“Why am I doing this? This is dumb, stupid, what the fuck is wrong with you, Snicker? Go back, just… turn around and go back. Find the path and gallop the way you came from, nopony will know if you hurry and just say you went to the Clubhouse for a crayon.”
Snickers stumbled over a large exposed tree root, lost in the shadows and heavy detritus under the dense canopy of the Everfree. Having lost the past several minutes past, he continued in the direction he’d been pointed hours earlier by Kiwe and Rarity towards Zecora’s home. Glowing eyes tracked his movements and to his pony mind, everything was a predator hunting him.
His muscles trembled and his guts felt like they were vibrating as fear coursed through his veins with each heartbeat and step he took deeper into the haunted woods. “This is stupid, you’re a bably pony in a giant wolf’s den… you’re not a human or an apex anything, you don’t even have a knife, Snickers.
“Just go back, there’s no cutie mark going forward or answers that can’t wait two days,” he whimpered when a tree branch brushed his back, but he went on without heeding his own words. Having lost track of the path, time, and where he was; Snickers eventually stopped and looked around himself for the eighth time and chattered his teeth.
“Stupid colt, stupid,” he stomped his hoof into the ground with a soft crunch, “shouldn’t have, but you did. Why? Because of a dumb rhyme that might have had an answer about why I’m here beyond a second chance to do better. I can’t be lost, I just have to go back the way I came. Hoof prints, an obvious track, maybe I can smell my way back,” he postulated and started back the way he came.
Several minutes passed before he gave up. “This isn’t like in the holovids or books,” he lamented, “it’s too dark, I don’t have any tech, my prints aren’t deep enough to follow two paces in these soft leaves, and all I can smell is forest crap.” He kicked some leaves exposing dark rich soil.
“Fuck this place, I’m so fucked,” he flopped to his belly and whimpered. “No, can’t give up. There’s gonna be a bunch of ponies looking for me in no time, Mom’s gonna panic and send the whole town into the forest and I’ll be found in a couple hours. I didn’t go that far in, I’ve got little legs and can’t go as far.
“How long’s it been? An hour, maybe two of walking? At my size and,” he took several paces from a marked line in two counted seconds, “that distance, at the pace I kept through the brush puts me…” he scratched imaginary numbers into the ground to keep his place as he ran the math, “fuck… almost fortyseven-point-one square miles from home in a planar grid.
“They have no idea where I went because I acted on impulse; the only hint is the talk I had with Kiwe, and there’s little chance they’ll even listen to him at first, setting them all back hours by the time they direct the search to the forest. They won’t brave the forest at night because, unlike me, they’re not idiots that take crazy chances. That leaves my hope in the other Crusaders to find me, which is still a million in one chance because they have to get away from everypony, sneak into the forest, choose a path at random, travel for hours, and eventually run across me by pure luck.
“Heh, thus adding one pony in trouble to three making this even more dangerous for survival,” he resolved and moved to the nearest tree to gently slam his head against it. “What have I done?”
Snickers stood up and rubbed his mane clear, adjusted his shirt and sleeves, and picked a direction to begin walking. “It’s gotta be this way, I can feel it in my b-b-bones.”
He walked in his random path and prayed that he’d come out of the forest or find a path, a sentient creature, or some kind of salvation. Hours passed before he found a large tree with a hollow large enough for him to crawl into and scooted in backwards to hide from what may hunt after the sun had set.
His stomach ached and he cursed at himself for not snacking before he left or taking anything with him. Having to resort to baser needs, he bit some bark from the tree he was in and crunched it quietly behind closed lips into a pulp before swallowing. It tasted awful, bland, he could feel it roughly travelling down his throat, and it left a fetid taste in his mouth.
Bugs crawled across his back and under his shirt, but it was a small price to pay to stay hidden from one of the many beasts he’d heard of that made the Everfree home. Eventually he fell into a fitful rest with little actual sleep until he felt his internal clock tell him it was time to wake up. He looked outside the hollow and listened intently before he crawled out and shook himself twice.
He snapped his tail and roughed his mane to get as many crawlies from himself as he could. “Mom’s gonna be so mad when she sees how I look.” Snickers said and shook one last time for good measure before standing still and listening with swiveling ears for anything he could use to help himself.
He began walking again, unsure of where he was going and snacking on bland leaves as he passed them, enjoying the rare ones that actually tasted flavorful and picking some to savor later on his trek. He made his way over logs, around trees large enough to make into a home, and a pond full of stagnant water that housed several creatures below the surface he didn’t care enough to see.
Finally his ears twitched and his head lifted from being low in growing despair. “Water?” He asked himself and turned to the noise, stopping when he came across a babbling brook holding the greatest gift he could imagine. He fell to the bank and dipped his muzzle in the water, slurping and gulping his fill.
“Wow, I was thirstier than I knew,” he said mirthfully, lying on his side with a distended belly. “Now to get enough food that’s not gross or blah, and I’ll be fine until I’m rescued. They should find me in…” his eyes closed slowly. “Fuck me… stay in place, that was what I forgot. I added fuck knows how many miles to the search now.”
He groaned and burped. “And now I’m super lost, I’m getting an upset tummy, and…” his thoughts traveled to various fillies he accepted into his life as family and, dare he say, a herd. He sniffled. “I miss my herd and family, I want my mommy,” he sniffled loudly and sobbed quietly in the forest without any creature to hear him or care for him for miles in any direction.
…
Eventually Snickers recovered himself and chose to set up a small camp in place. He marked several trees with scratches from his once pristine hooves to mark a boundary and outside the boundary he selected a bunch of scraggly bushes as a latrine he promptly used. He undressed and stuffed his shirt into a hole in a dead tree and then went outside his perimeter to gather broken branches, twigs, and rocks to make a firepit.
“Okay, just like Rainbow showed me that time. That one time before she went camping to show off how awesome she was at starting a fire. It can’t be that hard, just roll a stick into another stick until it smokes and then blow on it to start a fire; easy.”
He set a circle of rocks and dug out more soil to make the pit, then cleared as much of the area as he could before he spent an hour building a tent of sticks in the firepit like Rainbow had done, practically effortlessly. He finally gave up and piled them in the center of the pit after they collapsed for the hundredth time and set his fire starter in place.
“Okay, last night was a bit chilly, tonight is gonna be as warm as snuggling with my girls on a cool night.”
He set to rolling the main stick he’d nibbled at until it was similar to the one Rainbow had used between his forehooves before realizing it wasn’t making enough distance. He switched to using his forelegs and after several minutes he dropped his starter with trembling legs. “C’mon! How can this be so hard? That’s what she said, but this isn’t the time for that,” he stated with a stomp, “there’s always time for that. No there isn’t.
“Yes, there is. C’mon, I’ve gotta get this fire going or I’ll be cold again. My shirt doesn’t do anything to keep most of my body warm, even with my resistance to cold. Ugh, fine, just act like you’re rubbing one off, that works like a charm.”
Snickers frowned at the stick, grabbed it between his hooves, and then began rolling it again without any luck. “Fuck this! How the hell does anypony start a fire with sticks? Give me a damn lighter or match, how about a fucking pulse rifle and some titanium alloy? That shit gives off heat for hours. Yeah, but how would you fire it? Tongue it. That’s how she likes it. Are you really gonna keep goin’ like that? Sure, I’m all you have again. Just like when you got here, you’re all alone, except for me.
“And who are you?”
Yourself. Herd creatures don’t do well alone, so I’m here to keep you company.
“Well, start this fire for me or fuck off and get some real ponies or anything to keep me company.”
Oh, you don’t want just anything to keep you company. Most things will do you no good in this forest. And as long as you’re here, so am I. I’m merely a figment of your imagination trying to stave off insanity, after all.
“Then come back when I’m going insane, I’ve gotta make some weapons and some place to sleep because I can’t just be lazy over a warm cozy fire when I don’t have one.”
Ask, and your wish is my command. Well, as long as it’s absolutely necassary, that is.
Snickers looked around the area and moved to gather leaves and sticks, branches and a convenient vine. He took them all back to the side of his fire pit and started to tear the vine into strings, then he made quick work to lash the strings and twigs to make a dense weave that he supported between two trees close enough together to not waste any space and keep the mesh several inches from the ground.
He repeated the process on a larger scale and found footholds to climb the same trees to tie the mesh above the first by a foot and a half. He stood back and smiled. “Well, that was pretty cool.”
Congrats, you made the base of a tree loft. I hope you understand that you’re still going to need to make your own defenses and find your own food.
Snickers waved a foreleg. “Whatever, I knew I could do this the whole time, I was just messing around and seeing what you knew about what I knew. As far as defenses, that’s easy. Sticks with pointy ends and I can break some rocks to make a knife, I can dig some traps with spikes in them and as far as food, I’m an herbivorous vegetarian, I can eat trees and shit.”
I’d recommend expanding your dietary options; you’re sapient and need more energy than leaves can provide now.
“And you’re not real, I can do fine with whatever I get until I get found and taken to an all I can eat hayburger buffet, sponsored by Mac ‘n Mares.”
Snickers gathered more leaves as shadows covered his temporary home, indicating the time of day being around noon, and started to cover the base of the first hammock he’d made as bedding before he laid on it and sighed happily. “Yeah, this’ll be over in a couple days and I’ll have learned an important lesson about a bunch of stuff.”
Snickers chuckled to himself and swayed a hind leg to start rocking slightly as he fell into a comfortable sleep after six hours of work he barely noticed himself doing. Snickers snorted awake and stretched his legs along the ground, then realized he wasn’t in his hammock. He looked above himself and groaned. “Must’a fallen. Great, gotta learn to hammock,” he said getting up and brushing his side and belly.
“Well,” he yawned loudly and stretched his hind legs one at a time with a shiver once done, “wow, that felt good. “Okay, so… huh,” he looked around his site and noticed how gloomy it was. “Great, must be close to sunset. A totally wasted fucking day and no fire yet. At least I have yummy, yummy… leaves.”
Snickers snacked on some of the leaves he’d gathered and then poked around the perimeter of his area finding large branches to kick over so he could snack on some bugs and more nutrient rich vegetation. “This is worse than interstellar rations,” he griped as he spit dirt from his lips. “At least the dirt in those was part of the meal bars, this crap is still raw.
“Fuck me, I’m bitching about quality of dirt,” he said dragging his hooves to the hammock and resting his head on it. “Day two, I’ll be fine. Just gotta stay put this time and everything’ll be fine. Fine, fine, fine.”
Yeah, fine and dandy like cotton candy.
“Why don’t you do something useful like point me in the direction home? Or bring me a pegasus to fly me to safety?”
You are safe… enough. And I can point you in any direction, are you sure you can walk in a straight line all the way there?
“Yes! I know how to walk straight, asshole.”
The voice chuckled. Well, do you recall dancing after a butterfly earlier? Because you lost the path doing that, and now here you are.
Snickers was silent, ruminating on the truth he was given. “It’s not my fault I’m a colt and I like to have fun and play.”
No, but it is your fault you chose to talk to a zebra without telling anypony where you were going and going to a place you only heard mentioned three times indirectly.
Snickers kicked detritus behind him and turned around. “You wanna make me feel like an idiot, you’re doing fine! I acted impulsively and got lost in the Ever-fucking-free forest trying to find answers why I’m here.
“You aren’t even real, why am I talking to you?” Snickers turned back to his hammock and climbed onto it.
Because if you don’t have me, you’ll go insane by day five. The voice laughed loudly in Snickers’s mind. And that’s not something you can easily recover from, even in this world. Embrace me, or choose not to. Either way, it’s your choice on what you do.
“Thanks a lot, I needed that like a need to bite my lip while eating supper.”
Silence reigned and Snickers sighed, basking in it for a few seconds until his ears shot up and he lay completely still. Yes, just noticed it, didn’t you? It’s quiet in the forest, and quiet isn’t a good thing. Something prowls nearby, perhaps something that would like to use your canon bones to pick it’s teeth once it’s consumed your mealy flesh.
“Shut up,” Snickers whispered under his breath. “Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Just imagine a three headed monster with snakes for tails and electricity dancing between its teeth. A bite to paralyze, then each head grabs a different limb and pulls you apart, eating you alive. You head saved for last so you can hear your bones crunching in its maws and feel as they bite off your remaining legs and drool your own blood across your body.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.”
Then it’ll eviscerate you and slurp your innards like spaghetti until--
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” Snickers screamed and covered his ears with his forelegs. “Shut up you bastard! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
“Excuse me!” A male voice shouted from behind Snickers and startled the colt from his hammock onto the ground with a thud. “You are yelling at yourself.”
Snickers scrambled to his hooves and cowered back from the shadow. “Wh-who are you? A-are you here to s-save me and t-take me home?”
A golden glow shone from the tip of a horn and the fire Snickers couldn’t start sparked to life, bathing the area in a warm orange glow. Snickers smiled at the stallion until he came into the light, and then Snickers’s smile fell. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Harmony stepped into the light and smiled at Snickers. “Is that any way to speak to the avatar of your being?”
“Fuck that, and you,” Snickers pointed at the stallion. “What you did last time was the best you’ve fucked with me, and now you’re just fucking with me again, aren’t you? This is some lame ass dream, isn’t it?”
“No, you are my representative; the same as Discorance and Order have theirs, I now have my own. I have chosen those you call kin to be mine, and I would appreciate it if you would take this seriously because I offer you a gift to aid you in your future plights.”
Snickers moved by the fire and sat down. “Yeah, whatever you’re offering; I don’t want it. Just send me home and let me live this life in peace and… I was gonna say ‘harmony’, but you can go fuck yourself and your brothers in some three-way gang bang for all I care.”
Harmony sighed and sat opposite Snickers at the fire. “Do you know why you are even here?”
“Because I wandered off into nowhere to find a zebra that might have answers for me.”
Harmony smirked and shook his head. “No, why you are on this planet. Why you live again in this magical world?”
“Because you wanted to mind fuck a new kind of pony?”
Harmony’s smile wavered. “You are more difficult than the others by leaps and bounds.”
Yes, he is not worth your time. Just send him on his way and wait for salvation.
Harmony’s eyes flashed yellow and from nowhere his brothers fell to the earth in a heap. “You have no place instigating my representative to act beyond his nature.”
Discorance and Order got to their hooves and stuck their tongues out at Harmony. “You interfere with our representatives, often.”
“You have six representatives, and now you seek more?”
“You are imbalance at its peak of hypocrisy.”
Harmony raised his forehooves to the fire. “Brothers, my six representatives now serve Order, as she believes to be serving me the best she can. The representatives share my name only, and Discorance has his avatar that we all know too well.”
“You turned him to stone with your power and focusi!” Discordance shouted.
“You used my representatives to use your focus to defeat him,” Order whinnied in fury.
“You brought our avatars to blows and watched as the land was set asunder,” Discorance and Order said together.
Snickers kicked dirt at Discorance and Order. “Fuck you both in your hemmorhoid loving assholes for all I care about the shit you’re talking about! You both spent the day fucking with me again?! I swear to god that if I get the chance, I’m gonna shove your heads up each other’s asses and make you cast fireball spells for an hour once I get stronger and older.”
Harmony laughed happily. “That is why I chose his kin,” he pointed at Snickers, “none of your choices have spirit like they do.” Harmony stood beside Discordance. “You and your ever so creative Discord, making mayhem and sewing panic.” He stood opposite Order and tutted. “You and your Sisters of the Sky, ever diligent and keeping things the same for years, decades, centuries without any change.
“And now, here comes something new,” he stood over Snickers and didn’t react when Snickers yelped and hopped from under the tall stallion that could move through space at will, “something to create true change to your Order and bring structure to your Discordance. No focuses, no sneakiness, no hiding,” Harmony gestured to Snickers. “Just potential.”
Snickers scratched his forehead as a burning, itching pain blossomed. “Fuck,” Snickers grunted as he felt a horn growing from his head until it was complete, “what...”
Harmony chuckled and turned his gaze from Snickers to his brothers. “You see, nothing will be out of reach for--”
“Get this off me or I’ll cut it off and shove it in your cock sheath!”
Harmony’s eyes widened and he looked back to the colt with a trickle of blood running from the base of his newly grown horn. “What?”
Snickers growled and walked towards Harmony. “I said got this off me and out of me, or I’ll duck under you and shove it in your tiny little cock sheath and use your blood as a lubricant to snap this off after I shove it in your ass!” He pointed in the area his horn now resided.
Harmony stepped back and looked at the rage in his chosen’s eyes. “What you have been given--”
“Is a fucking cop-out! I’m not going to have everything handed to me on a neutronium platter, and I’m not going back home explaining that some local versions of ‘God’ not only raped my brain with brain washing to make me ‘one of them’, but made me into some demi-god, just to shove magic light up bad guy asses in the name of ‘just because fuck reason and logic’,” he said in a mocking voice with air quotes and included body motions.
Harmony snorted and stood as tall as he could. “Listen to what you are saying, what you are--”
“That’s it, I warned you!” Snickers shouted and ran with his head lowered toward Harmony.
Harmony shrieked and backpedaled away from Snickers to his brother's delight. “Now you will know what it is like to be gelded, brother!”
“Or skinned from ring to sheath.” They shared loud laughter as Harmony ran away from a determined colt.
“Brothers, assist me!” Harmony called out as Snickers chased him around the campsite, truly intent on using his horn for its original natural purpose. “Fine, fine!” Harmony shouted and looked back to Snickers. He turned and reached out with a foreleg and slipped the horn off Snickers’s head with a squelch.
Snickers stumbled and caught himself before he fell, pressed his forehoof to the side of his head, and hissed. “Ou~ch.” He felt the greatest migraine of his existence beginning and through squinted eyes, he looked at Harmony holding his former horn. His eyes trailed down a long series of nervous nodes and clusters, some that glowed with a dimming golden light from the base of the horn into the forest floor.
“There, you ungrateful whelp,” Harmony stated and threw the horn to the ground before stomping on it, casting it into bright light before it was gone, “my gift to you is no more. Never again shall I offer it freely.”
Snickers felt his stomach twisting as he felt near vomiting. “Good, don’t want your cheat st-stick anyw-,” he bent his head down and vomited the meager snack he’d eaten earlier as three beings watched. “Ugh, still worth it,” Snickers said once he was done. He leaned against the tree; shivering and trembling while he slid to his haunches. “Won’t be your toy… not a plaything.”
Discorance and Order hummed and backed away into the shadow of a tree, vanishing from the plane of reality as Equus knew it. Harmony looked down at Snickers and snorted. “I hope I have not made a mistake choosing you.”
Snickers chuckled and retched. “Fuck you... if you did,”
Harmony sighed and conjured an orb of water from the stream. “Drink. I acted hastily and removed your focal point without preamble; your body is low on aetherial energy and the connections in your brain were already set. Had any lesser creature performed the action, you would be unable to use aetherial power and would lose most of your higher brain functions for the remainder of your life.”
Snickers sipped the water held beside him. “So, what? My little kid ass sh-should thank you for not killing me?”
“It is not that simple. Across all of time and space, none have ever turned a gift offered by one of us three away. It’s unprecedented and… I am unsure of what to do.”
Snickers coughed and whined at the pain rolling through his head and neck. “Do… do what feels right, you won’t be wrong as long as… as someone is made better by what you do.”
Harmony’s left ear flicked. “That is a wise statement.”
“Heh, my real... my real mom said it to me,” Snickers said weakly as his eyes drifted closed. “She was really smart, for a mom.” He chuckled quietly and then slumped against the tree, asleep and warm.
Harmony walked to Snickers and dispelled the water. “What am I to do with you? On your own you already have almost all you need to do your tasks and duties to their fullest. Perhaps,” he said, taking a step back and looking to the side at a creature hiding farther in the shadows, easily seen by Harmony’s eyes. “Perhaps there is something I can offer you that you will not so easily refuse.” He smirked and vanished in a spectral flash of light, leaving a large bowl of fruit and vegetables behind.