Dawns' light was beginning to coat the clearing in the woods of Teneha Texas. The dew that had clung to the morning air was beginning drop to the ground, sprinkling it with liquid rhinestone. It would have been a dramatically beautiful sight if it hadn't decided to stick to my skin.

I wrapped my camouflage coat tighter around my shoulders and pulled the hood farther over my head. The chill always got to me. I leaned my rifle up against my knee as it sat perched between my legs and laid my head back against the tree, trying to count the number of leaves in the branches to pass the time.

It was my first time hunting on my own. Although I was twenty three and plenty capable to hunt on my own by the time I was eighteen. I never got into it until now, and the only reason I did was because my entire family hunted on the same property we've owned since I was born. Even my brother, since he was fifteen, hunted on his own and have bagged his own game to brag about to me.

Why did I not start hunting until now? Well call it peer pressure because that's probably what it is. I never liked shooting animals unless I intended to eat them to survive. Well yes, my family ate deer and other game once we killed them, but I found it unnecessary to kill unless we absolutely needed to eat. No before you start thinking I'm some goody two shoe, tree-hugging hypocrite I just love animals, always have and always will. Of course there are the occasional exceptions such as spiders and creepy crawly things that sting and bite and don't deserve to be on planet Earth.

I huffed in boredom and picked up the yellow and black walkie talkie my dad loaned me. I clicked on the right channel and pressed the button on the side, "Dad?"

The slight noise of static reached my ears until he replied, " What Heather?" He was obviously annoyed I was interrupting him during his own hunt. My dads deer stand was a mile up the dirt road in what we called "The Bottom", which was just a sunken in area of the wooden valley of East Texas. I shifted in my sitting place underneath the huge red oak tree, feeling the book I bought in Walmart two days earlier dig into my bottom.

"When are the deer supposed to come out, I'm bored", I whispered, not as if anything at all could hear since there were no animals in sight not even a squirrel.

"I don't know Heather", he replied sarcastically, "They didn't call to set up a meeting."

I rolled my eyes and clicked off the line. Dad was very touchy about his hunting privacy, but personally I didn't see the joy in it. What's so fun about sitting for hours on end until some poor creature unlucky enough to walk out in front of you gets shot?

So far I was the only Hallsworth that had not killed her own deer, and that joke went well around the campfire. They just loved embarrassing me.

I sighed against the tree and shifted the rifle in my hands trying to think of a nice tune to hum. I had a good memory when it came to songs, especially those never ending Disney songs. I started humming 'I Stand Alone' from Quest for Camelot when it walked out not sixty feet in front of me across the clearing.

At first I thought I was dreaming, or perhaps it was a ghost, but I kid you not a white deer had appeared from the other side of the clearing plain as day!

With my mouth hung open slightly, I blinked but it was still there. Then I remembered what it was. Dad told me about these and how he had dreamed of the day he could have it mounted on his wall.

An albino deer, I mused. Only one in thirty thousandth chance you had of seeing this rare mutation in a breed. Dad used to tell me about how the Indians said they were spirit walkers or guardians of the woods and such nonsense. It was a huge deer with at least eight-point antlers that were as white as Christmas could get.

I had to get it, Dad will be so proud!

Slowly as the creature slowly walked with its side facing me across the clearing I lifted my rifle, careful not to breathe too hard as my heart raced in excitement. Today was just my lucky day. I blinked away dust from my eyes, and peered through the cross-hairs and aimed directly behind the shoulder blade like Dad said to.

I can do this. I can do this. It's just an animal.

My finger tightened on the trigger, but it wasn't enough to set the bullet free. Then, suddenly, as if it knew my intention from the moment it stepped out of the woods it looked at me.

I paused, releasing the tension on my finger. It's large black eyes seemed to find mine directly in the scope and it nearly froze me there. It looked directly at me, nostrils clenching and unclenching, and ears slightly twitching in front of its large horns. I watched as it rotated its body to where he was facing me, coal eyes still boring into mine.

For a few minutes the wind had stilled and birds in the trees ceased their chirping as if awaiting the outcome of the situation.

Moments passed as my finger hovered over the trigger. I tried to reason with myself. If I don't kill it now it'll die eventually right? With no natural camouflage predators will eat it.

By now my finger was tapping the trigger, waiting anxiously to fire and the deer had stilled as if frozen in time. I sighed, closed my eyes and finally lowered the rifle. "Sorry Dadio", I murmured with a slight chuckle and shook my head. I really was a wimp.

I looked up again and the animal had disappeared. The wind was once again blowing and the birds chirping. I hadn't even heard it run away during the stillness.

"That…was weird", I premised.

I slung the rifle over my shoulder and decided to walk back to camp. I was just not cut out for this like the rest of my family was. I stood, with the chill of the wind once again biting into my face, and walked around the big tree I was sitting by. What happened next was completely unexpected and resulted in me jumping almost ten feet back.

There, right as I turned the corner, was the Albino Deer standing in my path staring straight at me.

"Yahh!" I jumped back for my nose had been merely inches from its. I stumbled and flopped back on my ass. The rifle was flung to the ground in a puddle of mud. Dad was going to kill me for that one.

If I thought the deer was large in the woods I didn't even think about how large it was up close. It was muscular, the biggest deer I had ever seen and it just stood there with its two front feet together, facing me and….staring at me? In all my life had I never been so afraid I felt as if I was about to faint.

I looked into its eyes once again. They were like black orbs, depthless and seeingly human from the way the creature studied me. My mouth was hung open like one of those operated puppets, and it was when the deer lowered its head to my level and started stepping toward me that my body started feeling really tired.

I fell back, no longer having the strength to keep my body upright, I was forced to have the cloudy blue sky as my last sight before everything went black.