The path ahead was well beaten and softened by the test of travelling hooves against it after so many years. It served as the main road between Stablehearth and Trothelme, two mildly prospering pony settlements. The road itself stretched for near ten miles; an fair travel for wagon to do business between the two towns. However, on lone hoof in a collective group, it was a much trying passage. This made all the more trying should you have found yourself with a sort that doesn't meet the traditional travelling requirements. "Fickle as a fury, Fenix, friendly friend forsooth; for true!" the skeletal revenant clacked his jaw soundly as it started to laugh at its own words.
Trailing ahead of the skeleton garbed in an inky black robe was the one it addressed as Fenix. Fenix's head lowered down as the helmet around his head made for his sigh of anguish to echo with a metallic tone. Fenix pressed on none the less, shaking his head and dismissing the creature who was still laughing. "Surprise, surprise. Sure as shower shine! Surprise's shrew seems sullen as you!" the skeleton continued to laugh at a high pitched cackle; its bones rattling against the air like rain against stone.
Finally, the tallest of the caravan, if only by his antlers height, moved beside Surprise and gave the skeleton a small nudge with one of his branching blue stems leaching out from his side. "Surprise..." his voice well soft and soothing as he offered a single glance down to the still chuckling revenant, "Perhaps your humor would best lighten our spirits once our wills have been hampered. For say, once we reach a tavern?"
Surprise seemed to gnaw the idea over while the jilted mandible of his jaw clacked against the white of her top teeth. As perhaps the rarest of moments, Surprise nodded her bony head and remained quiet outside of escaping snickers from her absent maw. The near silence from Surprise instantly had an effect on Fenix as he put his head back up and strode against the road more clearly. Both Ban and Whooves let a passing sigh move out from them and they exchanged knowing glances. "Fenix, my friend," Whooves started up in this new moment of calm, "Would you put any coin on these hopes of yours?"
Fenix gave an eye back to the pony, also taking in a small look to the bird perched against his own back that seemed to be mimicking Fenix's every motion. "Coin? Coin nay cover how sure I am on this one, lad. Put me own soul on this one, I'd'a say..." Fenix mused the notion back to Whooves as well to his own self.
For days, their caravan had been moving between town to town looking for someone. By chance, the five of them had been brought together as it was already. Fate brought them here as one team. And yet... One seemed to be missing. They all could feel it flowing through them. An invisible desire and knowledge that something was missing. Someone...
"If'n we don' find what'n we're looking for here... I will lick the dirt planted on Ban's thumping hoof!" Fenix laughed a bit, soon joined by his bird squawking along with him.
Ban frowned at the comment, though seemed to only do so with a friendly entail. "If that be your wish, I would have Pallanen whip stinkweed to my hooves before you dine..." Ban's voice, though thundering, still held a friendly note to it.
"Gladly I'd eat it, gladly I'd eat it. But only should I be wrong... Only if'n that happens." Fenix returned.
A feeling of kinship went through the caravan and they started to move along with one another more briskly. All except Surprise who slithered up beside the group, her hooves refusing to touch the ground as they seemed to fold into her skeletal body.
Trothelme was a simple, rustic village beside a river that ran through the spanning land. The settlement had no mayor, jarl, or village leader. To the same akin, very few settlements in the area had any of the sort. Instead, they were only governed by peacekeepers. It was a simple way of living for a simple land of living. But, unlike many other rustic settlements in the area, Trothelme was much well known and regaled as something special.
To that day, Trothelme was one of few settlements that welcomed Earth pones, unicorns, pegasi, even gryphons within its grounds. For this, the structures were mostly made of stone and wood; well crafted and well put together to weather any storms. For any traveler of the realm, Trothelme was known to be a primary checkpoint or destination. Not only for the peace and equal nature of the town itself, but for the myth that the town promised. "Trothelme: The Town of Harmony".
As the dirt roads of Trothelme ran clotted with rushing ponies this way and that, a young filly watched curiously from the crooks between two homes. The frazzle of her pink tail brushed against the floor she sat upon as she continued to watch the village ponies like a dog would its master. She mused glances this way and that with tilts of her white coat head, so interested with these ponies. Behind her, the darker and younger looking filly seemed far less interested in what the villagers were doing, and more so in what was tightly guarded in her hooves. The darker filly looked at the shimmering gold she protected with her whole body, trying to piece it out as her eyes looked it over moment by moment.
For hours, perhaps even days, the two fillies had not broken from where they were. Nothing kept them there except a compulsion to remain in that village... Something telling them that in this town of 'harmony' they had to remain. And as the Celestia watched the ponies and Luna eyed the curious gold trinket, they waited for that reason to arrive.
"Trothelme... Anything special about it, Ban?"
"Legends say that any caravan that passes through the village is promised good fortune and fair winds in their coming travels. However, those caravans are only gifted with the maker's blessings by offering a spell of their own water to the sprout in the center of the village. In time, they say, that sprout will bring harmony to every reach that the roots shall spread."
"If'n that's true, lets give it a good spritzing."