The Disappearance of Harissa Honeycomb

by Miller Minus

3 – Between A Graveyard And A Cemetery

The town of Pinery was quaint and bustling. That was, if it was even considered a town. The vibrancy and energy of its structures and inhabitants made it feel like it could be upgraded to 'city' at any moment.

Its houses were small and many and impressively tidy for things made entirely of pine wood. The outer surface of every plank was detailed with artistic carvings, displayed to passersby on the street. Every roof, arch, column, and wall was crafted in a strikingly different style, like every single Pinerian had built their home themselves.

It was also like Canterlot, in a way, in that it was built into the side of a mountain—just a wider, shorter one than ours, and a lot less precarious. Instead of jutting out from the side of a cliff, the town was sitting on a flat plot of land carved into the mountain itself.

The town was surrounded on most sides by a great ridge of rock, which couldn’t possibly be scaled. But, if you wanted, you could still get to the top. All you had to do was exit the town into the forest to the south, walk around the perimeter, and you could be two hundred meters above the tip of the tallest structure by the time you were at the town's north side. You couldn’t keep walking too far, though—it dropped back down eventually.

Maybe the casual thought of uprooting myself and living in Pinery might have crossed my mind, if not for one small problem: the smell. At all corners of the town were pulp and paper mills, and the sulphuric stench that they exuded had seeped into everything. I knew it had spurred the town’s growth back when they were first founded, but I couldn’t believe how bad they had let it get.

It was the only part of Pinery that wasn’t fully welcoming, but it was a big one. Thankfully, its citizens knew how to take care of their guests. When the three of us, clad in our country and captain’s colours (and Terrain’s freshly washed), waltzed into their fields of view, many of them turned on a needle towards us, wonder enveloping their faces. They greeted us earnestly, insisting we sit down for dinner at their finest restaurant before we moved on. There, they served us pancakes and waffles, all soaked with a rich, tangy pine syrup. They must have been fresh off the griddle, too, because it sure felt like they melted.

Our arrival must have coincided with some traditional Pinerian holiday, because the restaurant was packed to the doors with townsfolk, all drinking and celebrating with a complete disregard for how they would feel in the morning. Even for a Saturday, it seemed excessive.

About three quarters of the raucous ponies in the restaurant queued up to greet us throughout our meal. They asked questions about Equestria, Celestia, and all the different colours our leaves turned to in the fall. They left us gifts, too. Mostly food and drink, but there was one item that stuck out from the rest, and I was keen on keeping it for myself: a hoof-crafted wooden figurine of a great blue heron. Or perhaps it was a crane. The artist had gotten the proportions a little mixed up.

"Is that bothering you too?!" Terrain shouted from across the table, raising his voice over the sea of singing and dancing.

"Only a little!" I replied, tracing my hoof along the bird’s neck.

Terrain reached over the table to smack my shoulder. I put the carving back in my bag with the rest of the gifts and snapped to attention.

The lieutenant gestured to the bar, where our captain was balancing a pint of Pinerian lager on her hoof alongside a portly stallion sporting a green Mohawk and his own mug. Their drink-bearing hooves were entwined, rims of their glass resting on their lower lips. They glared at each other, smirking wide, and a crowd of ponies started to form around the two of them in anticipation.

"I think it's nice!" I answered. "Ponies here sure are nice to us, huh?!"

He shrugged his shoulders. "…Well, sure! You know why, right?!"

I blinked and shook my head. I had an idea of what he was getting at, but I wasn't sure.

The lieutenant made to shout again, then rolled his eyes again and walked around to my side of the table. He pulled me in and spoke in my ear. "Fog, do you know about the politics here?"

"Um… A little. I’m not totally sure, though," I laughed. A little bit awkwardly in hindsight.

"Pinery's a very small country. And it's surrounded on all sides by Equestria’s borders."

"Okay."

"Everypony's friends and everything, but the Pinerians are starting to wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just assimilate and become part of Equestria."

"That’d be cool!" I said. "Do you think they’ll do it?"

"Who knows? They might be leaning towards it, but not everypony's on board."

"Why?"

"If they were, they'd've done it already," Terrain concluded. He shuffled back to his seat to take another swig of his water.

I had meant something else by that question, but I hadn't worded it well enough. Either way, this was all great information. I already knew all that he said from reading everything Pinery-related in the latest issue of the Canterlot Chronicle, but now I at least knew I hadn't misread anything. He summarized it better than I could, too.

"Who would be against joining Equestria?!" I asked.

Terrain stopped mid-drink, eyes widening. He shot a look to his left and back again in an instant.

I did the same to my right. In the booth across the aisle was a shaggy group of ponies, all with a glass of alcohol, none with a plate of food. They wore darkly coloured overalls, flat caps, and mostly-healed scrapes all over their faces and hooves. They were frozen stiff, save for their blinking eyes, all of which were pointed at me. Each had their own unique blend of disgust and offense etched into their faces.

I squirmed in my seat and coughed.

A mare at the table shook her head and said something, and they all snickered grimly. My heart sank into my stomach.

"Oh," I muttered.

Terrain set down his water. "Yep."

Suddenly, a violent crash sounded throughout the restaurant, silencing everypony in earshot. The clinking of glass shards along the floor took two seconds to peter out.

Minerva, sitting tall and alert at the bar, gawked at the shattered remains of the beer mug in her hoof. The stallion next to her, hanging his head in shame, slid his mug across the table. It was intact, with a small pool of amber liquid remaining at the bottom.

Minerva slowly pivoted in her creaking barstool.

"I won!" she announced, and the bar erupted in cheers.

*****

I had done really well up until that point.

Or at least, I thought I had.

I was doing what I was told, I wasn’t getting in the way of either of my superiors, and I was making sure that nothing I did threw our mission off course.

Up until that point, all that had gone wrong was a group of workponies scoffing at me at a restaurant. Ponies I'd never see again. Quite frankly, I would have jumped for that if I thought it was the only hoof I set wrong all mission.

But after we left the bar, and a somehow-sober captain told us we were still going all the way to the castle that night, we found ourselves at our first real obstacle.

Castle Road.

I hated that stupid road.

It was the only way to get to the castle from town, and it was inexplicably a one-hour journey. A meager six ponies wide, it was enclosed on its left by a wall of mountain rock about three hundred meters high, and open on its right to an equally lofty drop to the dense forest below.

And it was on Castle Road that I, Private Foghorn the Field Knight, completely, sincerely, and unceremoniously, blew it.

And I’m sorry to say that this mistake sits at the top of a list of errors I made throughout the mission. A list sorted in chronological order, and a list carefully stored in about a hundred different places in my mind for me to stumble upon whenever I least expect it.

It started out innocuous enough. Minerva flew ahead to make sure the way was clear, and Terrain and I walked the line between mountain and air. Terrain was in front, saddlebags jingling with our untouched budget (the Pinerians didn't let us pay for anything). I wasn’t too far behind, bags stuffed with our syrup, liquor and trinkets from our most gracious hosts. I had accidentally gotten the weight wrong when I packed it, so it was slipping a bit to the right, but I wasn’t about to stop our progress to fix a little balance issue.

Terrain, meanwhile, had no such qualms stopping. When Minerva was out of sight, he took a break without notice, strolling to the edge of the road to oversee the forest below. I suppose he was confident we would make it before sunset.

"Fog, check this out," he said. It was hard to see him now, enveloped in the mountain’s shadow, but I was fairly certain he was closer to the cliff than I ever wanted to be.

"Do I ha… I mean, is it important?" I answered, my left hooves stuck firm in the corner of the wall.

"You wanted to know why some Pinerians don’t want to join Equestria, right?"

"…Okay, yeah, sure, I guess so."

I huffed out my newly developed acrophobia and pretended like I was actually successful. I cantered out to the edge, as far as Terrain and absolutely no farther. When I was standing next to him, though, I relaxed a little. If he wasn’t nervous, why should I be?

And then I saw what he saw.

"What the…"

There was no forest beneath us at all. Not anymore. From the base of the mountain all the way out as far as I could see was an array of tree stumps fanning out in every direction. Strewn out between the stumps was a thick layer of severed branches, twigs and needles, completely covering the dirt floor.

I peered along the wall back towards town. The forest did spring back to life eventually, but there was still a clear line between the trees and the stumps that nature had taken no part in drawing. The dividing line between life and death. And it would likely creep even further on Monday.

"They've got… quite the industry," I observed. I suppose that was obvious.

"Count the saplings," Terrain said.

"Um… Okay."

I lifted my hoof up and prepared to note every young tree in the mix.

I squinted.

Nothing poked out from beneath the mess. Not straight up, anyways.

"I'm sorry…" I said. "I… can’t see any."

Terrain laughed. "Fog, you’re the only pony I know who would apologize before giving a right answer."

"…I'm sorry?"

Terrain laughed again. "They’re clearcutting, Fog."

"Oh… But that's so… destructive. Why would they do it?"

"S'cheaper, that’s why."

It didn’t make sense. I focused on the forest floor again, certain that there was life hiding in there somewhere.

"They're not replanting?" I asked.

"They might be trying, but clearcutting doesn't exactly leave the nicest land for it. It harvests faster than it regrows."

"Won't they run out?"

"Maybe. If they do, it'll be after every Pinerian is dead and replaced with new ones. For now, this suits them just fine. The question is—will it suit Equestria?"

A chilly wind ran up my back, carrying with it an empty whistle. In the vast graveyard of trees, not a single object moved.

"…Princess Celestia would never allow this," I realized.

"Bingo."

"EXTRA, EXTRA!"

A shrill bark crashed down on us from above.

Terrain cringed. "Uh-oh."

We slowly tilted our heads back to see Minerva, hovering with her forelegs crossed. She didn’t stick out very well against the purple and red dusk-filled sky, but her voice had no such camouflage.

"READ ALL ABOUT IT! TWO STALLIONS UNABLE TO WALK AND TALK AT THE SAME TIME! ANNOY HELL OUT OF CAPTAIN!"

Terrain griped and shook his head. Trotting away from the ledge, he held a hoof up to his mouth and hollered right back.

"TRAGEDY IN EQUESTRIA! PEGASUS MARE ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL WITH HER TITLE LODGED IN HER BRAIN! DOCTORS UNABLE TO EXCISE!"

Minerva growled with venom. She bit down on her sword and drew it out in one swift motion, flew to the mountain and slammed the blade into its side. She flew away into the clouds, having made her point. Both with words, and with stones.

"Heads up!" Terrain called, nimbly evading the falling rocks, and whooping the whole way along.

He didn't really have to say that. Minerva had aimed for him. And she had very good aim. He was able to evade easily and continue trotting down the path.

There was nothing for me to evade.

But I still did a tiny half-turn. That’s all. Just to have my eyes on the situation.

Just a puny little turn.

But the next thing I knew, I had only two hooves on Castle Road. And I very much preferred having four.

"Ah!"

My right hooves shot inwards and slid down the wall, burning the insides of my legs. I whimpered and grappled the ledge like it was the only thing that could save me.

Because it was.

My chest bounced hard off the ledge, and I shot upright again, scrambling my two wayward hooves back onto level ground.

"Guh—!"

I tackled the wall in a panic, wincing in pain and skidding down to my seat. And as soon as I stopped hyperventilating, the ordeal was over as quickly as it had begun. I dusted off the underside of my armor and scanned the scratches along the inside of my legs.

Not too bad. Crisis averted! Terrain was off ahead, Minerva was above the clouds, and nopony else was around to see what had happened. Or almost happened, rather.

Suddenly, there was a hollow thump from below me. I froze, and I heard another.

I inched my way back to the ledge and peeked down at the graveyard, where I had almost made a reservation.

"Oh, Celestia, no."

One bounce. Two bounces. Three bounces. Thud.

My saddlebags came to rest at the base of the mountain in a pile of abandoned forestry tools. The contents exploded everywhere. It was too far to even hear the glass bottles shatter, but I knew they all had.

"Fog!" Terrain called, peering around a bend in the road.

"Uh… Huh? Uh-huh!"

"You coming or are you waiting for Minnie’s next issue?!"

"Uh… Yeah! Coming!"

I took one last glance at the mess I’d left on Pinery’s land. My egret-crane hybrid figurine, now with a leg snapped off, sat in the folds of the bag on its side, staring up at me like an abandoned child.

"…Damnit, Foghorn… Get it together."

*****

"Is this mare actually serious?"

The walls of Castle Pinery weren’t so imposing up close. When they first came into view, the size and spread of the dark wooden boundaries immediately spoke of the amount of work that went into its construction. Unlike the houses in Pinery, it didn’t have any artistic carvings on its outside. It was all business. The only thing in it that was probably more flashy than practical was the largest pine tree I had ever seen, sticking out from its center, like an immeasurable being had plucked it from the earth and placed it there after it was built.

But up close, the castle bared its scars. There were growths of moss in the numerous cracks covering the walls. The door had knife-marks from children who had carved messages or scratched their favourite curse-words permanently in the wood. All that was missing were pairs of initials proclaiming love for each other inside anatomically-incorrect hearts.

Speaking of proclaiming love, Terrain was doing the opposite of that behind me for a certain captain of ours.

"She screams at us to hurry up. She throws rocks at us. And then we beat her here. Pegasi, I swear. They have no respect for us walkers." The lieutenant spat in the dirt and stepped on it. "And that's not even bringing up her little stunt at the river. My clothes are still moist."

Over the top of the mountain, against the final rays of twilight, the tiny, growing silhouette of a pegasus appeared.

"Here she comes now," I pointed out.

"Good," Terrain said, focusing his ensnaring emerald eyes on the mare in the distance. "I hope her ears are as clear as the space between them… because she’s getting an earful."

This was good. He hadn't noticed my absent saddlebags (probably because they didn't have anything important in them), and every second he spent looking away from me was a second he wasn't spending noticing that I was carrying less weight than normal.

Just about 800,000 seconds more to go. Give or take 80,000.

"Guys!" Minerva exclaimed as she arrived, so excited she didn’t bother to land. "You’ll never guess what I found up there!"

"Do you have any idea how lon—?"

The captain waved her hooves in front of the lieutenant's face until he stopped talking. "Holy crap, Terry! Shut up and guess already!"

Terrain let his complaints go with a grumble. "I don't know, Minnie… a large cemetery at the mountain’s peak or something? Maybe one that overlooks the entire country?"

Minerva landed. "What the what?"

"And did it have a large wooden statue of King Pinery the First, standing over the gravestones like some kind of postmortal sentinel?"

Minerva sat down. "'Kay, I know you're smart and everything, but how did you do that?"

Terrain went to retrieve something from his bag, and I braced myself. I didn't want anypony’s attention on our two-out-of-three bags. He drew the library book, and I exhaled.

"Mt. Foreverest. It has a dedicated chapter in this book. You should read it sometime."

"There’s really a cemetery up there?" I asked.

"It was so rad!" she exclaimed, suddenly looking directly at me. "Imagine being buried at the top of a mountain overlooking the whole freaking continent! What a way to… Where… in SHITTING HELL—!"

I tried to step back behind Terrain, but it was no use. Minerva followed me, leaving her mouth open, and drawing a circle in the air with her hoof.

"Where are your bags?" Terrain finished for her.

"I… don't know," I lied. I scanned all sides of my back, eating up the opportunity to avoid eye contact.

"My liquor was in there!" Minerva protested.

"Did you leave it at the restaurant?" Terrain guessed.

"Oh," I said. "Oh!" I whacked myself in the forehead. "It must be sitting in the booth…"

Terrain ruffled my hair. "Nice one, Private. Not a problem; we’ll get it tomorrow sometime. What was in there?"

"My liq—!"

"Oh, what, Minnie! Were you planning on getting plastered between today and tomorrow?"

"No, but there's nothing wrong with having the option!"

My superiors put all their attention on berating each other, and I had to pinch myself to make sure what had happened had actually happened.

They had bought it. And if any of us went to town to look for the bag, we would have no luck, so long as none of us looked down. I thanked Terrain (in my head) for giving me an out, because I was awfully close to letting the truth spill over.

I mean, I was going to come clean eventually. I promise I was. Once we were leaving Pinery, the success of our mission as fresh in our minds as the thought of returning home, I could tell them in passing, and we would all have a good, hearty laugh about it.

But if they knew before we even got in the castle? They wouldn't find the humour in the situation. They'd get mad, not to mention disappointed, and then they'd be distracted during the mission! So I kept it a secret, for the good of Pinery and Harissa Honeycomb.

In case it wasn't obvious, that was mistake number two.

Comments

[Minnie Mouse]

I'm intrigued by this Minerva the Brave, instantly lovable, hope to see more of her!

[SevenBubbles1000]

Ooh... Liking it so far! Your dialogue is absolutely wonderful, and now I'm really curious.
More please?

[Miller Minus]

7899129 More will be coming Hopefully soon!

[SevenBubbles1000]

7899453
Yay!