A cool winter breeze drifted through the dark cave in the Everfree forest that inhabited four strange creatures.
Pod lazily opened one of his slate grey eyes. He lifted his head up and yawned quietly. Today was the second day of White tip’s absence and probably the day he should forget about her at all.
Unfortunately, in Pods fifteen years of life, he’s learned that every member of a pack has a role. His and Red claw’s role was to hunt the smaller prey while Frost and Pounce hunted the larger prey to survive the winter.
White tip’s role was uncertain. She was easily the smallest of the five, just over two feet tall and the youngest. The main advantage she was that she was the fastest, as she was able to quickly snatch the young prey before the parents could react and defend them.
Rays of sunlight were shining into the cave now and the other three were waking up. The carcass from the day before had been nearly picked clean by the night time scavengers, not that Frost and Pounce left them much anyway.
Pod got off the ground and yawned again, ‘if White tip does have a role, maybe I shouldn’t give up the chance she survived just yet,’ he thought.
Red claw glanced at Pod, “I know she’s not dead, Pod.”
“What do you mean?” asked Pod, slightly unnerved at how Red claw seemed to know what he was thinking.
Red claw shrugged, “White tip is not dead, I found her tracks leading out of the forest.”
“That could be anyone’s tracks,” replied Pod.
Red claw shook her head, “no, none of us has feet that small but her. She is definitely alive.”
“So what if you found her tracks? She could have died further ahead.”
“Ahead was a wooden cave inhabited by one of the large mammals,” said Red claw, “White tip isn’t stupid. She must have seen the cave and took shelter inside. Why the yellow mammal is still alive I’m not sure, but I definitely saw her shadow inside.”
Pod nodded while Pounce snorted at Red claw’s statement, “White tip was a desert crawler. There is no way that she’d have survived. What you saw was something else, maybe one of those freakish wood carnivores.”
“I know what I saw. And I saw White tip,” insisted Red claw.
Frost tapped the ground with his sickle toe claw; the sound reverberated around the cave. “Whatever you saw, as unlikely as it may be, White tip may still be out there.”
Pounce rolled her eyes, “don’t tell me you believe these two?”
Frost stared straight ahead and looked beyond the cave and into the frozen forest. “Every member of a pack serves a purpose. No matter how small. If White tip still has even the slightest possibility of being alive, then she still is part of this pack.”
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“Steady, steady,” said Frank the bird as White tip slowly walked out of Fluttershy’s cave, which was called a cabin.
Fluttershy seemed to have noticed late yesterday that White tip needed to be in an environment more ‘suitable for her body type’. Which meant that she was allowed to roam around outside for a certain amount of time while Fluttershy made sure that she didn’t eat anything.
Eating was another problem for White tip. Like how she noticed that she needed to be outside, Fluttershy had barley even needed to check White tip’s teeth before knowing that she was a carnivore. White tip had only eaten some sort of meat-like product that any carnivore could tell wasn’t natural.
White tip made Fluttershy nervous and uncomfortable, which was oblivious to White tip. Still, she didn’t pose as much of a threat as she would like with her legs damaged from two nights ago.
“Steady,” Frank said again.
White tip rolled her eyes. She hadn’t been walking since the pain killers that were used for her legs wore off and she was just trying to get around today. Unfortunately, every step was painful. Although White tip was no stranger to pain (as most would be if they had to spend two weeks in the desert without a proper meal and a sprained ankle) she had never experienced the pain this intense on both of her legs at the same time. That coupled with the bitter cold outside made even a slow walk challenging.
“You try walking steadily with bandages around your legs,” muttered White tip as she cautiously took another step forwards and away from the cabin.
Fluttershy had decided to let White tip roam around town, with her and Frank supervising of course, and hopefully finding out if Twilight had any idea what she might be. Of course, Frank knew that she was a Velociraptor; Fluttershy couldn’t understand White tip and Frank could barely pronounce it and just called her Raptor, which meant bird of prey.
Although Fluttershy had dealt with predatory birds before, like eagles and falcons, she had never encountered one without wings and had an entire jaw full of razor sharp teeth.
The ground was a pale white due to the snow and frost, which did not help with White tip’s injures. It was around ten in the morning when Fluttershy decided that it was about time that Twilight took a look at White tip. Frank decided to accompany them by standing on top of White tip’s head, much to her annoyance.
During the walk through the town, White tip was given looks from horror to curiosity. One small pony dared to walk closer to White tip. The opportunity to scare the small pony was too easy to pass up so she turned towards it when Fluttershy wasn’t looking and stepped towards it with her claws outstretched and jaws gaping.
The small pony shrieked in terror and fled as fast as its legs could carry it. White tip started to laugh again, causing Frank and Fluttershy to glare at her. Sighing, White tip turned back ahead and resumed walking.
“Be more careful,” said Frank, “the ponies don’t like strange new things that nobody knows anything about.”
White tip rolled her eyes, “well, it was its fault for getting so close to me.”
“Her,” corrected Frank, “the foal was a she.”
“Whatever,” muttered White tip.
The two were silent until they arrived at Twilight’s house with Fluttershy, Who knocked on the door and waited for a response. To White tip’s surprise, a small purple reptilian thing a little smaller than her opened the door.
The two stared at each other until White tip growled slightly, causing it to jump.
Fluttershy started to speak with the reptile in mammalian. After a moment the reptile invited them inside where anther large mammal (Frank called them ponies) and the purple one with a horn on its head looked at White tip curiously before speaking with Fluttershy.
White tip sighed; she couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Trying to pass the time, White tip decided to look around. There were shelves with things called ‘books’ on them all around the building.
“What’s the point of having all these books everywhere?” wondered White tip aloud.
“Huh?”
Spike scratched his head. He swore he had heard someone speaking. It didn’t sound like Twilight or Fluttershy, no, it sounded like a low bird call but spoken like it was Equestrian.
“Did you hear that?” Spike asked Twilight and Fluttershy.
They shook their heads. Frowning, Spike looked around to find the source of the voice. After a few minutes of searching, Spike returned to the main room of the library and sat on a chair around where White tip was wandering.
“Who could have that been?” he asked himself.
Spike saw White tip walk up to him, the small bird on her head seemed to be chirping to her.
“Spike, huh? Not very threatening is he?”
Spike froze and stared at White tip, who returned the look. Spike shook his head, “no, that’s crazy.”
“What’s he saying?” White tip asked Frank.
Frank blinked in surprise, “I think he can understand you.”
Now it was White tip’s turn to be surprised, “what? But, I he can understand me, then why can’t I understand him?”
Frank shrugged, “maybe it has to do with your species. You sound and act like a bird, but you look like some sort of two legged reptile with feathers.”
White tip considered this and tried something, “hey, purple guy, nod your head if you can hear me.”
To White tips utter amazement, Spike nodded slowly. White tip stared at him, astounded by the discovery that something other than a bird could understand her.
“You can speak to them, right?” asked White tip slowly as she gestured to Twilight and Fluttershy, who were staring at her and Spike.
Again, Spike nodded.
“Interesting,” muttered White tip under her breath, “you can understand me, but I can’t understand you. You can talk to them, but I can’t,” White tip suddenly smiled as an idea popped into her head, “hey, Spike was it? Well, since you can talk to them, can you get them to let me go back to the forest and rejoin my pack?”
“Hey, Spike,” asked Twilight, who white tip couldn’t understand, “what are you doing?”
Spike turned to her, “I think I can understand her.”
Twilight and Fluttershy beamed at him, “what?! Is it saying anything?”
Spike nodded, “yeah, I think she wants to go back to her pack in the forest.”
“Wait, maybe those things that attacked Fluttershy and Applejack are the others in this one’s pack!” exclaimed Twilight.
“But Applejack said the monsters that attacked her were much bigger and had black and dark green feathers and the one that attacked the animals at my house had orange feathers.”
Twilight continued smiling, “maybe they are all different species! We may have come across a whole new genre of animals!”
White tip looked at Twilight, who was rambling on in mammalian with worry. She backed away and growled at Twilight as she ran up to her to try and see every possible visible detail on her body.
White tip didn’t like this. She didn’t like this at all.