//------------------------------//
// timber men 
// Story: No. Not there. She's not on the moon. 
// by waste 
//------------------------------//

Luna wakes in the night. She’s draped in a jacket and the fire is raised on a broken log. She would touch her face and feel a layer of sweat. She had dreamt of her and Celestia. It wasn’t a dream but a memory of how they parted. Her mouth is sticky and her head is feverish. Sore.

Her eyes are gritty. She’d reach out with a hoof to rub her eyes. Her vision is repaired and in it she can see one of the things. This larger thing was poking the fire. The smaller thing lay down curled inside the larger thing’s limb. She’d watch as the large thing dropped the stick and lifted two eyes fitted on a smooth face. Luna felt like talking so she talked.

“Why are you awake?”
“Why are you?”

The thing would say no more after that then throw the stick into the fire. The thing’s sight is sorrowful when it strays on Luna. They’d meet eyes and it isn’t confrontational but understanding. Then the thing would curl up with the smaller thing, both turned away from Luna. Luna abstains from sleep. The other two motionless in the depths of fatigue, asleep and safe with each other. From where she is the two animals are so still she could imagine them dead.  

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Morning came again and Luna remained there solid and brooding. The pair would sleep there in a deep peace. Luna eyes out the day and waits for the night to return. She tries to use magic to bring night back but nothing happens. The day still unmoving and uncaring. Comatose in a wakeful stare she watches the pair stir at the same time. In a broken mumbling of Cantonese the mother urges Hayden to get up. The mother says good morning to no one in particular and no response is heard.

Hayden shyly passes by Luna asking if she wants breakfast but Luna is inside the borderless expanse of her mind. What wretched things haunt and pin her down there? Terrible feelings formless. Shapeless. Her silence hums in the pinched daylight.

The mother would again check the shotgun and thanks the lord he hasn't given her reason to use it. Loosely she would reach into the truck for stale bread and a six pack of eggs. Two of the eggs are broken so she puts only four eggs into old vegetable oil to be fried on the camping pan. Instead of plates she puts the egg on stale slices of bread, the greasy smell like a warm invitation pencilled into the air.

“You hungry Luna?”
The pony occupies a half wasted frame, seemingly stunted and unhealthy. She turns her head morose and lost. She would just seem confused. Then she would grow even more confused as the pair both knelt down and thanked someone called god. The bipeds would then shuffle their slender fingers and bring food to their mouth. She stares slightly mesmerised. Then Hayden gestures and points to two eggs fried and left on bread. Luna eats it off the ground and feels like an animal.
“Luna we come from somewhere far from here. We we're sent to you. To help you back to your sister."
“My sister probably isn’t fond of this idea”
“We need to keep going in a straight line. That’s all I know to do right now. You're coming with us now. My name is Elle and this is my son Hayden. We're humans Luna”

Luna licks specks of yolk and grease of her lips. The mother hands her a tissue but Luna looks confused once again. Hayden waddles over to her and takes a tissue in his hand. He wipes her mouth gently and smiles at her. The sun pure in streams of gold yellowed into the forest. 

“Luna you need to help us carry some stuff okay? The truck is dead. Hayden help mama get the canvas off the back.”

They heave off the sheets of canvas, shrouds of semi blackness tough and waterproof. Rolled and twisted the canvas sheets are transformed into pouches that hold tins, boxes and jars of food and small drums of water. Two sacks of supplies made. Then she would step into the truck and retrieve three backpacks. She’d stuff these bags full of packets of dried food, first aid, water, clothes, shells and bags of flour and salt. Lastly gasoline poured into a flask.

“Hayden you need to strap this onto your shoulders. Here you go.”
“Its heavy ma.”
“I'm sorry. Do you want me take some more stuff?”
“It’s okay ma.”

She then shoulders a bag on to her back and another on to her front. It squashes her breasts too much so she wriggles and rearranges folds of clothing and the weight hung over the front of her.

“Luna hold still a sec okay?”

She drapes the sacks of canvas on either side of Luna forming primitive saddlebags. Without his mother looking Hayden would take some of Luna’s weight from her saddlebags and put it in his pack. Luna looks at the boy as if it’s the first time she’s really seen him. He returns her dazed gaze with a grin of milk teeth. They set out at a slow pace the mother leading with the compass, Hayden in the middle, Luna at the end and self-destructive wants hovering behind the pony.

They travel for six miles. The trees would seem to space out more. They’d become larger. They stop to see strange fruits and nuts left on the ground. All of the items as large as two hands put together. They would stop a while and eat the fleshy fruits. Hayden would root around and bring his mother what he thinks are the best looking fruits. Then the mother would give Luna more than half of them. Luna takes mouthfuls of fruits. Hayden would watch fascinated. The mother stands next to Luna and talks.

“Luna I can see something really big in the distance. The trees are getting massive. What does this mean?”
“I don’t know”
“Say again?”
“I don’t know”
“Okay”

The trees sprout out bigger and bigger. The company stalk past a canopy reaching higher and strangling more and more of the eliminated light. Trees of the forest ancient and indestructible, their roots steeped in age and spread out at thirty feet. More miles would be put behind them, and trees yawn out bigger and greater. The trunks thicker then the skyscrapers the mother would see in Michigan. If you could look upwards the branches are monsters of thick shadow barely unseen and when they make camp underneath a giant root the texture of the bark is coarse like gnarled hardened leather trailed in your hand.

The three of them could never be able to understand how these wooden leviathans came about, and if you ask the mother she'd tell you that this is in all principles the wonder of god as well. Luna wouldn't say it but she has never seen anything splayed out in such an eternity so deathless and old.

They made a fire from pulled strips of bark and a splash of gasoline salvaged from the truck left behind. They eat a supper of cooked soup and the rest of rustic stale bread. 

Hayden said he saw giant eyes bobbing down from the branches, and when asked if this was true, Luna would nod slowly still staring out at the darkness, her abject depression forced into curiosity and fear. The mother saw no such thing but switches the safety off and glares at the darkness daring it to move. When something large and bristled moves against the darkness she gets everyone to wake up and gather behind her.

“I think something is out there. It looks dangerous. I’m going to shoot the shotgun.”

A flash and thunder. The shot spindles out hot, the buckshot screaming into darkness. Behind her Luna and Hayden hold each other tightly. In front a large cluster of darkness runs off wailing in a sound indescribable. She pumps the shotgun and loses the spent casing. She loads another shell her fingers sticky and trembling.

“We're moving come on.”
They settle further into the root and start no fires. They shudder around, fear holding them tightly together. Luna tries to generate heat through magic and nothing comes out.

“Mama I'm cold.” 
“Come over here then, you too Luna.”

She unzips sleeping bags and spreads it across them like blankets. They hear another wail and the fire they left behind is wiped out. In their fear they are all equals. They would press into each other and the son will wrap his arms around his mother and Luna.

“Luna is your home like this”
“No.” 
“Is this far from home?”
“I think this is very far from equestria. Very far from home.”
“Good.”