From the Tree of Flames

by Falx_of_Lume

(2) Trees and Flames

Granny Smith was stubborn. A stubborn mare, a stubborn earth pony, and most importantly a stubborn Apple. Those three facts alone should tell just how much stubborn was truly packed into the small package known as her body, as each of the three can be considered the stubbornest in each of their own categories.

Despite that though, not even she can lie to herself about getting old in age. Not now that she can feel every decade of life she’s lived throbbing through her leg joints from galloping into town.

She still made it to town of course, because, as has been covered, she’s a stubborn earth pony Apple mare; but it took twice as long to reach it as she expected to.

When she reached Ponyville, she banged on the door of the current weather manager, a stallion by the name of Wind Tunnel that was also getting along in years like her, and asked him to get a team together to help fight the fire in the orchard. He immediately agreed upon hearing of the emergency, and got his ponies together to fly off towards the orchard with several rainclouds in tow.

Granny, however, was then left with the extra painful task of making the same trek that she’d just made in reverse. Since her legs were already suffering from the first gallop, this next one was especially painful to do.

Again, she still did it, because, again, stubborn.

But damned to Tartarus did her legs feel like they were burning when she finally reached the entrance to Sweet Apple Acres!

Granny Smith was not winded from her run, but her legs were definitely hurting, and so she decided to take a moment to stop and rest, leaning against the fence with a foreleg next to the sign arch. As she rested though, she twitched her ears in an attempt to listen for something that should be there. What had happened to the timber wolves’ howls?

“Mrs. Granny Smith? We’ve taken care of the fire.”

Granny looked up to see a weather pegasus mare hovering above her. “Oh, ye’ have? Thank goodness.” She said with a sigh of relief. Then, she looked back up at the hovering mare. “Did ye’ happen te’ see my son and daughter-in-law while you were out there?” She followed up.

The pegasus shook her head. “No, it was just a half-burning tree with a few extra smoldering patches of grass. There wasn’t anypony else that we could see on the ground.”

“Did any of ye land to look around?” Granny asked.

The mare nervously scratched the back of her head with a hoof. “Well, no, uh-.”

“Good,” Granny interrupted her with a firm nod. “we don’ need any more ponies riskin’ themselves out in the orchards while the wolves are still out. If ye didn’t see them, then that’s fine. Ah’ll check the house te’ see if’n they got back on their own. But if they haven’t…” Granny Smith visibly cringed at the words she was about to say. “Then they’ll have te… fend fer themselves till mornin’. It’ll be too dangerous to look around till then.” She choked out.

The pegasus mare openly gaped at what Granny Smith had just told her, and believe her, the thought of abandoning her family to the wolves made her sick. But the years of experience Granny had accumulated with dealing with them made her acutely aware just how dangerous the wooden lupines could be with the cover of darkness on their side. And sending other ponies into the orchard to try to help Bright Mac and Pear Butter would only add to the number of ponies that might not come back out. The two Apples had youth, strength, and teamwork on their side, as well as a fraction of Granny’s own experience with the timber wolves to draw upon. If anypony stood the best chance of surviving a night among the apple trees with the wolves roaming, it was those two. Nopony else though.

Granny Smith thanked the pegasus mare again, and made her way back up to the homestead, apprehension building in her stomach at who she’d find or, Celestia forbid, who she wouldn’t find waiting for her there.

Oh, please Celestia let her find them inside waiting for her!

Granny Smith swung open the front door and stepped inside. “Bright Mac? Butter! Ya here?” she hollered inside.

A pregnant pause.

“Yeah, we’re here Granny! In the kitchen!” Pear Butter called back from the kitchen. Granny Smith let out a sigh of immense relief. They were safe.

“Bright Mac, did’ja find the first-aid kit yet?” Pear Butter followed up with a question directed somewhere else in the house.

“Got it here! Comin’!” Bright Mac said through the handle of said first-aid kit, trotting past Granny from the stairwell into the kitchen.

Granny took a moment to process what she’d heard before she followed her son into the kitchen. If Pear Butter was hurt, then Granny would do her best to help. She may have had reservations about the orange-maned mare in the past due to her heritage as a Pear, but the Apple matriarch had long since accepted her fully as family since then. And family means helping each other when they’re hurt.

“How bad isit’? How ken ah help?” Granny asked, determinedly following her son into the kitchen.

“Huh?” Pear Butter looked up from beside the table. “Oh, wait, Granny no I’m not the one that-!”

“Why is there a big black lizerd on the kitchen table?” Granny Smith asked blankly after halting in the entrance to the room. Said lizard was lying on its side while passed out. Pear Butter took the first-aid kit from Bright Mac and started working on the bleeding flank of the lizard while Bright Mac turned to look at Granny.

“Um… Ah’m pretty sure he’s a dragon ma’, not a lizard.” Bright Mac corrected her. Granny craned her head to look at her son, silently telling him that his input didn’t help her. “… and he’s also prolly the one that started the fire.” He finished nervously.

Granny Smith’s eye twitched. “Alright, so that didn’t rightly anser’ mah question in any way that I needed, so ah’ll rephrase it. Why is there a big black dragyn’ that probably started the fire in the orchard, doin’ inside of our home, where our kin are sleepin’?!” She asked with calm incredulity.

“Cause he also saved our lives.” Pear Butter answered firmly, glancing up to meet Granny Smith’s glare for only a moment before returning to working on wrapping the dragon’s flank in gauze.

Granny was silent for a moment before she silently trotted past them towards the sink. She put her front hooves on the counter and reached up to the top cabinet and pulled out a bottle of hard apple cider. “Yer gonna need ta’ disinfect that. Timber wolves’re nothin’ but rottin’ wood, and rot gives the worst infections.” Granny told Pear Butter, bringing the bottle over to the table.

Pear Butter blinked once before she nodded in understanding. She started unwrapping the gauze she’d wrapped. “Thank you Granny.” She thanked.

“If’n you wan’te thank me, start tellin’ me the whole story of what happn’d out there.” Granny told her through her teeth as she yanked the cork off the cider bottle. She then hoofed it over to Pear.

Pear Butter took the bottle and started drizzling the alcoholic drink into the bloody wound. “Alright, so we had found a few fires that were easy to stomp out without needin’ the blanket or bucket, but then we found the large fire,” She started explaining.

Bright Mac took a step closer to watch them treat the dragon. “It was jus’ another tree from the old orchard, nothin’ else was burnin’. We got it put out for the most part pretty quickly.” He added.

Pear Butter nodded in agreement. “Right, but after that… we realized we’d been surrounded by timber wolves.” She said in a low tone.

---

Pear Butter and Bright Mac backed their flanks together as the wolves slowly closed in on them. Their green eyes glowed in the darkness and they snarled at the two trapped earth ponies.

And then one of them leaped at Bright Mac. The stallion whipped around on his front hooves and kicked his hind ones out in a powerful buck. But the wolf had obviously learned a little from the previous time, because it managed to twist in the air at the last second before they grazed the wolf’s side. The buck knocked a few branches loose, and the wolf sailed past them and hit the ground on its side. The impact with the ground managed to shatter the wolf’s foreleg, but the damage fixed itself faster than it took for its full body to reform.

Another wolf charged at Pear Butter, probably the same that she’d shattered against the tree. It was too close for Pear to use her rope, so she took a page out of her husband’s book and attempted to kick the timber wolf back again. The wolf had learned even more than the previous two, because it avoided her kick completely, dodging away from her striking hooves to line itself up for another lunge. Bright Mac put a stop to its attempt with his two front hooves slamming down on the wolf’s back, shattering it completely.

Only to recoil back as a wolf head snapped at his throat, missing by inches. Pear reared up and lashed rapidly with her front hooves at the wooden head, but still retreated with her husband away from the wolf protecting its re-forming pack mate.

Buttercup’s mind raced. The two of them were still surrounded, and every time they disabled one of the wolves, another one made sure to cover the opening the fallen one made. The best possible way for the two of them to get out of this situation would be for them to disable all the wolves almost all at once and then make a break for it. But it seemed the timber wolves knew that as well, and so were choosing to play it smart and make it a battle of endurance against the two of them rather than rush in all at once to give the ponies the chance.

Normally that would be fine, considering that Buttercup and Mac were earth ponies, which are pretty darn durable among the three races. But against infinitely re-forming timber wolves… well, they’d probably stand a better chance at crumbling Mt. Canter than they would at wearing out malevolent constructs of wood.

Buttercup stepped on one of the branches Mac and her put out earlier and winced from a lingering ember stinging the inside of her rear hoof. Then she gasped in realization.

Fire. Burning. Wood. Timber wolves can’t re-form if all the wood in them has been burned away!

And they just so happen to be standing relatively near a great source of it.

“Mac, think you can help me knock one-ah them into the tree?” She asked her husband.

Bright Mac took a fleeting moment to glance at the smoldering tree glowing behind them. “It didn’t catch last time.” He commented with a grimace.

“It’s the only chance we have tah get away. It has to work! If it doesn’t, then…” Buttercup trailed off, leaving the consequences of failure unspoken.

Bright Mac nodded with determination. “Guess it has tah work then.” He turned to look Pear Butter in the eyes. “I love you.” He told her.

Buttercup took a moment to meet his gaze, “I love you too,” She told him softly. Then her eyes hardened. “Now!” She called.

Bright Mac stepped to the side as Buttercup leaped back from a timber wolf that charged her. She stepped to the side again and the wolf followed, lunging in for a vicious bite that it would never get the chance to deliver. Buttercup halted her retreat, crouched low, and then bucked with her hind legs straight up into the underside of the timber wolf’s jaw, stunning it.

And then Bright Mac charged in, he rammed his shoulder into the wolf’s side, He braced his head against the wolf’s neck to keep it from whipping around and biting him. The yellow stallion pushed with his full body, shoving the timber wolf swiftly across the grass until he finally slammed the wolf bodily into the burning trunk of the tree, and then held the struggling wolf there until smoke started to waft upward from between the two wooden masses. Then he finally relented and released the wolf from his iron hold, backing up to stand flank to flank with his wife again.

The wolf leapt away from the tree with a panicked yip. However, much to Bright Mac and Buttercup’s horror, it didn’t stay panicked for long. With one fluid and practiced motion, it planted its four paws in the dirt, and shook its foliage out like a dog shaking water from its coat. The smoldering and burning fragments of its body flew out and harmlessly drifted back down to the ground to burn themselves out, leaving the timber wolf, for the most part, whole.

The wolf looked down briefly at its burning fragments, and then back up at the pair of earth ponies to angrily growl at them.

It didn’t faze them; they were too busy realizing that their last hope had just died like the embers on the ground. The other wolves sensed their despair and began to slowly close in themselves.

The wolf they’d thrown though, took a single anticipated step towards them…

And then suddenly was engulfed in flames.

The now aflame wolf’s terrified and pained cries startled both ponies and lupines alike and the wolf started to frantically roll on the ground to put out the blaze.

Something caught Buttercup’s eye in the new light produced by the fire: a dark shape darted out past the wolf from underneath a hollow hole beneath the roots of the burning tree, heading towards the dark tree line of the orchard.

She wasn’t the only one to notice the fleeing shape; the remaining four timber wolves let out a wail of ferocious howls and, as one, converged on the shadow, Bright Mac, and Buttercup alike.

But now with the encounter at four on three, their chances of making it through the night had significantly improved.

The first wolf reached Mac first, and he made short work of it with his front hooves, shattering it in three quick strikes. The second wolf went for Buttercup, and she bucked out the front legs of it even quicker, and then she finished it off with a powerful leaping stomp downwards onto its body.

“Buttercup! Now’s our chance!” Bright Mac called out to her, gesturing with a hoof in the direction of the homestead. The way to safety was clear!

Buttercup nodded and made ready to run.

And then the heart-wrenching scream of a child split the air.

Buttercup and Bright Mac whipped around to where they’d last seen the shape to see another of the timber wolves completely engulfed in fire and futilely rolling on the ground. However, the fourth remaining timber wolf was still whole, and it had its teeth sunken into the rear end of a wildly thrashing smaller shape, fire spraying from the creature’s maw like water from a hose. It sent flames in every direction except the one it needed to get free, the wolf cruelly jerking its head around every time it tried in order to keep the flames away from itself. And all the while the shape screamed.

That scream was a sound that Buttercup had never heard before yet knew she feared more than anything else in the world. It was the scream of a foal, angry, terrified, and in utter agony. A sound she never wanted to hear from her own children.

And so she acted without any hesitation. She unslung, strung, and whipped out her rope at the head of the timber wolf she’d downed. Then, with the speed and precision only attainable by ponies fueled by adrenaline while furious and desperate to save the life of another, she flung the surprised wooden lupine head into the heart of the bonfire of the first flaming timber wolf, let it catch fire, and then lashed the now immolated head at the last remaining wolf.

The flaming head just happened to fly at the perfect angle and velocity to fly muzzle-first straight up below the timber wolf’s tail between its flanks.

And then, well, what happened next was really what any creature would do if something on fire inserted itself into a hole it’s not meant to be inserted into.

That is to say, the timber wolf jerked upright and let out a sound somewhere between a yelp and a squeal, and likely felt something of a mixture of pain, surprise, and discomfort. Almost immediately after though, it let out a howl of terror as it was sprayed with intense flames from its captive, which it had released when it took sudden notice to its pack-mate’s unwarranted access to his posterior.

A single growl startled Buttercup and Bright Mac out of their observation of the immolated wolves and they turned to find the last two remaining timber wolves, once more whole after doing their timber wolf-thing and re-forming their bodies again. Buttercup and Bright Mac stood their ground defiantly, ready to deal with the pair again. Although, in all honesty, it was much easier to do so considering one of the two wolves was missing a head and facing the wrong way.

The singular whole timber wolf took a moment to glare at the two earth ponies standing in front of it, and then glanced at its handicapped partner, and gained an unsure look in its eyes. The odds had very aggressively shifted against it within a short time. It looked, to Buttercup, like it was deciding on whether to try its luck once more or just flee.

However, it was the furious screech accompanied by the huge plume of flame that came from the owner of a pair of burning red-slit eyes that finally got the wolf to yelp in fear and turn tail and retreat back in the direction of the Everfree, its headless pack-mate haphazardly followed it on an irregular path.

Buttercup sighed in relief, relaxing her stance now that the danger had passed. She leaned into the side of her husband for support.

She felt her ears twitch and turn in the direction of a scuffing sound, and she looked and saw the shape of what Buttercup realized was a dragon looking directly at her with its large, red eyes. The light from the three burning timber wolves allowed her to make out more features on it than she could in the darkness of the night. It stood on four legs, had a pair of what looked like feathered wings folded at its sides, and a slender tail extending out behind its hind legs.

Then the critter turned away and started limping toward the trees of the orchard, on a different route than the wolves took back towards the Everfree Forest.

That is, until it faltered in its step and collapsed forward in a small heap. The fire’s glow gleamed red off the blood leaking from its flank.

Buttercup gasped and took a step forward in concern, but hesitated. She heard Bright Mac step forward to stand next to her and he looked down to her, his eyes silently questioning about what to do. After all she’d seen it do, did she really want to help it?

But then she remembered what made her help it… him… before. His young cry of pain spurred her maternal instincts then, and his prone form was spurring it now. She cantered over to the heap of scales, pulling the blanket from Mac’s sides and started bundling the small reptilian shape up while keeping pressure on the wound. “Help me get him back to the house Mac.” She told him.

---

“And that just about brings us ta’ now. After that, we got him home, kept pressure on the bleedin’ and then you walked in and asked if we were home’re not.” Pear Butter said, concluding her story to Granny Smith.

The three of them had moved into the living room after they finished treating the young drake’s wound, and set him down, along the length of one of the couches in the room, to rest.

“Ah’ see.” Granny commented stoically, her face conveying nothing of what she was thinking. She rocked her chair softly as she thought.

“Ma’… what are you thinkin’?” Bright Mac asked her after a few moments of her chair creaking in the quiet of the house.

“Gimme’ a seckn’d son.” She murmured thoughtfully, continuing to rock in her chair.

And so they waited. The only sounds that echoed through the house were the creaks of Granny’s chair and the ticking of the clock on the wall. “How’re the children?” Granny finally asked, breaking the relative silence.

“Macintosh was still up, but he told us he managed to get Applebloom and Applejack to bed while we were all gone. He was pretty tuckered out too, but stayed up out of worry. He was curious about us bringin’ in the lil’ feller, but we told him we’d handle it, and he went to bed himself afterwards. You made it back pretty soon after that.” Bright Mac answered.

“He did, did he?” Granny said. She looked over to the couch with the resting dragonling, his back rose and fell slowly with each breath. “Well, that sounds like a good idea fer now. Ah think it may be bes’ te’ get some shuteye ourselves an’ discuss it in the mornin’. We’ve all had a long night.” She decided aloud.

Bright Mac and Pear Butter met each other’s eyes and then looked back to Granny. “Are… ya sure we shouldn’t figure something out right now Granny?” Pear Butter asked worriedly.

“Ah’m sure Butter. Big decisions like this’n need clear heads. Go git’ some sleep.” Granny told her with a light smile.

“Hrmm… ah’ suppose… but what about him?” Pear asked, looking to the sleeping dragon.

“Don’chu worry ‘bout ‘im. Ah’ll keep an eye on the lil’ guy for the night. Doubt ah’ll get any sleep without ‘im in mah sight tonight anyways. That’nd it’ll help me think better with the conundrum layin’ down right in front ah’ me.” Granny told her. She waved her hoof in a shooing motion. “Now go-nd’ git some shuteye you two! Ya’ll need it after the night you’ve had.” She told them sternly, but not without a fond twinkle in her eye.

Pear Butter looked between Granny and the sleeping dragonling once more. “Well… if you’re sure…” She said before looking to Bright Mac. He gave her a reassuring nod and they both moved to the staircase upstairs to head to bed, leaving Granny Smith alone downstairs with their black-scaled guest for the night.

Granny softly rocked her chair. The rhythmic rise and fall of the dragon’s breaths were small, but consistent. Granny wasn’t sure how much blood he’d lost from Pear Butter’s story alone, but however much it was, his fate was out of their hooves now. They’d done what they could to help, and it’ll be up to Celestia whether the little one makes it through the night. But if Granny were a betting mare, she believed he stood a good chance of living till morning. He seemed like he had a strong will to live.

Which meant that they’d have to prepare for the eventuality of deciding what to do with him tomorrow.

Granny Smith was already thinking about it.

Three timber wolves. Pear Butter said he managed to bring down three timber wolves out there. Possibly more, if those small cinders Mac and Butter snuffed out on the way to the larger fire were what Granny thought they were. That little black dragon had the capacity to cause a lot of damage. That was undeniable.

But he’d saved her kin, even if it was unintentional, and suffered greatly because of it. And if Pear Butter’s recollection was accurate, he was also very young. Very young, and very alone. Nopony deserves to have to face the world on their own at that age, not even when they aren’t a pony.

He breathes fire though. Fire has no place on a farm. There are too many things that could easily catch and burn.

But it could also be used to protect, like it was used by the dragonling tonight. Fire is dangerous, but it has its uses.

Granny’s thoughts kept circling around and around between reasons to keep him here and reasons to get him away from the farm. And each time it only left her more unsure of what to do. But it also helped her to sort her thoughts, the circular mental motion would eventually stop once one side on either the pros, or the cons ran out of reasons to either keep or get rid of the dragon.

But despite that, she knew that the little one, at the very least, deserved one good night of sleep without any worries. And so she kept rocking her chair in synch with the dragon’s breaths. And eventually, she herself fell asleep while thinking of all that she’d seen and heard that night.