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 quiet calm to him, like he was keeping watch. But the little one? The little one kept tilting its head at me, blinking slow, like it was trying to say something I couldn’t hear yet.
I laughed. “Today I got some guests,” I joked, snapping a photo and posting it online without thinking too much. Just a strange but sweet encounter, or so I thought.
But right after I took the photo, something weird happened.
The little deer walked right up to the fence—slow, deliberate—and dropped something onto the ground.
At first, I thought it was a rock. Or maybe a clump of old mud. But when I crouched down to take a better look, my stomach tightened.
It was a metal key.
Not shiny. Not new. The kind of key that looks like it opens something ancient. Its handle was shaped like a leaf, and it was tied with a thin red ribbon.
I looked up again.
They were gone.
No sound, no rustling, no crack of twigs—just vanished, like they’d never been there.
I stood frozen for a moment, staring at the key, the ribbon, the empty forest. Something in my chest buzzed—not fear exactly, but that strange feeling you get when something’s just off in the quietest way.
I brought the key inside. Placed it on the kitchen table like it was radioactive. Spent the rest of the afternoon trying to reason with myself.
Maybe a kid had lost it. Maybe the deer had brushed it up from the ground. Maybe this was just a weird coincidence.
That night, I had trouble sleeping. Around 2 a.m., I heard a faint tap at the window. When I peeked through the curtain, there was nothing. But the key was no longer on the table.
It was on my windowsill.
Lying next to…
