//------------------------------// // Day 19: As hunters stalk // Story: A mare and her dog // by cammera //------------------------------// Applejack woke up to Winona's growl. She jerked awake and, after the initial shock, stood still watching Winona-- every hair on end, ears erected, tail between legs, and a deep, guttural growl escaping her bared teeth. She growled at the barricaded door, her pose ready to jump at whatever throat presented itself. Something walked outside. It scratched the door, but it didn't bulge and, after a few tries, it gave up. It walked away, paws clicking over metal. Once Applejack was sure that it had gone away, she looked around the room until her eyes fell in a tiny spot of sunlight, and followed it to an even smaller hole in the metallic wall. Through it she saw that the sun hadn't quite reached its highest, so it couldn't be later than nine or ten in the morning. Movement caught her eye, and she looked down to see... Rocs? Did the swim like ducks, now? The whole idea seemed just too unfair to her. She knew the river descended at a sharp angle. She knew rocs weren't especially brilliant. However, after the first shocked instant she realized that some young rocs were, besides bathing, dancing around females, and in a closer inspection she saw that there was something, seemingly sand textured glass, acting like a beach. She hadn't seen it at night because rather than being attached to something above the surface, it seemed to be anchored to the river bed via steel cables and lifted by more of the glass bubbles. She just couldn't wrap her head around minotaur engineering, even after having visited some of their cities, and understood perfectly well Applebloom's love-hate towards them: not only did they do everything up-side down, but they did it up-side down in clever ways that actually worked. Minds like those could make a flying machine that pushed the world under them. She shook her head off minotaurs and fliers and walked to her mat, where she laid again. Whatever was that was chasing them down, it'd take at least a few extra hours to enter, and she was perfectly fine with the fact. -ยบ- What felt to Applejack like, maybe, ten hours later (Enough for her to be much better rested, at least), she was woken up by Winona again. She stood in exactly the same position as before. This time, however, the hunter wasn't bothering with scratching at the door. It charged against the door an impacted it with heavy, meaty thuds. Applejack though about putting the saddlebags on, but decided against having extra weight in a close-quarters fight. Winona noticed her and, relaxing a bit, walked further away from the door, but still between it and Orange hat horse. They both watched as the barricade crumbled, their minds in similar tracks: A forest creature, of stalking nature and, from the sound of it, rather big and heavy. Used to fight in large spaces, probably. A good enough sight to not have all four legs broken, too. The barricade was pushed, and something entered without bothering with subtlety. Applejack and Winona tensed, both ready to jump. The only thing canine about it was the body shape, as mother nature had divided it from its brothers long ago. There wasn't any fur on it, or even eyes: instead, its head was covered up to the snout by what looked vaguely like five petals, each covered in small veins and a bulge near the tips. The petals opened. Each had a closed eye on it, and a magenta line running from each tip of the eye to the root of the petal. As twilight descended in the sky, the eyes opened, each pointing in a different direction, but after a few blinks (each making a wet sound) they managed to focus in its prey. The magenta lines alighted with what seemed like some kind of phosphorescent liquid, and the creature disappeared from sight.