I THOUGHT THEY WERE JUST CURIOUS DEER—UNTIL I SAW WHAT THE LITTLE ONE WAS CARRYING
They came out of nowhere—just wandered up from the treeline while I was tossing hay near the fence. No fear, no hesitation. Like they’d been here before.
The bigger one had a calmness to him, like he was guarding. But the small one? The little one kept tilting its head at me, blinking slow, like it was trying to tell me something.
I laughed and pulled out my phone to snap this photo—“today I got some guests,” I joked, even posted it with that caption.
But the moment after I took it, something strange happened.
The little one stepped forward. Right up to the fence. And dropped something.
At first I thought it was a rock or a clump of mud.
But when I crouched down, I realized it was something else entirely—a small leather keychain. Old, faded, and unmistakable.
It was my brother’s.
The same keychain he’d carried when we were kids—when we used to run through these woods together, climbing trees and pretending we could talk to animals. The one he dropped the week before he went missing last fall. We searched everywhere. For weeks. Nothing.
Until now.
My hands were shaking.
I looked up, but the deer were already backing away. The big one gave a single nod—yes, a nod—and turned. The little one blinked again, then followed.
They vanished into the trees as silently as they’d arrived.
I don’t know what it means. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But that keychain? It hadn’t been there yesterday. And deer don’t carry things in their mouths like that—not like that.
I stood in the field for a long time after they left, the cold wind brushing through the grass. Holding that little piece of leather like it was sacred.
And I couldn’t help but feel, somehow, that my brother had found a way to send a message.
