“Swing! Jab! Swing! Jab! Duck! Backtrot! Jab!”
Nova panted as the staff dropped from her control, clattering to the ground. “Uh, heh, huh, I, h-h, don’t get it… You make it, h-h, look so, so easy,” she stammered as she fell on the ground.
“Grape, you’re doing fantastic. Just, keep at it. I’ve never see a filly take so quickly to the staff before. With a couple more months training you could become a member of your town’s defense team.”
“Our town doesn’t have a defense team,” Tree added from the campsite just within earshot.
“It’s a small town, a berg. When it grows, and it will, you’ll need a couple ponies to fight off beasts or hungry monsters. Unless you want to hire a gryphon to guard you town. Bringing in its mean, controlling, bossy, omnivorous-”
“Okay!” Tree shouted, “I get it. Bad enough ya gotta teach a filly to fight, now you gotta bring meat diets into it?”
“It’s not fighting,” Nova added as she stood again and took the staff under her control, “it’s defense.”
With that she began the regimen again.
Trek nodded and moved closer to Tree. “I have to say, that she is truly unique. She can move items without magic and she’s so quick to learn.”
“Well, I know she’s unique, but I don’t know about learning. She was supposed to start school yesterday and instead I take her on a possibly dangerous trek across the center of our lands.”
“It’s noble for you to have done it,” Trek said reaching up, “I know that there’s a star up there, a constellation, that’s meant for you. For ponies like you, who are kind enough to take his sister on a journey such as this. More ponies need to explore the land with their own hooves and not in a book.”
Nova grunted as she swung the staff and began to focus her moves at a thin tree by her.
“Well, I hope I find it soon. I don’t feel like putting her at risk if we run into bandits or anything.”
“Heh, bandits? You do know you’re in Equestria, right? Those’re as rare as housebroken timberwolves.”
He snickered. “Yeah, true, but just because you don’t hear about them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I’m sure that somewhere in the world there’s a timberwolf sitting on somepony’s porch.”
“True,” she relented, “I’ve never been to the royal throne room but, I know it’s there.”
…
Nova swung the staff fast and got as close to the tree as she could before returning to jabbing and jumping left to right. She tucked and rolled, to see how it felt, and she liked it. She kept at it for a while until she felt something tug her tail.
“Huh? Oh, Trek,” she panted, “is it time ta eat?”
“N-Nova,” she said breathily, her mouth agape. Tree stood behind the mare, mouth agape as well.
“W-what?”
Tree closed his mouth and swallowed. “I-I’ve never seen anything move that fast. I have the chills, Trek,” he said awe.
“Nova-”
“I thought I was ‘Grape Juice’?” She giggled and levitated the staff by her side as she was shown.
“Grape, I could barely see the staff… the air hummed like a hornets nest. How’d you do that?”
“Do what? I just did what you said earlier,” Nova grinned proudly, “so, I did good?”
“...Y-you did amazing,” Tree said to break the silence.
“Yay! So, is it time ta eat? Oh! I gotta pee, be right back,” she said as she galloped to the cart, dropping the staff in her dash for one of the small cloths she used to clean herself with.
The adults watched her gallop to the other side of a large bush.
“Gah! Somepony didn’t bury their pee! Icky, I stepped in it… Oh well,” she giggled as she took care of business.
A moment later she left the bush with a sigh and a cloth rolled into a ball. “Much better. Tree, Trek, want me to show you how to dig a pee hole?”
Tree and Trek laughed quietly to each other. “No, no, that’s fine, but thanks for the offer. What we need to do is eat. No fire tonight so we’ll have vegetables, crunchy style.”
“Yay! I love crunchy veggies,” Nova said pronking in place.
Tree went to the cart and opened a small box, removing a large cloth filled with mixed vegetables. “Hey, time to eat. Now,” he lay the cloth on the ground and let the vegetables spill out, “you first. Eat your fill and don’t try to save any. I’m fine grazing if I need to through the night.”
Nova looked at him and then the vittles. “‘Kay.”
With a loud crunch she sat up and bit into a large farm carrot that was as thick as her foreleg.
“And that’s that,” he said getting up and moving to Trek, who was holding the staff in her magic and looking it over.
“The ends have been damaged to the point the staff could be almost turned into a spear, but that’s all that’s wrong with it. She wore a staff down in twenty minutes that would take hours of constant usage by an expert,” she said as she scrutinized the weapon. “The mare has talent.
“Maybe her cutie mark will be a staff.”
“Maybe it’ll be of her gem,” he said looking back to the filly who was crunching loudly through the carrot, not a care in the world.
“Gem? The one around her neck?”
“Eeyup. The first thing she ever truly owned and only she can move it. It’s magic proof.”
“Interesting. She’s an enigma, for certain.”
“Don’t dwell on it too much,” he said with a nod, “I almost went crazy trying to understand her gifts. I had to take a lot of time in my hammock, collecting myself.”
“Well, I’m not worried, I’m intrigued. She’s the most interesting pony I’ve ever seen, and I’ve met quite a few… Grape!” She shouted, “hurry and eat, more practice when you’re done.”
Tree looked at the carrot toothed grin from the filly and shrugged. “Just don’t hurt her,” he said.
“I have to worry about that?” She smiled to him.
…
The next two days were spent traveling, laughing, and practicing Nova’s new staff skills.
“Hey! Is that smoke? Is there a fire?!”
“No, Grape, it’s the town. Probably having a party of some kind,” Tree suggested.
“...That’s the town,” Trek hesitated, “but they don’t have parties like that,” she said in a deep voice, entering a gallop.
“W-wait! I can’t run with a cart,” Tree shouted at the mare as she passed a sharp curve he didn’t see ahead, and vanished over a hill within a minute after she started.
“Why’d she go off so fast?”
“I-I don’t know, but I really think we should hurry. If there’s trouble I don’t think we should be alone.”
Nova nodded and skipped ahead of him, then stopped suddenly, her ears falling to her head and her tail sagging. “Nov- uh, Grape, what’s wrong? Are you alright?”
“I, I can feel them,” she said softly as trembles waved across her body.
“Feel what?” Tree asked as he reached her and slowed to a crawling pace.
“I-I don’t know, but it’s sad… so sad, and alone. They,” she looked back to him with a confused look, “they’re hurting and, going away,” she whispered.
Tree looked at her then the smoke past the hilly plains and then around them. Rolling green hills with flowers dotting the landscape as far as he could see. The scent of grass and smoke tickled his nose. The woods they were in was beyond sight and yet, he felt suddenly crowded.
“Grape, I really think we should catch up with Safe Trek.”
Nova nodded and began a fast trot, just fast enough to keep pace with the stallion as he pulled the cart uphill at a steady pace, fueled by his nervous feelings.
Several minutes later they crested a hill and stopped.
The land was the same as it had been the previous day, however the town they were looking at, their first stop on their travels, was nearly half ablaze. Families huddled in herds in an arid patch of tilled farmland, crying and holding each other while others were casting what spells they could or using their natural talents to heal to the wounded.
The shining armor of Safe Trek glistened in the sunlight and fire as she violently pulled a stallion through the thin wall of a burning house before she jumped into the opening and vanished.
Nova covered her muzzle with her hooves and fell to her haunches, her eyes tearing at the sight. She stayed put as Tree unhitched himself, ran around the cart quickly, and chocked the wheels before he turned to gallop down the path.