Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter thirty five, Far North of Normal: Un-usual thoughts.

-Several months later, Velvet, frozen highlands-

I sat by and watched as Arizona warmed up, quite literally by fighting Paprika. It was my turn next, the alpaca had a lot of stamina and it was hard to tire her out for long periods of time.

The snowy forest was nice, the chill of the air made me feel right at home with the proper climate for me.

It was a pretty good climate for Paprika too. In fact Paprika was used to hot climates too given her fluffmancer abilities could keep her cool.

Unfortunately the climate was a bit cold for Arizona. Due to sheer stubbornness on her part, Arizona was still going strong and I was actually going to suggest Paprika do something to help keep my girlfriend warm.

There were only a few problems with that.

The first problem is that I was completely jealous of Paprika and Arizona’s growing relationship. Oddly enough, I was jealous of both Paprika’s love for Arizona and Arizona’s moderate attraction to Paprika.

My second problem is that asking Paprika for help would let her know I needed her and she would take that inch for a mile when I absolutely didn’t want her to.

My third problem was how Arizona treated the situation with Pom, we just left her alone and it has been nagging at my mind ever since.

Our relationship was strained due to our arguments, but Arizona assured me that Pom would eventually leave. She had no doubt the right catalyst would eventually get the sheep to stop waffling on what to do with herself.

I wasn’t so sure and tried to argue that we could have been that very catalyst.

This problem led to many a philosophical argument from Arizona about leading a pony to water in a desert, but you can’t force them to drink it. Even if said action might save their life, you could just as easily incidentally drown the pony in question by trying to force them to drink.

In other words Pom wasn’t willing to leave and if we had forced her to, then we might have made her resent us greatly as that’s exactly what the other sheep had already done to her. The decision to leave would have to be a decision that Pom made of her own free will, otherwise we’d be forcing her to do what we wanted even if it would have been for her own good.

This hit close to home for me as my parents had expected a lot from me, why couldn’t they just let me have one thing like being gay? This was possibly my hidden ulterior reason as to why I wanted to go back and help Pom so badly.

Pom was like a mirror of me. To think if Snickers had never come to find me… how did Snickers find me anyway? I hoped that poor dear winged turtle would recover from whatever was wrong with her before we left.

In my case, I didn’t exactly have any canine companions like Pom did and had had very little in the way of companionship as one of the best guardians my village has ever had. I could still at least talk to all of the other reindeer, Pom couldn’t even go near her own kind without causing trouble and her animals weren’t exactly the greatest conversationalists.

The white two tailed fox had certainly looked quite exquisite, though I didn’t think it was a kitsune as they were more mischievous than that one had acted. The white fox had even been rather suspiciously noble about Paprika cuddling her.

My fourth problem is where we were headed, my old home of Rein. Well we would be heading there if we weren’t currently a bit lost in a snow covered forest in some highlands, I didn’t recognize this area at all. I could safely say, much to my minimal relief, that we were nowhere near Rein at the moment.

It is quite sufficient to say that I was distancing myself from Arizona and Paprika, which I most certainly didn’t want. I absolutely loved Arizona even as crude as she could get, but Paprika I wasn’t sure of even if I did kind of want her affection and was too afraid to ask for it.

My attitude towards the alpaca was still fairly frosty and I knew why I was still sour towards her, it felt like she was trying to steal Arizona from my tender embrace sometimes. I logically knew that Paprika loved us both unconditionally with the full strength of her heart, but like with Pom, I had my doubts.

Also it was a bit of a double standard for me to argue Pom’s loneliness while completely ignoring the hyper needy alpaca following us around who was actively seeking companionship from the both of us. Paprika almost felt like she was starving for affection and friendship more so than Pom was with how often she snuggled up to us.

Any affection at all given to Paprika makes her ever more joyous on so little attention, it was hard to curb her enthusiasm in more ways than one once you returned an ounce of what she was always willing to give.

It would feel like kicking a puppy if I were to try and tear into Paprika verbally, all she basically did was love and those she stared at with those heart shaped pupils got even more of it specifically reserved for them. Love freak hardly begins to describe how cuddly Paprika tended to get.

As a form of fighting, Paprika’s rough love made for an effective deterrent for anything that tried to hurt her. Paprika was as good a match for me in a fight as much as she was for Arizona. We kind of slotted together in friendship, but any more than that friendship would take a bit of work.

“Oof… okay I’m calling it Paprika, good workout!” Arizona was eventually released by Paprika and she seemed a lot warmer after getting bombarded with snuggles and hugs from the fluffmancer. She turned to me looking less frozen than she had earlier today. “Hey Fluff Butt, did you finish setting up the igloo?”

“Yes…” I answered concisely, there was even a hole in the top of the structure to allow hot air out this time. Last time we had to have Arizona punch a hole in the roof, that had been my bad and I had been distracted by Paprika that day. “It’s ready, get the fire going. I believe it is my turn to face off with Paprika.”

I did not relish challenging or hurting Paprika, I’d rather not fight her at all unless I absolutely had to. Still, it was good exercise and the alpaca was incredibly hard to injure in any way that would be permanent.

Paprika looked eager to play with me and I let out a long drawn out sigh.

“Can’t we just declare me the winner and be done with this?” There was a slight lessening of Paprika’s smile and I grunted. “Okay, forget I said that, shall we dance?”

I created several shards of ice in the air and angled them towards Paprika who charged for me with a bright look of excitement on her face.

-The next day-

I awoke feeling very comfortable, with a wall of Paprika’s chest fluff in my face. I was also pressed up against Arizona while being held by both of them.

“Paprika, could you please let go of me?” The alpaca cracked on eye open to look at me, she released me and then went on to cuddling Arizona more as I rolled off of her. “Thank you, I’m off to go to the bathroom and will be back shortly.”

Arizona hadn’t been kidding, Paprika was a really good sleeping aid and made for quite a comfortable place to rest ones head upon.

I thought about asking Paprika to make a scarf and a hat for Arizona, she had to know how to knit right? A fluffmancer was generally good at that kind of thing when it came to their fluff powers.

“Paprika?” I turned to her, she opened both her eyes and sat up to looking to me while still holding the cozy looking sleeping cow to herself. “Could you maybe make a hat and scarf for Arizona from your fluff? She hasn’t had an easy time of staying warm. Also I want to remind you what I said about touching my floof, do it and I will despise you even more than I currently do.”

Paprika titled her head at me curious and the smile on her face widened a bit. I was making sure my floof was somewhat presentable as I made my way for the exit, never know when I might run into someone out here.

“Don’t read into it too far like that! I just worry about Arizona’s health in this weather that we’re both far more equipped to handle.” I carefully moved down into the short tunnel leading out of the igloo and found the entrance covered over with snow, being snowed in wasn’t much of a problem for me.

Putting my hooves together, I parted them sharply and the entrance cleared of snow immediately. Upon crawling out I looked back and saw that aside from the hole for the smoke to escape, more than half the igloo was buried.

There must have been quite a blizzard last night. Once I was done with my business, I’d wait on the others to do theirs and then we could get back to moving.

Upon covering up my leavings with dirt, I was soon making my way back to igloo.

The reindeer who lived out here didn’t have working plumbing like the ponies or most other species for that matter, mostly because it was hard to keep the pipes from freezing up where we lived. Frozen pipes always led to horrible disasters. So we made do with assisting nature a little bit.

I heard something unusual as I was almost within sight of the igloo and I hurriedly made my way over to them having recognized what the noise was. Arizona was getting our supplies ready to go and Paprika was using her hooves to miraculously knit something out of her thick fluff without knitting needles.

“There you are Velvet, what’s the matter?” Arizona must have noticed my look of panic.

“We’re in some highlands and I think I just heard a puk…” I froze and listened for the sound of a pukwudgie, I knew I had heard one.

“I don’t know about you Velvet, but they only attack Airship Mauled which isn’t in any highlands at all.” Well that was correct Arizona, the highland pukwudgies did attack us outside of anywhere close to what could be termed as highlands. “So I really doubt we’d be attacked by highland pukwudgies out here.”

“Really Arizona, did you just have to say that out loud?” In response to my words, an arrow struck the ground in front of Arizona’s hoof and her eyes widened as she backed up. We both looked in the direction it had come from.

“Well… at least they aren’t highland pukwudgies.” Arizona commented dryly as we saw a veritable army of armored pukwudgies with tiny flails, spears and swords, there was many sitting on top of artic wolves. The one in the lead had a tiny crown on his armored head. “Judging by appearances, I would like to say they are… medieval pukwudgies?”

“Arizona, I’m not going to forgive you for this for a while. Now we need to quickly… oh… I suppose you did good work Paprika.” It seemed our alpaca companions had packed our supplies, I made my way over to them and hefted up my bags as Arizona retrieved hers. “How are we going to outrun them or fight them without losing our supplies though?”

“Who says we have to fight them?” Arizona suddenly had a wooly hat thrust upon her head by Paprika and she stopped shivering. “Thanks for the hat Paprika, wait… I have an idea!”

“Whenever you have an idea, I start to worry.” I watched as Arizona pulled out her rope and lassoed Paprika who seemed happy to have the rope around her neck. Arizona turned to me and smiled. “Oh no, no! We are so not doing that Arizona!”

“I respectfully ask that you quickly make a sled Velvet, before Paprika has to drag us through the snow.” Arizona was giving me a quirky smirk and I sighed. “Wouldn’t want the snow to damage your precious floof now, would we?”

Some quick sweeps of my hoof and a sled of ice was made. We tied the end of this particular rope to the sled and then shouted for Paprika to start running like our lives depended on it.

If the pukwudgies got our supplies, then our lives would certainly be entirely dependent upon our foraging skills.

-Arizona, ten minutes later-

“Oh yeah, this is awesome!” The hat Paprika gave me was nice, certainly kept my head toasty. I heard multiple tinkling sounds and looked up at the snowflake barrier Velvet formed, it was full of arrows. “Go Paprika, go!”

We could hear the sounds of the artic wolves chasing us while they were dragging pukwudgie crossbow crews behind them. They were much scarier than the highland pukwudgies and could set up a pretty decent chase down. Thankfully, we were slowly losing them.

“Admittedly, we should have thought of using Paprika as a form of transportation sooner.” Knew you’d come around to liking her eventually Velvet or at least were more tolerable of her existence at the very least. “She is really quite fast and we could have gotten here much sooner, we also seem to be thankfully outpacing them.”

“Yeah, but do we have any idea where we’re going?” Seemed to me like Paprika wasn’t running in any particular direction except away from the dangerous little armored mutant hedgehogs with a thing for medieval weaponry.

“Not yet, but once we get somewhere familiar I can definitely get us to Rein easily enough.” If you weren’t so nervous about it Velvet, I’d swear you’d lead us away from your home if you could get the chance.

If one of the keys was there, then we’d be that much closer to finding out if my mother is still alive or not. Given the gigantic snake she took on and survived to walk away from, I’d like to say that she was definitely alive.

Who knows what my mom was currently doing? I mean throwing herself down a Roc’s throat, head butting a nearly full grown dragon and blowing up most of a city were the more interesting exploits that I’ve heard of.

Seeing the gigantic snake skeleton kind of sold me on the fact that my mom was ridiculous and possibly slightly crazy… someone I wanted to look up to and possibly emulate, because I’m her daughter and thought that she was cool.

I also felt a bit let down that she was way too busy to take care of me, at least she had a good reason and great friend in Grace.

“Finally, we’ve escape them." Right there with you Velvet. "I thought they’d never give up.”

Now if only we knew where we were, also how much food did we have left?

I knew we were running a bit low on things. That was quite a dangerous prospect out here in the middle of nowhere.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Ah, Civilisation Puckwudgies.

so of course there will be a Peaceful Puckwudgie tribe.

Lead by Grand-Oh?

Next thing you know, Velvet will have made an Igloo Ice sled, Parika will be towing it, and Velvet will wake up in the morning while in motion to take tea with Paprika and Arizona.

Whos flying the plane?

OOK.

[MadHadder]

“I respectfully ask that you quickly make a sled Velvet, before Paprika has to drag us through the snow.” Arizona was giving me a quirky smirk and I sighed. “Wouldn’t want the snow to damage your precious floof now, would we?”

I see whatcha did there.