Physical Description

The Isramaith stood tall as a stag wrought from winter itself. Its coat shimmered in silvery grey, textured like frost upon stone, and its antlers rose in a crown of ice, each tine catching stray fragments of light as though the forest had hung lanterns upon them. Where eyes should have been lay only hollow sockets rimmed with frost, dark as wells that had forgotten the sun. Yet it was no blind wanderer. It turned with uncanny precision, attuned to the pulse of magic, the shift of breath, the tremor of thought. Neither wholly beast nor wholly spirit, it was a sentinel of the deep wood.

Meanings of an Encounter

To see an Isramaith was to stand at the threshold of fate. Some said it marked the turning of a life, a moment when the forest weighed a soul and found it wanting or worthy. Others whispered that it appeared only to those carrying unseen wounds, as if drawn to the scent of hidden grief. Hunters feared it as an omen of loss. Many who glimpsed its crown of ice never returned from the snows. But wanderers who survived such sightings often spoke of a strange clarity afterwards, as though the world had been stripped of falsehood and left bare, sharp, and true.

Symbolism

The Isramaith carried the weight of paradox. It was both guardian and judge, both silence and song. Its antlers symbolised the branching of paths, the choices that split and rejoined like rivers beneath the thaw. Its hollow gaze served as a mirror of the self, reflecting not what was seen but what was carried within. In village lore, it came to embody endurance and the patience of winter, and also the inevitability of return, for snow always fell again, and the Isramaith always watched.

Sounds

Though it made no cry in the manner of beasts, the Isramaith was never silent. Those who walked near swore they heard the faint crackle of ice shifting on a frozen lake, or the brittle chime of antlers brushing unseen branches. At times, it was the hush of snow falling upon snow. At others, the low groan of timber under frost. Its presence was a soundscape of winter, subtle yet unrelenting, a reminder that the forest itself had ears.

A Tale of an Encounter

There was once a woodcutter who strayed too far from his hearth in search of timber. The storm rose sudden, and the paths vanished beneath the drifts. In the failing light, he saw it, tall and spectral, its crown of ice gleaming against the dark. He thought himself lost, yet the creature did not advance. Instead, it turned, slow and deliberate, and the woodcutter felt compelled to follow. Step by step, it led him through the storm until the glow of his own cottage fire broke through the veil of snow. When he turned to give thanks, the Isramaith was gone, its tracks already filling with white. He never spoke of it without reverence, and he never again cut timber without first laying bread upon the threshold of the trees.