Under an Emerald Sky

by Bateman66

Into the Woods

Alistair gingerly placed the small paper-wrapped parcel into the storage crate among the column of five others already inside the packaging. They all needed to be stacked tightly against one another for their eventual trip back to Canterlot, and any possibility of them getting damaged was something he'd avoid at all costs. The two-wheeled cart he was using as a workstation was sturdy enough, but a single bump in the road could be all that it would take to ruin the professors' samples.

He'd used some spare straw to fill in the minuscule space between each parcel and, for the most part, his progress was coming along nicely. He still had a few more crates to fill but at the very least he had just finished the one he was stacking currently. Smiling at the small success, he looked over at the crate lid that sat just a few feet away and began to concentrate.

Raising his right palm into the air, a fizing bright blue aura of light appeared in the center of his palm, glowing dully against his clothes and shimmering with torrents of compressed magic at his fingertips. He pointed his hand at the lid and watched as it too was absorbed in its aura of blue energy. He maneuvered his hand in the crate's direction, directing the lid as it levitated over to the opened top and promptly placed itself directly along the storage unit's sides. Alistair tightened his grip and heard the low groan of wood as the top sealed together under the force of his magic. He pushed it over to the stack of three other crates he already had completed at the back of the cart and levitated a fourth, unfilled one over to where he stood.

He was just about to start filling the next one when he realized that someone had been watching him. Turning around, his heart almost skipped a beat when he saw the turquoise unicorn standing behind him with an equally bewildered expression.

"Hello," Alistair greeted, taking his hands away from the crate. "Is there something you need?"

The unicorn, who just seemed to realize he was talking to him, bobbed his head in confirmation. "Um, uh, y-yeah. Professor Parapraxis wanted me to ask you to come with me back to the supply cart to pick up some sealant containers. He said that we're running out and wants us to get some more."

"Okay," the boy said with a nod, not needing much else explanation. "I can do that. I've meant to go out for a walk anyways. It'll be nice to get a little change of scenery." He paused and quickly extended his hand towards the unicorn. "By the way, my name's Alistair. I don't believe we've met."

The unicorn looked reluctant to touch his hand but shook it nonetheless. Alistair was slightly off put by the gesture but chose not to make it too apparent to the pony, who looked incredibly relieved when his hoof was back under his jurisdiction.

"My name's Quills," managed the unicorn with a little bit less skittishness to his voice.

"Very nice to meet you, Quills. It's good to see another student among this sea of PHDs. Where were you from before coming to the University?"

"Uh, Fillydelphia. Up in the northern suburbs."

"Fillydelphia," he confirmed with another nod of his head. "Summer's must have been nice, especially from how close the suburbs are to the lakes up there."

Quills eyes brightened. "You've been to Fillydelphia before?"

"Yeah. Went there a while ago on business. Very beautiful city but I hear it can get pretty cold there during the winters, especially with the skyscrapers making the wind sharper. Then again, what city doesn't?"

The unicorn awkwardly smiled and nodded his head. Alistair took that as a 'yes indeedy'.

He looked out into the network of trees surrounding them on all sides and spotted the path they'd originally come through to set up a camp. It wouldn't be too hard to maneuver through them; he'd seen worse back in Solitude. The countless years he'd spent there without maps or compasses had left him with a woodsmen's instinct in navigating wilderness and gave him clairvoyance enough to navigate through most of what nature could throw at him.

His earliest memories from the Realm of Solitude were starting to become a little bit fuzzy to picture, but his mind clearly recalled the pain of learning how to survive there when he first arrived there.

He shook his head to dissipate the thoughts. He didn't need to remember any of that now. Thinking about such things never brought him much comfort and further reminded him that the past, or at least his own, was a very undesirable lot of memories. He couldn't change what he'd experienced, so why dwell on them in the first place? It was useless and a waste of time but that didn't mean he couldn't stop his mind from wandering away when he least expected it to.

Sighing, he peered back at the unicorn, Quills, and gestured toward the woods. "C'mon we should get going. We're gonna be in for a bit of a walk, and I want us to be back before dark."

"Uh, yeah," Quills agreed with another bob of his head, "let's go."

----------

The two set off into the woods with Alistair walking at point and Quills moving behind him. The young man kept his head perched at an almost predatory angle as he trekked through seemingly endless and identical crowds of trees. The sunlight still poked out from under the thick canopy of leaves, but the light had been gradually losing its brightness as the time passed. They'd need to get back to the expedition camp before the sun entirely faded from view. Alistair may have been good at tracking but doing so at night was a challenge in of itself.

There wasn't much conversation between them as they walked. Quills was much too discomforted with Alistair's presence and didn't want to distract him from his duty of making sure they wouldn't get lost in an endless expanse of greenery. And Alistair was fairly absorbed in his navigation while trying to smother what he'd been thinking about earlier.

But eventually, knowing that the unicorn wouldn't be taking the initiative on this, Alistair attempted to stir some semblance of a conversation.

“What did you say your major was, Quills?”

The unicorn looked surprised at his sudden speaking but answered the question with a greater sense poise than earlier. “I, uh, started out as Undecided but eventually moved into Quadropolgy at the start of my Sophomore year. I’m a Sophomore right now.”

“And is there any particular occupation you have in mind with a Quadropolgy degree?”

Quills shrugged even though he knew Alistair couldn’t see it from where he was walking. “I don’t know. I was interested in it, so I decided to study it. I’m not all that sure what I’m going to do with it once I’m out of college. But...yeah.” He paused. “What year are you...Alistair?”

“Technically, I’m a Freshman although I got about half of last Spring’s semester onto my credit hours. They were mostly half semesters courses as you’d expect, but Neuro was able to slide me into one of his lecture classes just for the fun of it.” He smiled to himself. “I even kind of enjoyed taking notes in the class for no good reason.”

“If you don’t mind me saying, that’s just a little bit crazy," the unicorn said politely. "A lot of my friends, myself included, absolutely hate it. Boring and a waste of time is what we call it.”

“I understand the sentiment. But it was a way for me to fit in with the class a little bit better, to make it look like I was part of the whole curriculum. Besides, I need to find some other ways to fit in with other ponies,” he gestured to his bipedal form, “looking the way I do.”

“Oh,” Quills responded with a bashful look to the ground, immediately feeling guilty about what he said. It hadn’t occurred to him that the young man would be concerned with fitting in with his peers and belonging to a larger group. He typically seemed so passive with it whenever he saw him around campus, so he just assumed it didn’t bother him. But as it would turn out, there were plenty of things he didn’t know about his guide just by looking at him. What else did he feel about the adopted world he lived in? He doubted Alistair would be too open in sharing it.

Noticing the silence, Alistair quickly rebounded from what he’d said. “I’m not offended or anything by the question! I just thought to tell you why. I didn’t mean to make things get a bit too...heavy. Goodness, we've just met, and I’m already doing this to you!”

“It’s fine,” Quills comforted with a raise of his hoof. “You have the right to bring it up instead of hiding it. Other ponies get a real kick out of dropping their baggage on anypony that will listen, and get aggressive when they don’t get the kind of response they're fishing for. Trust me, there’s a bunch of them on campus.”

Alistair chuckled. “So I’ve heard."

"How long have you been here then? Like, here here," he gestured to the ground, "not just here at the campus."

"Gosh, I'd say about two and a half years now, maybe three. I never really kept count on the exact day or month. A lot was happening in such a short period. And even when I began to simmer into things the entire concept of a 'calendar' was a bit foreign to me. I'd relied on temperature and air pressure for a lot longer than I did tangible writings if I ever could get my hands on them."

They walked for a little while longer before finally located the supply cart along the roadside. The porter ponies had left it just in the grass between the dirt road and the encroaching forest not but a foot away. The cart was much larger than the one Alistair had been using earlier, with several untouched saddlebags of precious and various supplies.

It took a little bit of riffling through the leather pouches to find the saddlebags that held what they were looking for. None of the professors had bothered labeling anything which left the cart a seemingly organized but covertly disguised mess. It wasted precious daylight as they turned the bags inside out looking for the desired sealant containers.

Eventually, they found three saddlebags containing what they needed but not before they could clearly see the sun beginning to set over the treeline.

"That doesn't look good," Quills remarked as he strapped two saddlebags across each side of his torso. "I didn't bring along any flashlights before we left."

Alistair hefted one of the saddlebags into his arms and found it was a lot heavier than he'd originally thought. He tried to lug it over his arms and across his back but found that the straps simply wouldn't fit his body type. He turned to Quills.

"We should get going before we're completely left in the dark. If we double timed it, we might just get back before nightfall. Emphasis on 'might'."

Quills gestured towards the forest, which was now a bit more shadowy than the two would prefer. "Lead on, then. I'll be right behind you."