Yitterby wiped his eyes, taking the tale’s pause to collect his thoughts.
Aurora simply nodded, creating a rather cheeky grin. “That’s what happened, as it happened. We were… quite surprised, to say the least. Suddenly, I knew bits and pieces of some random pony’s life, and so did Alice but only the bits and pieces that would happen. Bori, meanwhile, had random surges of levitating flight.” Shaking her head as she recalled that past night once more, “it was… disorienting for the three of us.”
“And that how reindeer got here with strange gift powers?” Yitterby asked curiously, leaning over the table with his head.
Aurora chuckled. She then produced her shiny white teeth, those pearly whites glowing under the room’s lantern lights.
“No, it isn’t like that,” she said. “Truth be told, we all thought it was just a bout of weird magic... just a passing, temporary thing. But it happened again.” Smiling and showing her teeth proudly again. “Twice more, actually.”
Yitterby clasped his forehooves, now eager to hear more of the story. At least he ‘d be lugging over a longer story to tell, something that could captivate more of his fellow yaks in his own hut. Over Snilldar Fest, perhaps, it might even become Yakyakistan’s new meeting place.
Ignorant of the yak’s ambition to relay her story so grandly, Aurora continued: “So… where was I? Ah, let me finish this one first: After our little incident with Rack, we had to return to Rennefer. Of course, we’d be in some serious trouble if we were spotted by the guards, but we had to take the chance anyway. When we got up, it turned out they’d just spilled five sacks’ worth of imported berries on the ground. Everyone was trying to clean the mess up at the gate—all the guards and the merchants, too—while we snuck in unnoticed.”
She took a sip of water from her mug. “After, we parted ways. Bori got tired from all the flying and the cooking before that, so she called it an early night. Alice still had a couple boxes’ worth of bows to give—she made all of them, don’t you know?” Aurora then drank some more water, clearing her throat that way. “Me? I went back home. Heh… I almost knocked Thern out of surprise. Turned out he was waiting at my house to give me yet another gift. Asked me, ‘Where’ve you been?' but I merely said that I just went around. He bought it, I got to bed, and tucked in.”
The yak nodded, slowly digesting the end of this first part, trying to store it in his memory as vividly as he could. Then, after dusting off his shoulders and patting his freakishly long hair, he asked, “What next?”
Aurora smiled, putting the mug away and retrieving a cup of eggnog for herself. “What next? Well: the next day, we didn’t get to see each other at first. Bori had to be with all the other cooks and chefs in the public hall’s kitchen—they were going to top last night’s feast with an even bigger feast! Alice was out doing her own thing with her peers, hanging out with them as teenage calves would. I myself lounged at the market, browsing the jumble of things on sale for the rest of my children and grandchildren. When night came... I wasn’t expecting my antlers to glow again...”
The yak scooted his chair closer when Aurora took in one deep breath before continuing the second part.
“Isn’t she the cutest?” Thern boasted, squeezing his daughter’s cheek, smiling at an unimpressed Aurora.
“Father!” Austral moaned, brushing the intrusive hoof off of her yellow fur. “We’re in public!”
By the street of busy lights and busy talk of the carnival, Aurora couldn’t help but smile for a brief moment, not at how cute her grandcalf was, but at how adorable her son could be when he lived in doting mode which was all the time. He had given Austral a couple bows to decorate her antlers with, and they made her look elegant, though whether she approved of it was another matter.
“Well, Ma’” Thern began, scratching his itchy neck, “I heard they’re also having a shipment of scarves coming in today straight from Canterlot.” Turning to his daughter to cutely squeeze her cheek another time against her will, “You know how fancy those scarves are, with all their intricate designs?”
Austral winced from the pinch and then rolled her eyes. “No, I don’t.”
Aurora slyly smirked at Thern. Her arched brows deftly reminded him of yesternight’s conversation, of the act of spoiling and what not.
Then, Thern widened his eyes at a passer-by carrying a huge gift on his back. “Hey, Buddy! Is that for me?!”
“Aww! This was supposed to be a surprise!”
Thern raised a leg, ready to trot off. “Stay right there! Got you now, Buddy!”
And the cow hopped off of the sidewalk to meet his gift-bearing friend across the street.
This left Aurora and Austra to their own devices by the curb.
Aurora sighed, her short breath becoming a little fleeting cloud before dissipating. She then turned to Austral who was watching her father exude eternal joy—even giving a surprise gift of his own to Buddy.
Austral detected Aurora’s look, however. Without looking back, in an exasperated voice: “What is it, Grandma? Gonna give me another one of your special talk downs?”
“Maybe,” Aurora said, seeing Austral roll her eyes again before the old cow tugged at her own saddle bag. “Or, maybe not.”
Austral stiffened. “Huh?”
Aurora walked to Austral’s side, placed a hoof on her shoulder, let her eyes gaze upon the myriad of bows hanging from Austral’s trimmed antlers. “I talked to your father about how you’ve been treating him… or, rather, how he’s been treating you: coddling you endlessly like you’re his little ‘numpkin’.”
Austral stuck her tongue out. “I’m, what, twenty-one and he still calls me—”
“Numpkin!” cried Alice.
Both Aurora and Austral screamed.
When they calmed down from their hideous screaming, they saw Alice carrying a little open box on her back.
“Sorry for the scare,” Alice said, nervously shifting her eyes about, “but I just wanted to let you know that my offer on my bows is still on!”
Aurora scratched her chin, left wondering. “What offer?”
Austral, meanwhile, was miffed by Alice’s outburst of numpkin. “You don’t have to rub the word in my face, Alice.”
This made the offending teenage calf scratch her growing antlers in more piling anxiety. She faced her victim with, “Heh-heh! I’m sorry for that, too! I hope you’re still doing well with Thorn!”
“His name is Thern!” Austral lashed out, growling and stepping forward with a snarling face.
Alice backed away, creeping up on Alice and her saddle bag, eyes still on Austral to ensure that she wouldn’t disappear if she ever looked away.
Aurora chuckled at the display of rough camaraderie. “Well, now, Alice,” she began, “I know you’re excited for—hey!”
With Alice caught closing Aurora’s saddle bag, having just removed her head from the inside.
“Hey!” Aurora repeated, louder and raising a balled up hoof ready to smack. “Who told ‘ya it’s the time for stealing?!”
“Whoops! Gotta go!”
And Alice zipped off, gliding on the snow-touched streets with ease, almost like an ice skater but before ice skating begun existing.
Austral sighed and wagged her head with Alice drifting out of sight. “There she goes, Grams, there she—”
Her mouth slammed shut, slowly stepping back, laying her eyes on the luminous anomaly before her.
“Uh, wh-what’s that?” she asked Aurora, pointing at her antlers.
“What’s what?” and Aurora looked up. She saw her antlers glowing blue, feeling that tingling sensation once more.
She bit her tongue in fear. Her head whizzed about, turning everywhere to see a few strangers looking at her glowing antlers, one or two pointing there and grabbing more of their friends’ attention.
Aurora felt a pull, irises shrinking. Then, she put her hoof on Austral’s snout and said, “Um, t-tell your father I have to go! I… I’ll try to fix my, eh, broken antlers… got something from the doctor... must be magic leaking—faulty antlers!”
“Faulty antlers?!” Austral yelled after removing the hoof from her snout.
But Aurora was already hobbling out of the conversation, trying to sneak away from everyone else’s eyes.
Aurora left Austral out in the cold. She didn’t look back to see what her granddaughter was doing: whether it was impatiently tapping her hoof or just straight out leaving and giving up on the old cow.
As she passed by several more curious spectators, she overheard the whispers all about her faulty glowy antlers. A sympathetic teen offered her a dozen bits and some help for a trip to the doctor, but Aurora declined.
Sensing the tug of the antlers towards the town gate, she did her best to look natural: levitated her scarf, making it glow in front of her, hoping that glow would excuse her flashy, weirdly-behaving antlers.
There she was, less than a hundred hooves away from the guards and their imposing presence. Surely, there wouldn’t be a pair of pony merchants distracting them with their wares tonight.
Except, a pair of pony merchants were distracting them with their wares tonight.
“... and I was like, ‘Really, Flap? You have no business using dough on a pan!’ Really… can you believe this guy?! He’s so full of himself, he’s calling his new creation ‘flapjacks’! The nerve!”
The same unicorn from yesterday was busy lounging by the wall, entertaining the guards around him as Single Flap and a few more guards put the wagon’s cargo onto the ground.
It helped that the unicorn was out of the way, not even close to the gate. The guards nearer the wagon outside city limits were busy assisting Single Flap and checking out what was inside the sacks and crates—some cracking their smiles at the goodies in there.
So, donning her kind elderly face again, she trotted to the gate, hoping that her status as an old cow would give her enough leeway to make it outside.
“Halt!”
Gulped, almost dropped the scarf mid-levitation. Muscles tensed, hooves still in place.
The guard, however, wasn’t looking at her. Instead, the armored bull was keeping a cruel eye on Single Flap who was doing double duty by carrying sacks on both wings.
“You forgot your back!” the guard yelled.
The pegasus began to whimper, looking up from his burdened stance. “But, sir, I-I—”
A guard dropped a sack of potatoes and cheese wheels onto the pony’s back, the pegasus bending and about to break but still holding his own.
Aurora felt the need to help this poor pony out. Perhaps she could tell the guards that they were hurting this miserable pony, inflicting him with a backache. However, she still had to keep up her stealth; she wasn’t noticed yet, but stepping out of the way to save Flap would blow her cover.
So she sidestepped and discreetly walked past the gate, around the wagon, and, in a flash, she was brisking down the cold and snowy hill in cold and snowy weather.
It was a trip made easier thanks to experience. A few logs and bumps she recognized, and she avoided or walked over them to no expense. After a few minutes’ worth of steps downhill, she lifted her head to see what lay at the foot of the mountain this time.
A familiar sight: a wagon-attached lantern set against the blinding pitch black darkness of the freezing night. Flickering under the vague light was a shadow, an equine one wrapping something around its leg.
Aurora stood still and kept her balance, trying to discern this stranger’s details. She could hear aggravated mumbling, but she couldn’t spell out a single word. All she knew was, from the looks of it, this probable pony looked stronger and squarer. Perhaps a stallion.
Hating to scare this pony off into punching her senseless, she coughed from a short distance away.
The figure perched its head up, raising its ears.
“Who are you?” it asked in a snippy male voice.
Aurora coughed again, glancing at her saddle bag before trotting closer to him.
As she got nearer, she could see his scraggy features: a growing yellow stubble blooming early on his face; a hat half-torn and with plenty threads threatening to come apart; a rugged coat with several healing scars and bruises, providing him with a measly appearance… a limping leg he was resting on another knee, trying to wrap it with the last vestige of cloth from his cart.
“Oh, no!” was all Aurora said, galloping up to his side.
She got a closer look at the affected limb. Becoming the audience to his attempts at keeping himself alive, Aurora watched the stallion rip off another piece of cloth with his sharp teeth, only to shiver with a cold gust rushing by him.
“You must be really hurt!” Aurora said.
“Thanks, Miss Obvious,” he replied, rolling his eyes in tired annoyance.
He winced in pain as he tightened the cloth’s grip on his broken leg, struggling to not lose his teeth’s clutch on the fabric.
Alone with him in the cold and dark night, Aurora frowned. She realized she hadn’t felt the urge to grab anything medical from home, although her saddle bag had joined her.
“Look, ma’am,” he said, gruff and to the point, facing Aurora with those weary, bleary brown eyes, “I know you folk’s supposed to be all kind and cuddly to a somepony down and out, but if you don’t have anything useful…”
Turned his head away from her, confronting a long and arduous path up the faraway mountains barely visible save for the moon’s glimmer upon them. He swallowed his own saliva, clenching his jaw...
“... then scram.”
A heart fell. It was hers, ignorant that she’d put a hoof to her chest. All this trouble getting past the guards unnoticed, this traveling down a mountain she’d only traversed once before, this sympathy for a pony in need: all for nothing but an impolite invitation to leave?
“Unless ya’ got something in that pouch of yours, missy.”
She glanced at her saddle bag again, her heart now rising from its fall. A little smile spread across her face.
“Actually...” she began.
Aurora opened her saddle bag, poking her muzzle in to grab whatever stuck there at the bottom.
“Huh… it looks like I have a couple more cloths for you if you ever run out for your leg. A tiny jar of cold medicinal water I keep in case of emergency. Also some… h-huh?”
The stallion looked up, biting a spare tooth and making himself grisly. “Tell me what it is now! Can’t you see I have places to go?” and pointed at his battered cart, a crate and a sack damaged and slashed. “No time for hesitation, please! Can’t you—”
Aurora took out a poultice and a little lidded bowl, shining mildly under the yellowish lantern fighting to stay still against the wind.
“Wh… where did this come from?” Aurora said, holding the mysterious items out with her hoof, mouth agape and eyes agawk.
“I don’t know!” the stallion said, exasperated and his throat wearing out. “You’re the one with the bag, not me!”
“Yes, I am,” Aurora answered in a declining shout, “but I don’t remember putting on these!” upon which she held her hooves out again, hoisting both poultice and bowl.
“Agh! Gimmie that!”
He swiped the poultice from Aurora’s hooves, gone in a breeze with no time for Aurora to react. She opened her mouth to chew this young stallion out, but she stopped when he unwound the cloth in flinching pain.
With a wince or two, he removed the cloth, exposing his limp and lifeless leg. Aurora covered her mouth and almost puked, if her green bulging cheeks said anything. Next, he wrapped the soft and soothing poultice around his leg, the mass of healing now hugging his hobbled leg. Sensations of relief poured into him, eyes fluttering in alleviation.
“Ah… much better,” he said, brandishing a relaxed smile in spite of the harsh wintry freeze all around him.
Warmth reached Aurora’s heart, even if surprise still lingered over the strange suddenly-appearing objects. “It’s good you feel better—”
“And what’s that mystery soup?” the stallion asked, his voice changed from a guttural dark to a subdued light.
Aurora raised a brow in confusion. She inspected the hot bowl on her hoof, bringing it closer to her eyes. “I… s-still don’t know.” Taking out the lid, she continued, “I don’t remember putting it in, either.”
A new smell wafted out of the bowl against the bleakly frigid mountain air. In its place settled a fragrant culinary aroma, enticing the stallion’s stomach to grumble and his ears to rise and his head to rear in hungry anticipation.
“... that’s got to be cooked just for me!” he cried out, eyes bulging as he rubbed his tremoring stomach.
Before Aurora could say anything, she had the soup yanked from her hooves, leaving her with nothing to hold.
The stallion goggled at his soup: leaves and tomatoes bobbing around under his flimsy grasp, sailing bumpily across the tiny waves of the tasty yellow sea.
More than satisfied with the soup’s attractive face, he whipped his head around to stare at the elderly reindeer. “Wh-who are you?! A-Are you my… m-my guardian angel?!”
“I, uh—”
Had her hoof shaken rapidly and rough, her glasses almost falling out.
“You may not know me, missy,” he said fast, almost incoherent, “but my name’s Oat Milk and... I don’t know, but you saved me! I-I’ve been stuck waddling since I had a bear attack me just hours ago… decided to just wait here and hope somepony would come down to even notice me… and then you came down with this great stuff! The poultice was nice, but medicinal herbal soup?! It’s like you knew I had a broken leg in the first place!”
Aurora was flabbergasted, and it wasn’t just the pony bursting in an explosion of thanks and gratitude. She didn’t know a single thing about these mysterious objects, and yet... her mouth flapped up and down, breaking out mere broken syllables in awe, the reindeer herself searching for what words to say.
“Accidental guardian angels, probably,” said a voice from above.
“What?!” yelled both Aurora and Oat Milk as they looked up.
Descending from the cold dark sky, her antlers glowing pink against the expanse’s black, Bori slowly floated down.
“Agh!” cried Oat Milk, holding his cheeks in fear at this even stranger abnormality.
Aurora stepped back, beholding her friend in mid-flight. “B-Bori?! H-How a-are you—”
“Not crashing into the ground?” Bori finished, smirking at her older counterpart.
Aurora rolled and rubbed her eyes. “Not you, too, ah...”
“Oh, that was really just a guess,” Bori said reassuredly.
She lowered herself to the ground, getting her hooves plopped with cold snow and a thin layer of dirt, staining her pristine pinkness.
Oat Milk hyperventilated, chest rising and falling in quick succession, at this strange new reindeer.
“Who are you?!” he yelled, pointing at her out of rising fear, too.
The pink reindeer smiled, though lowering a brow in worry. “I’m Bori. I’m sure you’ve met Aurora here and—” smelled the air. “Wait a minute… so that’s where the soup went!”
Aurora shook her head and smacked her antlers in shock. “You made the soup?!”
“Then, thank you! Both of you!” the stallion shouted at the top of his lungs.
He shook Bori’s hoof, catching her off guard and almost making her stumble to the ground. At least her face wouldn’t be caked with snow and dirt unlike last night.
“I...uh, appreciate your, um, happiness,” Bori managed after the hoofshake finished, watching Oat then hoarsely slurp his first serving of soup. “However… I didn’t know what I was doing, actually.”
The stallion spat out a mouthful or two cheekfuls of soup to the white ground in his surprise, tainting them with delicious yellow.
“H-How… ?” was all he could say.
Aurora shrugged, directing his gaze towards Bori.
Bori scratched her throat, initially unsure of how exactly to put the incident to words. “I-I was in the middle of cooking dinner for our big festival back home when my antlers glowed and I felt the strange urge to just... make this local remedy for partial lameness.” She coughed, looked down and saw she was still wearing her apron even out here. “It won’t heal you instantly or completely, but it has kepu leaves for—”
“Anesthetic leaves!” the stallion howled, reciting excitedly from a long-gone lesson in botany. Cupping the bowl in his hooves and rubbing its warm surface over his chilly cheeks, “This is amazing... stopping by, almost giving up—your town was my last hope, but turns out I didn’t have to find a way up!”
Bori felt uneasy at Oat constantly singing their praises. “Yes, that’s true... but, we didn’t even know you were here.”
Oat’s smile vanished, supplanted by a look of perplexion. “Huh?”
Bori wore a restive grin, eyes nudging up and pointing at her antlers. Oat followed suit and focused on those whitish bones coming out of her head.
“I felt my antlers glowing,” Bori began. ”They told me—I think they were the ones telling me—to go outside and meet whoever was at the bottom of the hill.” Leaving Oat to swim in his puzzlement, she turned to Aurora. “I guess that happened to you as well.”
Aurora nodded with a hum.
“Hold on, hold on,” interrupted Oat, raising both of his hooves to show off his bewilderment. “So you really are… what did you call it? Accidental guardian angels? Because of your antlers doing weird stuff and whispering to you things?”
“Kind of,” Bori said, shrugging as she inspected Oat Milk’s almost empty wagon. “This is only our second time doing this… and we just don’t know what to do except roll with it.”
She chuckled, looking at Aurora again, prompting Oat to look at her, too. “Also gave Aurora and Alice some crazy time-reading powers or something."
She finished that with a somber smile as another cold gust blew upon them. Their coats bent and their manes swayed; the reindeer lowered their heads and closed their eyes, the stallion covered his face against the onslaught of frosty torture.
After the gust subsided, he opened his eyes and saw Aurora smile. Seeing her old face reminded him of Bori’s words mere moments ago: crazy time-reading powers…
“He’s probably wondering what I’d just said,” Bori said to Aurora while wiping the snow off both their antlers. This only frightened Oat a bit more.
Aurora pat Bori on the shoulders before turning to comfort Oat. “I’ve been trying my best to hold my past-reading powers in. So far, it’s working, but I’m still knowing random stuff about you out of the blue.”
“Like what?” the stallion said, curious but also still frightened.
Aurora cleared her throat, though it took her quite a while to fully clear it since she was spitting out snow clogged from behind her teeth.
“Apparently, Oat, you wanted to return to your home in this new-fangled place called Rainbow Falls; born in that frontier town, you were. I guess you’re also trying to make it back before your wedding, hm?”
The stallion blushed, scratching his had in both irritation and embarrassment. “That’s true, miss... lovely Starchy-poo’s gonna get straight mad if I take too long.” He cut into that romantic stint with a lengthily drawn sigh, turning to his nigh barren wagon which, now, was too big for its scant cargo. “Too bad most of the gifts and souvenirs I’d got back in Canterlot didn’t survive the trip; bear and her family took the food, and then a random dragon ends up stealing the rest of it at firepoint! Can you believe it? A dragon in the snowlands?! It’s like I’m not supposed to make it in time!”
Thus his little diatribe ended with him smacking the ground in vain, causing a few jets of snow to shoot out and fall flat in the quiet night.
All eyes turned to the wagon, that empty wagon. Once again, the crate and sack lay prominently at the front, their surfaces casting a fuzzy reflection of the moonlight.
“Wait...“ Oat Milk began, rubbing his prickly stubble, “you said ‘Alice’. That means there’s supposed to be three of you… right?” A smile returned to his face, hope revived if ever this Alice reindeer did come.
“Speaking of Alice...“ Bori turned around to see the mountain and a bright Rennefer on top of it. “I wonder if she’s going to get—”
“Yaaaahhh!”
All turned their heads towards the noise’s source.
There, a glowing blue thing rushed through the forest, bumping and brushing against many sharp and leaf-devoid branches. It screeched in an absurdly high pitch, constantly cut off by colliding into so much timber with clanging bsh!’s each time. Weak branches and twigs ripped off under the speed of this breakneck figure.
The glowing stranger flew fast out of the forest, and, screaming all the way to the sky, crash-landed in front of the wagon, face smeared in cold white and moldy brown.
It turned out to be Alice, bedraggled with bruises thanks to her ungraceful end of a flight there, but she still had that anxious smile for a worried Bori and a concerned Aurora by her side.
Everyone else stood astonished, their mouths wide open at Alice’s damage. Bori and Aurora rushed up to her, constantly asking if she was alright, if she was feeling faint.
As they helped Alice up on her hooves, Oat just stood there, dumbfounded by another flying reindeer—perhaps Aurora could do it, too, if he waited long enough. Alice’s antlers were glowing, he observed, though this one was a couple tads shorter than the others.
“Oat?” Bori said, gesturing a hoof at the new arrival while facing the lone pony there. “Meet Alice. She’s quite—”
“—annoying with her future powers, huh?” Alice finished, elbowing Bori’s knee. “I gotcha’, didn’t I?”
Bori rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. “Yes, you did, Alice. Took the words straight out of my mouth.” Facing Oat again, she said, “If you’re wondering… yes, I was going to say that. Goes to show Alice’s abilities of seeing what hasn’t happened yet.”
That prompted Oat to panic inside, biting his lip and his tongue several times before ekeing out, “The… wha… she can see the future?!”
“Not all of it,” Alice clarified cheerfully, “just some of it! Oh, and a question in three, two—”
Pop!
Everyone looked at the soup. From the bowl rose a big yellow-tinted bubble, riding high into the sky and disappearing.
“Don’t worry, that’s normal,” Bori said to reassure Oat from any fears of eating bad soup. After scratching her head, she quipped, “But how did the soup get here in the first place?”
“How did it get in my bag, you mean?” Aurora added, removing her bag from her back and showing it off to everyone else.
Bori scrunched her face up, resting a fidgety hoof on her neck. “I didn’t do anything with it! I only saw you this morning on the way to the hall!”
“Well, I didn’t see you at all until a few minutes ago,” Aurora said.
“Um… me, too… that’s what I just implied, right?”
“I guess that leaves me!” Alice concluded, jumping and throwing up tiny pieces of snowy dirt and dirty snow with her legs.
Bori and Aurora blinked in surprise. Oat, too, now all three of them giving Alice a strange look while a moaning wind ruffled their hairs and manes.
“Bori,” Alice began, “you sent the soup for delivery, but you never saw who took it, right? It’s yours truly, motivated by my eeire antlers telling this exact moment’s gonna happen!” Galloping up to Aurora next, she continued: “Next, I bumped into Aurora on purpose to secretly get it into her bag—did some talkity-talk to throw off any suspicion!” She zipped to the soup, inhaled its savory scent, and uttered, “Yup! This is Bori’s cooking, for sure! See? I knew we were gonna do, uh, this.”
While Aurora and Bori congratulated Alice with careful smiles and quiet chidings to warn them about her motives next time—while that was happening, Oat stretched his cheeks in misgiving. The future and past were known by these two random reindeer in some faraway reindeer village he’d only heard of less than five times in his life? That was a scary thought.
“Well… that’s, something,” Bori said after she ended her congratulations. “Good to know my soup didn’t disintegrate into thin air.”
“But what about the poultice?” Aurora asked, pointing at her bag and Oat’s limp leg. “Where did that come from, Alice?”
Alice blushed. “I didn’t do anything with it… honest! Maybe it was inside the whole time and you just forgot, old-timer.”
Aurora grumbled, leaving Alice to fend for herself against the verbal backlash she’d likely receive.
However, Alice knew subduing the enemy without fighting was the acme of skill. So, she subdued Aurora by looking away from here and talking to Oat instead: “Oh! One more thing for you!”
She hoofed her saddle bags out to Oat who received them with a grunt before getting used to their heavy weight.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just random stuff I bought from the market, plus enough food to last you the trip to Rainbow Falls!”
“... what?”
“Really!” Alice shook her head up and down in snappy nodding. “If you didn’t know, we got this thing called the Caribou Carnival going on right now, so the market’s full of random souvenirs and tidbits from around the world!”
She tied a red bow around Oat’s neck, catching him by surprise, but he decided not to protest; he didn’t know what to do with this future-seeing reindeer.
“Might as well consider this and the bags a gift for your you know who,” and she winked knowingly. “Better than just Canterlot goodies, am I right?”
It took a while, but Oat… gulped at the sudden gifts. His leg was healing faster with the poultice around it, some soup was available for him to get well on, food and gifts were aplenty for the trip home along with the wedding, and there was the bow which he wasn’t sure what to make of.
“... really?” he finally said in a croak, turning to the three reindeer before him. “Wow, I… I don’t know how to th-thank you!”
He put the bags into the wagon but not without taking a sneak peek into one of them.
“Ah, ah, ah!” Alice said, slapping the sneaking hoof away. “No cheating! I’d rather have both husband- and wife-to-be surprised. The best prize is a surprise, anyway… and I know you won’t cheat on those bags.” Leaning suavely on the wagon, “Trust me. I know.”
“Alright, miss…” turning to the rest of the reindeer, bringing a hoof to his throat as he failed to continue at first. “All of you misses… well, thank you. I… I, just—”
“Yeah, you can thank us by going out and fulfilling your future!” Alice said before having her ears pulled by Bori for being too rash with her goodbye.
With that, everyone exchanged farewells. Now, it was Oat’s turn to hook himself to his wagon and gallop away—or, rather, trot away, his limping but recovering leg getting in the way of fast pace.
The three reindeer stood there, waving at him as his figure slowly shrunk into a dot in the snowy and dark distance.