//------------------------------//
// Barking Up The Wrong Tree 
// Story: Every Dog Has Her Day 
// by SilverNotes 
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Fall had turned to winter, and no more ponies passed near their territory anymore.  Fall had only had one sighting, that had been a mare with foals, which was entirely unsuitable. Small ponies made high-pitched noises, and if Rover's oh-so-sensitive ears ached from something as inoffensive as her bark, then the sounds young ponies made would surely drive him to tears. 

That was Precious, still looking out for the pack, enough so that she would push her scouting duty into winter just to make sure they got a quality servant. The gifted sweater, of course, helped with the cold, and she'd grown very good at hiding it; she'd stripped bark from a few of the nearby trees to have something to wrap it in to help keep it clean, and after she'd dug a hole for it she'd found stones to line the inside of the hole to help keep curious underground animals from trying to steal it away.

As soon as the snow had come down, however, it'd been nothing, no ponies to hide from and watch, and so Precious had been left to find a way to pass the time. Thankfully, snow was very good as a creative medium. She'd scrawled patterns in it with her claws, flopped down in it to wave her arms and legs to make a lovely imprint, then had gathered up enough to start building a rough facsimile of a diamond dog, which she briefly entertained the thought of leaving at her post in her place. She was fairly certain Rover and his goons wouldn't be able to tell the difference at a glance.

It was as she was snapping small pieces off of a twig to form the dog's claws that she heard something moving through the snow, and turned to look. Beyond the fact that it was pony sized and shaped, Precious struggled to identify the figure through the various fabrics, and almost moved to hide--the question of where finally occurred to her, as the bushes and trees no longer had leaves to obscure her with--until she noticed a familiar long, pink tail that had had no equal among the other ponies venturing up the mountain.

"Fluttershy!" Precious bounded through the snow and scooped up the small pegasus in a hug. "What brings you out here?"

Fluttershy had come up a few more times over the fall, to talk to her. She'd even brought some food and drink, once, and laid out an impromptu picnic. Precious hadn't expected much to be edible for her, and so had been very surprised to find fish among the offerings, which she'd gratefully devoured. After the first snow, however, the visits had dropped off, not that she could blame her. The way up was no doubt more treacherous in winter, and she'd hate to see Fluttershy hurt.

Yet, here she was, giggling as Precious set her back down on her hooves. "I came out to wish you a happy Hearth's Warming." She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a box covered in some of shiny, brightly-coloured paper, and topped with a bow that she held it by in her teeth. "And bring you your present."

Precious blinked, taking the colourful offering. "Hearth's... Warming...?"

"Oh! You don't know about Hearth's Warming?" When Precious shook her head, Fluttershy let out a small gasp. "I'm so sorry, I just assumed... I guess it is more of a pony holiday. That's so insensitive of me not to think that diamond dogs might have different holidays. Spike celebrates it too, but his adoptive family are ponies, so that's different."

His adoptive family were what?

If Fluttershy noticed her shock, she didn't react. "Hearth's Warming is the anniversary of the day that unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies all became friends and built Equestria together." She did that thing with her hoof again, running it through the snow in front of her, as she asked. "Did... you want me to tell you the story? You can tell me about what diamond dogs do in winter too. Like a... my friend Twilight called it a cultural exchange."

Precious smiled. "That'd be lovely."

And so Fluttershy told her. She wasn't like the pack storytellers, who told their tales vividly and used their magic to light the cave walls with images from the stories, but Precious listened intently all the same as she told her of the Founders, the windigos, and the fires of friendship. 

It reminded her of the tales of the Old Kingdoms, the illustrious past of her kind. The storytellers would tell her of the grand, shining cities like Dimondia, Caninia, or Lycosura where the dogs had reigned supreme. A time when they were the masters, species who ruled their own patches of land as equals, and there were servants who worked for their protection and to share in their glory. So much of her puphood had been filled with those stories, and she still remembered when she had been finally told of the Cataclysm, the Discordant One's corruption shattering their great works, weakening their magic, and forcing them underground.

The stories didn't end there, either, as an offhand mention that this was before the Two Sisters had Precious asking what Fluttershy meant, and she grew all the more enraptured as Fluttershy described the Crown Princesses of Equestria, and at her stunned reaction, started to tell her the legend, and reality, of Nightmare Moon.

She barely knew how to process it. The old tales had mentioned the cycle of the sun and moon being thrown into chaos by the Discordant One, but the idea of ponies having restored the cycle... It was the kind of madness that would see a dog truly exiled, to ascribe such power and importance to a mere servant species.

"And just when things looked bleak, Sunset gave us a speech about not giving up... and Twilight got up and said she'd figured it out, that the elements were inside us." As Precious reeled at having her worldview so shattered, Fluttershy had a shining in her eyes and a tone of fond nostalgia. "She said that Applejack was Honesty, I was Kindness, Pinkie was Laughter, Spike was Generosity, Rainbow was Loyalty, Sunset was Empathy, and that the final spark was Magic." Puffing up a little, with just a hint of tentative pride. "And she was right."

"And so the dark pony... became good?" Precious asked slowly.

"Well, it's more that the thing making her act badly was taken away. Princess Luna was always there underneath, she just needed help getting out." Fluttershy drooped a bit. "She doesn't talk about it much. I think it hurts a lot to remember. I was told that after Nightmare Night, Sunset hugged her for a really long time."

Precious felt a chill that had nothing to do with winter air. The most frightening part to her was how familiar the concept was. She remembered the darker tales, not told to inspire the pups with past glories but as a warning. There were old legends of things in the dark, reasons not to dig too deep, and there were supposedly rare few ways to bring the dogs affected by such things back to themselves.

These Elements of Harmony were apparently one of those rare ways. And it was in the hooves of ponies.

As Precious's mind roiled with emotions, she found herself latching onto a single detail in search of centering. "Nightmare Night?"

"Oh! Right, I'm sorry, if you didn't know about Nightmare Moon, you wouldn't know about Nightmare Night, either..."

That story helped. It was harder to have an existential crisis when talking about a holiday filled with sweet treats and dressing in disguises, and it led to her feeling a slight ache in her heart for this strange Princess of the Night. After all, as she stood out here in the cold of winter, she felt she could understand some about being shunned.

As the hour came for Fluttershy to leave and they waved goodbye once more, Precious had to admit something to herself. That she was going to be on scout duty for the rest of her life, because there was no way a diamond dog pack could ever keep a pony prisoner for long, not when they had inherited the world as its new masters.

The next thing she admitted was that she didn't mind that, because that meant she'd get keep seeing Fluttershy.