Her Forest

by AliziaRoElier

Evasion

The troupe of six ponies and a human walked through the forest toward what Day assumed was the town of Ponyville. They traveled in silence, except for when Day would speak up to warn them away from the random obstruction or hidden hazard one of the ponies were about to blunder into. As they walked, Day realized more fully just how ill suited they were for the forest - almost exaggeratedly so. Every small noise caused them to shy nervously closer to each other, they were completely oblivious to the small markers around and beneath them that signaled a creature's burrow or the blatant markings wolf packs left behind to mark borders with other packs. After the tenth time having to direct them around the forest Day could feel the its irritation merge with his own. He stopped and let out a frustrated growl.

“Why don’t I lead for now. I can tell the general direction we need to go in and you six are disturbing everything...” Pinkie Pie bounced around him in a circle.

“Okey dokey lokey! I’m sure the forest doesn’t like us messing everything up right, girls?” She looked at her friends expectantly. Any objections they might have given were immediately quashed.

“It’ll be faster anyway. You need to be out of the forest by nightfall.” He started walking towards the forest border again and deftly maneuvered around the landscape, “Step where I do exactly. It’ll be easier that way.”

Their pace picked up considerably when Day didn’t need to constantly stop them from wandering. His irritation faded and he decided to strike up conversation.

“So, why are you all here in the forest? You couldn’t have come in without noticing the forest is blatantly trying to make you leave.”

Twilight spoke from immediately behind him. Day resisted the urge to jump away.

“This morning, I received a letter from Princess Celestia. She felt a large surge of solar energies coming from the Everfree forest and since Ponyville is on its border she wanted the six of us to investigate. We were gathering supplies for our mission when the entire forest started going into an uproar. I wouldn’t be surprised if everypony in Canterlot heard the forest and they’re a hundred miles away. You wouldn’t happen to know about that would you?”

Day rolled his eyes though the ponies behind couldn’t see, “Nah, totally wouldn’t. Link to the forest. Coincident story. Nope. Can’t think of a connection.” Belatedly, he hoped his sarcasm wouldn’t offend anyone too badly.

Twilight remained silent for a moment before commenting, “You’re very strange. You know that?”

Day walked silently for a few minutes. He could feel six sets of eyes on him while they waited for him to reply. Internally, he attempted to puzzle out the unicorn’s meaning. There were so many ways he could interpret her statement. He decided to go for the most obvious. “Well... yeah. I know for a fact that if it were any other day I would be curled up in a ball right now completely insane and crying my eyes out. I’m not sure exactly why I’m not so freaked out by all this at the moment, but I’ll figure it out eventually. Unless that wasn’t what you were referring to?” Silence followed his statement.

~%~

The group behind him breathed a collective sigh of relief when they suddenly burst out of the dense underbrush of the untamed forest onto a worn dirt path. Day guessed it was the path they used to enter the forest in the first place before abandoning it to find him deeper into the forest.

“Um... pardon me...” Day almost didn’t hear the small whispery voice addressing him. He wasn’t even sure it was actually meant for him, so he turned around and looked at the group expectantly. The only two ponies that hadn’t spoken yet were the yellow pegasus that almost started crying earlier and the white unicorn that had disliked sitting near the lagoon.

“Excuse me...” Day turned his attention to the yellow pegasus. He wasn’t too sure, but it seemed like she was shivering. Day wondered if he was really that scary, he wasn’t even blue anymore. Fluttershy took a breath to steady herself and asked her question, “Umm... how... is there a way to learn more about the forest?”

The forest’s interest spiked and Day looked around at the trees. It was difficult sorting through what the forest wanted. It was conflicted. Day tried to filter out the background noise and focus on the pegasus, “I don’t know. But is this really the time? We’re right near the edge. Let’s get you all to safety then we can deal with this again.”

Fluttershy nodded silently but didn’t hide behind her hair again. Day decided to take that as a sign of victory or something like that. He turned around and started walking down the path.

“How did this path get here? The forest knows what it is but hasn’t actually reclaimed it... which is weird. I’m getting the impression the forest will always retake its own land if someone upsets it.”

Once again, Twilight was the one to answer his question, “The path leads to the Castle of the Sun and the Moon. “

Day waited for an explanation that would actually mean something to him but as the minutes ticked by and the forest exit came into view he realized that Twilight considered her answer to be a complete explanation. When they all stepped past the border of the forest, Day turned around.

“You know, that doesn’t mean anything to me right? There are twenty seven structures inside the forest. All ruins.”

The creepy look was back. In the back of his mind, he knew that the unicorn probably didn’t mean anything by it. Sure, it looked like he was being stripped with her eyes and sure her eyes were extremely odd in and of themselves but he couldn’t stop the part of him that squirmed from the close scrutiny. He held up a hand to stop the question forming on her lips.

“No. I’m not taking you anywhere near them. I don’t think you understand just how much the forest doesn’t like you. You’d be dead before the first night even ended. Painfully dead.”

“Oh yeah! We went all the way to the castle Twilight mentioned and back without a scratch! Explain that!” Rainbow Dash once again zoomed forward to hover aggressively in Day’s face. She didn’t even need to hover so high this time as he was in his human form.

Day consulted the forest for a moment and received an odd answer. He received the barest impression of a thousand years previously, when a powerful being asked for a future boon and alliance. It was familiar, like a blurry picture where the outline reminded him of a close friend.

Day spoke slowly and uncertainly, “There was... a covenant?... some kind of pact that the forest was bound to. It wasn’t allowed to hurt you. In return... it received... something... room to expand maybe? Something like that...”

“But what about all the obstacles we faced? The tree’s and the bridge and everything else?” Twilight once again was the one to ask the questions. Day shrugged helplessly, “Not sure what you’re talking about. The forest explicitly had nothing to do with you while you were within. It didn’t help or hinder you it just... existed.”

The group made their way toward the town that sprawled at the base of the hill the Everfree resided on. As they made their way down, Day started to feel unease from his distance to the forest. It was still there, present and alive, feeding him information as before but it was like he was reading faded out words in on second rate paper. It was harder and harder to understand as he moved away. Unwillingly, he had to come to a stop. He turned to look at the forest. As delicately as he could, he probed the connection to find out why he was unable to go farther.

The ponies were looking at him and he raised a hand just in case they were going to say something. Day’s uncomfortably stretched connection to the forest took longer than usual to tell him what was wrong. The forest was afraid.

Day took a few steps back to the forest and felt the link marginally grow clearer. He turned to look at the ponies, “I... don’t think I can follow you all. The forest is... not letting me go yet.” Day concentrated again, “Maybe in a few days I’ll be able to leave. Maybe. Once the forest gets over its... abandonment issues...?” The feelings the forest were sending him were much clearer when he examined them more closely. “I didn’t think that was possible...”

Outside of the forest, it seemed like Day had a separate set of emotions - something he hadn’t even realized he was missing while they’d been in the Everfree. They weren’t all too strong, but he could feel them there waiting to come to full force. It was a curious sensation having three separate sources of emotion. Each was distinct... the first set was from the forest and he could easily tell where it came from, not that it really helped him untangle it from the second set of emotions. Those he could tell came from him, or rather they were of this new body he had acquired. They were intimately wrapped with the forest and only the faintest divide separated the two. Sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways between himself and the forest were what allowed them their connection and they were absolutely required for him to function.

The last set of emotions were different. They were distant and they felt alien to him, but they were familiar. He knew what they were of course and he wasn’t very surprised to feel them - they were his human emotions. The part of his mind that could never be changed, the part he’d been born into and lived for so long, they were him and yet not and he really didn’t know quite how to process them anymore. The dual sensation of familiarity and detachment was confusing. He was aware of all the emotion he should be feeling but it was like reading about them in a book in the place of a narrator rather than a character. He could feel the panic, anger, revulsion, resentment, and fear were there but he was detached from them.

His self-examination only lasted a few seconds before he had to pay attention to the ponies in front of him. Apparently, something in his expression as he dove inward had tipped them off that something was wrong. He took a few steps back to establish his connection to the forest more fully. As he suspected, it helped him mask his human emotions by a fraction, just enough for him to be able to think clearly.

“It looks like I’ll be staying in the forest after all...” Day started, “At least sleeping on the ground won’t be uncomfortable anymore.”

Pinkie bounced to his side, “It doesn’t bother you at all?” The rest of the ponies probably thought she was talking about having to stay in the forest but Day knew better. She had a knack for knowing things she should not.

“I’m... not sure. I wasn’t expecting this. Well, I was but I didn’t think I’d...” He trailed off uncertainly. He took another few steps back in the direction of the forest. Consequently, his formerly human emotions faded further. In the back of his mind, he knew he was doing so as an escape. He REALLY didn’t want to deal with those emotions. It would be painful and messy, basically all kinds of unpleasant.

“You all should go. This is about as far as I can get from the forest and it’s a bit close for comfort for you all seeing as the forest is still planning on trying to kill you.” His inner turmoil was affecting his judgment and he couldn't help his blunt presentation of the forest’s intentions.

The yellow pegasus spoke up, “Well... you see... I live right on the edge of the forest... you could... stay with me.”

Day blinked, “Wait. You live on the forest’s edge and you haven’t been eaten? Or attacked?” He thought back to the forest’s interest in Fluttershy’s request to learn how to communicate with it. The conflicted feelings suddenly made more sense. Despite loathing creatures like her, it knew that she was different from them. He gave her a far more interested look than before, suddenly she wasn't just a shy pony on the sidelines. He didn’t even realize his gaze was eerily familiar to Twilight’s. Fluttershy hid behind her hair.

The white unicorn spoke for the first time, “That doesn’t seem proper, Fluttershy. You can’t just invite stallions to your home unsupervised.” The emphasis she placed on the last word forced an indignant sound from him.

“Hey! It’s not like I’m going to steal from her or something!” Day felt legitimately insulted.

“She doesn’t mean that silly! She means that you’re going to go all -” Pinkie stood on two legs and her expression changed to the single most terrifying thing he’d ever seen. It was like she’d taken Twilight’s expression and plastered it on her own face with a twist of malice and a promise of insanity. He felt mortally afraid for his sexual continuance.

As suddenly as she’d assumed it, her expression changed back to her usual playful grin. She completely ignored Day as he tried to restart his heart and chirped, “Don’t worry Rarity. Any pooooosibility of that happening is long gone now!” She looked back at him and her terrifying expression was back for an instant before disappearing. He was unable to get his heart to start correctly. The other ponies, who had not seen Pinkie’s rapeface, wondered why Day was pale as a sheet and trembling. In some small corner of his mind, he couldn’t help but marvel at Pinkie’s ability to throw him through a loop.

“Uhh. R-r-right.” Day confirmed haltingly. It occurred to him that he should feel more insulted than before but he couldn’t. He turned to his only means of escape.

“Which way to your house?”

Author's Note:

Comments

[Cadmium]

Its going to be interesting when he meets the Celestia from this time.

[TheTownCrier]

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. It's the only sane choice.

[AliziaRoElier]

2184208 I'm a bit split about how he should react to Celestia. Or rather, how him, his human emotions, and his forest will twist him to act.