Chapter 7 – A hold.
The next day started wonderfully. The freshness of the cool, crisp morning air permeating her room, the sounds of the birds singing, and the happy feelings inside her—Fluttershy lay awake in bed for a while, just enjoying everything. Perhaps it was because Sadie offered to be her sphinx the day before.
“Oh! My very own sphinx!” she squealed, squirming giddily under her blanket. “The Equestrian Society for the Preservation of Rare Creatures will be soooo impressed! Oh...but...I...” She turned to her side and caressed the bed sheet with a front hoof as she thought to herself, “...I'd still like to keep him for myself for a while longer. Nopony has to know just yet, right?”
Eventually, she got out of bed, had breakfast, and did her bathroom rituals, singing all the while. And, as always, Sadie was there, observing her. She and many of her critters have gotten used to him just lying there on his mattress, barely moving. He was like a living fixture.
The day’s chores began with the chickens. Fluttershy sang a familiar tune as she trotted towards the chicken coop with a basket of chicken vita-feed on her back. Like any good chicken owner, she supplemented her chickens with vita-feed, which was to be given to them only 3 times a week. It was vitamin and mineral enriched feed meant for egg-laying hens.
“Good morning, my little chickens!” Fluttershy said, peeking into the chicken coop. Right away, she could tell what was wrong with the picture. Elizabeak and several chickens were missing. “Oh no.”
Back in her cottage, Sadie perked up, perceiving the worried tone in Fluttershy’s voice.
Fluttershy left the chicken coop, and looked around. There were tracks from several chickens on the ground, leading towards the Everfree forest.
“Oh! Not again, Elizabeak! I swear, as Celestia as my witness,” Fluttershy grumbled in exasperation, putting the vita-feed basket down and following the tracks, “next time I go out to the market, I’ll pass by the hardware store and get those stubborn hens some cyclone fence around their coop! Oooh!” She continued muttering her irritation as she trotted, rolling her eyes and sighing. Her exasperation started slowing down along with her pace as the trees of the Everfree started to loom over her. She gulped and thought that maybe she could have Mr. Bear...or better yet, Sadie, accompany her. But… no, the hens couldn’t possibly have gone very far. There was no need to bother them for just such a short trip.
Back in her cottage, the mattress that Sadie had been lying on was unassumingly empty, as if no one had ever been there to begin with. Not a single critter had noticed him leaving or could guess when he must have left.
Fluttershy stepped past the treeline and into the Everfree. The ground and surrounding trees, branches, and bushes were visibly disturbed with days-old claw marks, obviously left by the battle between Sadie and the timberwolf. Strangely, there were even some scorch marks here and there, but she didn’t have time to wonder about them. She had chickens to find. Fluttershy crept forward cautiously, and whispered as loud as she could: “Eliiizaaabeeaaak! Oh!” She whimpered. “You will be the death of me!”
With her head held low, she continued to make her way deeper into the woods. Several times she stopped to watch in the direction of some strange sound or another, but she never saw anything, and tried her best to remain calm.
“Huh, this isn't so bad. I... I can do this!” She cleared her throat and called out again, louder this time: “Elizaaabeeeaaaaak! Where are you and your hen pals?!” She paused and took a few moments to survey her now less threatening surroundings. She felt agitation welling up in her, as she stomped a front hoof on the ground. “Hmph!” That's when she heard it – a ghostly moaning. Her surroundings suddenly became even more threatening than they had been before. She gasped, lowered her head again and took several steps backwards, her pupils shrinking to the size of pinpricks.
“Whu...whut wass-was that..!” Fluttershy’s muscles tensed up as she began shaking, her eyes darting to and fro. “Mm-my goodnessPrincessCelestiaaa!” The more she listened, the more the ‘moaning’ sounded like dog whimpering, and though it still seemed somehow eerie, it sounded enough like a hurt animal to evoke Fluttershy's deep-seated compassion.
“Oh dear, it's a hurt creature!” She looked around (purposefully, this time), and there, beyond the darkness of the trees and bushes, she spied several faint green glows. There was no path in that direction, so she flapped her wings and cautiously hovered towards the glow instead. She surveyed the wild plant growth below her as she passed, all thick, thorny thistles and brambly bushes. It was as if she were on another planet.
Finally, she came to a small clearing and found the source of the green lights.
They were pieces of wood, tied together like piles of firewood, ever-burning with magical green flame. But these piles were moving! And whimpering! Fluttershy gasped as the realization shocked her – this was the timberwolf that Sadie had defeated!
“Oh my goodness! Hold on, I'll release you, poor thing!” She landed on the ground, and bit through the dried vines that had been used to tie up the timberwolf's wooden pieces. Once freed, they immediately started to reassemble themselves...
The chickens clucked happily, scratching at the ground and pecking everywhere. The Everfree forest was like an all-you-can-eat bug buffet to them. They were so carefree. Unbeknownst to them, they were in the presence of a sphinx, who was sitting up like a royal Egyptian cat before them, unmoving, except for its flicking tail. One of them, pecking and scratching the ground, unknowingly passed under his shadow. She looked up, looked back and instantly panicked—squawking and running to Elizabeak, flailing her wings, and scattering loose feathers everywhere.
“Buk-KOK! Buk buk buk bu-KOK!” Elizabeak and her hen-pals froze before him, stunned by his sudden appearance.
“Do you know what trouble you hens have caused me?” he said, stone-cold, but polite. “All of you, come to me. Now.”
But such is the nature of chickens that, whenever one of them begins panicking and clucking out the call of 'Danger!', this behavior will quickly spread through the entire brood. And so, rather than heeding Sadie's command, Elizabeak and her friends instead joined together in an unorganized, repetitive chorus: "Buk buk buk bu-KOK! Buk buk buk bu-KOK!"
“What an annoying sound,” Sadie commented drily, something unkind in his voice despite its elegant, masculine tone. Slowly, he raised his front paws towards the hens, pads facing up. Elizabeak and her hen-pals kept a safe distance, singling out the sphinx before them with their annoying clucks. Sadie lingered a moment, then tensed his paws so that his claws came out.
All at once, the hens felt an unseen force grip their bodies tightly as they all started to float in mid-air. “Buk-buk...bu...krok..errk...” The hens struggled to keep up their danger call. They could hardly even breathe. Sadie moved his paws, turning them like puppets on strings towards the direction where their mistress was at that moment. Focusing his perception, he let them see her through their own eyes as clearly as he could.
“Do you see?” He was seething. Despite remaining calm and collected, his voice betrayed a tense anger that the hens could feel manifesting as a gradually intensifying pain. “She has found what she was not meant to find.” Sadie levitated the poor chickens closer to his white mask, as they all watched the distant scene unfold. “And oh, look!” Sadie said, tightening his force-grip on the hens. “Now she’s setting it free! Isn’t that lovely?” The chickens could only continue gasping out their miserable-sounding clucks under the increasing tightness of his grip.
“..krrO..O...O...Ook-kruk...krurrk...!”
Using Fluttershy’s voice, Sadie comforted them as he loosened his grip a little. “Shhh-shhh, awww, there there.”
Elizabeak and her friends shuddered. It really sounded like their loving mistress! But despite its genuine tone, his actions made a mockery of her kindness. Hearing her voice like this made them realize how they always seemed to take her for granted, leaving their coop to have a bug-buffet in the Everfree, even though they knew how it rattled her nerves for them to be in such a dangerous place.
“Now,” Sadie cooed, still in Fluttershy's voice, “do you know what it is I'm setting free, oh my cute, cute little chickies?”
The chickens, bearing up the pain, shook their heads.
“I'll...tell...you...” Sadie said slowly and softly, prolonging their torment, “...it's...a...timberwooolfff.” They watched and listened helplessly as Fluttershy frantically ripped the vines used to tie up the timberwolf's piles of sticks and branches.
“Oh! Don't you worry,” they heard the real Fluttershy saying, sounding clear yet somehow ethereal coming through Sadie’s perspective, “I'll get some rain clouds to put out that fire! Wait here!” She then swooped up into the sky, took a couple of clouds and brought them down closer to the ground. Sadie and the chickens watched her as she kicked the clouds, releasing the water inside, showering it down on the burning pieces of the timberwolf.
Sadie suddenly turned the hens around towards him, their poor chicken faces directly in front of his eyeless mask, disrupting their view of the distant scene. Instead, the empty eye-holes of the sphinx’s mask filled their vision. Even this close up, they couldn’t see anything inside of them, no sign of life or warmth, just a cold, bottomless void...
“Oh, what's the matter, my oh so pretty little chickies? My cute and cuddly little chickies?” Sadie said as he giggled, in Fluttershy's adorably demure way. “Don’t you see? I might never have found that poor timberwolf and gotten to help him if you hadn’t run away like this! Oh, he’s going to eat me now, I’m sure, but that’s the price one pays for kindness!”
If chickens could blanch, Elizabeak and her hen-pals would have done it right then, as the full realization of what they’d caused to happen fell on them.
"Now," he said, reverting back to his own voice and tilting his head at them, "you will go straight back to your chicken coop, yes?"
The poor chickens nodded as much as they could in Sadie’s magical grip, to which he responded by releasing them all at once. They plopped to the ground and lay there for a few seconds, writhing, coughing, and gasping for air. Sadie rose and began walking in Fluttershy’s direction. After just a few steps, his body faded away. Elizabeak and her friends found themselves alone, and in their terror, scrambled as fast as they can towards the safety of their chicken coop.
“N-n-no...puh-please,” Fluttershy pleaded as she scrambled away on her back from the freshly reassembled timberwolf, stuttering through her fear as she tried desperately to communicate with it. “I… I…”
The giant wooden beast glared down at her, snapping and grinding the splintery wooden stakes that lined its giant, tongueless maw in place of teeth. She knew what that behavior meant—the prey was caught, and it was time to eat.
“But...I helped you. I...I helped you!”
Like a true animal, the timberwolf's first concern was it's hunger. Being tied up and tortured like that for a long time made it quite famished, and even though Fluttershy had been the one to set it free, the presence of an easy meal was too much to resist.
She glanced back: the edge of the clearing was just a few feet away. If she could just get on her hooves, she could cut straight through the forest and make a run for it, or even fly! But how, with the timberwolf looming over her?
Then, one huge paw stepped on the hair tail extensions, sealing her fate. So, this is how it ends, she thought to herself – doomed by an act of kindness. She remembered something similar had happened to Rarity during their time in Manehattan. But it hadn’t been a matter of life and death in Rarity’s case, at least. Still, were they all destined to ruin because of their elements?
She watched in wide-eyed terror as the timberwolf growled and snarled over her, its wooden fanged muzzle coming closer and closer, the vile stench of its breath getting stronger. She wanted to close her eyes, but fear had her completely paralyzed. All she could do was tremble, and stare, and wait.
Suddenly, from somewhere off to the side of the path, a stone zipped through the air and struck the timberwolf on the head. Fluttershy and the timberwolf turned towards the source of the attack, and there, on top of a boulder, stood Angel Bunny. He threw another stone, striking the beast near the eye this time. The timberwolf yelped and growled, stumbling a couple of steps backwards in surprise, releasing Fluttershy’s tail. Angel took this opportunity to leap down from the boulder, getting in between the monster and his mistress.
“Angel?! NO!” Fluttershy shouted, worried that Angel was too near the monstrous beast, but he paid her no heed. He continued to throw stones at it, hoping to do what Spike once did – shoot a stone into the timberwolf's throat and make it choke. He threw another, and another! But unexpectedly, the beast dodged and lunged at him with its jagged, wooden teeth. Angel bounced up and out of the way, and the timberwolf went after him, turning away from his mistress. He squeaked triumphantly! He managed to get the timberwolf’s attention away from Fluttershy, at least. Not exactly what he planned, but yes, he can definitely work with this.
The timberwolf snapped its monstrous muzzle at him again, but again it came up empty, thanks to the bunny's quick bouncing. However, the creature was more cunning than Angel thought. He’d been so focused on evading its mouth, that he completely failed to notice its paw swiping at him from the side until it struck him with such force that his tiny body flew several meters away through the air, tumbling several feet more across the dirt when he landed.
Angel was almost unconscious. Dimly, he heard his mistress shouting his name. Battered and in pain, he looked up and saw that Fluttershy was running towards him. “NO! Run away, mistress! Run! Fly!”
Instead, Fluttershy ran towards Angel, seemingly ignoring the timberwolf. As soon as she reached him, she took him up with her teeth by the scruff of his neck, tossing him onto her back without slowing a step. The timberwolf gave chase, each step of its massive wooden paws making the ground shake.
All she could think of was to run—as far and as fast as she possibly could! She made for where the trees had grown together the thickest, dodging her relatively small body between the trunks while the huge timberwolf was forced to break through them, slowing it down. As she ran deeper and deeper into the forest, the sound of frustrated growls and crashing trees grew fainter and fainter behind her, but still, she didn’t stop running.
Soon, she found herself at the bottom of an earthy cliff, studded with jutting rocks and lined with wild, overgrown bushes. Barely breaking stride, she tried to climb it using the rocks as hoofholds; but the cliff was too steep, and its soil too loose. Despite her best efforts, she slipped onto her belly and slid back to the foot of the cliff before she’d gotten even halfway up, whimpering plaintively. The dirt, dust and gravel kicked loose by her attempt slid down after her, stinging painfully in her eyes and nose. Desperately, she scrambled back to her hooves and tried again, and again and again and again, but every attempt fared no better than the first. Panting through gritted teeth, she blinked away the tears in her eyes and scanned the area for a way she might go around, but found that the cliff curved back a short distance away in both directions, effectively boxing her in. Her breaths came progressively shorter as she whipped her head around in all directions, desperately hoping her eyes would land on some way, any way, forward… to no avail.
Then, a sudden flicker of hope: perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it seemed! She’d built up quite a lead on the timberwolf, and she’d only have to backtrack a little ways! Surely she could still make it! But, turning around, Fluttershy realized just how much time she’d wasted on her panicked attempts to climb the cliff. The once-distant sounds of growling and snapping wood were almost deafening, now, and flashes of angry burning green eyes could be seen between the few remaining trunks. It was here, and there was nowhere left to run! She turned her head and looked back at Angel—he had passed out, still unconsciously gripping her mane. She had only one hope left.
Taking Angel up with her teeth again, she quickly carried him over to the cliff where the bushes were densest, intending to hide him there. She thanked Celestia when she found a crevice behind the bushes large enough to squeeze her dear Angel Bunny in, but small enough to keep the Timberwolf’s smallest claw out. She even stuffed some leaves into the crevice and pushed the branches closer together against the crack for good measure. “Goodbye, Angel,” she said silently, then went back to face the massive wooden beast. Only one tree was left standing in its way by this time, and it was almost completely uprooted. Any moment now and it would fall. She laid down and curled herself into a trembling ball on the ground in front of it. The timberwolf, seeing its prey within reach, began snapping wildly at her, pushing harder and harder against the tree. She felt the ground quiver under its massive paws, and prayed that it would be quick. With luck, it would overlook Angel while it… would she be enough to fill its belly…? Cringing from her own thoughts, she braced herself and waited for the end to come.
She heard the tree fall. “This is it!” she gripped herself tightly. Memories of her friends and loved ones flashed inside her mind. Already she missed them, and how she longed for their sweet company. “Goodbye my friends!” she cried outloud inside her. “I love you all!”
A moment passed, and nothing. In fact, it was quiet. She chanced a peek, and what she saw, she never would have expected: it was Sadie, sitting regal and somehow completely at ease, facing the timberwolf.
“Ah, so it is you again, my dear, brainless animal with no other purpose in life than to follow your bloodthirsty instincts,” he said impassively.
The timberwolf was visibly thinking twice now, its sticks-for-ears flat against its wooden head. Unsure of what to do, it stepped back.
Sadie looked back towards Fluttershy. “Are you alright?”
“Watch out!” Fluttershy shouted as the timberwolf lunged at him, taking advantage of Sadie's seeming distraction… and stopping in mid-air. Sadie slowly turned his head towards the dumb beast as its body began to convulse.
“Tsk tsk tsk,” Sadie said, waving a clawed finger at the timberwolf. “Naughty naughty, uh-uh.”
The timberwolf rose higher into the air, the convulsions forcefully stopped as its body gradually shrank in on itself, as if pressed on all sides by some unseen force. The cracking of wood could be heard.
Fluttershy was shocked. Was this really her sphinx? Was he somehow doing this to this poor animal?
“...stop...”
“Now you will pay for your treachery!” Sadie said, coldly. There was another, even louder crack of splintering wood. The timberwolf began to whine.
“STOP!!!” The force crushing the timberwolf suddenly ceased, leaving it floating in place up near the treetops.
The statement stabbed him. Sadie turned his head so that it seemed he was looking at Fluttershy out of the corner of one eye. “Whu...What?” he asked, obviously taken aback.
“Please, just...let it go,” she pleaded.
He turned to face her completely. “This...beast almost killed Angel and tried to devour you. How can you show mercy?”
“That's just it.” Fluttershy said as she stood up. “Like you said—it's just a beast, a creature of instinct...”
“...and once already, this very one,” he said, pointing up with a wing and a finger to the timberwolf still in the air. “has had the audacity to come out of the Everfree to prey upon the animals in your own backyard! These creatures must be shown the error of their ways in the most persuasive manner possible.”
“Which is to torture them?!”
“‘Torture them’? ...I see. You would rather have Angel Bunny be in danger, along with the rest of your creatures, by showing kindness to these timberwolves.”
The sphinx watched Fluttershy as she went and got Angel Bunny from where she had hidden him. Her movements were slow and deliberate, her face unsure. She was obviously trying to think of a response. “N-No!..I… Well...I...” She parted the bushes and reached into the crevice, carefully scooping him up with her hooves and cradling him along with her wings. She stroked his battered head with the tips of her wing, and nuzzled his battered body, feeling for any broken bones.
“Oh Angel…” she whispered to his unconscious ears as she pressed him to her cheek.
Sadie watched her express her kindness towards Angel; this right after she just showed kindness to the timberwolf! He suddenly felt weak and faltered slightly. He could feel himself growing weaker. “So? Should I just stand here, and let this beast overpower us?”
“Could you... scatter it into pieces, and send them all far, far away?” she asked hopefully.
Sadie looked up at the beast, and back at her. “You realize, it will just reassemble itself eventually. Then who knows what it will do.”
“Please.”
“...Very well,” Facing the timberwolf still hanging high in the air, Sadie stood up on his hind legs and bared his claws. He flared his wings wide open, and gave the air a huge, wide armed and wide winged push, and the timberwolf went flying high into the air, in pieces and in all direction.
“Thank you,” Fluttershy said. Sadie quickly turned towards her, breathing heavily, obviously upset despite his total lack of expression. Feeling his disapproval, she looked at his hind paws instead as she held Angel tight to her chest.
A moment passed in silence. “I see I will have to teach you much,” Sadie said in a tender, melancholy voice, “and I am almost out of time.”
“Huh? Whu...what do you mean?”
Fluttershy felt a gust of wind. She shielded her face and Angel with her wings, and heard the rustling of leaves above her. She looked around, and up.
Sadie was gone.