“You can’t be serious.” Honeydew said, turning to face me with an incredulous look. He was breathing a bit quicker after climbing up a large root above the sea of green below. “But the wind took you here!”
“It’s not that I’m unable to fly.” I said, crossing my legs defensively in front of my chest. “No-one ever taught me how is all.”
By the look he gave me, I was getting a sneaking suspicion that breezies could be expected to learn flying on their own. Great job, Twilight. A snarky voice in my brain nickered. You made him think you’re mentally challenged.
I might as well be, I thought back drily. It’s only gonna help when I ask a hundred thousand things I should already know.
To my right, Honeydew let out a long sigh. “Your clan must be terrible.” he concluded.
“No, they’re not!” I burst out and received another strange look from him. “Just… trust me?” I asked with a smile that felt just a bit too wide.
He gave me a flat look. “I just met you.”
I just kept smiling, even as my mouth grew horribly stiff. Snarky brain? I shouted inwardly. It’d be nice to have a comeback for that. Anything?
Suddenly, I felt Honeydew’s hoof at the base of my wing, stretching it out. “You’ll be answering some questions when we arrive at my clan.” he warned me. “For now, just hold on to my tail and do what I do, alright?”
I nodded, reaching down to sink my teeth into his seafoam green tail before giving him a nod. He hesitated as he stared at me holding his tail, his feelers agitatedly bobbing up and down, catching my eyes like a cat’s toy. The ones with the squeaky mice that Opal was too lazy to chase.
It was adorable!
“Twilight?” Honeydew asked, possibly concerned by the I am going to touch you-look I was ogling his feelers with. “We’re going to fly now.”
“What?” I blinked as my eyeballs retreated from the visual seduction of those feelers. “Oh, right!” Biting down on his tail, I followed as he leapt from our elevated point and was instantly caught in an updraft, carrying him (and me) high into the air. As we reached the height of the first branches, he gently shifted to the side, leaving the stream of air in order to glide between the trees, crossing a distance in mere seconds that would’ve taken minutes on the ground.
I felt a sudden heat rising in my feelers. The next moment, Honeydew closed his wings and I followed suit, just a moment before a sudden breeze almost knocked us off course. After dropping several meters, he caught himself in the air, just as the gust of wind had passed. I furrowed my brow. The heat was gone. It seemed that my feelers weren’t just adorable (although they definitely were, and so were his), they could detect atmospheric differences. I wondered just how far the breezies could push this gift. Maybe they could help predict the weather in those places the pegasi couldn’t control, like the Crystal Empire or even the Everfree Forest!
After a while, I reacted to my feelers practically automatically, turning and beating my wings in perfect unison with Honeydew, which allowed me to focus on other things.
As he told me, I had been very lucky indeed that he found me. This late in the year, few breezies would venture off the safest paths, especially this far from the village. Honeydew just stumbled on me by random chance on his way back from a scouting mission.
“Is that where you got those raspberries?” I asked, tilting my head to get another look at those grizzly containers.
He gave a quick nod, yet his eyes were fixated on our surroundings. “Yes, about six days from here. I agreed with a Farin Gaela that we receive one of every three berries on the bush.”
“Sorry, a what?” I asked, a slight tone of annoyance beneath my voice. It wasn’t the first time he’d used a word I wasn’t familiar with and it was starting to get on my nerves. My feelers twitched in accordance.
“Mother of ants.” he explained. At least this time he spared me the odd look over his shoulder, though maybe he was just paying more attention to the environment.
“But your gear-” I pointed out, then hesitated as I mulled over how to phrase the next sentence. “Didn’t they… disagree with those body parts?”
Honeydew let out a chuckle. “They gave them to me. Ants dont think about death, a corpse is meaningless to them.” He shot a look back. “It is clear you are from far away, Twilight. Are there no ants where you come from?”
I bit my lip. “Well, yes, but I’ve never talked to them.”
“Well, they are better than bees.” he said in a jovial tone.
Just as I furrowed my brows to wonder whether or not to ask him about that, he pointed towards a rock, surrounded by grass. “Land here. We are taking a short break.”
All of a sudden, I grew aware of just how long we’d been flying. My throat was so dry I could feel tumbleweeds bouncing inside. Yes, a break sounded like a great idea. I gently angled my wings just like Honeydew showed me, landing softly on the mossy rock, almost gently enough to not stumble and fall on my face. Almost.
“I’m fine!” I blurted out before he even had a chance to comment. My nose was aching a little, but that also passed after just a moment. Still, Honeydew reached out a hoof to draw me back up. “M-my mistake.” I muttered sheepishly.
“It was not bad for a first landing.” he said neutrally, trotting over to a blade of grass, which bent under a large drop of water, a remainder of today’s morning dew. My eyes were drawn to the liquid ball. But how were we going to get it down, if we climbed up, our weight would upset the grass and it would fall, splashing on the ground, where we’d only be able to get tiny mouthfuls by licking it off the ground… Although my stomach turned at the thought, if that was what we’d have to resort to, I would do it.
“Thirsty?” Honeydew asked, following my eyes with a knowing smirk.
I nodded. And felt my jaw hit the ground as Honeydew reached up and simply plucked the drop from the grass like a ripe berry. He was holding water. In his hooves! He didn’t seem to think anything strange of it as he held the wobbling mass of water out to me. Meeting his eyes, I slowly held out my hooves as he dropped the ball into mine- and it burst the moment it connected with my hooves, splashing us both with cold water.
He smirked. “You’re a clumsy one, aren’t you?”
I opened my mouth to respond. After making absolutely no comprehensible noise, I bit my lip, glancing away as I felt my cheeks burn.
He snickered as he brought another drop, this time showcasing how he dipped his feelers into it, each drawing out a drop that was at least a good mouthful. Carefully, I mimicked his motion, sticking my tongue out the side of my mouth as my feelers sunk into the water. I let out a gasp as the sudden cold enveloped them, but it didn’t feel like water. It was like… pudding, hardening around my antennae. There was an unexpected amount of resistance as I drew them out, each yielding me with a sweet, thirst-quenching reward. Meanwhile, Honeydew had placed his lips on the drop, noisily sucking up its liquid content before tossing it aside with a satisfied sigh. “Rest yourself for a moment.” he told me as he stretched his body like a cat. “After the next hurdle, we are going to fly until the sun rises. You can hold onto my tail if you want.” His feelers twitched adorably as he winked.
The entire night… a shiver went through my body as it reminded me how badly I’d been shivering until the sunlight had made the temperature acceptable. Honeydew passed me another bit of raspberry I happily tore into.
“Uhm…” I bit my lip as I stared at my stained hooves. “Is that not supply that you need to bring to your village?”
“They’re my own provisions.” he said as he rearranged the skulls, making sure he had a full and an empty one on each side. “There gotta be some upsides to being a scout after all.” He looked expectantly into my eyes, then my stained hooves.
I didn’t follow.
“So, you mentioned a hurdle?”
Tearing his eyes from my hooves (what, did I not eat cleanly enough for him?), he motioned for me to follow.
This hurdle turned out to be a rushing river, wide enough to tear a line through the carpet of leaves that was ever-present before. Obviously, our tiny bodies would simply be swept away by the water if we did land inside, heck, our wings would probably pull us down even in still water. But why was it a hurdle if we could just fly over it?
Suddenly, Honeydew’s hoof shot out, knocking into my chest and stopping my flight as he drove me to land on a large branch spanning over about a fourth over the river.
“Careful.” he warned me as he looked around. “Never try and cross here without me.”
Exactly what I needed to hear to feel warm and fuzzy. “Why?”
“Spiders.” he said darkly, and immediately I felt he blood drain from my face. First mantisses, now spiders? Was this world not content until it made me face every sort of gruesome death you could have when you were this small?! Unfaced by my inner panic, Honeydew continued: “Normally, we could catch a fly or a worm ourselves in exchange for us, spiders usually accept that. But this time of year, the males who haven’t mated yet are searching for the biggest, juiciest prey to present a female with.” He shot me a look. “That would be us.”
YES, THANK YOU FOR SOOTHING MY WORRIES! I screamed inwardly, pacing around in my mind and barely managing to keep all of that away from my expression. “S-so what do we do?”
“There’s a spot…” he muttered as we reached the tip of the branch, and I saw exactly what he meant. There was a long, silky string heading towards the tree on the other side of the river. Some spider must have wanted to cross.
“Are you crazy?” I whispered, afraid to alert a nearby multi-eyed beast. I could almost feel their spindly, hairy legs tickle my stomach. “You want us to get stuck?!”
“We won’t.” he whispered calmly as he placed his hoof on the web. Dreading doom, I sucked cold air through my teeth, but he simply grinned, pulling his hoof off the web, chuckling to himself. “It’s just one string, Twilight. If it was sticky, how would the spider go across?”
Okay, sensible reasoning. Why were those hundred alarms in my head still blaring? But Honeydew had already stepped on the string, urging me to follow. Why was the prospect of walking into the embrace of a beast that would liquify me less scary that turning away- alone.
I let out a shaky breath as I watched the breezie in front of me carefully monitor our surroundings. As chipper as he’d just acted, he looked just as tense as I was. It must’ve been that I trusted him in matters of survival, more so than my own judgement. Even if it screamed at me that I was about to make a terrible decision.
All of a sudden, the string shook, and with it my stomach. Honeydew shot me quick look, there were no words needed. The string trembled in rhythmic intervals, urging us to hurry along as we drew ourselves forward. I could now see the form of the predator approach from the other side, hanging downwards from its silky string, drawing itself forward leg after leg. It was much quicker than we were. And if it caught us too soon, we might jump off, simply to land in a different spider’s web. And so I drew myself forward, silently cursing the circumstances that forced me to go towards the thing that was going to eat me! I could feel my heartbeat in my throat as I got a closer and closer look at the monstrous beast, one of those with legs many, many times the length of their body. To say it gave me the creeps was an understatement. It gave me the terrors, as its mandibles clicked in a way that was horrifyingly familiar.
Suddenly, Honeydew drew himself up. We’d only gotten halfway across, was that enough? But the spider wasn’t far away either! Could we go back? I tried to exchange a look with him, but his head suddenly turned to his right and he jumped off the string.
THIS IS INSANE! My mind shouted as I leapt after him, watching him slowly drop in the absence of a breezie to carry us, floating down to where my mind was envisioning hundreds of insidious, invisible webs ready to hold us down for their creators- when I felt a warm sensation rising up in my feelers.
The next moment, a massive updraft caught our wings, carrying us higher, higher in the air until we were looking down at the treetops!
“Better luck next time, six-eye!” Honeydew cheered, before he burst out in relieved laughter. And I joined him a second later.