Three months passed and I won’t go into detail over everything at that time, but I healed nicely. My armor was unfixable by the locals but they did like to see me move around in it and its strength was unparalleled, I could help them haul ten times the produce from their farms with that bad boy running and got a lotta respect.
I was able to get a couple helpers that knew more about pony math and cleaning than I did, gave them jobs at the inn, with Beth and Una as acting co-owners. I’d write them where I was going, they’d send me tradeable gems and goods ahead for when I got there.
It was a great plan that got me out of there.
So, I packed up one evening and got ready to leave with a goodbye party and everything. Almost half the town showed up, it was a huge get together and party. One thing I will tell you about was my little pink pony. I changed her name to Strong Heart, or Heart for short. She said it was silly, but I told her it was because she had the strongest heart of any creature I’d ever known.
She was the housekeeper of the inn after I bought her. Damn I hate saying that outloud. She was really loveable once she realized I wasn’t really her owner and treated her like an equal, if not a daughter. The first week she slept in the house with me in her own room since the horses prefered outside to sleep and I didn’t think she could handle being stuck outside by a new ‘owner’.
She would scream in her room every night. At first I thought she was being attacked. Turned out she was. What her mother had done to her had taken its toll and she was scared, not just along her forelegs in defensive wounds, but in her mind. Una would cast a silence spell on Heart when she would go to sleep, so she couldn’t wake her with her night terrors.
I found myself sleeping in the same bed as her one night after one of her attacks, she cuddled up to me and was sleeping so sweetly when I woke up I just couldn’t move for fear of waking her. I’d never seen her so peaceful and content. So, that’s how we slept for the next month until I weaned her into her own bed.
I had Beth craft me a human doll that was made from wood but wore a green dress. When I gave it to her she was afraid of it, afraid of what I’d take in exchange. The thought of what horrors she’d had gone through crossed my mind for a split second before I came up with a perfect solution.
“If I give you this, I want something only you can give me,” she shuddered but nodded, “A smile, every day, no matter what.”
The look in her eyes as she looked to me was astonishment. ‘Something so simple? That’s all?’ She said with her expression of doubt and awe that were criss crossing her body.
Tentatively she reached a hoof out to the doll I held in my outstretched arm and hand, she laid her hoof flat and I placed the doll on it. “Smile, Heart, please?”
She looked to the doll, then me. I saw her mouth twitch, her eyes closed for a moment, then she looked into my eyes and I saw something change in her. She let a smile cross her muzzle, finally, and I sighed a sigh of relief. She’d finally smiled after all the time I’d known her.
I didn’t really like Una, overall. She had a skewed view of life and equality that didn’t sit well with me. It hurt me so much to leave her, essentially, alone back in that town but I had to. The morning I left was the hardest I had ever felt. I had to leave my home, but it was my home. I had friends there that I could count on.
Dishonesty and thievery weren’t big in that town, and with a gryphon soldier as the town’s hired defender, plus the extra gems I’d given him to hire a couple extra trustworthy creatures to guard the town. One of those acanacite gems was enough to make Rea crap on the spot.
She stared at the gem from the second it caught her eyes until we finished our deal. The reason they were worth so much, and it’s funny now, but at the time, they were how rainbows were made. Pegasi would be paid with the gems and use their energy to fuel their weather magic.
Now, their magic permeates everything across this land so they’re almost worthless outside of bits, and that’s why bits are a global currency. Gold, palladium, acanacite. Those three items are the tradeable items across the world, then and now.
Wow, that was way off the topics. Me leaving. Back to it. So, I ‘hired’ two mules from the local farms to haul my cart. In it I hid my armor, as well. I wasn’t going to trudge across the land in that thing, and I wasn’t going to leave it out for any creature to see and beat me up over. Learned my lesson with that one.
I began my journey out of town on a rough traveled road with Lom at my side. The hills were alive with the sounds of nature. It took two hours of travel on foot, in my boots and combat pants, no shirt because it was hot, before I started to feel excited. I was on the road. Off to explore a new town.
A new city. A new land that was open and ready. To find my friends. Cadence. To hold her to my chest after we finally made passionate love to each other.
The cart was rolling along and the mules, simple as they were, were conversing over what grass tasted better during our route. One was making the case green shrubs by the right side were sweeter, while the left one was standing in her belief that short grass was healthier for a growing foal.
They were each, apparently, holding their own versions on the same topic. The air was warm against my darker than usual flesh and my hair was coming in nicely. I chose to let it grow out and see how it looked. I was also growing a goatee. When I said what my facial hair was called some ponies wanted to call me ‘the goat’.
A vicious smile from me and a mention of how I fight a hunger for meat stopped that within an hour.
There was only one problem, well, one more problem with the route we were taking. The cart was wooden wheels and axle on a wooden bed with stone supports. Loaded to its max weight and barely full it was a slow haul which meant that a trip that should have taken a week on hoof was going to take almost three, weather permitting.
That and every so often the squeaking would get louder. I know uphill was rough on the ancient equipment, but it was worrying me and Lom. Three months had taught her some about the mechanics of how the carts, doors, and see-saws worked, and she knew about breaking things too easily.
If the cart broke too soon, we’d have to go back and wait a week for another to be built, or I could have bought one off somepony else for five times the cost of a new one, since I was right and all. We were climbing a hill and crested it when, as it happens, we began a descent. This time the path was a lot bumpier and that squeak occurred more often until I finally had to call it. Before we got half way I stopped us, the mules weren’t too happy since they saw dense brush growing near the base of the hill and it looked ‘mighty tasty’.
Lom and I walked around the wagon and checked it out, made sure the wheels were tight and there wasn’t any signs of burning wood by sight and smell. “Huh,” Lom said, “It look fine. Mocha, maybe we think too much?”
“No, I swear it’s gonna break soon. Mules, ahead slow.” With a grunt they started to slowly walk ahead. Lom and I listened intently and didn’t hear anything from the wheels. Then we hit a bump and her ears perked while I felt my hearing focus at the underside like I was on a hunt.
“Nothing.”
“Yup, Mocha is right. No things here.”
I kept pace with the wagon while Lom sided with me and bumped into me. It’d become a habit that whenever I’d be next to her I’d pet and scratch her along her mane and along her ears. She loved it dearly and it gave her a pleasure that is hard to describe. Like, imagine an itch on your back.
You find a way to scratch it, but it moves. You swear you feel it move too. Then you track it and scratch it. It feels so good, but then it pops up a hoof space away. And it continues until you’re almost crazily scratching your back on anything that can offer relief.
I was her relief. Her itches were along her mane. I honestly didn’t know a horse could purr until I started scratching her one day about two months before.
Then I heard a quiet squeak.
“Shit.”
“Mocha! Go in bushes, hurry!” Lom hopped ahead and pointed to the small patch of shrubbery ahead of us.
“NO!” both the mules shouted in unison.
“Not that kind, and don’t talk like I do with that, okay?” I asked slash scolded her. She looked to me with a frown.
“I help. You say and-”
“Look!” I pointed to the bed of the wagon.
Lom stopped and did a short gallop to get behind it and looked in. “Lom, erm, I see nothing. What is I looking for?”
“Mules, stop,” I said loud enough for them to hear without letting frustration seep into my words.
I went around the back of the wagon and lifted the tarp at a corner and exposed a stream of flowing pink hair hiding under the tent equipment.