//------------------------------// // Chapter One: Rustled Petals // Story: Sweet Scent // by Marcibel //------------------------------// “...so I told Blossomforth, I said, ‘You need to tell Thunderlane how you feel. That stallion is not going to wait,’” said a voice with the texture and sweetness of honey, pouring across the flower plains northeast of Ponyville. Lily Valley, the magenta Earth mare directing the voice toward her sisters, craned down to pick a mouthful of wildflowers and placed them into the baskets across her back. Roseluck and Daisy, both of whom had twice as many flowers in their baskets as their younger sister, were picking poppies at other, smaller patches. Roseluck placed a bundle of eight red poppies into her basket. “I thought Thunderlane was dating Flitter. I saw her at the spa last week looking pampered enough for the Grand Galloping Gala.” “Maybe she was,” Lily suggested. Rose stared at her bemusedly. “The Gala isn't until the end of the summer, which is a good four months from now.” “Well, then...how do you know she's dating Thunderlane? There are plenty of stallions in Ponyville.” “...There are, like, five single stallions in all of Ponyville, only one of which she’s frequently seen with—Thunderlane.” Lily rolled her tongue around the inside of her mouth as her lips curled into a smirk. “You of all ponies should know that being single or not doesn't matter.” Roseluck tilted her head to the side and her nose up at the nerve of her sister. Her eyes, though watery at their bottoms, glowed fiercely and hot as she took a hard step in the direction of her younger sister. “Alright, that’s quite enough,” Daisy interjected firmly, not even bothering herself to stop and look up at the two. Roseluck snorted and shot a dagger-filled glare toward her sister.   “You're really getting good at sounding like Mom, Daisy,” Lily commented as she leaned down to continue her picking. “I have to, if it means keeping you two from ripping each other's throats out.” Lily only giggled to herself. “And before you know it, you’ll have your own set of Daisies, Lilies, and Rosies.” “I told you not to call me Rosie!” “Sure,” Daisy uttered, “and a deadbeat stallion along with it.” Lily frowned and shook her head. She stood in the middle of a patch of small wild daisies dancing lazily in the breeze. Lily stretched down to pick a small bunch of four, clamping on their stems with her teeth. In the direction of the Everfree, there was a flash of a brilliant white light with an accompanying blare that shook the ground and the bones of each mare. Roseluck, Daisy, and Lily hit the ground and covered their heads in panic, with Lily letting out a scream that was drowned out by the more reverberating sound. The explosion—or whatever you would call a burst of light coupled with sound of that magnitude—only persisted for a second and a half before dying out just as quickly as it popped. The mares tentatively removed their hooves from their ears, casting darting faces of fright among one another, the completely intact field, and the irrefutable site of a catalyst for the strange, the wicked, or both (they did live in Ponyville, after all). “What the hay was that?” Lily asked, gathering some flowers that had flown out of her basket during the panic. “I don't know,” Daisy answered, “but it came from the Everfree Forest.” “Sh-should we check it out?” Roseluck questioned, putting on a brave, albeit strained, smile. “Nope. That’s Princess Twilight’s jurisdiction, not ours. Besides, we still need to gather up some more flowers.” Daisy raised her hoof to Lily, “Lily doesn't even have half a basket.” “It's not my fault you girls pick faster than I do.” “You would pick faster if you spent less time talking about playing Dr. Love,” Rose remarked. “Ahem, that's Dr. Strangelove, actually,” Lily returned. “I do have my doctorate degree in xeno-romantic relationships, after all.”  All Roseluck did was blow a raspberry at her sister as they moved across the train tracks and along the east end of Sweet Apple Acres. “Oh?” said Daisy as they walked along the fencing, with wild bushes growing around it. She turned her head back to her sister, “Did you become a Princess of Love too? Please tell me you didn’t get your wings from the same grocery store capsule machine as they do.” Lily scoffed at the idea. “Oh, please. You don’t need magic to know what’s going on down here.” She patted the little tuft of fur on the upper left part of her trunk with her right hoof. “No, just a big nose and a smart mouth,” Roseluck quipped. “Hey, at least I can smell better and speak more elaborately than most.” Daisy rolled her eyes, “Yeah, and it used to get you in trouble frequent—” A rustling in the nearby blackberry bush punctuated Daisy's sentence, and all three mares slowly turned to the patch. It shivered for a few seconds, the being within hidden in the shadows, until the being popped out. Roseluck and Daisy gave a startled “Ah!”; Lily, however, belted out with an exaggerated, head-rattling shriek. All three mares clumped together, thinking that making themselves look larger than the average pony would be enough to the dissuade the beast before them from attacking. The strange creature stared at the mares quizzically, all the while sucking on a blackberry. It was certainly leporine in physiology, its jet-black eyes focusing first on Daisy, then Roseluck, then Lily, who faltered at its gaze. But many other features were different from the normal rabbit. Foremost, it stood completely upright on its two back paws; its front paws held the blackberry in place. On the bottom half of its chocolate-brown torso and at the ends of its chocolate-brown ears was beige wool-like fur, most of which was pulled, licked, and filthy with leaves and twigs. “What...is that thing?” Roseluck asked. “Demon-spawn, that’s what!” Lily responded. “Bun?” the creature muttered, looking concerned as it and the three mares shared a stare down. It glanced amongst the three mares once more before it fell onto all four paws, its half-eaten blackberry still in its mouth, shouted, “Neary!” and darted past them toward the prairie to the east.  “That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen…” Daisy started. “...and we live by a forest of weird…” Roseluck added. “...and in a town of even weirder stuff.” Lily finished. They all fell silent for a second. “It probably has something to do with that explosion by the Everfree, doesn't it?” asked Rose, earning the incredulous tilts of the head from her sisters. “Right…” muttered Roseluck. “Well, as the owner of a third of this business, I vote we head home,” Lily stated, already turning tail and heading for home. “Yeah, so you can go crying to your big stallion friend,” Roseluck snarked. “You say that like there’s something wrong with it!” “Hm, maybe it is best we do head home for now,” Daisy said, turning to Roseluck behind her, “Lest you want to meet anything else brought by that big explosion.” Roseluck was quick to shake her head, being in no mood for more of nature’s new oddities. She and Daisy started back to Ponyville, with Lily already several yards ahead of them. Lily certainly didn’t wish to give the world a chance to toss another one of its newest creatures at her unexpectedly, especially other variants of that beast from Tartarus that confronted and confounded her. Daisy and Roseluck had to shift from a trot to a canter to catch up to her before they reached the tracks. *                        *                        * Luckily, the mares all arrived in Ponyville without incident; each had all four legs still attached themselves, and not a broken stem within their baskets. But the town felt weird. Ponyville was definitely within earshot of the crash over the Everfree, and the townsponies (save for the usual six) were just as fickle and fearful as they could come. But not these three mares—they could brave the worst, unless it involved a lop-eared abomination of nature with an appetite for flora and destruction. The streets were cold and dead in the late spring sun, baring no soul within them. Even the wind was not bothered to blow against the hastily shut stalls and locked window shutters. The eeriness and foreboding of the situation made the mares swallow their comments and keep their eyes ahead as they briskly trotted through the market. They came upon their shop and home on the market’s outskirts without meeting another pair of eyes. The shop was nothing to be too proud of, aside from the large backyard that had been mostly turned into a garden already full of green. The shop, painted grassy green, was once a two story house, but after some renovations it was made into a shop on the ground floor. A small balcony that sprouted from the second floor hallway stuck out toward the street; and the shop’s sign—a pink, crest-shaped board with only a blue flower and a white flower painted onto it—hung from beneath it. The shop didn’t even have a proper name attached to it; the townsponies simply called it the “herbal shop” or “flower shop.” But as long as there was business, none of the girls saw any reason to change it. Grabbing the key from underneath the welcome mat, Daisy unlocked the shop door, and the girls quickly shuffled in. Daisy locked the door again, and tossed the key into a basket under the shop’s front counter. “I’m going out back to check on things in the garden,” Lily said as she walked past the counter and through the kitchen. “I’ll put some water on to boil for tea,” Roseluck stated, following behind Lily. Daisy sat in a chair at a table by the register. “And I’ll just sit here and moan,” she said, burying her muzzle into her hooves. She knew it was going to be one of those days where nothing but the worst and most wicked will come knocking at their door or land themselves into one of the rosebushes out back. “What was that explosion over the Everfree from?” she thought quietly to herself, before groaning and saying aloud, “I don’t think I really want to know.” “Neither do I, really,” Roseluck replied, “But, we’ve survived worse, like Nightmare Moon.” She sat down in the chair to Daisy’s left. Daisy lifted her head up from her hooves. “True, and Discord, too.” “Mhm. As long as we have a Princ...er, Twilight living in town, I think we’ll be fine.” Daisy sighed longingly, once more wishing to herself that things were back to the way they had been, back when fearing for one's life would only be necessary for the poor souls that had the misfortune or ignorance to go wandering into the Everfree Forest. Daisy’s head started to sink back into her hooves, but just as she touched them, a screech echoed from the garden. Her head jerked up and quickly snapped to Roseluck, who was already looking at her. “Lily!” they both shouted and scrambled up from their seats to hustle through the kitchen and out the backdoor. The kettle on the stove was already whistling for attention that will have to wait. When Daisy and Roseluck burst out of the back door, they immediately found a peculiar sight: Lily, eyes wide and mouth agape, had backed up until her flanks were pressing against the wall right by the door; and across from her, by the fence, was a bipedal, plant-looking creature standing merely as tall as the average foreleg. It held a startled stance, black and white eyes darting randomly amongst the three mares, with its limbs held out to the side. It had a pale green body, stubby little points on the ends of its legs, and a chestplate and shoulder pads made of stiff, green-and-yellow leaves covered its torso. At the ends of its two upper limbs were one fully blossomed rosebud for each, a pinkish-red one on its right side and a cerulean one on its left. Atop its crown were three relatively long thorns. “Okay...just, what?!” Daisy wheezed, shaking her head. “Roselia, selia!” the creature said with little force. “A ghost possessed one of our rosebushes!” Lily shouted. “I was watering them, and it popped out from inside the bush!” “Aww, I think she’s a cutie,” Rose commented with her hooves pressing into her cheeks. “Of course you would think that,” Lily sneered with a roll of her eyes. Roseluck blew a raspberry at her from across the other side of Daisy. “Alright, you two. One of us is going to need to try and...communicate with it.” Daisy looked to both of her sisters, and both returned it with blank looks. “Well, you are the oldest here, Daisy,” Rose pointed out. “What, because I’m the oldest, I have to talk to it? You said it was cute!” Daisy’s sisters gave sheepish grins and backpedaled as much as they could. Daisy let out a low, gurgling sigh, and stepped forward. The creature immediately recoiled from the approach, pressing its small frame into the wooden fence surrounding the yard. “H-Hey, we’re not going to hurt you,” Daisy reassured it, “We just want to know what you are, and where you came from. You do understand me, right?” The creature nodded. “Se-Selia.” Daisy gave a genuine smile.”Good, now, how about a name? What is it?” The small leaf knight paused. It lowered its head and stared at its little rosebuds, shaking them slightly. It held them up, and took a small sniff. A beam of recognition and satisfaction had turned from the twitching, apprehensive frown. “R-Roselia,” it finally said, looking up to spot the quizzical brows of the ponies. “Roselia...got it,” Daisy said, regaining her warm expression with a nod. She took a quick glance to her sisters before saying, “Would like you like to come inside?” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Lily began, waving her hooves to and fro, “you want to bring something that we don’t even know what’s up with into our shop and house?” “Why not? It’s just a flower-sprite-thingy, it can’t really be that harmful.” And just as Lily opened her mouth to rebut, Daisy added, “And remember, I’m the oldest.” Lily huffed and trotted inside, immediately followed by Roseluck. Daisy turned to the Roselia, beckoning it with her hoof. A slight reluctance was in its steps, but it walked—or waddled, with its stout legs—past Daisy and into the flower shop. Daisy gave a small sigh, shaking her head as she looked toward the Everfree, and went back inside after them.