The lilacs were still good. They were nestled in the cart beside him. The dried and darkened flowers hadn’t gotten any better and the blackening and browning had not spread in his absence.
His cart handles came with a metal, belt-like ring attached between them. He latched the harness around himself and stood up. As it turned out, forests aren’t well built for wheeled devices. So, he pulled a cart over bushes on two legs while searching for orange, pink, and purple gems.
Something kind of like crickets sounded. Moonlight dimly lit the underside of the canopy. Small, unseen creatures held perfectly still, and he made ridiculous amounts of noise.
He glanced around rapidly. The bushes scratched and crunched. The wheels squeaked and vibrated as they turned. His two-hoof stance pounded the ground. If he trotted instead, the handles would be pulled from lower and the cart would not pull over the top of the bushes as easily.
He saw dim grasses and weeds. He could just see to navigate between wide-enough tree-gaps.
From the darkness, some sharp shape swung for his face. He let out a strangled scream and swatted at it. It flew away and up. He saw a bat against the sky.
He tried to calm himself. The night sky darkened while he looked up at it, and his heartbeat could just do whatever it wanted after that.
He ran and heard distant chuckling. Something bolted across the open space he was headed for. There was no other direction he could run, so he ran through there anyway. Nothing struck at him that time. As he passed by the next bush, something swiped at his legs and he jumped over it. He started scraping his hooves against the metal belt latch. It didn’t come off.
His cart caught on and ripped plant life, slowing him, tiring him, and making him very easy to find. He heard things moving. He saw bright, different-colored points of light behind him, but the forest around them was not visible. He couldn’t possibly get away. He scraped his hooves along the ground, stopping. His cart swung around him and drug him along for a few inches. He glared into the lights, ready to rain horse-hoof hammer-blows or die.
Something slid across the ground. One of the lights flared and then flew for his head. He dropped to all fours and popped back up as it passed. He saw teeth in a circle on a ball of flesh sliding forward on the ground, propelled by long, thick tentacles trailing off into the forest.
It lunged.
He swung.
His hoof went through it.
The stars and the moon lit the forest around him. There were no small points of light in the forest. There were no teeth. He looked around and found the castle behind him, in the distance. A few feet behind him, he could see a deep trench over the top of his cart. To his side, there was a hole in a tree where the red-orange horn once was.
The tree’s bark was darkened. The branches were now skinny and long and empty of leaves. The tree was curved and jagged but never straight. The trunk was twisted around the hole,and the tree was covered in gems.
“Wha…” He let out panicked breaths and listened hard and felt the urge to keep running, but his goal was right next to him. There was no place better to be, and he would have to come back to harvest the gems anyway, if he left. He touched a gem and waited for it to grow and pop out. Nothing happened.
It may seem difficult to remove gems from a tree-trunk. It seems that way because it is. No amount of kicking did anything. Branches, however, bend. He just pulled down branches and some gems fell.
Having a cart full of gems, he couldn't go back into the bushes. He took the widest opening between the bushes he could and left the broken bridge, the deep trench, and the castle behind. He found a long set of wide spaces between bushes, forming a convenient pathway. He began to suspect that it was a road. He was correct.
The smith moved purposefully through empty morning streets. He reached his store and found the grey blank-flank sitting on a pile of gems inside a small cart.
“I said legally.”
He sat and smirked. “I think this was legal.”
One of the smiths eyebrows rose. “Think? Where’d you get them?”
“Found ‘em in the forest.”
The smith blinked. “You went in the Everfree?”
“Uh, I guess? Is that the forest?”
“How long were you in there?”
“Only half a night. It kind of feels like it rolled over for me this time.”
The smith breathed in and breathed out and decided that it didn’t matter if the blank-flank was full of it. “Put it in the building.”
The smith stuck a key in the door with his wing and opened the store. The bucket was filled with water, the forge was made hot, and the tools were set out. The smith left the forge-room.
“Also, there’s breakfast.” The pile of gems was on the floor. He was pointing at three lilacs and a few bits on the counter.
“I know where your junk’s at.” The smith tossed him his bag and picked up the sword and a large chunk of gem in his wings. “Gimme a second.” The smith went back to his forge.
The bag had bounced off of him and fallen to the ground. He scooped it up and dropped it on his back. He couldn’t find a strapping mechanism. A single hammerblow sounded. “Hey, how long does whatever…” The blacksmith was standing next to him with a hammer and a sword with an orange gem in the hilt. “Why did you… thanks?”
“Ta’ make it work better.”
“… Work… better?”
“Yep.”
“… Can you do it to the bag?”
The blacksmith grumbled and put the sword on the ground. The smith picked another large gem off the floor and the bag off his back and went back to the forge. After a single hammer-blow, the smith came back out and tossed the bag over the counter, back onto his back. Each gem stud was a smooth, inch wide half-sphere with a gold ring around the base.
“Uh, what do I owe you?”
The smith looked at him. “Boy, you don’t seem to understand what you gave me. Take your bits and go.” The smith ignored him and put the gems in a chest.
He spat the coins into his bag and clenched his sword-handle in his teeth. With his belongings, he left.