//------------------------------// // Mumbling // Story: Stroll // by re- Yamsmos //------------------------------// Octavia absolutely hated being scared. Though she knew that feeling so was honestly very natural in the course of a pony's life, it wasn't like it was exactly okay whenever it desired to transpire. Being scared was that feeling she got whenever she was playing at a concert, and a string—probably her A string—on her beloved double bass decided that now was the right time to finally give up on dear old mum and rebel like an angst-ridden teenager, snapping in two so deafeningly loud that Domino Dragonetti, deceased for hundreds of years, rolled over in his dirt grave from six whole feet underground. Being scared was that gut-dropping experience that came with realizing that she was late for rehearsal, which meant that she would first have to vomit up her previous night's intake of refined wine, then brush her mangled bedmane into perfection, and then skip breakfast so she could take the local carriage to the concert hall, where an angry group of ponies awaited with their bows ready to pierce her aching heart with all their rosined tail hairs. Even in her admittedly magnificent childhood, filled with frolicking and the outdoors, Octavia had to admit that being scared to her wits wasn't too uncommon. There were many times that she and her friends found themselves crusading in the wide open expanse of the forest near her house, and being scared certainly wasn't something they were wary of. They would run through brush and fling berries at each other, not a care in the world until they, obviously, returned to their homes and their needlessly worried parents to attend school the following day. Thinking back to a certain series of terrible events that caused Octavia to suck on her bottom lip, the mare could only remember one time when she had been scared out in the woods with nopony but her friends alongside her. It started out, if she remembered correctly, as another ordinary journey. The four had met near the edge of the forest, their small school saddlebags situated on their respective sides. Greeting each other with lung-collapsing hugs and anticipating smiles, they went over roll call even though they knew that everypony was present, going over who had brought what on their next exciting excursion. Lyra, always the enthusiastic one, had packed all their food for the trip: granola bars. Chocolate, as plain ones were too casual for such awesome fillies as they. Golden Harvest had brought their survival equipment: a pair of chipped spades and a cracked compass. That mare was always prepared. Colgate, their one friend who could go on and on about remaining sanitary, had brought a single roll of toilet paper. She had assured them that Lyra would use them all in the following hours, and Octavia had laughed so loudly that the sleeping bags nestled in her saddlebags shook with her. She being the oddly strongest of the four, Octavia had even packed small pillows she had uncovered in her house's dingy attic. That was a lie. She had stolen them from her sister's closet. The quartet had walked into the forest, intending on figuring out where to set up their camp that time. They had settled near Shut Up Lyra Stream the prior month when the body of water itself was named, and they had decided to put as much distance away from the swarm of bees that had chased them out as was possible. As a group of growing, curious fillies in the horrifying years of grade school, they thought that heading further into their yet undiscovered neck of the woods was most certainly promising them a wondrous camping spot for the day. As was foretold by the common sense that each had forsaken long ago, night had approached them fast, and with night came the lack of their being able to see where they were headed, where they resided, and where home could be. So, setting up their camp anyway, they waited for day to come so they could try to forge their way to safety. This had obviously come up with very negative results, ending up with Lyra being blinded in one eye for a number of hours thanks to a filly-assisted branch, Harvest with a pair of torn saddlebags, and nothing but stale granola bars in their aching stomachs. They had even had to brush their manes with the stems of leaves, soaked with morning dew and dripping with water. Octavia cringed, about tripping over another rock. The Griffon behind her gave a short snort of laughter. Her dislike for the bird continued to grow. Yes, their time trying to get home was filled with a lot more difficulty than the four had ever expected, and yes Colgate ended up being grounded from the four for a number of weeks after achieving their goal, but it was a time that Octavia remembered. Not because it was... admittedly hard to forget the taste of stale granola and the feel of wet leaf against her delicate mane, but because it was a time of bonding, friendship, and a newfound, undying loyalty that none of them could ever forget. That excursion had been the one to change Octavia and her friends for the better, and though it wasn't pleasant, it was necessary. They had emerged from those woods stronger than they had been going in. This kind of excursion was different. Being in a dank, dark cave with a group of strangers of different species was definitely a far cry from being in a wide, open forest with her best friends. Though bonding wasn't something that she could see in the Griffons, and she could only really consider herself friends with three of the four individuals, loyalty seemed to be something worth looking forward to. She could just imagine being in the middle of a concert, playing through Morning Mood with the Symphony, only for a quartet of armored, armed Griffons to burst through the glass windows, sending shards across the polished tile floor as they landed with practiced thuds. Even though she barely knew these Griffons, she had to put faith in somepony who could spring her out of her life. Oh who was she kidding. They'd more than likely be out of her mane in the approaching days. She had to remind herself that the cause would most likely be mass starvation that would probably start with her and end with her. Okay. Maybe she should just stop with that thought. That was a little too fiction. These Griffons wouldn't actually consider eating her, would they? She would have asked W for an answer to her question if she didn't foresee V responding to her instead. Feeling the leather messenger bag bob along her side like a bouncy filly, Octavia squeed silently, the Griffon-sourced blanket she had used now safely tucked inside. W had happily entrusted her with keeping the warm article, and Octavia was more than happy to oblige him, ignoring the groan from V that sounded an awful lot like a complaint regarding the wasting of such things to ponies. Octavia would have given her purple eyes a gentle rolling were it not for her current, positive mood that she had no desire to let falter from the reactions of a stubborn bird. Returning her thoughts to the wet, rocky cave they were currently, thoroughly trapped in, Octavia gave a small grunt of effort as she stepped up a small cliff laden with limestone shards, threatening to cut at her skin if she dared make any wrong movement. Running a hoof through the mane wrapping around her neck, Octavia gave a sigh, feeling at odds with their current predicament. It had been, daresay, an hour and a half since they had started journeying further into the cave. Their campfire had been the victim of a horrible onslaught of cave dirt, and their backpacks and Magicarms were strapped over their backs. Octavia couldn't really be too sure how far in they were. There had been loops and levels and many other trivial things in their path that, in the end, only served to trouble her countdown to starvation. She couldn't really say that she had given up, but the situation she was currently trotting through didn't make anything else likely. She adjusted the strap around her body, eyes flitting over to stare at W. Candidate bounced along his back, its business end facing her. She most likely would have done a double-take if she didn't already know that it wasn't loaded. Candidate, apparently, took three small objects that resembled small, kid-friendly sticks of lipstick. The very idea that he fired cosmetics out of his gun almost made Octavia guffaw in response. Thanks to the aggressive Griffon stalking silently next to her, she found staying quiet and composed quite simple. W hadn't placed any of his ammunition into his Magicarm, which he assured her meant that it wouldn't fire if the trigger was somehow pulled, whether by somebody or by his armor itself. Studying the engraved steel and polished wood gun, Octavia had to admit that it was honestly fascinating. Though she couldn't say that it was only slightly unfair that Earth Ponies like her and Pegasi couldn't enjoy the same feeling of using a Magicarm that Unicorns and Griffons could, she could say that the object itself was simply marvelous to gaze upon. She still couldn't see the acclaimed sanity in naming one though. She supposed she could see the play on words or what-have-her in Candidate though. Looking back at the Griffon still walking ahead of her, she had to muse that he seemed to be the sort of sly fellow, most likely one to poke fun at zany government officials and go up in arms about such things as not being able to date his half-sister simply because of her being so and the price of hamburger buns in his local Shady & Mr. Pockets. Clearly, Octavia had watched too much Griffonia Bush Warriors. Thinking to herself, she begrudgingly decided that she would finally give those old tapes back up to the pawn shop down the street. Those Griffons weren't even from Griffonia anyway. And the racial lawsuits! She thunked her head. Focus, Octavia, focus. "Well to be fair, Octavia, you've gone off on these dreadful tirades many many times in the recent days. I seriously doubt that you'll halt now." L immediately turned her head, a wild look on her face. "What?" Octavia flinched. She looked back. "Did I do something?" The expression on L's face shifted as she continued walking next to the mare. Her brown eyes darted from her left and then to her right as if she felt she was currently the victim of a harmless prank, and then they returned to Octavia. She tilted her head, responding, "Yeah you uh... I think you said something. I didn't really catch it, so I was wondering if you could, like, repeat it?" Her hunt for words in that sentence exceeded two, which meant that the Griffon was obviously lying. Two inquiries meant they hadn't planned what they had said, a huge mistake in the real world of Equestria. "I don't believe I said anything, L. I apologize if I led you to believe otherwise." She couldn't recall. Had she actually said something? "Noooo, you said something, Octavia," L replied with a sly grin, "What? Was it about Wac– uh, W?" She pointed a talon his way, suspiciously distancing herself from the obvious slip-up. W, hearing them from up front, shot his head upward with a frown on his beak. "Don't worry. I'm sure it's a lot nicer than what you might've said about V over there." V scoffed. "Oh really, huh?" Glaring at the mare, she spat, "Whatever you can come up with against me won't matter, pony." She threw her head back, causing the long white tuft of feathers on her brow to dance into the air. Placing a claw against her armor, she added, "I can handle anything you throw at me." Octavia suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Judging by the exasperated sigh that came from L, she could say to herself that the Griffon lay in the same mindset as well. T, his claws clacking against the rock, raised an eyebrow as V stepped into his personal space, her eyes narrowed toward Octavia. He gave the same response as her, his golden eyes roaming to the ceiling as he—wisely—decided to remain silent. "Well, that egg yolk comment back at the train car seemed to phase you quite a bit, didn't it?" Octavia heard the sucking in and letting out of breath behind her as she dipped her head and shot a smug look at V. The Griffon bore her teeth. Octavia faltered. Maybe that was a reckless choice. Stupid, perhaps. If words could kill, maybe she could just shut herself in a room for a few hours and let nature take its course– "What kind of accent is that?" V asked, surprisingly audible through the white wall of her teeth. Rehearsed, Octavia thought. She held her head up high and lifted her chin, now looking at V out of the corner of her left eye. "British," she replied. V smiled, the steely glare still eternally stuck on her face. "Ah, crohmpets an' tea then? Bahahaha!" She slapped a claw against the rock, causing the loose carpet of pebbles currently laying on the floor to scatter like fish. "Actually, it's stallions, stallions, and more stallions," Octavia replied, half-wishing that it were both true and desirable. She flattened her lips, adding, "I know that attracting the opposite gender is a bit hard for you, dear old V, but there's no need to be insecure about it." Oddly satisfied with her response, and not able to actually try stopping herself anyway, Octavia listened as L let out a huge wheeze, her resounding steps along the floor faltering from behind the mare. Cracking a small smile, she looked back ahead to see that even W enjoyed that a little bit, his chest exploding outward in intervals as he inflated his cheeks. T as well, who she assumed to be the silent one in the Griffon band, snorted loudly. V's eyes narrowed, her bore teeth now hiding back inside her beak. Harumphing to herself, her head darted back forward and her eyes focused on the path ahead. The stalactites running alone the cave ceiling seemed to start shrinking in retaliation to the tranquilly raging Griffon. Octavia, following suit, suddenly jumped into the air, gasping inwardly so hard she had to suck in a large amount of air to regulate herself again. Looking at the claw that had slapped onto her back, Octavia looked up and found L stupidly grinning at her. The appendage went up to dab at her eyes. "Ahhh... that was a nice one, Octavia. Gonna remember that one for years." Octavia giggled. "Well, always glad to crack a few eggs in the morning."