You are sitting on the couch at your home, laughing at what you think was a joke your dad just made. He’s sitting across the living room in the chair he gave you when you moved in. It’s the same chair he always sat in since you were a kid and has that kind of sentimental value to you.
Your mother is sitting next to you glaring at you for laughing at the, in her opinion, tasteless joke her husband had made. She lightly slaps your arm and turns to glare at your father, who tries and fails to force back his own chuckling while he raises his hands in surrender. This makes your chuckling increase, which in turn, causes your mother to give in and laugh along.
It takes some time for the laughter to die down, which was fine by you, you love these times with your parents. Just the three of you, hanging out like old friends.
Your dad’s face falls to one of confusion, which you mimic in reaction. “Who are you?” he asks.
Your confusion doubles at this absurd question, especially since your mother is acting like he hadn’t said anything. “What do you mean, dad? I’m Anon, your son.”
“Hmm...” he hums, leaning back in his chair.
The next thing you know, you’re alone in your bedroom, folded clothes in your hands, packing a suitcase. You’re preparing to go on a trip. Your parents should’ve been here two hours ago, they wanted to hang out before saying bye. They aren’t normally late, but maybe they got caught up with something else. You shrug it off and finish packing.
You load up your car and begin your drive to the airport. Your parents didn’t show up at all, and they haven’t called. You start to worry about them, but you’re sure they’re alright. They probably slept in, it’s rather early after all, about nine in the morning. Yeah, you're sure that's it.
You’re standing behind the line at your terminal, waiting for your group number to be called. You idley sway, thinking about your trip to… Where were you going again?
You’re interrupted by your group being called. Being in economy class, you are in the last group among probably half the plane, who swarmed to grab their place in line. You manage to secure a spot halfway through. A few passengers board before you hear your name called from behind you.
You turn to spot your parents quickly making their way towards you. Your eyes widen and you make to meet them, but the people behind you block your path, shoving you forward in line with blank stares past you as it picks up pace. You fight to make it past them but they feel like they’re made of stone.
You look past them to see your parents having a similar problem, the crowds increased in density, slowing them down to a crawl. Faster than you realize, you’re at the front of the line and the attendant looks at you impatiently before snatching your boarding pass and scanning it. The people behind you give you no time to think about what just happened as they push you past and down the hallway.
You manage to be the last person to board the plane in a vain attempt to see your parents before you take off.
“Anon!” You hear your mother’s voice echo.
Turning towards your name, you see your parents through the crack of the closing door of the plane, and bang on the door, practically begging the flight attendant to open it just for a moment.
The attendant looks to you with a blank stare. “I’m sorry, once the doors close, we can’t open them until we reach our destination.” she states robotically.
With a defeated sigh, you make your walk of shame to your designated window seat. Head lowering to stare blankly at the back of the seat in front of you, your mind goes numb as you wait for your inevitable takeoff.
“What is this contraption?” A female voice asks next to you, breaking you away from your thoughts.
You sigh, not looking away from the seat. “What kind of question is that?” you ask, slightly irritated at how dumb that sounded.
The plane starts backing up and making its way to the runway. As you feel the lady next to you shift uncomfortably, you look out the window, resting your head on your hand, staring at the terminal you just pulled out of, unrealistically hoping to see your parents from the distance you’re at.
The plane speeds up on the runway and lifts off and you feel the lady next to you shift again, but you’re too numb to care. That is, until she speaks up again. “What are you?” she asks. From the sound of it, you can tell she’s directing the question at you.
“Seriously?” you ask, then turn to look at her. “Are you some kind of idio-” you start to ask before noticing not only was she translucent, she isn’t even human. She looks like some kind of horse, with a dark blue coat and a mane that appeared to blow in a nonexistent breeze, it was also twinkling like the night sky. The sight stopped more words from coming from your mouth as you looked on in awe and confusion.
Your chest begins thumping harder than you thought possible and your breathing increased as you start hyperventilating. Your eyes don’t leave the horse-lady as you grab a hold of your arm rests, trying and failing to calm yourself down as the thumping increases in strength.
You see her face contort into a concerned expression and she lifts a hoof forward. “Are you okay?” she asks, her voice filled with genuine emotion.
You fail to respond as the thumping escalates to pounding and your breathing increases. You begin to scream as the plane and its occupants disappear and everything quickly goes black.
“Anon!”
You wake with a short yell, feeling a weight on your chest tumble to your lap as you quickly sit up. Looking down, you see Missy righting herself to sit on your lap, giving you a worried look.
“Are you okay, Anon? It looked like you were having a bad dream, you were moving around a lot and you looked like you were in pain. I tried yelling your name and stepping on your chest, but you still wouldn’t wake up.” she says, putting her hooves on your chest for emphasis.
You take a moment to take a deep breath and rub your face to help wake yourself up. “Yeah, just a weird dream. I’m fine.”
She hugs your midsection with a nuzzle. “Good.”
You smile and hug her back with a hand before moving to get up and out of your shelter. It’s about an hour past dawn judging by the amount of light and the sun’s location. The fire had become naught but a pile of ash surrounded by rocks. Missy follows you outside, shielding her eyes from the light with her foreleg.
Grabbing your spear from its place leaning on a nearby tree, you and your companion begin the next leg of your journey. Unfortunately, as there is no trail this deep into the forest, your speed is significantly decreased by the many natural obstacles in your path. Missy can easily navigate under and in between the mess of plants, but slows herself to stick close to your side or just ahead of you as you either tear your way through or find your own path around the things you can’t force through.
The next several hours pass by rather quickly, filled with the sound of the forest and the ground crunching under your footsteps. The hike does wonders to distract you from your weird dream. Along the way Missy decides it would be funny to tap your leg and shout “Tag!” before running ahead of you and staying just out of your reach despite your best attempts. You both have a good laugh at the circumstance, keeping your moods lifted.
Missy takes it upon herself to scout ahead a bit, but does well to stay in your sight. At first. She starts to scout a bit too far for your liking, but keeps returning so you don’t worry too much. Until she scouts outside your vision and you hear a high pitched scream from where she disappeared, stopping you in your tracks as the color drains from your face. You don’t stand for long as you break into a determined sprint, ripping through the forest, not caring about the cuts and scrapes you get as you rush to where you heard the scream.
You stop as you come across a black vine with teal thorns sticking out of it in various places. It has Missy in its grasp and holds her in the air as she uses her hooves to beat it as hard as she can, occasionally biting it in an effort to get it to release her.
“Take that you big ugly plant thing!” she angrily yells. But when she notices her efforts doing nothing, her face adorns the look of one frightened for their life. She sees you and pleads for help with her eyes. “ANON!” she screams, absolutely terrified.
The grip on your spear tightens in rage and you run up to the vine and start stabbing and screaming. It starts retreating into the forest, still holding onto the filly, but you keep up. The more holes you put in it in an attempt to cut off the end of the vine, the slower it moves. Unfortunately, a particularly thick patch of plants gets in your way as the vine pulls through it. You attempt to grab onto Missy’s hoof, but the vine’s strength pulls her out of your grip.
You curse in anger and quickly make your way around the wall of flora and after the vine. Luckily, you seem to have wounded it more than you thought and quickly catch up to it. The adrenaline rush doing wonders for your stamina, you continue your assault with the spear.
With one especially strong stab, the spear goes all the way through the vine and into the ground, holding the almost cut off limb in place. It’s strength betrays it as with one final pull, it tears and severs the end, right where you created the many holes, and the stump retreats at a rapid pace. The now amputated end falls limp, releasing Missy from its grasp.
The filly falls to the ground and you rush to her aid. You kneel in front of her as she stands up, much to her credit, but favoring her left hind leg. “Are you okay?” you ask, unable to keep the mass amount of worry out of your voice.
She whines a bit, trying to put weight on the hoof she was favoring. “I’m fine. Well, except for my leg...”
You give it a thorough look, pressing lightly in multiple spots, hoping her anatomy is similar enough to yours that you can determine if it’s broken or not. She winces a bit as a few of your touches, but isn’t in too much pain as far as you can tell. “Well, good news, it’s not broken. But it’s pretty bruised.” you tell her. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you go that far ahead of me.” She looks down, regretting her own decision.
Debating for all of two seconds, you make a decision. “Alright, here we go.” You scoop her up in your arms and stand up, opting to leave your spear and make a new one later in favor of being able to carry her with both arms.
Unhappy with not being able to walk on her own, she pouts in your arms, but eventually coming to terms with the situation and begins snuggling closer to your chest, relishing your presence. You continue your walk for about an hour before she speaks up. “I’m sorry...” she says in a soft voice.
“Hm?” You look down at her.
“I’m sorry for running ahead. I just wanted to help find a good path.” she says with a frown.
You smile at her. “I know you did, I’m not mad at you for wanting to help. I was just worried about your safety.” You reach your hand over and boop her snout, eliciting a giggle out of the filly. Then a stern look overcomes your face. “But never do that to me again. If giant moving plants are here, I don’t want to know what else is.” you scold.
Her face becomes bashful. “Okay, I won’t. I promise.”
“Good.” You smile at her then look ahead, continuing your agonizingly slow pace.
Another several hours go by, and luckily there have been no other surprise dangers today, much to your relief. You idley keep an eye on the suns position and notice it will be setting within the next hour or so. You start to look for suitable shelter locations as you pass by a small mountain.
“Hey look!” Missy says, pointing to what looks like a small cave a short ways up the mountain.
Seeing this as the best option you’d get for shelter for a while, you make your way up the easiest route you can find to the cave. “Good eye.” you compliment the filly, who grins in kind.
As you step up the path, you look around and notice a small pond not too far away where you can probably get some fish for dinner.
Then a thought comes to your mind that there might be something already in the cave. Looking around, you notice a bush large enough to hide inside, giving you an idea of a way to check. You slowly creep your way towards the entrance, looking back and forth from the cave to the bush.
“Alright,” you whisper to the filly. “I’m gonna yell inside, then I’m gonna run us both into that bush over there.” You gesture with your head to the bush. She nods in confirmation.
You step next to the cave opening and prepare yourself. With a deep breath, you shout. “Hey!” Then you book it to the bush as quickly as you can while making minimal noise, forcing you and Missy inside it, then peaking through the leaves at the cave.
You wait for a few minutes, hearing and seeing nothing from the cave. You both take simultaneous sighs of relief and you make your way out of the bush and into the cave. The opening is short so you had to duck your head to get in, but the inside is just barely tall enough for you to stand up in. It’s fairly deep, measuring probably about thirty to thirty-five feet if you had to guess. It’s filled with twigs that have been dead and dry for a while, and the dusty ground is undisturbed, telling you nothing has used this cave as a home for a while.
You smile at this and set Missy down. “Alright, you stay here, I saw a nearby pond and I’m gonna go try to spear some fish for dinner. Sound good?”
She nods happily. “Sounds great! Please hurry though.”
You smile at her concern. “I will, don’t worry.”
After making your way to the edge of the pond, you proceed to find another worthy stick and spend the next fifteen minutes crafting your second spear. Finally deciding the weapon was pointy enough, you stand above a relatively shallow area, spear at the ready. The fish you see look just big enough for each of you to have a decent meal if you caught two.
Your first twenty or so attempts come up fishless and you begin to get irritated at your lack of skill. A few more tries later, however, you finally get a catch. Pulling up your catch, you watch it begin to flail with a smile, then brush it off onto the ground behind you with a hand. Several more failed attempts occur before you finally snag yourself a second fish and repeat the process you did with the first.
Finding a nearby plant with large enough leaves, you rip one off and place the now still pair of fish on top, folding up the leaf to make them easier to carry. You put the package under your arm and grip the spear with the other hand, making your way back to the cave. Along the way, you grab several sized pieces of wood. You carry two medium sized logs in your arms, placing smaller sticks, your spear, kindling, then your fish package on top of them.
You duck into the cave entrance with your load barely remaining in your grasp. Missy is still there, in the same spot you left her, likely due to her injured leg. She’s drawing in the dirt with her hoof, clearly bored out of her mind. She notices you enter and smiles at your return. You place the supplies in your arms on the ground beside her, then start to build a fire in the same way you had the previous night.
Last night’s experience made constructing the fire much easier this time around, and you manage to get it going in half the time, spit and all. You set it up close to the entrance as to not smoke the two of you out of your new shelter. Placing the fish on the spit, you smile at your efficiency and walk back inside to sit by Missy and wait.
She leans against your side and you wrap an arm around her, causing her to sigh contently. About a minute goes by before she speaks up. “Thank you,” You look down to meet her gaze. “Thank you for saving me. I was so scared you wouldn’t be able to get me out. I-I...”
You shush her with a finger and squeeze her tighter with the arm you have around her. “Of course I saved you. I don’t think I could live with myself if I let anything happen to you, especially a big plant of all things.” You scoff. “How embarrassing would it be to be bested by a plant?”
She smiles. “Still, thank you so much.”
You return her smile. “Anytime, Missy, anytime.” You think about your journey ahead. “How far would you say we are from Ponyville?”
She thinks about it for a few moments, her tongue sticking out slightly from the side of her muzzle. “Uh… We should be about halfway there now, maybe a little bit less.”
“Good enough for me.” you say. “I’d say that’s pretty good progress considering I have basically no experience with this kind of thing, then you add in the mythical plant and animal life and I’d consider it a win if we only made it half this distance. I’m surprised you made it as far as you did by yourself.”
She smiles smugly. “What can I say? I’m awesome!”
You chuckle. “That you are.”
“You’re pretty awesome too.” she continues. “I don’t want to know where I'd be if it wasn't for you.”
Your grin widens and you pull her into another tight hug, which she returns happily. “Thanks, Missy.”
The fish finishes cooking and you both have your daily meal in pleasant silence as the sun sets outside. You don’t have a leaf pile mattress tonight, but you figure the fine dirt on the save floor will do well enough. You lay down towards the back of the cave and Missy climbs onto your chest, spins in place once before curling up like a dog on top of you. You smile at the sight then close your own eyes, welcoming sleep in hopes of a cure to your exhaustion, as well as hoping for no nightmares this time around.