Upon Andrew’s return from his journey, he found a mess of a camp.
The place had been thoroughly trampled by hooves, shown through the large patches of flattened grass. There was not a single soul amongst the camp, either, but there was a clear sign of some previous forms of life; a vast array of campfires scattered the area outside the earth pony den. Andrew took a moment to marvel at the remains of the lesson in firestarting, then resumed his search for the herds. Alas, the river’s sides lay bare, the apple grove nearby was devoid of life, and of course, the sleeping cave was empty.
Something inside him told Andrew to remain calm, and so he did. It was a good five minutes of wandering around the camp looking for answers when he found a clue as to what had happened to the ponies.
Written in the dirt of a far off corner within the sleeping den was a drawing. There was a pony standing over some sort of oval with waving lines contained therein, and all around the two shapes were great trees. The trees were not the same redwoods as Andrew had discovered before, no, they posed a much more similar form to that of an oak. It was a simple drawing, and its the message was clear; the ponies were in a forest at a body of water. Andrew could only think of one place nearby that fit that description.
Hefting up his walking stick, Andrew carefully made his way to the southern forest and towards the healing pool.
He thought it clever that the ponies had decided to leave an image for him. Before he could ask why the ponies were not more worried about him, he chided himself with another reminder that the ponies had been on the planet a lot longer than him. The teenager sighed and shook his head; a vast majority of the ponies were probably older than him in human years. A crack of wood momentarily disrupted the songs of the critters around, and after a period of frantically looking around, Andrew looked down and stared at the twig that he had stepped on.
Ignoring the squirrel laughing at him from up in a tree, Andrew kept on moving to the healing pool.
There was a loud commotion as Andrew passed through a familiar part of the woods. Following the noise, he found himself standing at the top of the pit that led down to the healing pool. His eyes shot about the scene, inspecting it rapidly in an effort to learn what was going on.
Crowded around the pool, the three separate species came forward as individuals to draw something long out of the water and into their hooves. ‘No,’ Andrew thought, ‘they’re dropping it in.’
The teenager slid over the edge and made the short drop to the bottom of the pit. A fair few of the ponies that had already deposited their offer to the pool came over to the human. Andrew idly ran his hand through their manes as they passed by, but kept moving forward to inspect the situation up close. The other ponies did not part for him, keeping the human at the edge of the crowd. At this point, a dozen and a half ponies remained around the pool, a sign that the herds had only been in the pit for a short amount of time. Andrew was twice as tall as the ponies, however, so his sight remained only slightly hindered of the ongoing events before him.
The motions of the rite were simple; a hoof was dipped into the water, then raised above it to allow a long ribbon of red to form between their hoof and the pool. The water would then drink in the offered essence, and as the pony pulled away, it would pulse with a light that grew stronger with each ribbon. As the ponies drew themselves away from the pool, Andrew could see that they were visibly weakened. Even the foals that had stepped forward were subject to the weakening effects of the water, and that scared Andrew somewhat. Against his better judgement, the Bushkeeper attempted to herd the ponies away from the pool.
And then… Andrew felt pain.
The ponies began whinnying wildly as Andrew attempted to push them away. Within seconds, the human had lost the battle of strength as earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns bowled him over. He fell backwards, his stick lost in the commotion, and slammed down into the water. A wave of the magical liquid flung everywhere as Andrew sank, the teenager filled with surprise and covered in the pain of the hoof-brought bruises. Mint was yelling something in English to him, but Andrew heard nothing.
He slammed down hard against something solid.
Heaving for air, the teenager sat up and looked around him. His vision only brought about a thick mist of red that made his eyes water and his body tremble, and he couldn’t even begin to describe the texture of what he was laying on. Andrew managed to stand, albeit shakily. His vision went pure red, and his ensuing scream came out soundless. Andrew tumbled down onto his rear and shut his eyes, embracing the blackness as he wrapped his arms around himself. A buzzing filled his head, all forms of thought blocked out in the noise.
Suddenly, it was all gone.
Andrew cracked open an eye to inspect the absence of noise. Before him stood the herds, all looking very worried. Mint opened her mouth to speak, but Andrew heard only the sounds of a normal pony; unintelligible snorts.
The teenager passed out.
“Andrew?”
The Bushkeeper sat there by the cave den, his eyes dull.
“What is wrong with him?” Greeny said, face full of worry. “He has not said anything since he woke.”
“I…” Mint’s ears flapped down against the sides of her head, “I do not know.”
Greeny stepped quietly over to the hunched over human and shook him gently by the shoulder. “Buh… Bushkeeper?”
The human looked to Greeny, tapped twice on his own throat, and then shook his head. His lips remained in a small frown as Greeny looked him in the eyes.
The stallion shuddered and took a step back. “Bushkeeper… nod if you understand me.”
Andrew didn’t move an inch.
“He only understands his own language, now.” Mint became downright terrified. “Now what are we to do?” she whinnied wildly.
“H-hey.” Smiling weakly, Andrew stood and kneeled down before Mint. He grabbed her gently by the muzzle and brushed his thumb over the bridge of her nose. “I… I think I made an offering of my own…” he whispered, chuckling softly. “But this is just another trial, isn’t it? We can do this.” He stood up and gave Mint space.
“What do we do?” The unicorn opened her mouth to continue speaking, but Andrew cut her off.
“Words? No. Monsters? No running.” He tapped his stick into the ground. “Home.” He repeated the word again. “Home.”
“Home.” Mint became desperate as Andrew did not take the hint. “Home!”
“No words.” Andrew shook his head. “Time and time again I’ve been shown that talking to you ponies is not an option that the universe will allow me to take. You will stay here, I will help you grow, I will teach you to survive and thrive better than you have ever lived.” Coughing, Andrew clutched at his throat and shook his head again before resuming his speech. “I’m done messing around with this world. Things…” he let out another hack, “things are not going very well for me. I’ve got to stop playing around and start working. Winter’s coming, yes? We will deal with it. We’ll put up a defense that the monsters won’t be able to break, and once winter passes, you’ll grow. I’ll help you survive another year, and at the end of that, I don’t care how long it takes to breathe life into a civilization whilst lacking any knowledge. I don’t know…” he took a break to take in more air, “I don’t know anything about creating a culture. You’ve done that. I know a little bit about how to survive, but I’m not a good teacher for all things. All I can do is give you a push in the right direction.”
Andrew turned and shuffled back over to the ledge that overlooked the tiny river valley and the rest of their hilly home. “I don’t like this place anymore,” he spat bitterly. “I never asked to go on this road trip through the continent of death and magic, but I did accept the pursuit. I’m going to see this through to the end.” The Bushkeeper turned to face the two ponies, both listening intently to the speech they could not understand. “I’m going to put on my best face. I’m going to teach you what it means to innovate. I’m going to put my childhood aspirations aside and put survival first.” The teenager took his walking stick up in two hands and looked it over. A cough threatened to come up from his lungs, but he prevented it from coming out. Holding the stick out before him, he jammed it hard into the earth. Then, he walked away.
The ponies did not find Andrew for the next day.
While the ponies were in the midst of practicing English, Andrew stormed into camp, arms full of wood. The ponies had no idea where the human had gotten the massive piles of firewood, but most of them were simply glad to see their Bushkeeper return. Andrew ignored them all, more focused on his work as he set out the materials before him. The three herds were worried about their leader. Despite their cultural differences, they were all just as worried about him, but all were too afraid to say anything to the human. Storm dragged Sparky away from Andrew when the colt got too close.
The ponies lived life mostly as they had before the arrival of Andrew; scrounging up food, which was easy due to their location, playing in the fields with each other, and resting. Though, food was gathered and stored, and lessons of English were taught, but Mint felt that wouldn’t last; without Andrew teaching them any new words, it would be difficult to utilize the language to its fullest extent without proper communication with the human.
Many days passed like this, Andrew’s hard work widening the gap between him and the ponies further and further. On the night of the third day, the ponies awoke to the sound of skittering spiders. As they emerged from the den, however, they only found Andrew outside, a burning torch in his hand. He glared at the ponies and shooed them back inside. Once they were out of the way again, he went back to work.
While the ponies pondered over the sudden change in the attitude of their leader, who had become more of a strange herd member than a leader after a week of his new way of living, Andrew finally came up with a plan on how to survive.
After his day of epiphany, he had begun working on ways to provide safety for the ponies. Worried about the spiders, Andrew had set aside multiple hours of each day into expanding the moat, creating a log wall, and setting up fires to ward off predators. Working by hand quickly became tiresome, and he had soon run out of usable wood for the walls, but given enough time to work, the tools that he created were surprisingly practical enough to wield. A stone hatchet quickly became his main tool, though the axe head did fall out often enough that he grew accustomed to carrying more than a few with him on gathering trips to cut down small saplings and frail oaks.
The wall went up soon after his invention of the stone hatchet, and with its completion, Andrew finally felt it time to bring the ponies back in to work with him.
Mint’s eyes went wide as the human approached her. The Bushkeeper hadn’t spoken to her in days, and it seemed like he was ready to talk. He did not speak, only motioning for Mint to follow. Excited to work with the human again, she gladly followed Andrew over to one of the firepits.
Every night, the human would let all of the ponies into the area around the cave den, then seal off the passageway in the log wall that towered over the ponies, and a little bit over Andrew. Then, Andrew would light fires all around the camp, filling them up with as much firewood as he could, and get to work with his experimentations in tools. The ponies would watch the process as they ate their fill of gathered foodstuffs and slunk off to bed, but none of them stayed around long enough to memorize how his system worked.
Mint learned a few things from Andrew’s motions, but they were all very important things. Andrew would set alight a small pile of twig and brush through the use of a stone and a chip of flint quartz, then pile a certain amount of sticks onto the fire. Mint watched carefully as Andrew counted each stick, and when he finally presented the fire to her, the unicorn was able to count over the sticks again. After nodding to him, Andrew led the unicorn over to another firepit, dropped the flint and stone at her hooves, then let her get to work. Mint had learned quickly what he was up to, and in no time at all, the unicorn had set fire to the rest of the firepits, just as night fell. Andrew complimented her proudly in English. Though she did not understand, she appreciated the intended message.
As the two set off to sleep that night, Mint kept her eyes open and stared out into the night sky just outside the den, smiling. Tomorrow, Andrew, Sparky, and Mint would teach all of the ponies how to start fires around the camp. After that, Andrew would get to work on his next project; providing tools to the ponies.
Andrew shut his eyes and thought long and hard about what his next steps would be. He knew that getting tools into the ponies hooves would be the next logical step, but he was more worried about the future; how was he going to bring them up into a civilization if he carried them all along the way? His mind full of intense thought, Andrew did not sleep that night. After all, he’d done enough napping in the magical land to last him a lifetime.
Despite his lack of sleep, Andrew got up and began a new cycle in his life as the Bushkeeper.