//------------------------------// // Summer: The path to Grandma's house // Story: Little Red Bow // by WovenTales //------------------------------// The first he sees of her is the red not-flower steadily moving over the thick bushes, the rare color seeming to glow among the greens and browns and blues of his home, and surely drawing more eyes than just his. He follows, no louder than a breeze rattling through the branches. His territory is poor, even for one just barely out of his mother’s grove: on the edge of the forest and in areas most larger prey – and wiser predators – avoid. There is no reason to let such a willing meal fall to some other teeth or talons. The yellow one below the red is surprisingly unaware of the natural order in the forest – or if she is, she does not just accept it, but embraces her place among the squirrels and birds. Certainly, the flower she stops to smell would have no problem catching those smaller prey. Even if, he supposes, the whipping, entangling thorns would not be quite strong enough to more than scratch her, should she have touched the hanging fruit and awoken them. Indeed, as they pass a stretch where the bushes encroach far enough onto the path that he could almost close the distance to her in a single leap, he realizes she’s not just about his size, but actually slightly larger; she has to duck under a branch his ears barely brush at fully forward attention. No, better for now to simply follow the beacon of her red than to be hasty and loose such an easy catch. Not that he is worried. While she might be perfectly happy to wander into the waiting grasp of some other predator, they, at least, know the rhythms of the wood and the leaves. They know what it means when the bushes bend to an unnoticeable wind. They know better than to steal a catch from the muzzle of a timberwolf. He is close enough now that his claw could touch her tail should he wish it to. As she slows to climb over a fallen tree, he gathers his limbs under him to jump. And then – as if to spite him – an owl launches out of the leaves beside him, a squirrel dangling (hanging?) from its claws. Her hooves clack against the wood as she screams and nearly leaps the trunk, running ahead as soon as she is able. Before he can do anything, she is out in the relative clear of the path again, where his bark-and-leaf camouflage would be too obvious to follow. He can’t do anything now but follow and wait for another chance. This far from the fields, there should be no shortage of those before – if – she leaves. But then she turns from the old path she had been following, the one the trees sing of, that used to lead ponies pulling their mobile-groves into the heart of the forest and safely back out, onto the small track leading to Her house. Of course she would. His prey isn’t too different from Her. Both ponies – or were similar once, before She became Herself – though their different smells hid that. Red is sweet, with hints of grass and fruit and open air, while She is sharp and smoky and heavy with the earth and musk of the forest. But ponies don’t put much stock in scents, and he should have realized that she was going to see Her no matter how different the two might be. He hurries to catch Red before she reaches Her. She is enough to end any hunt, should She wish to. He freezes. She stands in the middle of the trail, looking straight at him. Still. Tree bark and leaves. Nothing can see a timberwolf in their own forest. Nothing but Her. Nothing can be hidden from Her. “I should know you well enough by now to watch for your approach before I would allow. These paths are home to dangers you know not – on them you never travel giving no thought – and should you wish to keep from needing escort, you will learn how to keep yourself unhurt.” Red responds, eyes on the ground, pulling Her gaze to her as she continues and his green eyes blink gratefully. But before he can shrink away, She turns back to him. “We will begin that training soon; for now, I have already planned our brew. But stay a minute, see what watched your journey, and know the peril brought by leaving early.” She walks toward him, and he tries to wrap the branches tighter around himself. A single brush of Her hoof breaks through his control and leaves him exposed. “Now you, who slink through shadows of rock and tree. This pony will travel safely through the Everfree; I rarely interfere with prey and hunters but her I will protect from creatures’ hungers.” Her face looms into his, and Her voice becomes low and even colder. “Should you harm her in any way, with your life you will pay.” He is unable to tear his eyes away from Hers, and in that eternity he is no longer a timberwolf, feared by all and fearing none, but a leaf grimly hanging to its twig as an icy wind shrieks down the side of the mountains. Her gaze strips away his bark, cuts deeply into his heartwood, and She sees everything he is and has been. The pup that lost his mother’s catch to a cockatrice, too busy bullying his sister out of the way to have it all to himself; the wolf who challenged a young manticore for its territory and lost, stinger stabbing and striking until the wolf could almost feel the venom trickling through his branches, corrupting the wood, and the potions She soaked him with when he had collapsed in the middle of the trail. The barely-wolf who spent nights on the edge of the fields, watching the ponies wrapping up their lives and holding back the darkness for one more meal, one more conversation. His entire life lies bare to Her, and even when She finally turns away and nudges Red towards Her own grove of light, he can do little more than lie where She left him, every breath of air inside him and around him feeling stronger than the thickest branches he runs through when chasing particularly quick prey. He barely even cracks an eye open when a squirrel bounds past him, branch or feather or something held in its mouth like a trophy. Later, when the world is once again separate from his own self, he carefully brings his paws under him, and unsteadily stands. Red will be safe. He would do nothing to cross Her, and She has made her wishes clear. But he remembers how Red looked at him from Her grove. Fearful and wary, yes – she knows something of the natural order, after all. But more than that. Sympathetic, almost caring, despite everything. He doesn’t want to forget Red and that look just yet. He has seen some of pony ways in those nights watching the red-and-brown and yellow-and-pink. He will give her a gift. The last several times Apple Bloom had entered Zecora’s hut – once its smoke and masks had stopped seeming quite as intimidating – she had been entranced by the colors and shapes and general sense of activity almost before she had crossed the doorway. Now, though, she glanced back at the pile of branches and leaves, and the two lights glowing a sickly green from its shadows. The zebra was right. It would have tried to eat her – she had seen what those teeth and claws could do, even to a sheep that had managed to get away; Big Mac and Applejack had made sure that was a boring summer. And yet she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for it. Her brother may never have made her quiver like that, but he could still be downright scary when he got really mad. Zecora gently nudged her further inside and shut the door, blocking the timberwolf from view. Come to think of it… “Hey, Zecora, how’d you scare it like that? Granny Smith says timberwolves are some of the meanest critters around, but it looked almost as scared of you as the ponies in town! Was it whatever you said at the end, there?” “To live out here with all its threat, you must, at times, be stronger yet. I hold respect, as you can see, and keep some peace through all the Everfree. But I will never give you cause to fear, and you’ll be safe from all while you are here.” She walked to the pot bubbling in the center of the room and stirred it, the long ladle between her teeth. The filly groaned, only just noticing the size of the cauldron. “Soup again? You know, there’s a lot of funner things we can make, like say, potions. Do you even use this thing?” She tapped the small pot on the shelf that Zecora had said she used to brew them. The zebra only glanced at her as she dipped the tip of her hoof in the water, and Apple Bloom sighed. “Sorry, I’m just getting impatient again. They’ve all been really good soups. You want me to open the windows? Might be nice to get a breeze blowin’ through.” The summer heat was only dampened by the trees, and while Zecora’s house, with its canopy of leaves serving as both roof and ceiling, was cooler than her own, the filly was quickly growing uncomfortable in the extra heat the fire threw out. “Please do allow the wind its swift access, though the soup means more than you have guessed: a potion’s brewed in much the same way, and you will show me what you’ve learned today.” She tapped one of the tables. “These notes, you’ll find, are rather sparse, so use your mind and trust your heart.” The rough sheet of paper was pinned down by a bright blue bottle and covered in Zecora’s surprisingly elegant mouthwriting, the glyphs as neatly-formed as Cheerilee’s but full of decorative flourishes that made them feel like an old Zebracan art – a glyph in “flower that has never known the sun”, for instance, was almost exactly like the mark on the zebra's flank. Reading over the instructions again, Apple Bloom’s first impression of them as a recipe seemed less and less accurate; while the ingredients were all listed at the top, most only hinted at what they meant and none of them said anything about how much to put in. The directions themselves were a bit easier, but only because there weren’t too many different ways to say “chop and stir.” “Hey, Zecora, are you wanting moondrops or morning glories here? I can guess an most of these, but…” She trailed off as she saw the zebra lying on her bed – doubling as a couch during the day – and watching her with a quiet smile. “All right, I’ll just figure it out myself, then. Don’t blame me if it doesn’t taste right!” She lost track of time as she searched the shelves lining almost every wall for a particular type of bark, or carefully poured liquids and powders from the jars hanging from the branches, or crushed herbs and cloves stored in the many braids and bowls. She did eventually decide to use the moondrop, as she had already tossed in several things that would give the soup a chunkier texture and nothing that seemed to be the core flavor. Besides, Zecora had mentioned knowing where a couple patches were, deeper in the forest, so she didn’t have to feel bad about using what would usually have been too expensive for a lunch this vague. And through it all, the stirring. The “recipe” wanted her to completely mix every single ingredient in before adding the next. Whether or not that was the way all zebras learned to cook, Apple Bloom the pony quickly simplified it, occasionally adding three or even four powders at a time. Even after reaching the end of the page, she still felt like the soup was missing some small but important flavor. She called over at the zebra – who seemed to be helping a squirrel braid a grey feather into its tail – to not let anything burn and galloped out the door. There was a particular berry she wanted to add, and she hadn’t seen it among Zecora’s supplies. She knew of a patch in the Low Orchard, but that was a long way from the hut. Maybe it grew out here as well? She didn’t look forward to her chances of finding a squashberry patch just by wandering around— on another hoof, there was that marshy clearing she and Zecora had visited last month, looking for mallow. That might be similar enough to the pond, where she usually found it. Besides, it was in roughly the same direction, so she wouldn’t even have gone too far out of her way if she didn’t find any berries there. She was almost surprised at how quickly she seemed to reach it, and, as it turned out, she had guessed correctly; there were several of the small bushes at the edge of the trees. But then the excitement racing through Apple Bloom’s body began to wear off, and she realized both that she had run out here without a basket to carry the fruit and, more importantly, that several minutes of forest lay between her and the hut – forest that, as she was being reminded of with each rustling leaf, was not very friendly to young ponies. She bit off a few berry-laden branches and hurried back down the winding, overgrown trails, ears twitching and mane prickling. Zecora looked up from stirring the soup as the filly came through the door, and her eyes widened at the leafy lion’s mane around her head. She didn’t say anything, though, even as she watched Apple Bloom toss the branches onto a small table by the door and start pulling off the red berries. The squirrel showed less restraint, and stopped grooming the feather to leap across to her back and scramble up to watch from over her bow. “I know ‘tart’ ain’t something that would normally go with everything in there,” she told it, “but Applejack had these in a salad the other day, and for some reason it seems like they’ll be good here as well.” With that, she swept the last of the loose berries into a bowl to carry them over to the cauldron. To offset the taste, she spooned in some honey from one of the largest bottles in the hut. Then, finally, it was just down to more stirring and letting everything in the pot finish cooking – and, after everything seemed done and she had put out the fire, cooling off enough to not scald whatever tried to taste it. Apple Bloom cleaned up as she waited. She quickly got used to the quiet, listening to the noises outside and to the last sounds of the dying fire, the swish of the broom, and the clicking of the squirrel’s claws up and down the walls, so she jumped when Zecora suddenly spoke up as the filly was finally ladling out a portion of the soup. “Wait a while, we’ve no need for haste. Your addition I would like to taste. I know what I wrote before, but you have made this something more.” “I know it ain’t going to taste how you were thinkin’ but I do know my fruit! I’m not gonna put something poisonous in there or anything! Or are you saying…” The zebra smiled cryptically as she sipped at the spoonful she was somehow holding like an earth pony. Her eyes closed and she seemed to be picking apart the flavors, but she didn’t respond quickly enough for Apple Bloom; the filly picked up the half-filled bowl and took a swallow herself. It was still too warm to be comfortable, and she coughed as it flowed down her throat. The contrast between the squashberries and the dewy-tasting moondrops was definitely… interesting, but what really surprised her was the sensation it left behind. She could still feel the humid weight of the early summer afternoon pressing in on her, but she shivered as the coolness spread from her mouth and stomach throughout her body, as if she had suddenly stepped out into the night, carrying a calm stability with it. “Is that…” “Yes, your thoughts indeed fly true: you’ve just cooked your first full brew. Not only could you read my list, you also gave it your own twist – fixing magic’s balance, it seems to be.” She licked her lips and let out a short laugh. “Your instinct might be growing faster than me! Do not worry, much remains ahead; you won’t soon be warden in my stead. Now, though, fill some bowls for our neighbors’ treat – they too will want relief from this tiring heat.” They filled the low, flat bowls that would be easy to carry and hard for the animals to tip over – the choice of the large pot quickly becoming obvious as even that was soon almost empty – and started to carefully carry them outside to the stumps and stone Zecora kept around for this exact reason. Apple Bloom stopped still as she was pulling the door open; there was a bright red flower, made of smaller, airy-looking blossoms spreading from a central stem, on the step just below her hooves. “Hey, Zecora, looks like somepony left you something!” The other peered around the cauldron, ears pricked. “No, that seems more like an apology. An honor: those are rare in Everfree.” She paused to make sure the bowl was secure on her back. “And I would doubt it’s meant for my own hoof – that pawprint says it’s from your timberwolf. Though while this gift might be honest do not forget what else exists, as even if he grants you peace the forest holds still sharper teeth.” “An apology, huh?” She set her bowl down long enough to put the flower behind her ear and brush her mane across to hold it in place. The filly smiled as she scanned the bushes and watched two green lights blink and disappear.