The Gift of Giving

by Comma Typer

Ever Northward

The frigid tempest lambasted the village of Rennefer with all its might, pervading the entire town as this menace. Seeing anything past ten or so meters showed up a bit difficult, obstructed by the freezing fog. Yet, above the storm’s rambunctious wailing, they could hear the shouts and cries of a hundred reindeer. Were they angry or at least as forceful in emotion as this hurricane? Probably, but confusion had seeped in with the tempest: a few aborted stampedes, antlers locking up with another’s on accident, and loud questions couldn’t be distinguished from hurled accusations.

All this happened during Aurora, Bori, and Alice’s parade to an unceremonial exit. It felt worse with the weather crashing down on them along with their chains and shackles refit and reworn; those chains reminded them for the tenth time that they were escorted by an entourage of guards once again, ostensibly to keep them from escaping, but they also kept the herd of reindeer from trampling them in supreme anarchy.

They tried to find familiar faces amid the fog and disorder: there weren’t any. All were wrapped by the constantly curling sheet of shooting snow. As for hearing what they were saying and shouting, they couldn’t discern anything lucid: it was all a mishmash of emotionally charged syllables.

Slogging through the build-up of snow and ice, they felt the sting of their chains’ metal cold. It did them some good, however, since it helped them force their eyes closed and protected from snow traveling at unsafe and harmful speeds.

The baffling cries, the indifferent guards, the chilling chains, the treacherous snow: these made few minutes pass by like eternity, after which the convicts espied the outlines of the village gate. This opened barrier was their entrance to exile, and they were going to pass it no matter what.

They couldn’t hear what the captain said; all they knew was that they were canned orders. Now they could hear his underlings blocking the outpour of the crowd, preventing them from getting any closer to the prisoners.

More heavy trotting, chains weighing them down against the thick layer of snow and more snow. One step, another step, yet another step under the wind-shout mix of more noise.

A muffled shout rising above the rest.

The escorting guards backed away. Their hoofsteps faded, becoming in tune with the the ruckus around them.

Slam!

They reflexively looked behind.

The gateway to Rennefer but closed, locked with its age-old grid gate.

Through the checkerboard of obstruction, they caught a glimpse of Hoofdagent’s face before it disappeared in the blend of a silent crowd. They gazed upon them as one would upon the ashes of a burnt tree. Anger and depression and revenge for them had to pause for they melted away into pure, simple disbelief.

Popping out to their vision and through one of the gate’s square openings, was Austral front and center. Squeezing her trimmed antlers through, she stared at them with a haggard mouth, a pair of beige eyes, and perhaps a broken heart. She drank as much of this one look as she could before she was pulled out of sight.

Another gate closed in the archway, blocking everything from their sight. They couldn’t see the crowd, the crowd couldn’t see them. It was just a wall, adorned with a filled in archway. Brick-muted commands sounded, but that was all they could hear through the blizzard.

They turned around, facing that same downhill slope. Against the storm, they saw a gray fog everywhere against the rattling of snow kicking up and being kicked up to their face by the wind. So dense was the fog without the aid of artificial light, their world only consisted of them and the little patch of snow-beaten ground they occupied.

Bori kept her head down against the gale dropping snow for the antler’s palms to entertain, her chin resting on the apron she still wore. “So... that’s that...”

Aurora rubbed a hoof all over her frost-caked face. She turned around, seeing her darling home with no way in, staring at where Austral had been. Looking down, she noticed she had brought her scarf into banishment.

“Where are we gonna go?!” Alice cried out in havoc, flailing and wailing and also lucky that she didn’t drop her bow in all that flailing and wailing.

“I don’t know,” Bori said hastily, raising her voice just to be heard over the inescapable growling of the wind flapping their ears. “I think we should start by finding shelter... maybe in a cave or—“

She couldn’t say the other option because her antlers glowed. She looked up, seeing the pink light like a pink lighthouse in an overcast day. Blue lights dotted her periphery, and she saw Aurora and Alice’s antlers glow, too. Together, they were a colorful lighthouse, living beacons against the volley of snow and bad happenstance.

Then those antlers pinged, echoing a faint ring.

“Huh.” Bori tapped her antlers. “That’s something new.”

“Just like a sonar,” Alice observed.

“I don’t even have to ask if that’s a future thingy,” Aurora blurted out.

Alice blushed. “Sorry! Can’t help it when you suddenly know there’ll be underwater radars in a couple centuries!”

“We just got stranded by every deer, never to return again, and what you think about is underwater radars? Do you even know what a radar is? ‘Cause I sure don’t!”

“Alright,” Bori said, stepping in between them, seizing the small break in the storm to catch their attention. “I know that this... this isn’t exactly great, but getting into arguments will get us nowhere.” She shoveled the snow off of her mane and the top of her head. “If we’re going to get progress soon, we’ll have to work together, rein in our powers, and just bear with each other.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Alice remarked.

Bori frowned at her. “Please, Alice. This is serious. I know you know this is serious.”

Alice scratched her neck and flinched. “Sorry, Bor’. It’s just... I didn’t expect to get kicked out of Rennefer like that. Or at all.”

“Well, I say Cervidi showed his true colors!” Aurora complained, raising her hoof and shaking it towards the closed gate (all that was needed was a cane). “To think that we could’ve been mighty helpful with everyone else with our smarts, strengths, and other reindeer stuff. I say he’s gotten too old!”

Alice snickered at the irony of age, but she covered her mouth from her sight.

“Are we done?” Bori said. She didn’t wait for a reply with both Aurora and Alice paying her attention again: “OK, girls, let’s start thinking of a plan. I propose we start with—“

Her antlers glowed and pinged again. She squeezed her eyelids shut, concentrating with the wind-driven snow landing on her face. Seconds later, she opened them up to Aurora and Alice ogling her like she was a deer on the loose.

“Actually,” Bori began with a lifted hoof, “I say we should keep going north.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Duh! That’s how we got down from here!”

“Uh, no,” and Bori rubbed her antlers like she was rubbing a revered heirloom. “I-I think my antlers or whatever it is... it’s telling us to just go north.”

“North until where?” Aurora asked immediately. “I’m not sure if my poor body could endure this. And why north anyway?”

With two sets of eyes asking her for answers, Bori covered her cheeks with her hooves, warming herself against the militant cold. “I don’t really know. However, our mysterious antler powers have helped us with two ponies and a dragon before, so I’m sure they know what they’re doing. I hope.”

“I hope it’s taking us to safety,” Alice said, tugging at her apron. “Maybe it’ll even take us to another town and we can move there!”

“I only hope so,” Bori replied slowly, morose. “I only hope so.”

So after one last look back at Rennefer, of a village and a home that’d produced a river of memories and good times, of the families and friends they’d leave behind—after that, they trotted down the hill against the raging weather.

---

The kitchen door opened and Alice popped her head through it. “Bori, I got some spare batter for snacks! You wanna?”

That snapped Bori and Yitterby out of the story, eyes now on Alice for some delicious matters.

Bori replaced her facial gloom with a smile. “Sure, why not?”

The bowl was enveloped in a pink glow and levitated to the table. Both yak and reindeer put in a hoof to taste the rich batter.

“Sweet. As. Usual,” Bori commented, smacking her lips in between words. “It’s even sweeter now. Did you do anything to it?”

“Not really,” Alice replied, still hanging out in the kitchen.

While the small talk of cake and batter went on, Yitterby let his mind mull over who exactly these reindeer were. They weren’t mythical beings who’d been living here since the dawn of time like the fabled Discord he’d heard off from traveling ponies. On the contrary, these were reindeer who didn’t give him a challenge, who didn’t have tricks up their sleeves, and just exuded hospitality... to think his quest would end so mundanely.

Bori and Alice’s cake conversation ended with the both of them waving farewell and Bori peeking through the door. Aurora was seen reading and re-reading a cookscroll, eyes trailing the fine hoofwriting on them.

The door closed and Bori turned back to Yitterby. She wiped her lips clean of batter stains.

“How are you feeling so far?” Bori said while she put down her napkin. “You don’t feel uncomfortable, impatient, or anything like that? Maybe it’s too cold, hm?”

Yitterby shook his head, letting his thick bundle of fur swing freely. “Yak OK. Yak learning.”

Bori nodded, relieved with the answer. “That’s good to hear!” She glanced up at the ceiling, descrying something unseen in the rafter. “Well, let’s see where to pick it up from...”

In a moment of weakness, she got another hoofful of batter and licked it. Yitterby took this as permission to get more batter, too. To him, the more batter, the better.

With their stomachs indulged in for the time being, Bori wiped her lips again and continued the tale:

“It was a hard trip for all of us. We went through unfamiliar territory; everything was unfamiliar. We’d never left our home before our antlers started acting up. All we’d ever known was what the scrolls and books taught us, what we could get through the city wall’s windows from time to time. Certainly didn’t help make the journey any easier. Even worse when we had no idea where we’re going at all; all our antlers told us was to go north, north, and north some more.”

Her voice halted a bit. She took in another hoofful of batter, downed it with cold water. Her eyes became downcast, filled with an anxiety that was strangely neutral: it wasn’t wanton worry nor giddy hope. It was just plain anxiety.

“We had a few good times on the road. We laughed at each other’s jokes and they helped us cope with what the world threw at us. When we slept (usually under a tree), we sometimes cuddled up to each other, hugging each other for warmth against the ever harsher elements. Of course, we also talked which kept us sane from boredom for those lonely weeks.

“Make no mistake, though: we had a really rough time out there. Beasts and monsters lurked in the unknown hinterlands: the abominable snowpony who runs way too fast, and we only escaped because he got distracted; the humongous amaroks who blend in with the environment so good, we had to start acting like amaroks just to get halfway past them; the thunderbird that can shoot thunder out of its mouth, so we just waited until it wasn’t stormy... let’s just say we had too many close calls.”

Here she laughed, partly to blow off some of the tension from remembering when Bori and the others had to dodge the thunderbird’s sneezes of lightning from singing their bodies.

“Even without them, we still had the wild terrain: crossing cliffs and ravines, traversing dark caverns, climbing up and down mountains without falling into certain doom. Well, we tried to fly at first, but it never came to us.”

Yitterby took spent the pause getting yet another hoofful of batter. When he looked at Bori again, she saw her eyes sagging, severely downcast this time.

“On their own, they were more than difficult to overcome. But do you want to know the biggest problem, the biggest obstacle we had to face?”

The yak slightly raised himself from the chair, making sure his ear was close to her.

Bori sighed once again, inhaling a heavy breath. Her shoulders and her back hunched. She turned to the kitchen door, heard a bout of hearty laughter from within.

“Our biggest problem... was each other.”

Now a bout of silence came over them. Expecting something profound or humongously dangerous at least, Yitterby couldn’t help but frown with Bori. Looking at the door and trying to see what went on in the kitchen, it seemed impossible that these friendly reindeer would stoop lower than occasional arguments.

“It was inevitable,” Bori continued, eyes still upon the door. “They say familiarity breeds contempt. Combine that with our weird focuses on past, present, and future... things had to go down, and it didn’t take long. Aurora would sometimes wake up crying from dreams of home, and she routinely blamed our strange magic for separating us from the good ol’ days we’d always had—not to mention she keeps reminiscing about those days every thirty minutes. Alice was good at helping us prepare for any challenges ahead thanks to her future vision, but it took a toll on her: knowing the threats and dangers ahead in advance made her afraid of the whole trip even if they were days away... and somehow, her vision didn’t stretch to our destination, wherever and whatever it was.

“Me?” She brought a hoof to her aproned chest. “I once thought it was a never-ending nightmare. Everything fused together in my mind, into the present. For all I knew, we were walking forever in endless snow with no escape.”

Yitterby gulped. He leaned back fully on his chair, a lingering terror creeping up on his hulky back.

“I... lost count of the days. I had to ask Aurora too many times how long we’d been out there.” Bori brought her forehooves to her temples. “It was so long, so weary. Were we not careful, it would’ve broken all of us...”

---

Crashing into the night, the perilous and savage storm from which none could escape its cold and ever-reading grip. Once inside the fog, no sign of help could ever pop up, for within the confines of this blinding mist, heavy snow and heavier wind collapsed upon them, forcing them to move slowly and suffer ever more from the heavy snow and heavier wind. In short, the storm styled itself a vicious cycle.

Here, nothing could be seen save for an infinite canopy of snow. Not a tree, not a mountain, not a valley: only snow and fog.

Against all odds, a cough echoed through the strident gale. It’d come from Alice whose lips were caked in still more snow and frost, sitting under her baggy and saggy eyes.

Bori and Aurora followed her not far behind. Their lips and eyes had similar chills to their names, too. The latter had her scarf covering half her face from weather attack; the former just sloughed on, letting the apron soak up the bitter freeze.

Their gait had degraded from a resolute pace to a stumbling stagger which wasn’t helped by the gusts blowing the opposite way. Their only hope was north and the glow of all their antlers lighting up a few more meters ahead of them. At least in this, some beauty could be found as blue, cyan, and pink meshed to form a swirling colorful light ahead of them.

“Are you sure we won’t encounter the icegator again?” Bori asked, raising her voice above the din of the storm. “You said he lives around here.”

“I said I think he lives around here,” Alice replied, pointing forward. “But he won’t come around.”

“Well... OK, then.”

That done, they spent a couple more minutes dragging themselves through the land of ever more snow. The wind blew their way, not so subtle in its intent to stop them.

Alice groaned, covering her eyes from any potential snowflake intruders. “Uh, Aurora?” she called out. “How long is it again?”

“A full week,” Aurora shouted, echoes faint in intense breeze. “We’ve been hurting ourselves for a full week.”

Bori glared at her. “And what does that mean, Aurora?”

“What do you think it means?” Aurora shot back, shrugging with her shoulders. “We’ve been bracing the outside world without any experience at all for one full week!”

“Aren’t you forgetting when we had that big blizzard a few years’ back?"

“That was then, this is now!” Aurora yelled, now clear enough for both Bori and Alice to hear. “And since it’s the now, I’m trusting you to help us!”

Bori huffed. “Auri, I—“

”At least we had a whole community helping each other out,” Aurora went on, shaking her forehoof. “Now, it’s just the three of us!”

“At least there’s three of us,” Bori said, stern yet trying to be as understanding as possible. “You know what they say, that birds who flock together—“

“—stay together,” Alice continued, “but birds usually flock away from the winter, not into it.”

Bori groaned and whipped her around to give Alice her second glare. “If you think you can sass around like that, Miss Future, please look ahead of time and tell us when we’re going to stop going north!”

Alice pointed at her antlers and made a desperate face. “For the millionth time, I’m getting future-blocked there! I don’t know when or where we’ll stop... if we’ll ever stop...”

“Why are you getting future-blocked?!” Bori shouted, putting her forehooves up and down like a zany hummingbird. “Why do your powers have to break down when we need it the most?"

“D-Don’t ask me!” Alice countered. “I’m the one with the problem! You’re asking a bricked computer to troubleshoot itself!”

That made Bori pause, standing still in the rabid storm. “... what?”

“I get what she’s trying to say!” Aurora cut in, raising her hooves high against the gloomy and unseen sky. “I don’t know what this magic thing is, but it’s caused us more trouble than good, I can tell you that!”

Bori gasped and lifted a hoof, knee-jerk at that. “Auri, no!”

“Well, what if she’s right?!” Alice said, standing up to Bori and arching her brow at her. “I don’t see any ending for this one and I’m supposed to see endings! All I see is snow, snow, snow...“

“Just snow?” Bori said before bursting into a hopeful smile. “We might be close! This could be the final stretch, and we could see what our antlers are trying to tell us!”

“Are you serious?” Aurora replied, planting her hooves into inches-deep snow. “We’ve walked almost non-stop for seven days, and it looks like we’ve covered an ant’s throw of distance!”

“At least we’re here!” Bori looked off into the horizon despite how grim it was with the storm and all. “We must be a lot closer than when we’ve started!”

“Bah! ’Course we are!” and Aurora kicked some snow behind her in frustration.

“But what if we still have a lot to go?” Alice asked Bori, turning from anger to a charged, worrying sorrow. “I don’t want to walk forever! We’ll be like those ponies who keep traveling and don’t have permanent homes!”

“We won’t walk forever and you know it,” Bori said firmly. “What we have here now is each other, and that’s more than enough to last us through this journey. If we can just grin and bear it for just a little longer, we could find signs that we’re almost there!”

“And if we don’t?” Aurora quipped, wiping her glasses from fogginess for the hundredth time.

“I hate to say it,” Alice began, tugging at Bori’s apron, “but for all we know, this weird magic might lead us to somewhere worse than Rennefer.”

“How do you know?” Bori asked, challenging her.

Alice crossed her forehooves, donning a smug smile. “Oh, it’s just a guess!”

“A guess, huh?!” chipped in Aurora. “What, you know something we don’t? I sense your passive-aggressive attitude, youngin’!”

“Girls!” Bori started, staring at them, gritting her teeth. Realization was in her eyes, and she looked like she had that realization a second too late. “You have to understand—“

“Do you think you’re Miss Know-It-All?” Aurora prodded Alice, paying no heed to Bori’s warning.

Alice recoiled from the old cow. “I never said that!” Scanning her from antler to hoof, “And, what’re you gonna do? Bring up something from my past?”

“I’d never think of that!... but what I think is there’s more danger in your future powers ‘cause you can threaten them all you want as this self-proclaimed seer... and Bori’s just gone psycho!”

“It’s psychic,” Bori corrected with a groan, “and I don’t think that’s nice to say, Aurora.”

“Says the one who was all in on being stranded in the snow for a week! Why, if it were up to me, I would’ve made sure to resist whatever strange things that magicky thing wants me to do, especially if it wants me to fly—”

Stopped. She felt something felt icy, way too icy to be regular snow. Bori’s and Alice’s looks of surprise confirmed it wasn’t just her feeling it. So, they looked down.

Under the light of glowing antlers, a blanket of ice crept up on them. Amid this sounded howls and thunder accompanied by the flashes of far-flung lightning. So, they looked up.

There, forming in the clouds, circled a lone figure creating a whirlwind in the feisty clouds. It was an equine ghost, eyes glowing like gems; it was composed of personalized wind and breeze, its zephyr vocal cords eliciting a garbled whinny.

That was enough for Aurora, Bori, and Alice to cling onto each other for safety from whatever that creature was.

“What is that?!” Bori screamed, holding tight onto Aurora’s sturdy antlers.

Aurora gulped, biting her lips so much, she felt pain in them. “It’s a... no, I can’t believe it, but it’s a windigo!”

“A windigo?!” and that sent Alice afluttering. “Alright, alright, alright, alright... how did they do it? I-I got it! We, um, we declare we’re friends and fire shoots up to beat him!”

Bori and Aurora looked at her, dumbfounded by quite the daring solution.

The windigo, slightly amused at this suggestion of how to be defeated, glided ever closer, bringing the blanket of ice ever closer as well.

Alice coped with this ramping difficulty by saying, “Should’ve known it’d be harder than that.”

“Of course, you dummy!” Aurora roared, slapping her on her blooming antlers. “You’re dealing with the dreaded windigo, and none of us are the legendary Clover the Clever!”

But instead of diving into the argument again, Bori took stock of raw reality attacking her with this snowstorm and the windigo in the sky. That immense ghost giant hovered over them, its long muzzle and its glowing eyes shaking Bori to her core as it descended ever closer and incited the ice to snake its way to encase them in ice for the res of time.

Except it didn’t shake Bori to her core.

Aurora and Alice clung to her neck and leg; this was done in the hope that bundling together would give them a fighting chance against these specters of frosty hearts. However, Bori sported not a single hint of terrified trembling in her features.

Above Alice’s and Aurora’s desperate screams, Bori stared the windigo down.

The phantom stopped in mid-air. It showed not a smile, unamused at this pathetic gesture. It continued its merry circling around above, gathering more storm clouds and raining ever more snow on the three reindeer, forming a furious weather.

But Bori’s antlers glowed still, shining brighter, refusing to be blotted out by the whirling and whirring fog. It shone, not a care in the world even as the gusts and gales rushed to try to snap them away. Pain coursed through her whole body, pain of the freezing kind, but Bori held her head and her glowing antlers high.

She gasped before turning to Aurora.

“Aurora!” she yelled, grabbing her by the antler; Aurora would’ve punched her any other time, but inclement conditions dictated otherwise. “R-remember when we helped those ponies and that one dragon out? How we stuck through the weird stuff together?”

Aurora nodded, clenching onto her glasses; they were about to fly apart.

“We got through them because we had each other!”

“We were secretly told to do it with each other!” Aurora yelled back.

“But still!”

With that, she turned to Alice who was quaking by her side. “You used the future to be confident about, well, the future! We prevailed against whatever came our way and even helped others out without them knowing!”

“Like knowing the dragon won’t eat us?” Alice said, before blushing at how late she was. "OK, I see what you mean, Bori!”

Affirmed with Alice, Bori turned back to Aurora who’d been staring at her the whole time with baffled eyes.

“I... I’ve never seen anything like this before, Bori.”

“Maybe not exactly like it,” Bori said, more snow and wind beating down on all of them. “But something like it... that, I’m sure of.”

Her confidence fully regained, there was one more thing to deal with: the windigo. She stomped a hoof into the ground, driving it deep through snow and soil. This stance completed, she stared down the windigo again.

“I know you’re trying to feed on our discord,” Bori bellowed high into the sky. “But I’ll let you know, Windy Whiner: you just helped us grow stronger!”

She received a ghostly scoff from the creature, which echoed out as far as they could hear. The reindeer wobbled from the volume, but they still held their ground. In fact, Aurora and Alice joined her in staring the windigo down.

“Back then,” Bori continued, gesturing to her friends by her side, “we were united by the unexplainable urge to help three complete strangers in a place we’ve never been to before. Then, we desired to help just about anyone who would come our way with some kind of gift, whether literal or not. Now, we’ll finish this journey wherever it leads us together... and that includes stopping you!”

Lights flashed brighter, brighter, and still brighter. The reindeer didn’t know they were floating above the ground, escaping the blanket of ice in the last second. The windigo first arched its head back; it whinnied when it saw the reindeer still floating closer to him, trying to hold them off by directing all the snow and the wind right at them. It neighed when even it couldn’t see them under the blinding light of their antlers.

That blinding flash of light and an explosion.

Nothing.

There was nothing after, not for a while. Eyes closed and squeezed tight.

They felt cold covering their whole bodies. Yet, a warm breeze came over; upon feeling that, they snapped their eyes open.

Over there in the distance, without the gray obstacle of fog, they could see a color that wasn’t white or gray. It was a splotch of green first, then there were splotches of that leafy color. Accompanying green close ahead was brown. It wasn’t the brown of wood since they saw the trees fully covered in green leaves with not a branch nor even a sign of trunk peeping out.

The brown belonged to a lodge in the middle of the snow.

Comments

[Godslittleprincess]

Wait. So the lodge was just there waiting for them?