These ponies are nicer than I honestly expected someone randomly encountered on the road to be. This Sunny Skies lady seems to be some noble wom-er, noble pony comes off as as quite amicable. I’m even more surprised at how friendly the guard Captain is, especially with how rude I was when I was introduced. I’ve joined up with their group since they know where we’re going, and it’s been mostly quiet since we’ve got to walking. Boy am I glad that I didn’t try to stand like the werewolf form did, it would have been awkward do try to explain to them why I was standing so strangely compared to them. We’re moving at a relatively slow pace through the brush, when suddenly I’m surprised to see that the winged ones can indeed fly, as two just took off. They’ll probably start watching me more closely if I just act quiet, should probably do something about that. Maybe tell a story? No, I’ll need to adapt one for pony speak first. I truly am having a terrible dilemma trying to find a way to get the conversation going again. Thankfully the road seems to be coming up, and Sunny Skies looks like she’s going to say something.
“Ah, here’s the road. We’ll be headed to our right on the path to head north.” Knew she’s start talking, she seems the type to provide information to new people. There’s always one of them in groups like this. If this group keeps acting like a new faction to join, then the next sentence will be something that hooks my curiosity. ”Tenacity, I think we’ll need to get ready to set up camp for the night. It should be getting dark soon and we should have everything done before the night guard arrives.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll send the signal for the Night Guards to locate us once we’re where we’ll set up” Tenacity quickly responds. Knew it. I should probably ask what that is, but I won’t. That’s a one way ticket to getting roped into some business that I’d have to wind up fixing. Well, either that or nothing, I’ll just get roped into something involving them eventually regardless if my luck holds. Until then, I’ll just learn what they’re talking about when they get around to actually doing it.
Now that we’re on an actual road, I can say that the scenery around us isn’t all that different from Skyrim. I mean there’s more vibrant colors on a lot of the flowers, but nothing that clearly shouts “not Skyrim”. I mean there’s even mountains surrounding us in the distance! The only things that consistently show I’m not in Skyrim are the present company of pony people, and how freaking hot it is compared to Skyrim’s wonderful freezing summers. Between my unenchanted college robes and coat of shaggy yellow fur I’m getting pretty hot. Not that I’m not used to being hot, I mean that’s just what happens when a nord used to living on snow capped mountains for years that’s just what happen-wait a second.
If I’m apparently a pony now, why do I still feel the same as with my nord blood? The robe doesn’t feel any different, certainly no enchantments on it, besides the obvious shape change. There’s no alterations to the fabric that I can feel and I can’t look any further until I’m alone. Questions for later aside, the scenery is much less interesting compared to Skyrim and Tamriel in general. We’ve been walking for 10 minutes and I haven’t seen a single interesting sight. I mean no animal attack, no weird encounters, no ruins, nothing! Sure the scenery is pretty and we haven’t traveled that far but it’s still seems far too peaceful. I can feel myself slowly growing more paranoid about this as we walk. I itch for something to do. All this silence brings are the issues I have with this body. My soul boils at how I’m stuck in a prey body, I feel my thoughtful side trying to bring the pain of losing everything from home to the forefront, and the pragmatic power-hungry side burns to get into a mess to fix with as violent a way as possible to get rid of that pain through fire and war. I’d welcome it if we were attacked by something if only to relieve this frustration from all sides of myself. The lack of conversation is most definitely not helping. Speaking of conversation, Tenacity and Sunny Skies are too many syllables for me to not make a mental nickname for them. I think I’ll think of them as Sunny and Tenny. Yeah, that works for me.
Let’s at least move faster to get moving. I’ve got the hang of this, it’s just like running as a werewolf but better coordinated.
“Say, you said you wanted to cover more ground before we have to set up camp right?” I ask this to the whole group, but it looks like Sunny and Tenny are the only ones that listen. They look at each other, Sunny nods to Tenny and she nods to the rest of the guards.
“Alright then let’s move then. We’ve got an hour before we have to stop. I want us within a league of town before then, so pick up the pace!” Yeesh, I wanted to go faster and start a conversation, not make it so there’s no comfortable room for talk. Now our pace has picked up into a near gallop. This kind of pace was not conducive of conversation. Oh well, back to my thoughts. I’d be able to talk normally if I was used to running in this form as my nord one, but I’ll just have to settle for getting practice running.
“Alright, this spot seems to work for us. Get the camp set up while I signal the night guard.” Oh how time just flies past when one only has one’s paranoia and the sound of hoof falls and the occasional wing flaps to pass the time running. Now, I’ve slept on plain snow before, but I’d really like to pull out the roughspun bedroll to sleep in. Only problem to this? It’s in my inventory. Granted, these ponies seem to have something to set up where I can’t see it. But unless it’s a magical storage space that looks the same as mine, then I’ll be stuck on the forest floor. To my great joy however I am now witness to one of the normal shaped ponies taking out a cooking pot and table out of thin air. So they have inventories here then. Excellent.
With this joyful thought I take out my roll and see Tenny shoot multicolored flares from her horn into the air. I guess the magic coming out of the horn is normal. Now that I’m all set, I move to see if I can help. “Miss Skies, is there something I can do to help with camp?”
“Yes, I do believe there is. Are you skilled with fire making?”
“Oh I’m quite proficient.” That’s putting it mildly.
“Then would you please get a good fire going? We’re close to town and we were planning to splurge on dinner.”
“Then I’ll get started right away. Need any help cooking? I know some good recipes.”
“I do believe that just the fire should be fine.” Doesn’t trust the stranger with the food like a fool, good.
“Understood.” I’d best get started on the fire then. First, I look out under the surrounding trees and find a suitable amount of branches. Next comes the stones for the pit. A quick and dirty modified transmute turns some dirt into reasonably shaped stones, with some dirt added to make them look natural once they’re seen. Now that that’s done, I divide the sticks from the branches. With the sticks separated, I further divided the twigs from the sticks, then made a bird’s nest from the twigs, then put the nest in the newly made pit. I know from seeing Tenny’s signal to the night guard that magic isn’t uncommon, so the ignite spell from Gane is perfect to start the fire. Once the twigs light I start the process of adding the sticks to make the infant fire grow. As I’m about to add the smallest of the branches I look up to the sight of flying carriages and Sunny holding a hoof to her face. Once these immensely potent creators of curiosity land which is a whole other curious conundrum itself, one of the ponies pulling them walks up towards the pair of Sunny and Tenny with a salute to both.
“Captain Nox Wing sends his best wishes ma’am.”
“Thank you guard.” Sunny says with a sigh. I guess she’s upset her attempt to seem less important than she is (which wasn’t working honestly) has gone up in smoke. “Please get your camp gear set up then prepare for your patrols. Once dinner’s ready the guards not on patrol are free to help themselves.”
“Thank you ma’am.” With that, the uniformed guard moved to assist the other guards. I notice that these seem to have a similar (if darker) color scheme to their day variants. Questions for later once I’m alone once again. Unfortunately, or the opposite, I’m getting curious looks from some of the night guards. They look about the same as their day variants, but most of the winged ones have more bat-like wings. Meh, I’ve got my enchantments on my roll and am more than capable of handling any night assault from these guys. So I quickly and quietly grab some uncomfortably sweet vegetable soup (which was weird to have—I don’t like it), I move to my roll and go to a (very) light sleep.