Welcome to Gaia! ::

She was small for a Totoma. Her mother, disappointed with her stunted and weak daughter, blamed the unusually harsh winter the year she foaled. Other Totoma, huddled against the cold and speaking in whispers, blamed a parent who did not do enough parenting. The truth was somewhere in between. None of their convenient excuses made the lost fights and humiliation of perpetual namelessness any easier for her to bear.

She didn't remember how the argument started. It wasn't important, really. It was the same as it always was - a bigger, stronger Totoma was taking something that was hers. Food. Territory. Pride. She had long since learned that acquiescing was the less painful option, but... not again. No. Never again! Her refusal was met with laughter and in turn met with a threat and then a charge. Skull plates cracked together and the impact rang in her ears. He shoved and her hooves slipped, but she stood firm on the cold earth. She willed herself to stand and meet him again and again; terror and anger lent her ferocity. No! I will not back down! There was a strength in her small body that she never knew was there.

The buck who challenged her threw his head back in laughter. There was a ringing in his ears, too, but he would be hard pressed to admit it. The laugh was not the mocking sound of before, but instead it carried with it recognition of an equal. "Little doe, you are immovable! You are like a tiny mountain!"

A battle -- even a challenge -- was not the right term. Youth was much more accurate. For the young believe in immortality, invincibility. And he, well he had never thought either were real.

The clan -- it was more than three but less than eight -- that stood before him was green. They believed, falsely he might add, that the land he stood on was theirs. He had inclined to tell them he was on a journey, to the swamp, and cared not about their delusions of ownership and then the leader began to speak. And had not stopped speaking. It had gone to the reaches of ridiculousness and beyond, really.

When he could take no more words, "Famous last words are not to be proud of, whelp."

He had cowed the young ones and left them shivering in shame, fear, youth. And though he had said little, nothing compared to the clan leader, he was forever known as Famous Last Words. He, the pale totoma with plate like bones, had become a legend of sort -- all who met him eventually spoke their famous last words of youth.