//------------------------------// // Ch. 4 - Family History // Story: Child of Nightmares and Everfree // by Georg //------------------------------// Child of Nightmares and Everfree Family History Sergeant Sunshine Symphony was fairly unused to the concept of being alone. The clan where he had grown up had dozens of adults in the house and a fairly large cascade of foals of various ages, leaving him relatives of various types within sight range all the way through school and into the Royal Guard Academy. Even his fellow driver, Light Breeze, was a cousin several degrees separated who visited his clan house on a near weekly basis. As he walked down the path which led to Zecora’s forest home, he was really starting to wish he was alone. The old saying ‘The night has a thousand eyes’ seemingly underestimated the optical quality of a good, dark Everfree walk, as well as the number of assumed teeth and fangs associated with the unseen watchers. Sunshine had started his journey along the well-trod path at a casual walk, which had picked up to a fairly innocuous trot in short order once the forest canopy had closed over his head and his acute night vision could pick out the movements of creatures in the shadows. Friends with Fluttershy or not, if anything attacked him during his short-but-seeming-awfully-long-now trip, he was going to buck it in the face with armored hooves just as powerfully as he could, but some unspoken truce seemed to keep the dark creatures at bay until he came to a forest clearing with a single tree lurking in the middle. It had to be Zecora’s house. Although the Everfree journals he had read described habilis ficus, or the Convenient Hollow Tree as a noted species inside the Everfree Forest, it was a wild version of the domestic quercus bibliotheca, the Library Oak, and quite rare. The academic papers had been quite vague on that point, but the Royal Guard briefing materials about Ponyville specified Zecora’s special status as a non-citizen who was to be given the utmost of deference. The phrase had been underlined three times. Just exactly why such special attention was paid to a seemingly low-income herbalist and alchemist was more than a little fuzzy, but as a Royal Guard he had faced much stranger orders. Still, he could not think of any of them while looking at the fierce Zebrican masks and dangling bottles outside of the ominous tree. There was a lamp lit inside the hut or Sunshine would most probably have just bolted back down the pathway just as fast as his wings and hooves would drive him. Instead, he slipped up to the open window and peeked inside to get a sense of what he was getting into. The living area of the tree looked smaller on the inside, a mixture of cosy and creepy which raised the hair all across his back and sent little prickles of ice around his hocks. A large iron pot in the center of the room bubbled with some dark green ichor which should have smelled chemical and vile, but actually made his nose twitch and a faint growl come floating up from the vicinity of his stomach. Or at least he hoped that was his stomach. The rest of the cosy room in the hollow tree was decorated in what he could not help but think of as Neo-Classical Zebrican Overabundance with a hint of Ponyville Chic, due to a few tasteful unicorn wall hangings. Wooden bowls and colorful gourds crammed nearly every flat space inside the hut that did not have a lit candle or terrifying mask, with a few open books scattered here and there for reference material, or possibly hints on where to find things in the confusing area. He was just getting ready to go knock on the door when a zebra mare abruptly appeared in the window, nearly eye-to-eye with him and just far enough away that her brief scream of fright momentarily deafened Sunshine. The door fairly sprung open afterwards, with Zecora looking quite sternly at him and admonishing, “Oh, my heart! You gave me quite a start.” “I’m sorry, Miss Zecora,” said Sunshine, trying to look in all directions at once just in case the scream were to attract things he really did not want to see attracted. “The Elements of Harmony said you were informed about my wife and daughter’s disappearance and the sighting I had of her…” He paused, thinking. It seemed like so much had gone on in the last day. Was it only one night ago he had seen her? The memory of Emerald Dreams’ flight from him was already starting to fade like a dream, but those terrified green eyes still burned somewhere deep in his soul. The zebra gestured him inside. “Yes, yes, the sighting of your daughter last night which gave those of us who heard you quite a fright. Come in, my troubled friend, and tell me the story of your plight, for I see your pain, and wish to set things right.” The zebra listened to his story with a few uh-huh’s and the occasional nod, although she pushed a bowl of split pea soup into his hooves when his concentration started to fade about halfway through the story and would not let him talk until he had finished off a second, as well as a few vegetables he had never seen before and a great deal of water. “Proceed, noble steed,” she said once he had finished eating, and listened again until he finished talking. It was surprising just how much of his personal history had come bursting out in front of the strange mare, and he found himself telling things which he had never even told his therapist. It was both embarrassing and highly embarrassing, but he sat quietly after he was done and waited for the zebra, which took some time. “So after searching without result for your runaway bride, you thought my home was a place for your loved ones to hide.” “I had considered it,” said Sunshine. “The more I thought about it, the less likely it was. Emerald Dreams was headed deep into the forest, not in this direction at all. She was fleeing to her home, and if my wife is anywhere to be found, it will be roughly along the vector she was headed. I’m really not sure why I came out here, but I’m willing to try anything to get them back.” Zecora nodded. “I seem to be a slim reed upon which to place your parental need, but if it’s all you got—” “—It’s worth a shot,” said Sunshine, although with a sudden glance at the zebra to make sure he had not angered her by stepping on her lines. He was tired and a certain nasty streak of passive-aggressiveness tended to leak out whenever he got less than an hour’s sleep in a day. Zecora nodded again. “While I have not seen your daughter or her keeper, I agree that into the forest, you must go deeper. What you need to point you in the right direction to guide you to the pony of your affection is somepony who knows what secrets are concealed, and who to talk with for them to be revealed.” “That’s a lot of help,” said Sunshine, and after a long moment of silence from Zecora, he added, “That’s sarcasm.” “It is as you say,” said the zebra, moving to open her front door to the unwelcoming darkness outside. “So you should be on your way.” “Thank you, Miss Zecora,” said Sunshine as he moved to the offered door. “If I ever find myself without a headache, I know where to go to get one.” “One last thing before you go,” said Zecora once he was safely outside. “Remember, all you see may not be so.” Then the door to the mysterious mare’s odd house closed and Sunshine began his brisk trot back to Ponyville, taking his headache with him. ~^^~ “Come on, Mama!” Dee fluttered ahead of her mother, darting among the treetops and snapping at the tiny moths rising up with the disturbed air of her passage. “We’ve been flying this way forever.” Her mother did not respond at first, flapping along with short strokes of her membranous wings while squinting down into the forest canopy. “It’s been a long time,” said Mama after a few more short wingstrokes. “I’m not sure where it was any more. There is a stone lizard guarding the place. A dangerous lizard. You must not look at it.” “I’m not afraid of some dumb lizard,” squeaked Dee with a quick loop. “I’m fast and quick. I’ll bop it on the nose and—” Mama abruptly turned and began flapping the other direction, leaving Dee to chase after her. “Wait up!” “We’re not going,” said Mama. “I don’t want to lose…” Her rapid wingstrokes strengthened as she increased her speed, and for a while, it was all Dee could do to keep up. “I’ll obey, Mama,” squeaked Dee just as soon as she could get her breath. “I’ll stay away from the dumb old lizard. Please? I just want to know.” As her mother flew on, Dee slowed to a hover over the top of a broad-spread tree and hung her head, eventually sinking down until she could stand on a sturdy branch without her useless hard feet skidding off the bark. The cool breeze blew through Dee’s unnaturally thick neck hair and brought a chill to her coat while she stood there in the brilliant moonlight. Mama was always brave and protected her little Dee from any danger. She never fled from anything, not even the fierce Owls. This was the first time she had ever fled, and she was flying away from Dee. It was unfair. All of the other batlings looked like their mothers, with long, thin fingers and normal flat faces instead of her long muzzle. They grew up fast, getting larger wings and higher voices until Dee could barely hear them, as the cute little balls of fuzz who rode on their mothers’ back turned to Dee’s size, and then so much larger just like Mama. They did not need to have their mothers lie down awkwardly to cuddle up for the day’s sleep. They did not look like all of the monsters in the distant city. They did not have a hairy tail, or six limbs instead of a more normal four, or— The gust of a nearby flier made Dee look up in a panic, but it was not an Owl as she feared. Her mother swooped down and clutched onto a branch above Dee, turning to look her odd daughter in the eyes as she hung in a more comfortable fashion for The Folk, and in a way Dee could never duplicate, no matter how many times she tried and wound up on her head instead. Her mother reached out one long-fingered hand and ran it through Dee’s shaggy pelt. The wide membranous wing that came with it gently brushed up against Dee’s side, and she raised her own broad wing to press against it. Even there, she was different, as her mother’s wing was softer and warmer than Dee’s rough surfaces, which were always dry and itched, no matter how much she or her mother licked them. “I don’t want to show you,” said Mama. “Please?” Dee lifted a clumsy foreleg and touched it to her mother’s damp face, brushing away a tear. “You said it would help me understand why the monsters in the city look so much like me. I want to know. I have to know.” “No,” said Mama. “Come back with me to Home and we shall hunt powdermoths tonight until you cannot eat any more. Then I will groom you and hold you and—” Dee bolted from the tree limb and began flying again, gliding along with almost negligible twitches of her long dark wings. Her mother followed with a series of quick flaps, catching up to her daughter and calling out, “Dee? What are you doing?” “I’m looking for a lizard,” snapped Dee. “I want to see what you’re so afraid of.” “No!” called out Mama. “It will turn you into stone and break you into pieces!” “How do you know, Mama?” shouted Dee. She slowed back to a glide as her mother looked away, barely making headway against the warm breeze out of the forest until she spoke again. “I’m not your Mama.” Those were the last words Dee was able to get out of her mother as they glided together on their trip across the moonlit forest. After several exploratory sweeps, Mama eventually flew to the top of a large tree and huddled down on a branch. She did not even hold on with her hind legs and hang free as the rest of The Folk did, but crouched in an obviously uncomfortable stance and pointed with one wing at the forest clearing in front of them. “We must be very quiet,” she squeaked, just barely within hearing range of Dee’s fuzzy ears. “The lizard does not like noise. Look, but be careful.” Dee peeked over the edge of the branch, past her sprawled-out mother and down. In the clearing, there was a huge old redfruit tree with twisted limbs bearing evidence of surviving more than one lightning strike during its long life. The gnarled tree seemed diseased, with dead branches mixed with a few brownish leaves still clinging as if they were some sort of parasite, sucking the life and energy out of the dying wood, but the objects scattered around its exposed roots and ragged trunk caught her attention. At first she thought they were bones, peeking out from beneath the forest mold and showing white in the moonlight where the forest breeze had cleared away the fallen leaves. A longer inspection made them look more like tree sloths and many of the huge moths of the forest, only strangely immobile and broken into pieces, as if they had been turned into stone and shattered as Mama had said. Even members of The Folk, both large and small could be seen broken into pieces throughout the clearing. There were many, many of them, far more than Dee could count, but one broken piece of stone made her heart almost stop beating. It was a monster. What little remained of the stone torso of the monster was wedged into a narrow crack at the base of the redfruit tree, battered and chipped, but still recognizable as a creature like herself due to the strange symbol on its rump. The legs had been broken off and reduced to mostly rubble, but the head was still somewhat intact where it had rolled under one of the protruding roots. It had a horn, much like some of the monsters in the city, and its… no, her wide, staring eyes were filled with the last of the terror of being petrified. The sight made Dee’s knees tremble as the face brought faint memories in the back of her mind floating to the surface. Fly! Fly, Emerald! Don’t look back! She did not know how long she stood there in silence, staring down into the dark clearing. It was a shock that made Dee twitch when Mama finally wrapped one warm wing over her body, which was as high as she could reach from where she was flattened against the branch. “That is your mother,” squeaked Mama in a raspy voice Dee could barely make out. “The lizard attacked while we were eating from the redfruit tree. It killed her and broke her. It would have killed you too if I had not saved you.” “Mama,” said Dee as she slowly collapsed to her chest and wrapped her wings as far as she could around her mother. “Mama,” she repeated. “I’m not your Mama,” said Mama even as she held Dee tight. “I stole you from the monsters. You will fly away to them and leave me all alone again.”