Little Red Bow

by WovenTales

Autumn: How pretty these flowers are

He sits by the old pony-trail. Watching. Waiting. He saw Red start across the fields on her well-traveled path to Her house not long ago. Now hooves crunch on dead leaves and his ears swivel to the sound. Red walks fearlessly into his territory, though she watches the bushes as she passes. The forest has taught her respect as the days lose light, but she is still trusting, still soft.

He steps out to walk beside her, and she bares her teeth in happiness. He watched over her from the shadows since She claimed her – at first because She might not care that it was something else that hurt Red, if anything had happened, but then because he had come to like her himself: her open, caring scent, its edges now smoky and sharp with power; her soft bird-singing when she thinks she is alone; even her careless bravery. Now he watches her from clearings and paths and light.

The trail turns as it passes through a denser patch of brush and across a small rivulet still draining yesterday’s rain. He stops. They are not that far from… Red freezes as well, searching the trees with wide eyes and twitching ears. There is a tint of fear in her voice and her scent. But she does not need to worry and he tries to tell her with his body, with the way his ears lie as she looks back at him. Red relaxes.

He follows the water into the undergrowth, calling Red silently on when she hesitates, and soon the vines and brambles would be a solid wall for anything else walking this way. But they part smoothly for him. Trickier is leaving them open for her – he is not used to holding apart branches he has already passed. His grip slips several times and she jumps against his tail as they whip closed on her flank.

Then they are through, and he circles her; red welts slowly weep on her haunches and long scratches reach down her sides. He hears himself whine as he noses them, licking away the blood. Red is hurt and She will not like it. He does not like it. But Red is looking around his grove and her teeth are bare again. When she pulls away from his tongue he lets her wander, jumping to the top of his high log to watch.

The water runs from under the leaves and into his stream, and Red traces its path there, stopping with her front hooves in the shallows to dip her head and take a drink. A breeze blows through the leaves, and she shivers as it plucks at her red. For a moment, she just stands there, water dripping down her chin and burbling around her legs on its way over the stones and branches. Then she picks her way over to him, climbing the rock outcropping until her ears are almost level with his paws. A yelp when she almost stumbles into the hollow under his log, where he sleeps when the rain falls and he is not somewhere else, and when she looks up again he can tell from the set of her ears and the look on her mouth that she only now realizes where they are.

Red turns, looking down the slope of his grove. It is small, yes – it would never hold all the pups his mother’s did – but when she glances back at him, he knows she sees what he has made of it: cleaning the banks of his stream, shifting logs to make a secure path up and down his hill, encouraging the forest to grow the wall enclosing his entire clearing. But when she steps down from beside him, from the point where they can watch it all, she goes instead to the flowers growing around the bases of his trees, the scents he has carefully chosen and raised to bring some of the bright singing of the fields into the heart of the forest. The one thing in his grove he is most proud of.

He stands and stretches. Red keeps her muzzle over his flowers as he pads to her, but her ears follow him. He settles a respectful distance from her side. A brave pair of birds flits to the bank further below and jumps across the stones to splash the day’s travel from their feathers; she watches them, her shoulders relaxed and legs folded as if she is not under the dark trees and only a jump away from teeth and claws and hunger. His chin thumps heavily against the ground.

Something lands on his neck. Something with claws and chittering that runs from shoulders to ears and back. It is too close to snap at and it dodges his paws’ clumsy swipes. He rolls. It runs to stay on top. He shakes. It digs between twigs and plates and hangs on. Soon he is on his side, legs tangled and chest heaving and big eyes and big teeth are standing on his cheek and scolding right into his ear.

Red is barking but her lips are drawn back like she is happy – not like a snarl. The ball of fur jumps to her shoulder and scolds her as well. It moves like a squirrel and has teeth like a squirrel but its tail is wide and feathered. He has seen it with Her. He bares his teeth – not in Red’s happy way – but she says something soothing to him and something sharp to the squirrel-bird, and it did not actually hurt him.

But if it is here, She is hunting them. He scrambles to his paws. He does not like seeming weak, but if he appeases Her, She might be more gentle in Her anger.

The squirrel-bird leaps from Red to tree to tree to stand on the side of his wall, chattering. Red follows on the ground, and says something to him as she passes. The scratches – his scratches – are red and pulling at her coat, but at least they are no longer bleeding. He hurries to part the branches when she calls. The squirrel-bird leads from overhead, sometimes disappearing and starting them off in another direction when it comes back, and when they reach the end of his wall, She is waiting only a few lengths away.

He drops to his stomach; She looks coldly calm, with Her mouth closed, Her shoulders loose, and Her ears only slightly back. But She smells more dangerous than he has ever smelled Her. Red steps out of the brush behind him, and Her eyes go to her haunches. Then Her shoulders tense. Sharp eyes pin him to the ground as they did those moons ago – as they still did in his memory – and She steps forward.

Red’s tail fills his vision. He hears her say something to Her as if She were just one more creature living in the forest.

“This wolf—” the word is heavy with Her power, and he shivers at its sound “—has gotten you to roam, when I have said to—”

Red cuts Her off. Red cuts Her off with a voice that challenges Her power. And even though her voice itself barely weighs anything in his ears, he feels Her burden lift.

“Truly, do you trust this wolf so much, to know that you will never be his lunch? The Forest’s soul is fickle, living here is hard, the best of friends can turn if one should drop her guard. For all your years you still remain a child, raised outside and sheltered from the wild; have you really learned enough with me to follow where your soft heart leads?”

Red yells something at Her, but She stays silent, unmoving. When she starts talking again, her voice is quieter, calmer, but no less strong. Eventually, she too falls silent. He hears Her make some movement with Her hooves, and Red steps to the side. He no longer feels that predatory force behind Her gaze, but he still presses himself further into the ground as She steps closer to kneel in front of him. Their muzzles almost touch and Her dark, deep, hard eyes peer straight into his.

“You have earned the trust of this young mare, but know that this means more than you’re aware: she’s not used to Forest ways and values much that you’d downplay. Should she fall, it won’t be me you’ll fear, but your own love of those you hold most dear. If you aren’t the noble wolf she sees, leave her now to walk alone but free.”

The power returns to Her voice for the last command. A long moment later, She stands and calls to Red to follow, and she glances back at him before they disappear into the shadows and the leaves.

Only then does he sit up. What was it She wanted him to decide? He already knows Red is strange, her fearlessness makes that obvious: she is not a dragon or a cragodile, or Her, to be unguarded and still be safe. But that is not what She meant. Something Red finds important that he does not? It is something in how she thinks of him, something she does not know she is wrong about – so not how he eats, no matter how she reacted to the rabbit before the last full-dark moon.

How does she see him? Not long ago, she would never leave the paths and the clearings for the true forest if she did not smell like Her and burn with her own power. Even now she does not walk the winding trails through the brush unless she is looking for something important, but she followed him to his grove anyway. When she leaves her bright fields and tamed trees, she looks for him and is calmer if she knows he is near. A protector, then. But why would She warn him about that? He is not going to get bored and leave her to the claws and thorns— but She might not know that; She might think he will only stay as long as Red is new and interesting. And ponies do ally themselves more freely than anyone else could afford to. If he left, Red would not understand like those of the forest would. That would hurt her.

That was not going to happen.

He stands and lopes off, following her trail.

Heartwood leaped at her, his claws outstretched. Apple Bloom fell to the ground to let him fly over her, rolled to get back to her hooves, but the timberwolf had already turned and was racing toward her again. The filly stepped to the side and lashed out with her strongest applebucking kick, catching him square in the jaw as he passed.

At least, that was the plan.

Everything before the kick had gone smoothly this time, but her timing was off and her hooves thunked hollowly against his – much more solid – shoulder. Rather than dazing the timberwolf, the small filly was thrown off balance by the force of his passing and of her own buck, and fell face-down in the leaves and dirt. She shook her head clear just in time to feel Heartwood’s jaws close around the back of her neck.

He held Apple Bloom for a second before releasing his grip and letting her pick herself back up.

“Each and every jump, your form improves, but you still act with risky countermoves.” Zecora left her post at the side of the clearing to walk up to the pair. “Do not think a single kick will end the fight; you’re better thinking sharp and swift when you strike.” Her hoof shot out and cracked against the timberwolf’s other shoulder, sending him staggering against the filly once again standing beside him. “But you are agile, fast and small. Use those to not get caught at all.

Apple Bloom glared at her. “Just ’cause Heartwood agreed to help you train me, that doesn’t mean you get to knock him around willy-nilly!”

The wolf nudged her back with a comforting huff. When he turned toward Zecora, shifting, half-growling, and making the other noises Apple Bloom now recognized as his form of talking, he kept his head low and seemed like he was trying to be as polite as possible.

“He is grateful for the care you show, but won’t – from that – be hurt, as you well know.” Heartwood turned to the filly with a look that was both smug and slightly wounded, and she rolled her eyes.

“Do not think that this is just my whim: should you freeze or fumble, your future may be grim. Use your wits, control what force you can, but your best fight is one in which you ran. The creatures here will overpower you – others strike with magic, too. Maybe Macintosh could overpower some, but even he would fall if more were called to come.”

“Make a way out and take it, you’re saying? Ain’t gonna help much if whatever it is is faster than me. Me and the Crusaders certainly tried getting away from that cocka-whatever the other day, and it just kept popping up in front of us,” she said, lying down with her back resting against the timberwolf’s side.

“For that you’ll learn the ways of every creature— at least, as much as I can pass as teacher; that night there’d be no need to fear her, if only you had brought a mirror.”

“What, does it not stoneify you if you only see its reflection or something?”

Zecora shook her head. “Their own reflection is a source of fear, for it too will petrify the seer. Once her spell is cast, the stone obeys, and she herself can fall under that gaze.”

Apple Bloom shuddered and pressed closer into Heartwood. He hung his head over her shoulder. “That would be— I’m glad I don’t have to worry about anything like that whenever I’m near something shiny. But if their magic’s so powerful and all, how come it stopped it for Fluttershy?”

“Some creatures here can meet their eyes, but that she calls their magic does surprise. Most of those that have the power, like your wolf, cause prey to cower. Even more, to come when willed only… I find I underestimate that pony.” She fell silent, clearly thinking, only to give a short laugh when she noticed the filly almost absentmindedly nuzzle her companion. At their look, she explained, “do not pay my humor any heed, you’re simply an uncommon pair indeed. To not only give the wolf a name but also act as though he’s fully tame? And to let your prey survive, then act as guard so she may thrive?” Her laugh was full and warm. “If I ever were to return home, your tale would be told when legends roam.”

“And you ain’t just as strange? You talk to animals just as good as Fluttershy, and you can’t use ‘earth pony magic’ to explain it like she does, however that’s supposed to work for her.” Apple Bloom looked around for the squirrel, but he was apparently back at Zecora’s hut lining his nest for the winter. “I get how you can turn Cululay into a bird, but he would’ve needed to let you know he wanted to be one first.”

“That gift is one most zebras don’t possess, but every shaman first must pass her master’s test. For me, that was to brew a lifelong change, and I had thought all other language strange. That is when I started rhyming, too: I could not make a magic wholly new. I call that behind tales, wonders, even fears, and with it carry words to other’s ears. Should I speak in any other manner—” Her next line was in some Zebracan language. Apple Bloom’s ears pricked and Heartwood lifted his head. The words were certainly not harsh – they reminded the filly more of a stony brook than anything else – but it felt almost like her ears had suddenly risen out of a pool of water, when she didn’t know they had been under the surface in the first place.

She shook her head to clear it, and again as she thought about what the zebra had said. “A storytelling magic, then? Guess it’s not any weirder than when Pinkie gets a really good song going.” One of Heartwood’s looser branches clacked against something deeper inside as she lay her head back across him. He rested his own on her barrel in turn and let out a long, comfortable sigh.

Eventually, Apple Bloom’s thoughts turned to another part of Zecora’s explanation. “Hey, why are you doing this for me? I mean, you said your master made you brew something that would last forever before you could be a shaman, and I’m guessing that’s not what she had you start with. Is that what you’re doing? Training me to do what you do?”

Zecora smiled thinly. “I’d call myself a ‘warden’ now, but not a ‘shaman’ – I doubt I could go back to that old life again. But you are on a different path than mine, one which fills the pony dream to be benign, and I can only help you find your way. What you will become… none can say. Although I teach the skills that I myself once learned, the magic you will call will not be that of zebra herds.” She stood and stretched. “Come now, on your hooves, we’ve rested long enough, it’s time to train to make the Forest’s hunts more tough.”

Apple Bloom barely felt Heartwood’s twigs and limbs tense before he was out from under her and batting at her head. She curled up and rolled, trying to get to her hooves as the zebra’s laughter echoed around the clearing.

Author's Note:

Um... Happy Hearthswarming? I could have had this up by the end of August if I had just come up with two more lines for Zecora and given everything a final brushing. Instead, I wound up almost agressively procrastinating for some reason. For four months. I'm really sorry, Devildogg20. Better late than never?

Next time: definitely not filler. Hopefully in a reasonable length of time, but I've learned my lesson about promises and writing.

Comments

[Devildogg20]

Glad to see this in any case! great chapter, but how come Heartwood can understand Zecora in his half, but we don't actually "hear" applebloom?

[WovenTales]

7816829 Thanks for asking! I tried to hint at that, but I'll definitely admit that I could have been less subtle. What Zecora brewed for her final test before becoming a shaman has allowed her to understand everyone and everything (unless there's some creature that is completely immune to magic), and if she calls on the magic she put in the potion, everyone understands what she's saying as if she said it in their own language. Heartwood understands Zecora perfectly because the magic is translating for him, but since it only affects what she herself says, he and Apple Bloom have to learn what each other mean the hard way -- much like us and non-magical dogs. He might have a pretty good idea of whatever Apple Bloom says, but it's more along the lines of a dog staying several feet in front of us and looking back if we fall behind: we know they want us to follow them, but we don't "hear" it as if they were to speak English. By the way, if you've read Kin, Apple Bloom's amulet in that is based on Zecora's potion (though it only works between her and Heartwood), but she doesn't make that until several years after this story.