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Terra lived in a tree in the middle of a forest. She had distant memories of her father making this home for her, but they were foggy at best. Her home had a firepit in the center for warming food, scroll shelves on the wall furthest from the door, cupboards for dinnerware she never used, and a staircase to the left of the front door in the far left corner of the house.
She had everything she would ever need in this forest. Food was easy to scrounge for. Protection from dragons and gryphons came from predators, and the house guarded her from predators. That and her ability to outthink them and overpower some of them. Even with all of that, though… she felt something missing. She felt it when she cooked her stews and soups, when she found a new plant in the forest, and when she listened to crickets chirp and owls hoot as she went to sleep. She knew exactly what she was missing, which was part of the reason she had made a schedule for her mornings. She made this when she realized she would have that time to herself.
First, she walked by a certain patch of wild flowers with cyan leaves and a purple stem. She would then continue past that until a bush of berries. By that time, she would have trotted near the edge of the forest, by grassy plains inhabited by trees and a few rabbits. Under the trunk of a certain tree in these plains, she found a mushroom that looked plain. There was a stream she would fill a cauldron of wood out of and mix in the ingredients. Carefully. Precisely. Just in case this would be the day somepony showed up.
The first week after she had thought of this, she had been ecstatic. If I showed up with food and waited long enough, maybe ponies might show up! She thought to herself. After a week, she had slowed her gallop to a fast trot. After a month, a slow one. Now, ten years after this filly’s dream, she gathered her materials and sat, watching not the horizon but the sky and clouds. She felt peaceful until movement caught the corner of her eyes.
Wolves? A badger? Maybe a bear? She thought to herself, the possibilities going out of hand. But as she looked around, all she saw were two dots on the horizon. One was a midnight blue, the other an off white. She did not know whether they were ponies or if they were gryphons from the north, so she continued stirring her soup, hoping for the former.
As the day wore on, the blobs took on shapes. The white blob grew feathery wings and had a pink mane and tail. The blue one grew a horn, with cyan hair that seemed to glisten in the sun. They moved at a slow pace, their fatigue shown clearly on their faces, but they continued forward all the same. After the sun went into the highest point in the sky, Terra felt lucky she had the shade of the tree I brewed under. After a while, she could hear them arguing, though she couldn’t tell which voice was who’s.
“--I know that! But the stew smells so GOOD!”
“Just because you want to follow your stomach doesn’t mean we should put ourselves in danger!”
“Again, we already are doing just that! The searing heat and lack of food is--”
At this point, I could see that the white one was arguing against coming, and the blue one was arguing for it. The blue unicorn looked slightly smaller than the white pegasus, and both had dark rings around their eyes. But as the unicorn stopped talking, the two averted their eyes from each other and onto me. This did not make me feel any more comfortable.
“Hi, my name’s Terra.” I whispered quietly, slowly scooting, hiding herself using the tree.
“What was that?” The pegasus asked.
Instead of answering, I tapped the tree next to her. It infused with magic and grew very quickly. She shaped the wood into 3 medium sized bowls and slowly poured soup into the bowls, ignoring the shocked looks of her visitors. She then carried the bowls over to them, setting them down so that Terra could face the other two, but they had space.
I then said “I made some soup if you want it.” quite timidly.
The others tried the soup. The pegasus took a sip, then set down the bowl and sat quietly, with a wide eyed expression.
The unicorn on the other hand asked “How did you make a soup taste this good?!” and promptly guzzled the rest of her soup.
I let a genuine smile adorn my face, and said to them “I found the ingredients in the woods and had a bit of time to make a really good recipe. I used some berries and wild flowers I found in the forest, and some mushrooms from under this tree.”
I heard the pegasus whisper “So very good.” from my side as I told this to the unicorn.
In a much more comfortable tone, I said “Hi. My name’s Terra, and I live in this forest.”
“Do you live with anypony else?” The unicorn asked while prodding the pegasus.
“Just me. For about ten years.”
The others just looked at me in disbelief.
“Well then, lucky we passed by, huh?” The unicorn said with a triumphant smirk on her face.
The pegasus whispered something with wide eyes, and the unicorn furrowed her eyes and shook her head in disagreement.
“My name is Luna, and my sister is Celestia. We were wandering before we got here, and we just got out of the desert to the south of here.” the unicorn told me.
My mind chewed on that for a second. They caught this as Celestia said “We don’t come from there, we just passed through so we could get away from some ponies who wanted to harm us.”
“Why did they want to harm you?” I asked.
“For being born.” They replied in unison with deadpan faces.
I raised my eyebrow, and Luna decided to elaborate with “In our kingdom, inter tribal marriage and breeding isn’t allowed. So since our pegasus mom had kids with our unicorn dad, we were deemed a ‘danger to society’ and ‘social boundaries’ before we were even old enough to do anything.”
“That seems counter intuitive.” I said plainly. The other two hummed in agreement. “If you want you could stay here.” I told them, hiding a hint of desperation in my voice.
They looked at each other, and Celestia said “We have certain ponies hunting us. Are you sure? We wouldn’t want the one decent pony to die because of us.” in a serious tone.
I mulled it over. “While I would rather not die, I couldn’t send you off in good conscious. Stay however long you want. As long as you help with the food and teach me what you know, I have no problem.”
They smiled, and Celestia asked “Would you cook the soup every so often?”
I nodded, and I didn’t need to hear a response as they they looked at each other with wide eyes and licked their lips.