//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: Tales of an Equestrian Mare // by Durandal //------------------------------// The night passed without much discomfort, between Hearthfire’s canvas serving as a groundsheet, and a pair of loaned animal hides coupling with her own thick cloak to keep off the night’s chill. Along with the warmth of the fire embers and Cas snuggling up beside her, it was almost pleasant, and the pair slept soundly, undisturbed by the gentle sounds of other ponies snoring or talking in hushed tones around the perimeter of the camp. It had been a gruelling week of brief stop overs and even briefer naps while waiting for her tiny plane to be refuelled. She had slept in cheap inns, on concrete hangar floors, by the side of tiny airstrips, at whatever time of day or night she ended up making her landing. To sleep an entire night, in a quiet place, with actual blankets, was practically a luxury. By the time she was gently shaken awake by a grinning Cloud Flower holding a bowl of porridge and a smattering of dried fruit, the camp was beginning to dissolve back into its constituent parts. The fire was gone, sand scuffed over the charcoal remains, and in every direction figures were moving about their morning tasks with a busy determination that put Hearthfire in mind of a swarm of insects, all working individually toward a shared goal. In the light of day, she realised that there weren’t just pegasi here, but also a handful of earth ponies and even one or two other unicorns; in fact, the band was not even composed solely of ponies. What she had taken to be unusually shaped rocks or piles of luggage in the dark turned out to be bulky-bodied, spindly-limbed camels. Standing up, the creatures were giants, easily twice the size of the average mare, perhaps even taller than the rare alicorns, the largest of the pony breeds. To a pony seeing them for the first time, they might appear monstrous, all gangly legs and odd, lumpy bodies, but you couldn’t go a day without encountering one in this part of the world, and Hearthfire had always found them pleasant company, if somewhat rough around the edges. They were far better adapted to desert life than any pony, and were often highly sought for their expertise in survival and navigation in one of the most hostile environments in the world, as well as their great stamina and strength. In the midst of the departure preparations, Hearthfire found herself lost and bewildered. Cloud Flower had made ‘good morning’ sounding noises and vanished back into the maelstrom, and while she was no stranger to travelling with caravans, it was obvious that this was a group who had been living together for a long time, and knew their jobs inside and out. She felt that she should be helping out, but had no idea where to begin. Instead, she jimmied open a tin of cat food from her supplies for Cas, wolfed down the porridge as quickly as she dared, and set about making good her own belongings; a task which took under five minutes, and left her sitting uselessly by the remains of the fire, waiting until the caravan was ready to leave. As she waited, Hearthfire became slowly aware that she was being watched. While most of the folk around her were too busy for curiosity about last night’s newcomer - at least for now - there was one little face peering out at her from behind the wheel of a nearby wagon. It vanished when it noticed that it had been spotted, only to appear again a few seconds later, looking sheepish. Hearthfire put on her best dealing-with-foals smile, and motioned for the watcher to come closer. The foal, when it emerged, was a light green unicorn filly with a wavy hay-coloured mane and the very round, oversized eyes common to young ponies, rendered in a soft violet shade. “Hello, there,” Hearthfire began, with an exaggerated, friendly hoof-wave. “I am Hearthfire. What’s your name?” Pantomime pointing, to indicate each pony being talked about. She was rewarded with a string of Saddle Arabian, in the same unfamiliar dialect. Completely unintelligible to her when spoken at full speed. Of course. The conversation went back and forth, with Hearthfire unable to work out if any of the words flying past her ears were supposed to have been an introduction. The filly didn’t seem to get why Hearthfire couldn’t understand, and was beginning to pout from frustration. Hearthfire, for her part, was beginning to panic. She wasn’t the best at dealing with children under normal conditions, had almost never felt a mothering instinct in her life, and was now totally out of her depth... And then the filly caught sight of Cas, dozing on top of Hearthfire’s luggage, causing a magical transformation to take place. The mouth became an ‘o’ of excitement, her ears noticeably pricked up, and she let out a cry that Hearthfire presumed to be the Saddle Arabian for kitty! as she gamboled over. Cas opened one eye suspiciously, but it was already too late. She was scooped up into a squeezing embrace by the foal. “Ah, no! Gently! Gently!” Hearthfire lunged and missed in her attempt get the pair separated, leaving herself splayed on the ground in a spray of grit. The instantly furious Cas turned on her unintentional attacker and twisted, contorting in a blur of feline gymnastics that somehow slipped her free of the hug. As quickly as it had begun, it was over, and Cas was sat calmly on top of Hearthfire’s flank, smoothing down her ruffled fur and preening, one watchful eye on the filly. The other party of the brief fight sat down hard, eyes wide in shock, tears beginning to well up, with a trio of scratch marks across her muzzle where Cas had exacted clawed retribution. “Oh, pony...” Hearthfire picked herself up, dislodging Cas in the process and earning herself a disapproving look, and did her best to dust her coat down. “Come on, it’s not deep.” The commotion had halted much of the activity immediately around the three of them, and Hearthfire was uncomfortably aware of being stared at, and an undercurrent of muttering propagating through the traders. “Um.” She tried to put a comforting hoof around the filly’s trembling shoulders, but the shock seemed to wear off just enough to allow the little unicorn to bolt, head down and bawling, back towards the wagon she had originally appeared behind. A unicorn mare stepped out of the crowd, shot Hearthfire a dirty look, and galloped after the fleeing young one without a word. Something was shouted from the back of the crowd, and the rest of the gawkers seemed to take this as a sign that the show was over, and went back to work. “...Well, that was staggeringly awkward. And you, Cas, I would have thought you’d know better.” Cas had the decency to look slightly embarrassed in the face of her scolding. Hearthfire sighed, “I suppose neither of us are very good with children, are we?” *        *        * Sandwhistler and Cloud Flower seemed to have either been appointed, or to have self-appointed themselves, as her guardians. They found her as the ponies and camels on wagon-hauling duty were assisted into their harnesses and the caravan prepared to move off. “Hello, Hearthfire, how are you today?” Cloud Flower greeted her. Sandwhistler had a stupid grin plastered over his features; clearly whatever his punishment had been, it hadn’t been enough to dampen his good spirits. “He was reading books all night, try to learn. Father has books of... Equestrian words.” “Hello, you two. That’s very good, Cloud Flower.” Cloud Flower looked panicked for a moment, his wings flexing nervously, before settling on: “Yes, I am fine, also. This is lovely weather we are having.” His friend burst out laughing and made some derisive comment in Saddle Arabian, causing Cloud Flower to scowl and shut his mouth. “Maybe I should see if your dad has anything I could use to brush up on my language skills,” Hearthfire mused, half to herself. The day’s march was long, the caravan setting off early in the day, before the heat had time to really build up. Hearthfire made her way up and down the caravan as they went, picking up her pace or letting it flag as needed, always escorted by the two she was beginning to think of as ‘the pegasus twins’, despite their differing appearance and lack of actual blood relation. She chatted to the ponies and the camels, in an attempt to find out as much as she could about the way the caravan worked. There were, it turned out, enough folk in the group who spoke passable Equestrian that she could usually find someone who could understand her, or who was willing to translate. “So each of the wagons is owned by a family?” she had asked, as she trotted side-by-side with a burly pegasus colt towards the middle of the convoy. He was pulling in the traces of a diminutive cart, loaded with wax-sealed firkins, its fabric canopy dyed a gay sky-blue colour. Sitting daintily by the cart’s tailgate, his wife, a pretty young pegasus mare with quick hooves, was counting silver from a pouch into a large leather bag. “Yes. But some families have more than one wagon.” “Sandborne called himself the ‘head of the tribe’. What does that mean?” “It means that out of all the family-heads, the other heads have most faith in his experience. His word carries more weight than the others when decisions are made. He has been a trader longer than anyone else.” Most of the members of the caravan walked, only the few with specific jobs to do or who were too young to manage the day’s trek rode. It was dusty and achingly hot, and those who were not pulling the wagons instead stuck to the shadows they cast. The youngsters had spent the first hour or so dashing around and playing games up and down the line of travellers, occasionally being shooed away when they got under the hooves of other ponies, but by mid morning the rising temperatures had sapped all the bounce out of them, and they had retreated into the wagons to curl up amongst their parents’ wares. It wasn’t until all the children were napping and a relative peace and quiet had descended over the travellers’ toils that Hearthfire realised she hadn’t seen the little green unicorn from the Breakfast Incident. Feeling she perhaps should explain herself and try to make peace with the filly’s mother, she set off along the line once more, looking for the glaring unicorn mare from earlier. It didn’t take Hearthfire long to find her, trotting towards the front. She was three carts back from Sandborne’s lead position. Her coat and mane colouring were more or less an inversion of her daughter’s, perhaps a few shades less saturated. She had the same soft violet eyes, but there was nothing soft about her expression as she spotted Hearthfire, with her two local shadows in tow. She seemed to entirely discount Sand Whistler, focusing all her ire on Hearthfire and Cloud Flower. Hearthfire decided to gamble on Equestrian. “I’m sorry about earlier, ma’am, but you see, it -” “Hmph. You are bad news for my family.” Well, that was blunt. At least we can understand each other, I suppose. Hearthfire didn’t relish being corralled into defending herself when she was manifestly not in the wrong, but there weren’t many other ways she could answer the accusation. “Now, ma’am, your daughter wasn’t entirely blameless in this -” “Yes, yes, I know.” The unicorn cut across her again, with an irritated roll of her eyes. “Neither can you be blamed for my son choosing to wander off into the desert without telling anypony. All the same, you have been like a bad omen.” “Excuse me... your son?” Even as she opened her mouth to ask she had already worked it out, from Cloud Flower’s guilty expression, and the way he averted his eyes from the unicorn’s gaze. There was the look of a young pony who had recently received the sharp of his mother’s tongue. Oops.