An Unusual Companion
"China is for those prissy peacocks or those know-it-all swans! I demand a metal cup!"--Dripseed the Drunken.
Scootaloo felt the top of her stomach lurch up to the center of her chest, seemingly crowding out her heart. A deafening roar, like that of a rushing sound, filled her ears, pressing her eardrums in uncomfortably. Instinctively, her eustachian tube popped. She knew the sensation of the stomach lurching rather well. It had come to her in many a dream about flying. It was the sensation of negative g forces. The deafening roar, however, concerned her.
Her consciousness came back to her, and her eyes slowly opened. What she saw made her heart skip a beat or two. Before her burned a bright fireball. It loomed in her vision, filling her eyesight such that she had to turn her head to see its edges. Red tongues flicked out periodically from the surface and reaching fingers of flame waved and danced before submerging back underneath the searing plasma. Occasionally, archways of fire would well up before breaking apart under their own tortuous escape. It took several seconds before the full horror of Scootaloo's situation hit her. Around her was nothing but air, and she was in free fall, heading towards what looked like the sun.
She made contact with the corona and quickly plunged through the chromosphere. Instinctively she held her breath and screwed her eyes shut, preparing her body to expect instant evaporation. Instead, she didn't burn. The most she felt was the kind of heat one enjoyed from a warm bath. After a pause of several seconds, she braved a brief peek through a sliver of an opening of one of her eyelids, and she realized, much to her relief, that she hadn't been vaporized.
Around her, the air had been colored deep red. In fact, red was all she saw. The scenery and ground below her had been replaced by the vibrant color, which danced in shimmery air as convection currents flowed past her. Red swirls, like growing roses or spinning pinwheels, churned about in the background, saturating the translucent part of Scootaloo's vision.
In the middle of this odd, crimson landscape of fire and plasma, Scootaloo found a bird, possibly the largest bird she had ever seen. It looked much like a large peacock, except its giant fan tail didn't possess eyelets, and the tail's feathers were of a single broad shape, not punctuated by the rhombuses that peacock tails were known for. Its plumage possessed various shades of bright orange, making it seem like it was almost a part of the fiery atmosphere. In fact, Scootaloo probably would've missed it if it hadn't been enveloped in a faint green, shimmering shell of light. It had its head bowed and tucked into its chest, its eyes firmly closed. Its feet were curled up, and its wings were gathered around itself.
The great orange bird of flames seemed to be sleeping in the fetal position, cradled by its womb of light, but that didn't stop Scootaloo from starting to lock up every single one of her major muscles out of sheer fright as her descent brought her past one of its large eyes. She figured the bird must've had a wing span of several hundred feet. She looked away as she was whisked past its face and started hoping that it would stay asleep.
As she headed towards the other side of the green shell surrounding the giant bird, a strange point of light appeared before her and hovered there, seemingly falling along with her. Her fear suddenly melted as she found herself captivated by this light, which seemed like a tiny star that had come to greet her. The light approached her chest, and upon making contact, blossomed into a full flower as streams of soft green light traced arcs around and through her body, with all the streams flowing towards the original star at the flower's center. When the light show was over, the star disappeared, and she found herself with her own shell of light surrounding her.
Her descent shot her out of the other end of the sun, and she seemed to be picking up speed as she fell towards the land below her. A faint purple light could be seen as shimmers in the air between her and the rolling hills below her. The light waved and traced moving patterns of no particular size or shape, much like patterns light produced when floating face down in a swimming pool. She was still high above the land, possibly miles above the land, but her free fall gave her little time to reacquaint herself with the scenery, as her vision was obstructed yet again. The forward edge of her shell started glowing white hot, and a bow shock of superheated air enveloped her, transforming her shell into a cone of flames, a veritable shooting star. Scootaloo had heard Miss Cheerilee talk about the reasons for how meteorites produced shooting stars when entering the atmosphere of Equestria. She must've gone into a daze during the lesson on surviving a fall from thirteen miles high.
As the mass of white air before her grew brighter and more intense, Scootaloo heard a hissing noise from behind her. Turning her head, she glanced behind her. All she saw was the darkness of outerspace behind the sun that she had miraculously fallen straight through. One patch of darkness seemed to deepen, almost as if it were possible for pitch black to get darker. At first she thought it curious that a patch of outerspace would get larger and deeper. Then her curiosity faded to terror when she realized that the darkness was actually getting closer to her.
As she watched, she saw a dark, reaching mass peel itself away from the background of space, and it was headed towards her. It seemed like a twisting, writhing dark arm. Then the arm changed shape and seemed like a tendril. Then the tendril split apart and became many tendrils. Before too long she saw an army of shadow snakes, all twisting and reaching and grabbing towards her. The shadows inched closer as she fell through the atmosphere. One of them touched her shell of light, then another, and a third. They snaked around and embraced the sphere of light surrounding her, searching for a way through.
Scootaloo's eyes became wide, and her mouth became slack as terror coursed through her body. "No! Stop!" she tried to scream through the roar of the flames around her.
The light in one patch of the protective shell seemed to fade, and a tiny sliver of the shadows found its way through. Tears streamed upwards from Scootaloo's eyes when she realized that, in free fall, she had nowhere to go. All she could do was watch in horror and let the shadows find their way to her. The tiny shadow snake breached the crack in the shell even farther and undulated towards one of her back legs. She watched it make contact with her leg, and she opened up her mouth to belt out a scream of horror but found herself drowned out by the roar of the flames around her. Then, her energy expended from screaming, she passed out. The last thing she heard before fading into unconsciousness was the sound of shattering, like that of glass being broken from a thrown baseball.
* * *
Even after feeling returned to Scootaloo's body, it took a moment for her brain to register to her that she was actually alive. She fluttered her eyelids open but saw only blurriness. The first thing her vision filtered in was the color blue, and she realized she was flat on her back and looking at the sky. The fuzz in her head slowly faded, and her eyes caught sight of a face looking down at her. As she tried to get her bearings, a feeling of relief washed over her, relief over being alive and breathing. She shifted her weight, trying to get a feel for where she was and heard something crack and grind, leaving her to wonder if she had made it out of her strange ordeal whole. Fearing she had broken something, she lay perfectly still and merely stared up at the sky. Her vision cleared completely and she saw the face again. It stared at her with big, red eyes set behind the most peculiar nose she had ever seen. The nose was long and slender and terminated in the most preposterously bulbous tip she had ever seen. Punctuating the tip was a strange keratinous protrusion that jutted down like an overbite. It took a while for Scootaloo to realize that she was staring at some kind of beak, on top of which lay an unglamorously short but lumpy dome of a head. The creature opened its mouth and out came words.
"Excuse me. But I do believe you've broken my finest porcelain tea set," the creature went.
Scootaloo rubbed her head. "Huh?" She suddenly remembered the fall and the strange shadows touching her and jerked upright, looking around in a panic. She saw no sign of the shadows but didn't recognize any of the trees. Worst of all, she couldn't find any of her friends or her teacher. Fearing she was lost and thinking back to her strange ordeal, she started to breathe rapidly and heavily. "Where am I? How did I get here? I wanna go home! I wanna go home!"
As Scootaloo glanced around and wheeled about, she stepped off the spot where she had landed and heard something hard clatter about. The creature winced as her awkward steps caused more pieces to break.
"I say. Watch where you're stepping."
Scootaloo stopped glancing about in fright and stilled her legs long enough to stare only at the creature for a time. "Where am I? How did I get here? Where's home? Where's Ponyville?" she asked it, gazing at it with sorrow in her eyes.
"Good Nadia. Look at this mess," the creature quipped gazing down at the ground underneath Scootaloo's feet, apparently showing more concern over the broken bits than Scootaloo's emotional distress.
Scootaloo stepped backwards as the creature approached and looked down. She finally saw where she had landed. Under her hooves, she spotted the remains of a china tea pot and some porcelain cups and a sizeable blue and white checkered blanket, which was spread out on the grass beneath. It seemed the creature was having a picnic for one. Scootaloo stepped off the broken china and sniffled. The creature glared at her, one eye narrowed and slightly twitching in a look of consternation.
"Just how are you going to pay for that? I was just about to make myself a proper Manechester breakfast, and you had to go and ruin it," the stranger exclaimed as he made a couple steps towards her.
The tears flowed freely from Scootaloo's eyes now, with her having been rendered a complete emotional mess from the approach of the stranger and his sudden anger. She was at a loss over where she was, why the strange creature before her was yelling at her, and what it was that she had done wrong. "Pay? I'm just a filly!" Scootaloo exclaimed through her sniffles. "I don't even know how I got here! Where am I? Who are you?"
As Scootaloo looked at the stranger through her tear-filled eyes, she processed in her mind what kind of creature was before her, whereas before she could only see the face. Only two legs, which were short but gangly, were below the creature, and they seemed to be leathery instead of covered in fur. The body was short, stocky, and rotund, with the chest coming up to the level of Scootaloo's nose. The most unusual feature, however, of the creature was that it sported a pair of stubby, seemingly unusable wings. It appeared to Scootaloo that she was looking at some kind of bird, but not a bird that she had ever seen before or even remembered learning about.
The stranger dragged a wingtip across the bridge of his snout, his beak being too long for his too short appendages. "Gah! Of all the inconceivable... Well I guess a proper introduction wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience." The strange bird pointed to his chest. "I'm a dodo. Actually, I'm THE dodo, the last of my kind. So if you prefer, you may simply call me Dodo. However, I have thought of a name that I would rather hear. It just came to me recently, and if I had my way, I would rather you call me Dodoringo Lamelle Esquire."
"Uh..." Scootaloo stammered, blinking the tears dry. "How about I just call you Ringo?"
There was a short pause as the dodo seemed at a loss for words. "Gnngh. Very well. Ringo it is. Now how, pray tell, shall I go about getting my tea set replaced? My breakfast was going to be oh so delicious, and I was about to prepare a rather bold tea." He tapped a feather against the side of his cheek as he pondered. "I don't suppose indentured servitude is out of the question."
Scootaloo took a couple awkward steps backwards. "I... I don't even know what that is." The dodo was starting to make her rather nervous. "I just want to find my way home. I don't even know where HERE is. I want to find my friends. I want to find a stupid chicken who stole my cookie!" Scootaloo gave a stomp in anger at her last sentence.
Ringo dropped his wing as his demeanor changed to one of amusement. He cocked his head to the side as he pondered Scootaloo's presence for a bit, and a smile escaped his face. "Is that little devil still around?" His smile faded when he noticed Scootaloo's querying stare. "Nevermind," he said with a shake of his head. "And where are my manners? You received the luxury of my name. Will you grace me with yours?"
"Uh..." Scootaloo balked at his peculiar way of talking. His mannerisms seemed rather familiar to her, but she couldn't endear herself to its unwieldy romanticisms. "My name's Scootaloo. I'm from Ponyville, and I'm..."
"Yes yes. I know what you are. You're a pegasus filly." Ringo clapped his stubby wings together. "Perfect!"
Scootaloo only grew more confused.
Ringo edged closer and placed his wings on both of Scootaloo's tiny shoulders. His smile was uncompromisingly broad. "I can help you, but you'll need to do something for me."
Scootaloo raised an eyebrow and shuffled a foreleg. "H-help you how? You're not mad about the tea set anymore?"
"Huh? Oh you're still paying for the tea set. That's part of what you're doing for me, but what I have in mind is much bigger than that." The strange creature glanced around before turning back towards Scootaloo, his smile suddenly gone, with a serious expression once again in its place. "Follow me, and I'll tell you on the way."
With a flourish, Ringo reached behind a large tree stump and produced a strange green carpet bag, with a brass clasp ringing the top. The metal frame came together in a hinge about a third of the way down from the bag, and the rest fanned out into a substantial triangle, giving the impression of sturdiness while providing a balance between portability and carrying space. Ringo undid the clasp and opened the top wide, cradling the bag under his right wing, which somehow proved amusing to Scootaloo, given the wings' short length.
"Yenu Interin!" the strange bird said.
In a flash, an envelope of light wrapped around the blanket and the remains of the tea set. Scootaloo could only stare in wonder as the blanket folded itself up with the porcelain shards still inside and promptly started shrinking in size. Her jaw dropped slightly when the folded blanket became the size of a postcard and entered the open carpet bag. In a precipitous puff of dust, Ringo snapped the bag shut.
"Whoa," Scootaloo exclaimed. "If you could do magic, how come you can't just use magic to fix the tea set?"
"Don't get any ideas," Ringo sniffed. "Reduction magic only decreases the amount of space between the molecules. Levitation is a relatively simple process. However, my good child, it would not be fitting to be in possession of a tea set that looked whole but possessed the structural integrity of a broken one. Once something is broken, it's broken. To my knowledge, I don't know of any way to keep the pieces held together." He then hefted the bag onto Scootaloo's back.
"Oof. Hey!" Scootaloo shouted, eyeballing first the bag on her back and then Ringo. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but I am not a pack mule!"
"You're earning your keep. Now come on." Then, in a single move that a stage magician would be proud of, Ringo reached over to a tiny sapling, upon which rested a cloak, and whirled it around his body until it draped completely around him. He drew the hood over his head, completely covering his face in darkness, including the end of his bulbous beak. Finally, he tied the drawstring tight across his wishbone.
The cloak possessed a prodigious length, coming down to near his knees, and a near cavernous hood. The outer color was an unassuming moss green, and the material looked to be almost waterproof. Scootaloo half-expected the cloak to be made of some kind of expensive material, given her companion's rather unusual, middle-of-the-nose accent and elaborate speech mannerisms. Instead, it seemed to be made of something like cashmere. What little she could see of the inner lining, however, through the darkness of the hood and the gap behind the drawstring, seemed to be made of a soft purple velvet material. Scootaloo couldn't even begin to guess why Ringo felt the need to disguise his body within the shadows of a cloak.
Ringo gave a brief glance around himself, but to Scootaloo it only looked like the opening of the hood swaying this way and that. When it seemed that the strange bird appeared satisfied, he motioned to Scootaloo and began walking through the woods. Scootaloo started following.
As Scootaloo walked, she silently glanced around, taking in her surroundings. The woods around her seemed little different from Whitetail Woods where she started her class outing, begrudgingly following Miss Cheerilee with the hope that she could enjoy a good picnic and play games with her friends like hop scotch or frisbee throwing. The woods here possessed the same mix of trees such as elm and maple, all decked in the same bright autumn colors she remembered before being swallowed up by a strange light and finding herself falling through the atmosphere and waking up being gawked at by a strange bird. In the back of her mind, she almost kind of wondered if she was still in Whitetail Woods, but the absence of her classmates and teacher, and indeed her harrowing trip through the sun, planted seeds of doubt that she was even still in Equestria. There was also something else.
Her gaze wandered upward. The sun blazed a bright orange, the same as Equestria's sun. The clouds were puffy and white, the same as Equestria's clouds. The sky was a light and uplifting shade of blue. As she stared, however, she spotted here and there amongst the backdrop of blue, brief flashes and shimmers of that same purple light she saw while in free fall. Nearly transparent and seeming much like the curtains of the heavens or an ethereal bed sheet of an angel, it was rather difficult to spot against the otherwise unblemished tapestry of the sapphire sky. The simple fact that the flashes of the purple light seemed to, more or less and for lack of a better word, rotate across the sky and in the shape of a dome gave Scootaloo the inkling that something was there. The tops of some of the taller clouds also melted into a soothing backlight of purple.
Scootaloo opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by Ringo.
"That's the outer swell," Ringo muttered succinctly, never stopping his walk nor turning his head.
Scootaloo lowered her gaze and returned it to the dodo, who walked several feet ahead of her, his head still shrouded by the hood. "The outer swell?" Scootaloo asked.
"A barrier of light. It protects us from..."
A shrill scream seemed to be carried on the light breeze, lifted from some far off distance through the trees and past the rocks and reaching Scootaloo's ears to chill her blood and send fright through her nerves. Instantly Ringo turned around, the trailing edges of his cloak fluttering open as he whirled, and he set his legs into a sprint, a remarkable feat for an animal so stubby, and with his wings, grabbed Scootaloo, startling her as he dragged her behind some rather prominent boulders. Ringo, using a forceful gesture, urged Scootaloo to stay behind the boulders and inconspicuous, but upon seeing Ringo peer around the edge of their hiding spot, she couldn't repress the urge to satisfy her curiosity and look herself.
Her eyes widened when she spotted a simple wanderer, a middle-aged goose, burst through the bushes in a state of absolute panic. The goose's terrified running was still some distance off and didn't take her any closer to where Scootaloo and Ringo hid, so Scootaloo mused that the goose remained unaware of where they were. Scootaloo got the notion to call out to the goose, but the filly's voice died in her throat when a mass of shadows, much like the tendrils she remembered attacking her, emerge from the treeline in the direction of a clearing and seemed to gallop over the leaf strewn ground, rolling effortlessly over rocks and earth banks and dividing to flow around trees only to merge back together on the other side. Watching the shadows was very much like watching a stream flow over a bed of pebbles, rippling and coursing into rope-like shapes along the way. However, a stream of water usually brought refreshment and pleasant reminisces. Watching the mass of shadows raging through the woods brought a chill of fear to Scootaloo, and she couldn't help but clench her jaws tight for fear of crying out. Other parts of her body locked up as well, not the least of which were her wings.
Despite seeming to be little more than darkness and moving air, the movements of the shadows suggested to Scootaloo a possession of sentience, of an awareness or intelligence that guided the darkness towards ways most unnatural. A flurry of feathers caught the wind caused by the goose's frightful escape and ripped themselves from her body and tail. She struggled to maintain her distance as she ran, her short legs and webbed feet near useless for sprints. She pumped her wings like mad, seemingly trying to take flight, but by a visible lump in a right wing, Scootaloo knew a bone there was broken.
The goose tripped over an unseen obstacle, and Scootaloo had to stifle a gasp as the bird noisily skidded along rocks on the front of her chest, her beak bouncing along rough spots in the ground and carving a groove in the soil once she had slowed to a halt. Reflexively, the goose whirled around onto her back and held up her good wing across her face, not realizing it did nothing to shield her from the impending attack.
"No!" came the single shrill cry from the goose, a cry that wasn't even allowed to fade, cut short where it lay uttered as the shadows pounced.
Scootaloo felt the need to avert her gaze, but her eyes remained locked in place, tears streaming down her cheeks as she witnessed the horrible sight. The shadows wreathed the poor goose, much like flames would wreathe a log in a roaring hearth. No more sound came from the creature, but deep within the pitch black of the shadows, Scootaloo could see a shape that was colored a lighter gray, with a mouth open like it was emitting a scream of agony. The edges of the shape frayed and blurred, much like tissue paper being ripped apart, before completely disintegrating as the shadow gave one final triumphant whirl and then took to the skies, scattering apart to the far corners of the land. A tiny patch of scorched earth was the only sign anything, living or otherwise, had ever been there.
Scootaloo and Ringo remained behind the boulder for a time even after the ordeal was over, a sense of cautiousness compelling them to ensure that it was well and truly safe. After some silence had passed, Scootaloo finally collapsed, the weight of keeping her limbs locked in fear finally catching up to her.
"Wha...?" Scootaloo tried to choke out in a raspy voice, but her throat failed her as she felt like she had been gargling sand. After a couple swallows, Scootaloo found her voice and tried again. "What in the hay was that?"
Ringo stepped out from behind the boulder and folded his hood back as he stared first at the scorch mark and then at the sky. His red eyes shimmered with wetness as he swallowed a lump.
"Ringo!" Scootaloo exclaimed after the silence became unbearable. "Quit leaving me in the dark! What's going on here?"
The dodo let two solitary tears drift away before turning towards Scootaloo. "That was a force called 'Dark Wind'. But it... it was supposed..." He turned back towards the scorch mark and suffered another choke. "I don't understand," he said, his voice trailing away.
"What happened to the goose?" Scootaloo asked as she stepped forward, her own sorrow almost threatening to overwhelm her.
"Gone, I imagine. She's one of the lucky ones."
"The lucky ones?!" Scootaloo exclaimed. "That goose just got vaporized into thin air! What happens to the ones who aren't so lucky?!"
Ringo knelt down and touched the dark ash on the ground once before shaking his head in sadness and standing up to draw his hood forward. "You don't want to know," came his only reply.
The dodo started walking forwards again, which left Scootaloo perturbed again as she liked neither the walking nor the somber silence, and she felt like she was being strung along on something of which she understood little. Left with little options, however, she gave up trying to make sense of everything and started following Ringo again.
Their travels took them past many trees, mostly elms and maples. Scootaloo recalled a lesson from Cheerilee in which she said that the age of the tree was determined by its size and thickness of bark, and as she looked around, she noticed all of the trees were, while tall, rather thin and with an absence of the gnarled and twisting branches on the bigger trees. She felt it unusual that there wasn't a single aged tree to be found anywhere, unlike Whitetail Woods, which had many trees of a wide variety of types and across a full spectrum of sizes.
Scootaloo couldn't be bothered to wonder about the ecology of her surroundings for too long. She was too preoccupied with thoughts about her strange situation. Then, the more they walked, the more her thoughts melted into melancholy boredom. To entertain herself, she surveilled her surroundings once more. Nothing about the landscape looked familiar to her. Behind her, partially shrouded by a gathering of mist, rose a smattering of small mountains, dressed royally in purples and the golds of the trees near the more gradual slopes and crowned by a hat of clouds. The landscape around her seemed to gradually descend away from the mountains, so gradually that the land almost seemed level. It was far from flat, however. The two of them walked past rises and dips in the contours of the land and outcroppings that harbored animal dens. The picturesque beauty brought a slight smile to Scootaloo's face, but it wasn't enough to kill her increasing weariness.
After about an hour of walking, or it could've been several for all Scootaloo knew, her gait became like molasses, and she finally gave up and collapsed on the ground. Ringo gave her a brief glance and then drew back his hood, eyeballing an ugly tree stump.
"I could've sworn we had passed by this stump before," Ringo uttered, his right wing tapping the narrow bridge of his beak in thought.
Upon hearing this revelation, Scootaloo lifted her head, but just barely. "We've been going around in circles?!" she exclaimed, her voice cracking from exertion. "How is that even possible?" Her head slumped back on the ground again. "I give up. I'm too tired of walking. I've been walking even since before I crash landed on this dumb world."
Ringo lifted his gaze towards the sun. It slinked off towards the western skies, crowning the trees in the distance in a blaze of orange.
The dodo chuckled. "Dumb world. A perfectly apt analysis, I should say. Well nevermind. It's getting kind of late. We should make camp here."
"Get this stupid bag off me, then."
Ringo gave a sharp turn and pulled his carpet bag off the back of the cranky filly. "Rather contentious, aren't you?"
With an audible snap, Scootaloo's companion opened up the carpet bag and hauled out what seemed to be a miniature futon, which to the amazement of Scootaloo, started expanding in size until it was the proper dimensions for Ringo to lounge on.
As the dodo stretched out his wings while lying on the futon, he allowed a yawn to stuff his words. "Well I don't know about you, young lady, but..." He staved off a bout of drifting for a moment to finish his conversation. "I like sleeping under the stars. This cloak is blanket enough for my frame."
Scootaloo's eyes shimmered with eager anticipation, which faded when the only reply was Ringo turning his back to her. She frowned and stuck her nose inside the carpet bag, left still open, but this move proved to be unwise with disheartening results, as Ringo promptly reached over and snapped the clasp shut on the tip of Scootaloo's nose.
Scootaloo grabbed the end of her nose and started soothing it as several tears streamed from her eyes. "Ow," she muttered. After her pain had subsided, she gave Ringo a hard stare. "What about me?"
The bird sat up, turned around, folded back his hood and glared at her. "Excuse me, my fair lass, but what gave you the impression that I was expecting a tagalong, one who inexplicably and inexcusably landed on my rather expensive porcelain tea set, such that I carry around a spare bed in my carpet bag?"
Scootaloo pointed an accusing hoof at the bird. "Well YOU were the one who dragged me along on this 'indentured servitude' thing."
"That is a fair point, but it doesn't change the fact that this singular bedding is all I possess with that function. It shouldn't get too cold tonight. Go find a pile of leaves to sleep on."
Scootaloo pulled the corners of her mouth into a pout, but she soon looked around for a place to sleep.
"And don't even think about running away. I know some pretty good immobilization spells," came the voice of Ringo from behind Scootaloo's back as she picked out a mound of leaves and walked towards it.
She settled down into the pile of leaves, worming her body around the way a cat would to create an indentation to nestle down in. After fidgeting around for a few seconds, she finally found a comfortable position and curled up, briefly giving the twilight sky a look. The color of the sky was a mellow orange near the horizon that melted to deeper purples closer to the tops. Higher up, a few stars came twinkling out to play. As sleep overtook her body, a powerful longing for her parents burned in her heart, as she realized this was the first night she had ever fallen asleep without the knowledge that they were nearby and there for her. Several tears fell from her eyes as she fluttered them closed.
* * *
No, daddy! Don't!
Scootaloo's sleep was interrupted by her troubled dreams, and her eyes snapped open, only to see little more than the deep shadows of the trees around her. The twinkling stars above told her that it was still night. She breathed out once and shivered against the chill. The air didn't freeze her, but the cold was sufficient to make sleep uncomfortable, and her emotions didn't help keep her warm, either.
She lifted her head and spotted the lumpy shadow of the futon with Ringo curled up on it.
"Ringo?" she called, keeping her voice low.
All she heard was snoring. He was fast asleep. With a newfound determination, she slowly rose to her feet, trying to keep the rustling of the leaves to a minimum. She pursed her lips as she pondered her strange companion. She wondered if she should tag along for a bit because she realized he had saved her life and she felt a little shame over breaking his tea set. However, it didn't change the fact that he was trying to keep her captive.
"Hmph. Indentured servitude. I don't know what dentures have to do with anything, but I am NOT being anypony's servant."
Having made up her mind, she slinked away, tiptoeing past Ringo as he snored. In the deep shadows of night, everything blended together, and her sense of distance perception was completely off. Every rock and tree and bush looked like a lumpy black morass with fuzzed edges. Every rise and dip and tripping point in the land all seemed to smooth together in the darkness of night. She had to be careful where she stepped. Not knowing the area well, she decided to just follow the moon, as it provided the only source of light for her.
The moon here didn't seem all that different from Princess Luna's moon back in Equestria. Perhaps it seemed a tiny bit smaller. It currently made its trek across the sky in its first quarter phase. Despite not being able to see one half of the orb, she didn't recognize any of the seas on its surface. Listening in on Twilight during her "astronomy outings" had sown into Scootaloo a basic knowledge of picking out the seas on Equestria's moon, and none of them could be found on the moon she currently saw, finally cementing her belief that she was no longer anywhere on Equestria. She also saw something else out there among the moon. It appeared as sort of a red haze around one edge of the moon's otherwise silver halo. As she stared, she could've sworn she saw the tiniest sliver of what looked like a second moon, trying to peek out from behind the moon in front.
Scootaloo turned her attention back towards walking without bumping into or tripping over something. As she walked, she suddenly wished she had at least brought along her Cutie Mark Crusaders' cape. She would've welcomed what little warmth and comfort it brought her. As her situation stood, the chill air was getting to her and causing goosebumps to form on her body. The chill in her body, however, soon gave away to a chill in her heart. A primal fear rose up within her when she heard a loud moaning and whooshing sound, almost as if the wind developed a life of its own and had decided to taunt her. Fearing the Dark Wind hid in the deep shadows of the night and would soon come take her life, she glanced about this way and that, looking fearfully at every rock, tree, and shadow for any sign of danger.
The sound seemed to multiply and grow louder. The very air seemed to confuse and misdirect her, as it carried the sound all around her on echoes off of the trees. Unable to pinpoint where the danger lay, she reached the conclusion that danger was all around her. Sweat poured from her body, and her breathing became rapid and shallow. She imagined that every shadow seemed to want to swallow her up, and the woods suddenly took on a menacing tone to her frightened imagination. The trees no longer seemed friendly but instead took on patches of darkness that twisted to form howling mouths and penetrating eyes. The ends of the branches seemed to become dagger-like fingers that reached for her, seeking to snatch her up. Scootaloo found that the longer the moaning went on around her, the more difficult it became to repress the urge to break into a run.
The wind suddenly changed direction yet again, and Scootaloo heard another moan, but one that seemed very close and of a higher pitch than what she had been hearing so far. She turned her head and saw a mass of shadows crest the top of a small hill behind her. This black morass seemed different from the Dark Wind that had taken the wandering goose. It had lumbered up the hill, like a black bear would when on the prowl, and it didn't possess the same whirling, chaotic etherealness, although she still had trouble making out a defined outline. What came next, though, threatened to draw all of the air out of her lungs, as the black shape gave her two definite things that attracted her eyes' focus. Tiny red points of light sprouted up in a high spot on the shape, or perhaps rather they flared up, silently and ghost-like. The points of light even flickered and danced like flames, and Scootaloo realized to her horror that they were eyes.
Another black shape appeared. Two more eyes.
Then another set of eyes.
Then another.
An element of black shapes, each with two burning, searching red eyes, stood behind her on top of that lone hill, and a chorus of moaning filled the air. Scootaloo wanted to cry, but she knew it would only result in her being swarmed and killed. She instead broke into a run. The whooshing started again, and she imagined that whatever creatures were behind her were giving chase.
Scootaloo's legs pumped and flexed and pushed at the ground faster than she had ever known. Her hooves hit hard rocks and raised tree roots, and she pushed her way through brambles and undergrowth. She stumbled many times but always got up to continue running, despite her diminished vision. It wasn't long, however, before she became covered in cuts and bruises and fatigue burned her lungs, threatening to slow her down.
A whooshing and moaning noise assaulted her right ear, uncomfortably close, and before she knew what had happened, she felt a powerful blow from her right side. She was pitched sideways, and a dip in the land took her by surprise. She tumbled down the embankment, colliding with every single pinecone, small tree, and boulder that seemed to be on the slope on the way down. As her vision whirled end over end, she could see that she was falling towards a small river. At the bottom lay a rocky bank, skirting the near side of the river. The collision came full force, and an electric jolt of pain lanced up her right side with a low crack. She moaned out in pain and kept still as the throbbing in the injury began. She dared not move, but another round of whooshing could be heard above her. She turned her head ever so slightly just in time to see the black shapes jet down the embankment with supernatural speed. As they reached the bottom and got closer to her, Scootaloo could see that behind the burning eyes, the shapes resembled shadowy wolves, but their movement and speed were extraordinary and unnatural.
Staring at her imminent doom square in the eyes, Scootaloo felt a powerful desire to live well up from deep within. This power manifested itself in a need to shout. The creatures lurched ever closer, pressing dark, shadowy feet to the ground.
"No! Stay back! Keep away!" Scootaloo exclaimed at the monsters.
Her words echoed off the rocks and trees, and Scootaloo was amazed at the power and volume in which they left her lungs. She suddenly felt a pulsing and radiating warmth on her back, and she no longer felt the chill of the air. The creatures stepped back a few steps, balking as if on retreat, but the exertion of shouting took its toll on her body, and she nearly fainted. The wolves saw their opportunity and lurched forwards, but then jumped back again as Scootaloo heard a series of low thuds. It took a while for her to realize what was unfolding around her, as she drifted in and out of consciousness, but she soon realized that the wolves were getting assaulted by a flurry of rocks. One wolf received a blow square on the nose, and it yelped in pain, which gave Scootaloo some satisfaction.
As light crept past the trees with the coming dawn, a strange new shadow leaped in among the wolves like a sudden hurricane. Scootaloo's vision became blurry again as it became increasingly more difficult to maintain her consciousness, but she could see that the stranger seemed to wave about a wooden sword, striking at the wolves with an impressive flourish and keeping them at bay.
Finally Scootaloo couldn't keep her presence of mind any longer, but as she drifted into unconsciousness, she thought she felt her rescuer pick her up and talk to her.
"Honk!" came the last thing she heard before sleep overtook her.