Andrew thought that it had been hard enough to scale the mountains, but going down was another story entirely. His leg was killing him despite the natural remedy one of the ponies had applied to him. He suspected the earth ponies had done the binding on his leg, but he never made his comments aloud; he was far too busy trying not to die.
“Nope.” Andrew shook his head and stepped back from the ledge. “No, nuh-uh. Not happening.”
Mint cocked her head sideways. “Bushkeeper?”
“Mint—” he pointed a finger down at the plateau below “—that is not happening today.” He pat his leg gently and glared at Mint. “Not with this, and especially not at any time. Scaling the mountain without gear was fine, but climbing down the mountain without gear is another story entirely.”
Andrew swore he could see Mint roll her eyes before she turned around to Blackie and the pegasi. ”Carry the Bushkeeper, please.”
Bowing low momentarily, Blackie zipped over and hooked his hooves under Andrew’s arms and lifted him upwards with a grunt.
“Hey! Drop me right—”
With the help of the white pegasus mare from before, the two pegasi held Andrew over the edge.
“—after we land, okay?!” Andrew’s eyes were wide as he stared down at the lengthy drop. His eyes squeezed shut. “It’s always better on the way up…” he whimpered.
Thankfully for Andrew, the flight was over relatively quickly. Unfortunately for Andrew, they still had three more plateaus to cover. By the time the pegasus herd had landed at the base of the mountain, Andrew was ready to vomit. Groaning, he laid down in the sweet green grass beneath the nearby trees and curled up.
Blackie whickered worriedly and stepped closer to the human. ”Bushkeeper?”
“Leave me alone,” Andrew grumbled, clutching his stomach. “My stomach’s is killing me.”
With a shrug, Blackie returned to his herd and looked over Storm. Andrew couldn’t hear what was going on due to a combination of distance and the singing birds above, but he could care less; he was going to take a nap, and that was final.
In a perfect world, at least.
Far too soon for his liking, Andrew recognized the thump of multiple hooves dropping into the grass, signifying the dreaded arrival of the earth ponies and unicorns. He heard some of the hooves approaching him, and against his will, he was rolled over by a hoof to face Mint, Greeny, and Lemon. The three unicorns all eyed him with varying levels of emotion; Mint looked worried, Greeny was amused, and Lemon looked annoyed.
”Bushkeeper?” Mint began.
Sighing, Andrew sat up and dusted himself off before standing. “I’m good.” He paused, looking around briefly. “Where’s my stick?” Andrew spotted an earth pony walking over with the aforementioned stick in its mouth. Andrew gladly accepted it, giving the earth pony’s withers a pat as a reward. Andrew turned to the three unicorns and nodded. “Let’s go.”
It was clear to anyone that was watching that Andrew had no idea where he was leading the massive herd, but the ponies behind him seemed not to notice. Andrew severely regretted not spending time up on the mountain to survey the valley further, but that didn’t really matter to him. What did matter was the group’s newfound safety in the mountain-locked plains.
Calling the area a land of plains would be incorrect. There were definitely great amounts of open fields, but close to the mountains and the western ocean, a large forest prospered. The further the group ventured towards the central plain to the north, the more and more evidence of young life appeared. Andrew, for his part, spotted a multitude of baby creatures following after their mothers. From deer to rabbits, the eerily calm critters seemed endless in the forest. The unicorns and pegasi shared Andrew’s interest in the forest’s denizens, but earth ponies seemed keen on pointing out tiny piles of earth that appeared every so often. At first, Andrew didn’t really pay the small mounds any mind, but when an earth pony pressed their hooves into the dirt next to the mound and caused a seedling to sprout, Andrew could do nothing but stare.
The brown earth pony herd leader whispered something to her own seedling that she had sprouted, causing it to shiver and twitch. There was something unnatural about the process, but Andrew considered that it was probably normal for the earth ponies to do such a thing; this wasn’t Earth, after all. The unicorns and pegasi didn’t seem to care, though. Shaking his head, Andrew waited patiently for the earth ponies to finish their strange rituals.
Time passed quickly, and as Andrew emerged out of the forest and into the central plain, he was pleasantly surprised to find a humble field of low-lying blueberry bushes. The ponies followed after him as he approached the berries. They stood still as Andrew inspected a berry he had plucked from a bush. Popping it into his mouth, he chewed slowly. The berry was gone too soon, and Andrew was quick to find another ripe berry. Yet again, he tasted the surprisingly strong taste of blueberry as he chewed. Pausing, Andrew chuckled and waved the staring ponies on.
The ponies immediately began to devour any berry they could get their hooves on. Something warm tingled in his chest as Andrew looked over the bone-thin ponies munching on berries. He was surprised that he had made it so far with them. Andrew honestly felt that he would have given up ages ago.
Looking up into the sky, Andrew raised a hand to avoid the glare of the sweltering sun. Contrary to the cold mountain air, the plains held the brunt of the late summer heat. Andrew assumed that it was summer; it had been late July when he had first arrived, so it must have been August by now. Andrew paused, his mind distracted by a previous sentiment; winter was coming. How much time did the herds and him have left to prepare for winter? Eyeing the icy wasteland to the north, Andrew shuddered. This place held only a few similarities to Earth, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that even seasons could be different.
Things may have been different, but Andrew could adapt.
For one thing, the lifestyle of the ponies required a drastic change. Andrew knew that he had to help the ponies begin the development of their civilization, and that most of the work had been done for him; the ponies had a spoken language, a pictographic language, a culture, and some form of social hierarchy. All that was left for them to prove that they were a civilization was agriculture; government and specialized labor would come to fruition then. Silently, Andrew thanked his history class and wiped his hands on his jeans.
There was a plethora of other things that needed to be done as well: create a reliable communication system between the ponies and himself, look for a good place to settle down in the valley, find seeds to plant, stock up for winter, and find some way to defend themselves. At this point, all Andrew knew that the ponies could offer in terms of self-defense were their hooves, wings, and the strange levitation tricks that the unicorns pulled every now and then. Andrew eyed one of said unicorns, currently channeling their strange visual energy into levitating a cluster of blueberries down to a familiar white unicorn foal.
The language barrier was what Andrew was most anxious about. Sucking in breath, he decided that now would be as good a time as ever to get started; he’d been putting it off long enough. Andrew walked over to Greeny, the unicorn busy munching away on berries, and picked up his keratin tooth. Running his hands over the etched surface, Andrew attempted to find meaning in the pictures.
Greeny had done nothing to improve the small pictograms that he had first carved days ago, but there had been a few changes to the background of the carving. Further behind the herds and the tall humanoid figure, there now stood a chain of mountains. Andrew made a hazardous guess that Greeny was maintaining some sort of story of where the herds were going. He sighed, knowing that he wouldn’t have to guess if they could understand each other.
Mint was standing beside Greeny, and paused in her feast to check in on Andrew.
“Bushkeeper?”
Andrew held a hand up to the mare without looking. “Wait.” After patting Greeny on the back and placing the unicorn’s work back down, Andrew turned to Mint.
Mint cocked her head. “Wait?”
Andrew slipped a berry out from the hood in his front pocket and offered it to Mint. He gave her a toothy smile.
“Yes.”
Mint snorted, but took the berry anyway.
“Alright!” Andrew stood and clapped his hands together, attracting the attention of most of the ponies nearby. “Nobody can understand me, which is problem number one. Problem number two is that we have no long-term source of food for winter. Problem number three is that apparently some sort of apocalypse is about to happen. Sort of.” Andrew dropped his arms and sighed. “What a life.”
"Andrew?" Mint attempted to cut in.
He blissfully ignored the mare and continued ever onward. “Did I mention that another problem is that I need meat?”
Mint whinnied angrily and kicked Andrew roughly. ”Lead us, do not be childish!”
Andrew rubbed his shin for a moment then stood back, gesturing to the ponies watching the two. “How about you lead, herd leader?”
Mint’s eyes went wide. ”I do not—!”
“No no—” Andrew waved his hands in front of him “—I understand.” Grinning madly, he took another step back and gestured again. “You need your space. Go right on ahead.”
”Fwalfa?” a unicorn asked from the crowd. ”What is the Bushkeeper’s word?”
Mint looked to Andrew. ”Fine.” she huffed. Returning her gaze to the unicorns before her, she spoke. ”Survey the lands, look for the yellow grass and cleared water. ”
The brown herd leader of the earth ponies stepped forward, her herd behind her. ”We will assist in the yellow grass.”
Blackie stomped a hoof, causing Andrew and Mint to turn around. Blackie spoke as he and his herd came up from a bow. ”We shall watch from the Great Open.”
With nearly simultaneous reactions, the herds split up, leaving behind the herd leaders and their mates. Andrew scratched his head and looked embarrassedly to Mint. The mare looked up quizzically to Andrew.
“Uh…” He laughed a little. “I guess I kinda overestimated how nervous you would be going into your leadership role. I mean… wow. You really just took over there.”
Mint ignored Andrew’s ramblings. ”What now, Bushkeeper?”
“Now…” Andrew straightened and looked to the disappearing herds, two of them trotting about the nearby grassland and trees, and one of them flying through the sky between the clouds. “...we plan out what’s going to be happening from here on out.”
”What?” Blackie snorted. He looked to Mint. ”What did the Bushkeeper say?”
“You know what? Whatever.” Andrew motioned for the ponies to follow and began walking. “Let’s go over… here.”
Andrew dropped his bag and walking stick, then sat down on the ground. He was soon joined by the five ponies who had stayed with him, the ponies opting to fold their legs rather than crossing them like Andrew. He found it curious that the foals had gone with the rest of the herds, but after thinking it over for a moment, Andrew decided that larger numbers probably meant that the foals were safer. He was about to begin speaking when he realized that each of the herd leaders had a mate, save for the earth pony leader.
He pointed to the mare. “Uh… hornless pony. Wait, that sounds kind of messed up. Erm, lemme just call you Brownie, you good with that?”
The mare blinked blankly at him.
“Brownie,” Andrew enunciated slowly. “Brownie.”
”A name!” Storm whinnied excitedly from beside Blackie. ”The Bushkeeper gives you a name!”
The newly named Brownie cocked her head slightly. “Brownie?” Blinking, she looked to Storm. ”What is a name?”
“What you are now the proud owner of,” Andrew cut in. “Also, Storm…” Andrew leant forward and brushed his hand through the stained fur of the grey mare. “We’ve neglected the blood for too long, but it needs to go.”
Storm waved Andrew off. ”I am fine, Bushkeeper.” She paused suddenly. ”What are you—?”
Andrew watched as the water he had just poured from his thermos and onto Storm’s fur soaked in. Silently, he scooted closer and began rubbing the crimson away. Blackie was quick to catch on and immediately went to work as he took Andrew’s place. Smiling, Andrew leant back and looked over the rest of three other ponies who watched him with equal attention.
“Now listen closely…” Andrew broke a tiny twig off of his walking stick and began to draw in the ground. “We’re going to do a small lesson for productivity’s sake…”