SHELTER
“You can’t be seriously be considering this, darling”
“Yeah, Twilight! I mean, I’m all up for adventures and all that but this is plain stupid! You can’t be serious!”
“Of course I am! We can’t ignore something like this. We all know what things like these mean, something is out there and if we investigate it now, we can save us a whole lot of trouble later on!” Twilight was starting to sound desperate even to herself, but she knew she had to convince them. She was sure there was something to discover out of this, hopefully, nothing that would endanger her home.
“Sugarcube, are you sure you’re not just exaggerating?” Applejack said. Twilight had to stop and think there. She didn’t have much to work with, but anything of this magnitude needs somepony to take care of it. Not that she knew what it actually was. She was almost completely in the dark, and that was the main reason. She wanted to know more!
“Um... Twilight? Have you tried to contact the princess?” Fluttershy asked, barely able to be heard among all the chatter around her.
“What? No! Of course not. How could I bother her just for something like this?” she replied rather harshly. “Uh, I mean, no, I haven’t,” Twilight tried to make herself sound a little more relaxed, she couldn’t tell if the others noticed it.
“Well... I say we help Twilight and go on an adventure! We’ll be like Daring Do, right Dashie?! It’ll be totally awesome!” Pinkie loudly exclaimed while jumping at the same height Rainbow Dash was flying. “I’ll even make us some yummy snacks for the trip! Come on, girls!”
“Fine! You got me at awesome...and snacks. Count me in!” Rainbow Dash replied quite smugly while landing next to Twilight.
“I’ll go too. Maybe I’ll meet some new friends in the forest!” Fluttershy had a big smile on her face. She was going to be the one most comfortable with the environment. That’s for sure.
“Alright, alright! I’ll go then, guess Big Mac’s gonna have to take care of the farm for a couple days.”
“Oh dear. I guess I’ll have to go too. Finally going to make use of those magnificent hiking boots!” Rarity exclaimed.
“Great! It’s set then, we leave tomorrow morning. Be sure to pack up, imagine this is just a camping trip! Oh, I almost forgot! SPIKE!”
“Ugh, yes, Twilight? I was trying to sleep, this better be good,” the baby dragon replied. Having finished his tasks for the day he assumed it would be a good time to take a nap.
“You’re gonna have to take care of the library for a couple days, starting tomorrow morning. We’ll be going to White Tail Woods to investigate something, if anypony asks, just tell them we went camping okay?”
“Uh, okay. Not even going to ask. It’s weekend anyway, it’s always slow. Unless Miss Cheerilee gave her students some homework. Anyway, I’m going back to my bed. Cya, girls,” Spike said while heading upstairs for sweet slumber.
They all gave a quick farewell and returned their attention to Twilight.
“Okay, it’s settled then! Go get ready and I’ll meet you all here tomorrow morning!”
“So you saw a village and you didn’t think it was important enough to tell me right away?!” Lily was yelling at me at this point. I honestly didn’t think it was too much of a deal. Apparently, I’m an asshole for not telling her in the first few minutes of knowing her.
“Yeah, um, sorry for that. It’s actually that way,” I said while pointing straight ahead. Across the river, and above a hill, one could see a faint column of smoke.
“Oh well, it’s okay. Guess we’ll be heading that way then, our supplies won’t last that long, and we still need to find out where the hell are we.”
“Yeah. Our best shot is heading that way, but I don’t think we’ll make it before nightfall, and I don’t want to be out here when that happens.” I said as I lifted a stray branch so we could over under it, revealing the river behind it in all of its glory.
“There it is!” Lily ran ahead of me heading for the river. Barely able to keep upright, dashing through the foliage as soon as her eyes laid on the whooshing river.
“Wait! What the hell are you... Dammit”
SPLASH!
“Come on in! The current is not strong at all, and it’s really nice!” Lily was splashing around the river as a five-year old would. I had to admit, she looked adorable with her mane all soaked up. She luckily had taken off her saddlebags, leaving them close to the bank of the river.
I sighed and passed a talon through my headfeathers. It was a strange feeling, I was beginning to miss my messy hair. In fact, despite having a very athletic and cool body now, I still didn’t feel like it was mine, more like, borrowed.
“Did you stop and think how you were going to dry yourself afterwards?” I put on my most disapproving glare. ‘What the hell was she thinking?’
“Uh, I think you’re right. Oh, what the hell, I’m already all wet.” She replied while splashing water at me. I was seriously starting to consider my luck. I didn’t think she was retarded or anything, but of all the moments to be childish...
“I...Why would you...” I stared at her antics “You know what? I’m not even going to say anything. Might as well check out where to settle down for tonight. Be back as soon as I find somewhere good. Don’t go too far.”
I left her to take a bath, if you could call it that.
I walked in broad circle around the area where she was, trying to look for anything we could use for the night. I found some trees similar to the one I slept in, leading me to believe it was not unique, but some huge species of trees pretty common in this region. Of course, those were out of question, I doubted Lily could climb a tree with hooves, and I sure as hell couldn’t carry her.
I noticed something for the first time in my short time here, I hadn’t met any sort of animal, as one would expect to find in a forest. Sure, I could hear them, but I hadn’t been a close encounter with anything. I wrote it off as luck, and continued my search.
I eventually found a small cave, hidden by the branches of several bushes growing around its entrance. I entered and found out it could barely be called a cave, it was more of an indent to the rock hill it was scraped off. Still, both of us could fit in comfortably, at least for a night.
I took notice of small landmarks around the place to remember where it was and cleared out some of the bushes around the entrance, making a small space where I could enter and exit easily, without scraping myself with any of the branches.
I looked up to the sky, and judging from the position of the sun over my head, not more than three hours had passed since I left looking for shelter. Of course, I was only vaguely estimating, but I was confident in my abilities.
I retraced my steps back to the river where I left Lily. In a short while, thanks to the really big trees, I found my way back. But I stopped once I heard something coming from right ahead, it didn’t sound threatening. It sounded vaguely similar to...
Sobbing.
I quietly sneaked towards the river, following the sound, and peeking over a bush, I saw Lily, standing beside the river, crying. Facing towards the river, her tears falling into the current. Trying to clean the tears off her face with her hooves. I felt really sad for a second, but a sense of guilt came to me. ‘What’s going on?’
Crying. Just sitting awkwardly in her two rear legs in her new form, while trying to wipe off the tears. Even in her already soaked coat, one could clearly see the tears crossing her face, her constant sobbing and sniffing. It was a miserable sight. I felt guilty of spying on her during such a moment.
I backed up a few steps, careful not to step on any fallen branch and make myself heard. Once I had made a few more meters distance between us, I approached the river once again, this time stepping on every branch I found on the forest floor and slapping every branch in my way, as to make myself as noticeable as possible.
“Hey, Lily! I’m back!” I yelled over the constant snapping of twigs at my paws.
I pushed over the bush I had been spying her in and saw her once again.
This time she was laying down hitting the surface of the water with her hoof. The only remnant of her sorrow was the redness in her eyes. She bore a calm smile, playing with the water, as if I had imagined everything that had just happened before.
“H-Hey. Did you find anything we could use?” The shakiness in her voice made it pretty obvious she had not calmed down, and was just putting up an act for me. I decided not to mention it. If it’s something she wanted to talk about, she would’ve talked about it.
“Yeah, a little cave we could use for the night. We just need to bring our supplies in and maybe make a small campfire to keep us warm,” I said while trying not to look her in the eyes. I started to pick up our supplies and I offered to carry her saddlebag, under the excuse of it not getting wet. “Just follow me, it’s close by.”
I started walking back to the cave, more like waddling, with all the extra weight I had with me. I did not wait to see if she had started following me or not, but I could clearly hear her hooves stepping on a twig every once in a while during the small trip.
The walk was uneventful, as it usually has been in this forest as long as I had been in it. I tried to keep some sort of chatter, but it died down quite quickly to an uncomfortable silence. We just ignored each other after that.
The cave was not as far as I had initially thought, I had been walking in circles when looking for shelter, once I went straight to the cave, it only took the better part of about fifteen minutes to get from the river to our hide-out for the night.
“Isn’t it a bit small?” Lily asked. Her voice was back to normal, it seemed. She came up to the entrance and stuck her head inside.
“Well, it’s better than nothing, and I’m pretty sure it’s big enough for both of us and a fire to warm us and dry yourself.” I stuck my head inside, beside hers and looked inside. It was about the same size of a small kid’s bedroom, if that sounds like a good comparison.
“Meh, I guess you’re right. Pass me over those bags.” I gave her our supplies and she set them down around the small cave. Hers was big enough to be used as a pillow, but mine was barely bigger than a small handbag.
We went inside the cave and arranged the bags in a campfire like-fashion. I picked up some rocks from around the cave and propped them up in the middle of the cave, as to serve as a guard to the flames.
I decided to make a quick inventory of our current supplies. We had food for about a week, if we starved ourselves a little, our food mainly consisted of nuts and dried fruit, with my couple packets of dry meat included as an extra, as I was the only one who could eat those. And, thankfully to the river close by, we didn’t need to worry about fresh water.
“Well, we just need some dry twigs and some leaves, and then we can start a fi-” Lily was interrupted by the most closest sounding thunder I had ever heard in my life. It was accompanied by the sound of heavy rain hitting the forest.
“Okay. You have to be fucking kidding me! There wasn’t even any signs of an oncoming storm!” I stuck my head outside for a second, only to quickly retreat inside the cave with my feathers completely drenched. “Have I mentioned how much I hate rain?”
The storm only grew in strength during my initial shock. Lily also took a peek outside to evaluate the situation. She whistled loudly when she took her head back inside.
“Well, there goes our warm campfire. Any ideas?”
“I’m pretty sure we’re stuck here. Goddammit.” I set down against the cold wall of the cave and closed my eye. It was getting dark anyway, and the storm only made the ambient darker. I suddenly remembered I did have something to measure time with. I opened my eye and grabbed my bag.
I took out the old-timey clock out of my pack only to find out it was useless, both of its tiny arms were bent out of its original shape. ‘Fucking cheapskates’ I guesstimated it was close to late-afternoon, considering the last position of the sun I had seen before this damned storm. I tossed the clock outside the cave, after cursing it one more time.
I sighed dramatically and pulled my pack closer to where Lily was and sat on it.
“Looks like we’ll be here for a while. I still don’t wanna sleep. Wanna... uh... chat? I guess?” Good god, this was awkward. Hopefully she brushes off my stammering as a symptom from the temperature.
It was getting rather chilly with the storm about, the wind was blowing and the water was freezing. It wouldn’t be too long until we start to feel the true power of the wilderness. The cold.
She looked at me with a quizzical look on her face. She scooted her pack closer to mine and sat on it.
“It’s not like we have anything better to do. What do you wanna talk about?”
“Uh... Why the hell did you dive into the river?”
She blushed at the question, and directed her gaze at the floor. She faked a small laugh and tried to look anywhere but me. I didn’t even know ponies could blush. I guess these have very human qualities.
“Heh, I don’t really... know. It was more of a sudden... need? It was kind of stupid in retrospective, especially when you told me I’d get this wet without any way of drying myself.” Her coat was still damp from the water, and she had taken off her cloak, which was still soaked as well.
I really, really, wanted to ask about what all the crying was about, but my common sense stopped me from making a mistake. ‘If I have chance of helping her, I will, but not blindly, without even knowing what the trouble is in the first place.’
“Well, tell you what. Let’s make this interesting. I asked you a question, so it’s your turn now.”
“Oh great! But only the truth, and no half-baked answers here.”
“Fair enough. Go ahead.”
“Who... umm... were you, before all this happened? Nothing too specific, give me the basics.”
“Well, first of all, I still consider myself that person, just a new body, that’s all.”
“Okay... So...?”
“Oh, right, sorry. Well, let’s see... Nathan Redfield. I’m seventeen years old, I was a high-school student, guess I won’t be finishing those studies, huh? I lived in Sacramento, California, USA. Son of a wonderful single mother and a son of a bitch... Brother to two little sisters, twelve and nine. What else... Well, I wanted to study medicine, of all things. You know, become a medic, maybe a doctor, help people? I guess that won’t happen either. Guy with few friends, did well at school, didn’t talk much. I spent most of my time home, or taking care of my sisters, when Mom was working... I guess that would be it, pretty much. Wow, it sounds really bland when I put it that way.”
“Heh. Wait, you said Sacramento?”
“Yeah, aren't you from there too? I mean we’re both here s-”
“I’m from Montreal... Canada”
“So these bastards are taking us from all over? What the hell...”
“It’s strange, why us though?”
“I don’t know... So, Canada, huh? I didn’t notice any accent. Tell me more, it’s only fair I ask the same thing.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. Lily DuBois, pleased to meet you, Nathan.”
She extended her hoof and offered me a warm smile. I reciprocated eagerly.
“Okay... I’m twenty-six years old, so I’m your elder, kiddo, even if you’re bigger than me in size, so remember that. I was an executive chef, working on a small restaurant in Montreal, Canada. Born and raised. My father was a french chef and my mother was a local writer. I have three siblings, two brothers, one sister, all older than me. Um... I’ve always had passion for cooking, especially soups and broths. Strangely, I always prefered my mom’s cooking, and she made a soup to die for... I... was supposed to be on my way to visit her when I was...”
I could see tears already building up on her eyes, and the breaking of her voice could only mean one thing. It was a traumatizing experience, I could tell that much. I had also been in the same situation, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget such a terrifying event in my life.
“...It’s okay if you don’t wanna talk about it. I sure as hell don’t want to.”
“It’s alright... Let’s leave it at that. Why did you want to become a medic?”
“Huh, well... it all branches off with the need to help other people, but it’s strange, I’ve always thought being a doctor was the only way to help the world, but well, I was young, er-younger... I did take some first-aid courses and whatnot. But other than that, it’s just the desire to learn.”
“Such a noble cause for such a little guy.”
“You’re gonna tease me about my age from now on, aren’t you?”
“Oh, and he’s a smart one, too! Lucky me!”
Time seemed to pass by slowly while we talked. The soothing sound of the rain, now that the storm was gone and only a light drizzle remained, served as a calming background noise to our conversation.
We didn’t talk about anything, really. We were both just rambling about our world, and pop-culture references. If I had known Lily before, I could safely say she would be one of my best, if not the best, of friends. Even though she was a bit older than me, she was still young in my book. I was glad I wasn’t stuck with a dimwit, but with a great person.
We ate some of our food, and were starting to get drowsy. The cold at this point had only increased throughout the night, but I wasn’t having a hard time dealing with it, having a heavy coat of fur and feathers apparently shielded against much of the cold.
“Hey, mind if we call it a night? I’m pretty tired.” My voice was starting to sound hoarse, probably from all the talking, or maybe I had caught a cold.
“Yeah, it’s probably for the best. We need to wake up early, and get to that village tomorrow!” She had raised a hoof in an epic hero-like stance. I didn’t have the heart to tell her we were still a few days days away, if we kept the same pace we had when we were out there.
“Well... Goodnight.” I slid down into a position I knew would let me rest easily. The one that I had used for sleeping in the tree. I grabbed my pack and put it behind my head as a poorly shaped pillow. I sighed and closed my eye for sweet, sweet sleep.
“G-goodnight.” She replied with a jittery voice. Some shuffling was heard as she probably moved her saddlebags to make something to rest her head on.
A few seconds later I heard her moving about. ‘Probably trying to get a better position where to sleep in.’ Not more than a couple minutes later, I heard the exact same noise again. This time it was longer, and louder. I tried to ignore it and fall asleep.
Then came the clattering. The clattering of her teeth echoed around the small cave. I opened my eye and turned my head to look at her. She was laying down on the other side of the cave, her head on her saddlebags and forelegs crossed around her body, failing to retain any body heat. She was freezing.
‘Why isn’t she using her cloak as a blanket? That should keep the heat in.’
I looked over to her side and saw the cloak sprawled out on the floor, drying. I had completely forgotten it was still wet. ‘That means her coat is still damp as well, no wonder she’s freezing to death.’
Suddenly, a stupid, but plausible idea popped into my head. I wasn’t sure how she was going to react to it, but I couldn’t let her fall ill.
“Hey, Lily.” I didn’t know why the hell I was whispering at the time, but it seemed like the correct thing to do in the current situation.
“Y-yes, N-nath-than?” She couldn’t even speak without stammering. I got up and walked over to where she was. She opened her eyes and looked up at me.
“I’m gonna do something, and it’s gonna be really weird, but if I don’t do it, you’ll freeze to death, alright?”
“W-what are y-you talk-king about?”
I didn’t say anything and laid down next to her like a dog would. I pulled her closer to me and carefully grabbed one of my wings and draped it over her, covering most of her body.
“I-I... What?”
“Don’t say anything. You’ll just make it more awkward... Just sleep.”
I crossed out my forelegs in front of me and laid my head on them. I closed my eye and was slowly falling into sleep when I felt Lily moving beneath my wing.
“Nathan?”
“Yes...?”
“Thank you.”
I felt something cold and soft against my cheek. I was left in shock while she snuggled beneath my wing, quickly falling asleep. I resorted to just lie down and fall into slumber.
“And... Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said as she checked the last name on the list on her clipboard. “Okay, are you all ready? We won’t be heading back for anything until we’re done.”
“Yeppers! I got tons of yummy snacks for the trip!”
“I’m ready, sugarcube. Hopefully we won’t take too long, Big Mac wasn’t too eager to work by himself.”
“Ready as I’ll ever be, Twilight. Finally using these boots, they look quite fabulous on me don’t you think?”
“I think I’m ready... I’ve even packed some food for the critters we meet!”
“Can you give one of those fruit bars, Pinkie? Oh, and I’m ready too.”
“Rainbow Dash... Well, alright! If we’re all ready, we should be leaving immediately, let’s not waste any more time, we should get there before nightfall, and we can decide where to start once we’re there.”
The five other mares followed Twilight as she walked out of Ponyville on the road heading to White Tail forest.
I awoke to something stirring beside me. I opened my eye and remembered where I was. I carefully lifted my wing with my talons and slowly got up. I took off my cloak and put it over Lily, who was still sound asleep.
I got out of the cave and decided to stretch out a bit to loosen my muscles, which were sore from sleeping in such an odd position for me.
I stretched all I could. I felt how all the bones cracked as I moved my limbs about. My forelegs responded with a satisfying pop, as did my hindlegs. I started to move every articulation I had, and stopped abruptly when I heard a sound behind me.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH. WHOOSH. WHOOSH.