"What's that smell?" Prickle looked around curiously in the cavernous space that was Comforting's home. "I don't... mean to be rude... It's... odd?"
"I bet it is." Comforting reached to pat Prickle, just to abort the motion. Unwanted touches... "The predators are enjoying a meal they caught. Not that I imagine you have to worry about predators."
Prickle shied back. "That sounds scary."
Comforting lifted a tufted ear. "Does it? What could they do? They're nice, but you're as strong as anything could be, so far I can tell."
"Sorta..." She deflated a little. "I can lift and push and... I'm still a pony. If they... bit me, it would hurt, a lot."
Comforting put that together, understanding dawning on her. "Ah. You don't have the full superhero package, alright. Still, they're super nice. Even the largest one of them made a promise to never eat anything that can ask them not to eat them."
"What about ponies that can't ask?"
Comforting let the extended finger and the hand attached slump down. "Like... who?"
"Like a pony that can't talk? Young foals, or just adults that don't talk." Prickle reasoned with little gestures of her hooves along the way. "Would they eat them?"
Comforting cringed at the idea. "I will talk to her. I promise she's nice! But I'll go over that just to be sure."
"That would be a bad accident." And yet, she seemed pleased, perhaps with noticing that future problem before it became something worse. "You have a nice house. It's very large."
"It's for two creatures, and one of them is large enough to need it." Comforting lifted into the air. "Probably not, but do you like meat?"
"I never had a lot before." She sniffed the air. "Is that what I smell? I had fish before. I like that."
That sounded like permission. Comforting took Prickle out the front and around the house to the gang of three vicious predators enjoying a cookout behind the house. "What'd you catch today?"
Smolder waved from her perch on a sizable rock. "Hey. Who's the new foal?"
Gallus turned the sizzling meat over, one eye on the newcomers. "Hey, she's a foal herself. No reason she can't have foal friends. We're the odd ones, if you think about it."
Cracked was lounging on her side, waiting patiently for food to be served. "My alpha presents the most curious of situations. She, my alpha, wears the garb of a child, and has child wants and friends. But she remains my alpha. She could destroy everything I know, but a child she remains."
Prickle looked alongside at Comforting with a new light. "Creatures are scared of your strength too?"
"Scared is a strong word. Cracked, you're not scared of me, right?"
Cracked considered Comforting quietly. "No. I trust my alpha. She protects me. She loves me. Why would I fear that, even if she is so powerful? Your strength will turn towards things that make us unhappy, not me, unless I made you unhappy." She scratched at her chin with a hindpaw. "But you are a kind creature, alpha or not. You would tell me what was wrong, and I would fix it."
That was a fine reminder. "Right! Cracked, one little thing." She held two fingers close together. "If a pony doesn't talk, you would..."
"Assume they are frightened of me." Cracked lifted an ear at her small alpha. "I would move past them."
Comforting let out the breath she hadn't noticed she was holding a moment. "That works. I just want to be clear, just because a pony doesn't talk, doesn't mean we should eat them. Once one thing of something talks, that gets a pass for everything else like it."
Cracked wrinkled her nose. "So I can never hunt a rabbit?"
Comforting blinked at that. "You've seen a rabbit talk?"
Cracked lifted a hoof to point at Fluttershy's house, not that far away. "Your mother talks with hers often."
Comforting glanced to the house and its rabbit overlord. "Sort of... But you bring up a good point. Pets, being close to ponies, shouldn't be eaten. You will make a pony very sad if you eat their friend, whether they can ever talk or not."
Smolder laughed at the exchange, slapping the rock she was on in her giggling fit. "Yeah, wow. We would not hear the end of it if we ate a pet. Imagine how peeved Rarity would be if we grabbed Opalescence, not that she has much meat on her anyway."
Gallus prodded at the great slab of meat. "Look at us, gabbing away. Kid, you alright with this?"
Prickle Berry perked, suddenly brought back into the conversation. "I'm curious about that." She pointed to the slab of meat Gallus was pulling free of the flames and setting on a large serving dish. "So, you eat meat all the time?"
Smolder hopped down, landing on the other side of that dish with a dull thud. "Not all the time. I'm a dragon. A good gem's a fine thing to chew on."
Cracked began to wag her tail, smelling and seeing that food was about to be served. "Do you eat meat?" She was watching Prickle Berry with some curiosity. "Most ponies do not."
"I'm not most ponies..."
Comforting hummed. "True. Oh! Want to be impressed? I bet she could pick you up if she wanted."
Cracked scowled at her alpha. "She could not. She's far too..."
Prickle Berry had accepted the challenge, walking up and casually lifting Cracked with her hooves like it was barely a problem. She turned the big wolf-pony over in the process to hold them by the back.
Cracked yelped in surprised shock, dangling in the air. "How?!"
Comforting put her hands behind her head, giggling at the sight. "Pretty sure even she doesn't know, but it's very cool."
"It is..." Cracked failed to find a word for it. "Please put me down."
"Okay." Prickle gently let Cracked return to the ground, unharmed for the trip. "May I try a little?"
Gallus sliced off a little thin sheet and offered it up. "You just earned your spot. Have a taste. If you like it, we have more."
Prickle took the wobbly meat sliver. "Is it good?" There was really one way to know for sure. She chomped into it, and soon slurped up the rest, chewing thoughtfully as she colored more and more. "That is good. Thank you."
Comforting thought for a moment of a thousand reasons why Prickle might like meat, but put that aside. "I'm glad to hear it." She found something a new friend liked, and that was good enough all on its own, she figured. "Now there's a new member of the cookout club."
Smolder chuckled softly. "You're welcome aboard, but I doubt you want to hunt with us."
Prickle looked quite unsure. "How does that work?"
Cracked pulled a tray over that had a big chunk for her. "You are a pony. Ponies are not hunters, usually... To get meat, you must kill. My alpha has instructed me to only kill certain things, and not other things. There is plenty left to hunt." She directed a hoof at Prickle. "You will not be hunted. You can ask me not to, and you are a pony." She snapped up half the meat, seeming to fight with herself to keep the meat on her tongue a moment before she, well, wolfed it down. It was a struggle against her instincts to not devour it as quickly as possible. "Mmm, good cooking, Gallus."
Comforting considered her predators, one being an opportunistic little pony. "If she wanted, I bet she'd be really good at it, but I don't think she would want to."
"I don't want to hurt things..." Prickle glanced aside at the meat she just had some of. "What... was that?"
Gallus sat with his own plate. "Doesn't matter anymore, but I can promise it didn't talk, or anything else like it."
Prickle swallowed audibly. "I don't think I want to hunt..."
Smolder smirked as she chewed on her share. "Figured. But, if you want to share, you're welcome to it."
Cracked snapped up the second half of her share, laboring intensely to keep it around long enough to enjoy it before it vanished. "Hm... May I have another?"
"Sure." Gallus served Cracked a new portion. "Really like it, huh?"
"Yes." She sniffed at the prepared food, savoring it. "My talented little hunters. You know how to make it taste better."
Prickle shuffled in place, clearly uncertain, but she lost the internal contest. "May I try a little more?"
"Got it." Smolder took care of that one, giving a thicker slice over to Prickle. "Sandbar never joins us, so you get a thumbs up from me." A thing she could, and did, display. "Right on."
A thought occurred to Comforting. "You all have fun, be right back." She zipped over to Fluttershy's home, not very far away. Fluttershy was relaxing with a family of squirrels, letting them crawl over her, to her seeming satisfaction. "Mom?" Comforting came down a small distance away. "Have a quick animal question."
"My favorite kind." Fluttershy sat up slowly, as to not startle the squirrels. "How can I help?"
"If a generally herbivorous animal enjoys some meat... Is that bad?" Comforting waved off to the meat-enjoying filly, not that Fluttershy could know about that.
"Oh, that's a big thought." Fluttershy took one of her squirrels gently, petting it. "A wild critter may eat what it finds, but a plant eating critter won't find much meat. They're not good at finding or making it. It's fine for them, once in a very rare while. A domestic critter, a pet, should never be fed meat, if they don't eat meat already. We could give them far too much, and then they'd get sick, or worse. Their bodies aren't made to handle it." She let the squirrel jump free.
"It's like they say, dose makes the poison, and when you're the one deciding the dose, it's far too easy to go overboard and hurt your friend. You don't want to risk that, so don't feed a squirrel a meatball, even if they look hungry." The squirrels were pouting at her, as if they could understand her words, which perhaps they could. "Don't look like that. It's for your own good."
"Perfect, thanks!" She darted in for a big hug from Fluttershy and rushed back to the cookout. "That's your last one for today."
Prickle folded her ears back. "Why? Was I bad?"
"No! No..." Comforting waved her hands in wild denial. "But you are still a pony. You might like meat, but I don't want you going overboard. Your mom would kill me. One slice once a week at most." She turned to the predators. "You heard me."
Gallus saluted. "You got it. Once a week at most." He chomped at his share with a chuckle. "Poor foal, Comforting means it."
Cracked licked her lips thoughtfully. "You are not a carnivore." She flashed her teeth, deadly and sharp. "I am. But I would not live well to eat too many plants, and you, too much meat. Let's be careful, together."
Prickle stirred at Cracked's words, looking cheered. "Okay. When I have mine, you have a nice salad. We'll have our treat days together."
"Deal." Cracked licked Prickle in a great display of massive canine tongue. "Ponies are very good at making tasty salads. Will you make it? You make the salad while the small hunters prepare the meat. That sounds fair to me."
"Deal!" Whatever regrets she had were lost, shed in favor of the joy of the kinship she had earned with the massive hunter. "You're all... nicer than I would have thought. Sorry, that sounds kinda bad..."
Smolder waved it off. "Nah... Ponies are like that, but you stuck around and even learned we're alright. That's better than most. Now, I'd offer you a bit of mine... but I don't know any ponies that want even a little of a gem before they've had too much, so..."