Before Nightfall: Barely Rescued

by Jordan179

Chapter 6: The Hermit Is Not At Home

Big Mac tracked the bear right to the edge of the Hermit's back yard.

One of the indications that the Hermit was strange was that she had not, as would most sane Ponies, seriously fenced off the portion of her property which directly bordered the Everfree. There was a small stream out front, which served as a moat between her house and the main road, bridged by a small stone arch; out back, there was nothing but a dual-rail fence, no higher than Mackie's breast, which anything large -- predator or Pony -- could easily overleap or even overstep, and with the rails set sufficiently far apart that smaller creatures could simply push between them. As security against the hell-forest, it was a joke -- its function purely indicative and decorative. A chicken-coop out back was better protected, with actual wire fencing that would serve to keep away hungry foxes and weasels.

It was almost as if the Hermit found the beasts of the Everfree no more frightening, or possibly even less frightening -- than she did her fellow Ponies -- which, given the way she was said to walk among the beasts and shy away from Ponies, was a conclusion which Mackie could almost credit, though it implied that she was seriously crazy.

Big Mac did not like to assume his neighbors to be crazy, even though he knew for sure that some specficially were crazy, at least on certain topics. In particular, some were timid to the point of absurdity, while others were so reckless that Mac wondered how they managed to survive.

Mackie wasn't entirely sure whether the Hermit was timid or reckless. Possibly, she was both: timid where Ponies were concerned, reckless in dealing with beasts. If this was true, Mackie strongly sympathized with her timidity -- he was somewhat shy himself talking to other Ponies, especially ones he didn't know well. He and the Hermit might even be kindred spirits in that regard.

He wasn't particularly friendly to wild beasts, but he wasn't terrified of them either. Proof of this was that he was out here alone, hunting a fairly dangerous one. He had a strong suspicion that the Hermit would not approve of his actions in this matter; but then, there was no particular reason why he should go out of his way to please her, especially when one of her supposed beast friends was nosing around his farm.

Was he being reckless? He was taking a risk, to be sure, but not as grave a risk as was the Hermit. He was an almost full-grown stallion, and considerably larger than most; the Hermit was a willowy filly in her early teens. He was bearing an arbalest capable of slaying almost any beast, while the Hermit had never been known to bear any arms. He knew from experience that he could take care of himself in a dangerous situation.

T'ain't the same thing, Big Mac decided. She prolly figgers if she feeds that bear he'll be her friend. But he's wild. He could turn on her and tear her apart.

The thought of this happening to a beautiful young filly distrubed Big Mac on a fundamental level. Protecting mares and fillies, in Mackie's view of life, was one of the main things that good stallions were for. And Mackie always tried to be a good stallion, just as his father had been before him.

Ah cain't let this happen, Big Mac realized. Ah have to protect all of us from this bear.

---

It was obvious that the bear had rested just beyond the Hermit's back yard; the grass was pressed down over a rather large area, and examination revealed copious amounts of coarse brown hairs shed there. Indeed, the quantity shed was so large that it was almost as if the bear had been systematically brushed. There was at least one clear Pony hoofprint and several partials around where the bear had lain, and he could see strands of long pink Pony hairs caught in a bush, and some pale yellow ones.

Big Mac almost could not believe the obvious implication of these clues. Could the Hermit have been grooming the bear, almost as if it were the "big doggie" of Apple Bloom's foalish imagination? It almost seemed impossible that the bear would submit to this. Surely this was an incredibly dangerous thing for the Hermit to do -- if she accidentally hurt the bear with one of her brush-strokes, it could break her bones with a casual cuff. Yet there were no signs of a struggle, no blood anywhere.

Mackie decided that he had to talk to the strange Pegasus filly.

---

He circled around the property to the front, easily leaping the small stream. Then he approached the front door by the bridge. Coming up to someone's back door, especially armed to the teeth, was an impolite thing to do; it might have been positively dangerous in some of the more remote parts of the White Tails. As he stepped onto the Hermit's property, he called out to announce his presence.

"Halloo!" he said loudly. "Miss Hermit, Ah'm Macintosh Apple. Ah need to talk with you about a bear. Can you hear me?"

There was no answer from within, but he did see a motion by one of the front windows. A curtain twitched slightly.

"Miss Hermit," Mackie continued, "Ah don't mean you no harm. Ah just want to palaver. This bear ... he's a-wanderin' close to mah farm, Sweet Apple Acres. An' Ah'm feared he may hurt mah little sister. Ah think he's your bear, or at least you know him real well. Ah need to talk to you about it."

The curtain twitched again.

Big Mac worked sideways toward the window and peered in through the glass.

Two small and extremely angry-looking beady black eyes, set in a snarling white face much smaller than that of any Pony, glared into Big Mac's own much larger ones. The creature hissed with extraordinary malevolence.

Big Mac gasped and stepped back in momentary fright, before he realized that what he was looking at was merely a white rabbit.

One of the Hermit's pets, he realized, blushing in shame at the way that he -- who was hunting a bear -- had managed to be terrified by a rabbit. Ah sure hope the Hermit didn't see that.

The rabbit chittered at him, giving him a good scolding in its own vocalizations.

"'Fraid Ah don't speak Rabbit," Big Mac said, grinning at his own foolishness, "so Ah'm afraid your words are lost on me. But if yew happen to see yer mistress, yew can tell her from me that Macintosh Apple of Sweet Apple Acres came to call, and needs to speak to her on a matter o' some import. Sorry if'n I scared yew."

The rabbit made a derisive sound, almost as if it had understood him and was letting him know in no uncertain terms that it was well aware of who had scared whom.

"Right," replied Big Mac. "See yew round." Look at me, he thought, laughing at himself as he walked away from the Hermit's front door. Spooked by a rabbit. And then explainin' mahself to it. Some mighty monster hunter Ah am.

---

Mackie circled around the Hermit's property again, leaped the stream again, and made his way back to the place where the Hermit had on the evidence brushed and groomed a big brown bear. He examined the periphery of the spot carefully, trying to determine in what direction the bear had gone next.

He picked up the bear's trail without too much difficulty. For a bear, this one was not the most woodswise, and it was clearly moving without much concern for pursuit. It had seemed young, and was probably a bit foolish -- which, unfortunately, might make it even more dangerous, since it might attempt aggressive actions toward Ponies a wiser and more experienced bear would avoid.

Still Big Mac moved cautiously, and he kept Ol' Bessie's case open so that he could draw her in an instant. This forced him to be careful about his posture -- if he bent over he could drop the arbalest -- but he did not want to have to fumble for his weapon if he came suddenly upon the bear. The heat of the day increased, as the afternoon drew on, and he was uncomfortably warm inside his hunting leathers, but he would not have dreamt of stowing them, and robbing himself of their protection.

Around him were the sounds of the forest, some of which he could and some of which he could not understand. Beyond the soft sounds of his own hoofsteps and the sighing of the wind in the upper tree branches, there were bird calls. At one point a jay followed him, scolding. At another point he saw flashes of motion as small furry brown things darted under cover at his approach. If he had been a true hunter, like some of the expert woodsponies of the White Tails, all this would have conveyed volumes of information to him: as it was, he noticed more of it than would have townsponies.

Once something very large flapped by overhead, above treetop level and going in the opposite direction. He turned his head to look, and saw a brief flash of something yellow-and-pink. He wondered if the Hermit had just flown by overhead, perhaps heading back to her house. A Pegasus in a hurry would of course clear the treeline, so that she wasn't slowed by having to dodge the branches.

When nopony landed nearby to speak or otherwise deal with him, he continued on his way. It would have been useful to ask the Hermit what she knew of the bear, but he didn't have time to dawdle. The bear's current track was taking it back toward the North Fields of Sweet Apple Acres, and the neighboring Carrot Garden. HIs grandfolks and Apple Bloom would be indoors, but he hadn't had time to warn 'Scape or Carrot-Top, and they might be letting little Brownshoot play outdoors. What if they met the bear?

Fear for his friends drove him on, not faster -- for he feared to lose the trail -- but with renewed resolve.

The trail proved easy to follow. The bear was ambling along slowly here, frequently stopping to pick berries or nose about in the underbrush, searching for this or that ursine delicacy. The bear evidently did not believe he had an enemy in the world, or at least one powerful enough to endanger him.

As Mac's missing tail hairs proved, this did not mean that he was necessarily harmless.

---

When Big Mac caught up with the bear, it was almost anti-climactic.

He was still most of a mile from the Carrot lands when the sky opened up ahead. It was a slight rise. A great tree had fallen; he could plainly see its shattered trunk. In its ruin the giant had brought down lesser trees, and left a gap in the canopy: a gap which had been colonized by various fast-growing shrubbery.

Mackie might have missed the bear at first glance, brown fur against brown bark, had not his keen ears heard a great cracking sound, and drawn his eyes to the motion of powerful muscles rippling under the bear's coat as it tore through the bark of the dead tree, its great form half-concealed by the fallen bole. Even though he had seen it rear before, the renewed evidence of its size was shocking.

Mac took in breath, but remembered to do it gently, so that the gasp did not give his position away to the bear's own sensitive hearing. The wind blew gently from the north; Big Mac was slightly favored in terms of the direction of scent dispersal. With what it was doing, the bear probably couldn't hear him, though if it paid attention, it might be able to smell him.

Moving very deliberately, Big Mac ducked behind another tree, hiding himself from the bear's sight if it looked up, and to some extent muffling himself behind its mass. Still, he knew that any loud noise would be heard, would alert the bear, and he very carefully pulled out Ol'Bessie, making only the most minimal slithering sound of metal against leather as he did so.

Even so, he feared it might be too much noise, and his heart pounded as he moved back out around the tree, arbalest levelled at the last place he had seen the bear, where he now did not see it. The words of his grandfather sounded in his mind ... Remember, Mackie-boy, don't fix on jest what's in front of yer bow, that's called 'target-fixing' and yew're open to ambush that way, and he forced himself to dart his gaze to both sides, ensuring that the bear was not approaching him from some direction other than the direct line.

Luck was with him. A moment later the bear shifted position, and he saw its great shoulders rise slightly as wood ripped and cracked; it had probably pulled loose a big strip of bark. Then they vanished again, and there were great slurping noises. Whatever bugs or grubs it was hunting had fallen victim to its great strength, intelligence and appetite.

Mackie's problem was obvious. He didn't have a clear shot. If he took a shot during one of the moments when the bear showed its shoulders, he would be lucky to hit at all, and it would probably be a glancing blow, likelier to enrage or frighten than to slay the beast. His grandfather had warned him of the potential threat of a wounded bear.

Ol' Bessie was a repeater, so he could probably ready the next bolt before the bear would be on him, but could he stop it with only one solid hit, before it struck him down? Or, if it instead fled, could he run it down and finish it off before it bolted clean across the Carrot farm, possibly encountering one of the Carrots?

Should he stay here and hope for a better shot? Or try to work his way around the log and bring the bear into clear view? Could he possibly do that without making too much noise?

For what must have actually been much less than a minute, but felt like an eternity, Mackie was immobilized by indecision. Then chance took the decision out of his control.

Something suddenly felt different. The sounds and smells around him seemed to shift ...

... and the bear suddenly hoisted itself right on top of the fallen tree, and looked directly at him.

Big Mac could see the bear in complete detail. It took a great sniff. Its ears went up. And its little yellow-rimmed, red-pupiled eyes peered myopically, straight at himself. It looked first surprised -- then angry.

Big Mac released the safety, pointed the arbalest right at the bear's center of mass.

The bear suddenly looked frightened, almost as if it somehow knew what Mac was holding.

There was a great flapping sound above. The bear and Big Mac both looked up.

And suddenly, right between Mackie and the bear swooped the Hermit of the Everfree, almost as Big Mac remembered her -- yellow-coated, pink-maned and blue-eyed, a filly who could not have been more than fourteen years old. The main difference was that she did not look timid at all. Those big blue eyes were glaring right into his own.

With a tremendous effort, Big Mac managed to keep perfect control of the arbalest, keeping it leveled without pulling the trigger, and thus did not murder the young teenaged Pegasus before him. He felt a sudden sick horror as he realized what he might have done.

"What the -- what are you doing! Get out of the way!" Big Mac shouted.

"What do you think you were doing, Mister?" the Hermit said, in a tone of voice which was all the more frightening for its barely restrained rage. There was something leaking from the corners of those big blue eyes which were not tears, and which Mac found suddenly terrifying.

"Were you? Going? To shoot? My friend?" With each short burst of speech, the Hermit flapped foward, hovering on her flightfield, and something stabbed from her eyes, something which Mac could not precisely describe or begin to understand, but which felt like knives stabbing into his mind, immobilizing his every muscle, rendering him helpless.

Big Mac was incapable of speech -- and suddenly he realized that there was something in this woods far, far more dangerous than any bear ever born.

The Hermit was a mind-witch. And she was not at all happy with him, right now.

Author's Note:

Ever consider that Angel Bunny's name may be Exactly What It Says On The Tin? Or that "angels" are not always nice and sweet, even if they are servants of the Light? Fluttershy is exactly the sort of Pony one might expect to be receiving Divine assitance ...

Another of his kind may have saved us from a second term of Jimmy Carter.

If you care to know, the wind shifted, and carried both his scent and small noises he was making to the bear. That's what alerted it.

The precise way the Hermit intervened was foolish, and could have gotten her killed, had Big Mac not been a good and brave Pony. But then, she's only around thirteen right now.

Comments

[Elsaack]

I am liking the way this story is going.
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/8c/95/8d/8c958dc7dc57ffa138a4630ea551ed4f.jpg
I'm a bit surprised Mackie has a term for the Stare. Makes me wonder if other ponies with changeling blood are prone to being called mind-witches. Now I'm really interested for the next chapter and a little more internal monologue from our red narrator.

[Jordan179]

6981270

Well,you know, given Changeling habits, Fluttershy is almost certainly neither the first, nor the only, half-Changeling Pony living in the Equestrian culture. The Stare is a high-caste ability, but then it's mostly the high-caste Changelings (Royals and Infiltrators) who spend much time outside the Hive, anyway.

[Maran]

I actually like Angel in this fanfic. He might not be such a horrible bunny; it's just hard for me to get past “Putting Your Hoof Down” even after all these seasons.

It was fascinating to read what it feels like to be on the receiving end of Fluttershy's Stare. Not a pleasant experience, to be sure.

I gathered from the comments that this is a version of what happened in Ponyville leading up to the “Nightmare Moon Triumphant” timeline in Cutie Re-mark. It makes sense in that context.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

So called Black Bears come in a wide variety of colors including brown. Brown Bears are also called Grizzly Bears. They are a lot bigger, tougher, and meaner than Black Bears.

I saw one fanfic were Angel Bunny was the master vampire in charge of Fluttershy. I always thought he was a Vorpal Bunny
If all rabbits are like him, Ponies aren't as cowardly as you'd think being scared of rabbit stampedes.