femur, a a relic of byone packs who had once inhabited the grotto.
lestan had turned and twisted in his fevered sleep; he had felt it dig into his hip; he had pulled it from the earth and there, there upon one end of it, seemed a blue-black smear of the blood he sought.
for he knew now! the blue-eyed doe was reverie and she was the deer and she was the one who had come to him, antlers burning one night beside the lake.
"cern — cerne" but the word would not come —


words of goldcoin cold had been dropped to his listening ears. 
lestan spat the bone out; he held it in one paw.
the addled eyes saw only the jewel it was, proof of the divinity he still followed.
"cerne ... cernunnos."and lestan was consumed again.