Big, Dumb Animals
BOOM
Applejack cracked open one of her eyes. A deep rumbling had started to enter her ears. It's probably nothing. There hasn't been a tremor in Equestria for....how many years?
Her thoughts were interrupted by sounds of creaking from the house's foundations and the rocking back and forth of her bedroom's furniture and herself.
Applejack had soon become shaken up from the violent vibrations that shook her house and her bed, and had even found herself being tossed up out of bed and onto the wooden flooring.
"It's a tremor!" she realized. She started to steady herself and sprint out of her bedroom when the quake had stopped as abruptly as it began. She heard some hoove-steps clop up the stairs and arrive near her room in a hurry. Big Macintosh, abnormally more verbal than he was in the past, crashed into her room and shouted, "Applejack, ya alright?"
"Ah'm fine. How's Applebloom and Granny Smith?"
"Granny Smith is.....well, Granny Smith. Applebloom is out with her friends at Rarity's. Ah'll go visit town and see if she's alright."
"Now now. Steady there, Big Mac. You're the one injured. Ah'll go." Applejack lumbered out of the room and steadily fumbled down the stairs.
"Applejack, you were the one workin' all day. Ya can't even trot properly. Rest, Ah'll go. Applebloom is as much of a sister ta me than she is ta you." Big Mac worriedly stated.
"But-"
"No, buts. Just stay on tha couch. I don't want ya to strain yourself for the rest of the day. The Princesses said that they would help ya out. And they are. Just relax." Big Mac guided his sister to the couch and made her lie down. Big Mac trotted out of the house quickly, not wanting to deal with Applejack's stubborn nature for a second longer.
The house became silent again. To Applejack, today was just peculiar. Not only had BOTH princesses just visited her farm with a giant farming mechanism crate, but for the first time in....lets just say a very, very long time, there had been a natural quake.
Her mind tiredly pushed away the events of her rather strange day, and collapsed onto the couch. Her head collided with the small mass of pillows on one side of the upholstery. Ah'll deal with all this tomorrow.
However, just as she began to close her eyes, a series of repetitive knocks on the door made Applejack wince and moan in exasperation. Right, when Ah was about to get some shut-eye? This better be good.
"Come in," Applejack murmured.
The door was almost ripped out of its place, when an extremely distressed pastel-yellow pegasus burst through the doorway and plotted a collision course with Applejack's sore body. The yellow blur slowed down on top of the orange earth mare and started to mumble quite shyly.
Applejack had never heard anypony's voice speak so quickly, yet quietly in her life until that moment.
"Applejack! I need your help! I can't find my birds. One moment they were there and the ground started to shake and I turned around and they all flew away and I want to find them ohpleaseohpleasecanyouhelpmefindthem?" the pegasus' serene voice blurted. "They might get hurt, or maybe some brutal carnivore would start to eat them! I don't want them to die!"
The poor pegasus was heaving her chest as if she had just ran a marathon. Applejack had almost never seen Fluttershy use her wings to fly that fast, and with her dilated pupils and frisked, frayed mane, Fluttershy looked all the more desperate.
"Fluttershy, Ah'm sorry but-"
Applejack cut herself off when she saw glittering tears start to gather in her dear friend's eyes.
Aw shucks. There goes mah day off.
"Alright. Ah'll help you. What are friends for?"
"Oh thank you, thank you SOOOOO much. I feel so much more better right now!" A sad, slightly relieved beam began to form on Fluttershy's once terrified facial expression. The smile faded away shortly, leaving behind a downcast look of concern.
"I just hope that they're safe."
Cyr had set a full barrel down onto a wagon with his teeth. That should be the last one for this field. Let's go to the next one.....again.
As he trotted off into the next enclosure, he sighed. He never wanted his surroundings to be this quiet. Silence often left him inside his own thoughts, and the more time he spent outside his memories, the better. But at least he had work to preoccupy him...until the Princesses decide what to do with him next. You can't just let a Changeling that had just attempted to, as in modern slang, "lay a beat-down on one of the Royal Sisters" go without real punishment. He had even looked forward to Luna's "option". Sure it was a bit too morbid. But Cyr found that, with his four centuries of life experience, Death had a great way of making you feel eternally peaceful.
Lost in his bitter thoughts, he would have continued trotting along, but a twittering of birds had bothered him. Not that birds at this time of day weren't normal, but the frequency and the sheer amount of noise could only represent panic.
Cyr wandered into the countryside not far from the fields towards the source when he found a tree quite near the Everfree Forest. The sole tree was literally and unnaturally covered in hundreds of individual avian animals. He couldn't see why the birds hadn't just flown away until he saw a pack of canines made out of wood snapping at the birds.
Cyr had found himself overcome with conflicting emotion. He was a firm believer in survival of the fittest. Nature has to regulate itself in certain specific areas, whether anyling or anypony likes it or not. And the Everfree Forest was one of them. If he stopped the timberwolves from getting their meal, they, and their cubs, would starve.
But he caught himself in the observations that the birds were quite....innocent. They seemed well-cared for and unfamiliar with the surrounding area, almost as if they were pets that were accidentally lost. Thus explaining why they clung together on a single tree. They were probably familiar with eachother.
Sigh. Let's just get this over with.
"Ahem," Cyr growled. "Return to where you have come, young wolves. Or you will soon find yourselves unbecoming to even be firewood."
The distracted pack made way for the alpha male. The fierce timberwolf barked in anger towards Cyr, to stay away from their kill. Their property.
And Cyr barked back. Except make that less of a bark and more of a 200 decibal sonic roar.
For further emphasis, he hooved at the ground, breaking a thick, fallen branch with a dull thud.
Oh, that got 'em running.
The pack leader, understanding Cyr's message, whimpered and fled into the Everfree Forest with its tail between its legs. The rest of the timberwolf pack eventually followed.
Cyr looked towards the birds hiding themselves on their tree sanctuary, and motioned for them to go.
"Go on. It's safe now."
They didn't budge, nor was a single chirp announced. They would only shake with fear.
Cyr sighed, "Fine. I'll go. But you need to get back home to your owner, if you have one."
He turned and trotted away, and Cyr began to return to the fields. After several minutes of walking, he started to hear a weak hum behind him.
He turned. There was nothing there. Only an empty dirt pasture.
"Wierd."
He continued his journey, only to hear the humming again.
"Indeed, my mind is growing duller and duller by the second." Cyr mumbled. "Oh well, schitzophrenia can't be that bad."
The humming continued, this time accompanied with small taps to his noggin. Cyr lifted his head and saw a lone hummingbird.
"Well, aren't you a brave one? Did you fly here all the way from that tree?"
The hummingbird nodded. Yup, I'm crazy. I'm starting to think that animals can actually understand me.
"Do you not know where your home is?"
The hummingbird shook his head and shrugged the universal "I-have-no-clue" signal.
"Well, I'm traveling to a nearby apple farm to work. Is the apple farm familar to you?"
The hummingbird nodded its beak enthusiastically and had impossibly flexed the sides of its beak in a relieved smile.
"Would you like me to take you there?"
Again the hummingbird nodded, but raised an objective wing. It whistled and out popped from the fields the mass of birds he had encountered eariler.
"Well, then." Cyr remarked. "The more the merrier I guess." They started to hop onto his carapace and head as Cyr began to walk further down the dirt pasture, with apple fields distantly calling to him.
After about 15 minutes of walking, or according to Cyr's extreme guess-timation of how long he had trotted, he entered into the respective field he had worked on. Many of the birds, knowing their way from there, flew away. But some, curiously, stayed behind and remained on Cyr's head and carapace as he began to work.
Cyr, noticing his guests, asked them, "Don't you want to leave with the others?"
Many of them shook their heads or shrugged, except for one woodpecker that started to hammer its beak into Cyr's head.
"Fine I guess. And you there, I only have so much chitin on my head. Don't drill a hole in it."
The woodpecker nodded, but slyly and slowly returned to his task when Cyr wasn't looking.
As Celestia's sun began to set, Fluttershy couldn't bear it anymore. Her fearful whimpers turned into cries of despair. It grated Applejack's pride that she couldn't do anything more to help her friend.
"Don't worry, sugarcube. Ah'm sure they'll be fine."
"They haven't returned to me yet. They always return to me," Fluttershy blubbered.
She stopped in her tracks and fell on her flank. Fluttershy hid her face with her hooves.
"I'm a horrible caretaker! They always were there for me, but I was never there for them!" she sobbed. "I don't know what to do!"
Applejack couldn't take it anymore. "Fluttershy, HUSH! That attitude ain't gonna help ya look for 'em. Out there, your birds are struggling ta find ya. What will crying do? Nothing. Now Ah'm prepared ta help ya through this, but only if ya can help yourself. Ah'll stay with you looking for 'em through the night, but you need ta get a hold of yourself!"
After a while, and several futile attempts to calm herself, Fluttershy finally managed to whisper, "Okay Applejack. I'll stay (sniff) strong. Thank you." Fluttershy hugged her.
"It's not a problem. Now let's get a move on. We're burning daylight."
Cyr had finished up gathering the last of the apples in the fields with only the moonlight to guide him. Changelings didn't need to sleep as long as ponies, but Cyr managed to make himself exhausted. The majority of the birds, even the sneaky little woodpecker, had started to make nests in the holes in Cyr's hooves and on the ridges of his carapace to sleep in. But a few, like the adorable, little hummingbird, stayed up with Cyr all night, even helping Cyr gather a few apples.
With only a last couple pools of apples to go, Cyr tiredly whispered to the hummingbird, "Rest. I think you've helped me far more than you ever could have dreamed of today. Thank you."
The hummingbird began to resist, but a mute yawn and a severe decrease in wing-flapping were signs of its over-exertion. It flew up and snuggled itself right behind Cyr's horn.
Cyr shoveled the last apples into a half-full barrel, and as he trekked on his last time back to the wagon-loads of apple barrels, primed and ready for their delivery, a wandering thought floated through his tired, sluggish conscious.
In nature, birds of small stature regularly gravitated their habitance and interactions towards larger, more aggresive-looking pack mammals in the wild. He had just experienced today, a similar grouping of that behavior. He used to notice that small birds were attracted by the presence of larger, and rather stupid animals. Cyr realized that, therefore, he was a big, dumb animal.
His reasoning, if actually possible, irritated itself.
He chuckled and partially hated his self-logic for the inference.
Cyr shuffled around for a spot to rest, finally spotting a rather large apple tree. He lay himself down on his stomach and looked to the heavens. He had always enjoyed watching the moon rise. There was something solemn about seeing a ghostly, white orb jettison being pulled into the midnight, oily sky.
As Cyr closed his visual receptors, he noted that the moon was ever so beautiful tonight.
In Applejack's eyes, Fluttershy was a mess. Her mane looked like somepony had attempted to attack it with a rake, her swollen, damp eyes had a blank, heavy stare, and her hooves dragged themselves through the dirt. She couldn't cry anymore, as there weren't anymore tears left for her to release.
"Look sugarcube, we can always look for 'em tomorrow." Applejack could almost hear her words echo throughout Fluttershy's mind. Hello? Anypony there?
"Ya can stay with me for the night. It's too late....I mean early for you to trot around all by yourself," Applejack corrected herself, as the sun was already starting to dawn across the horizon.
Fluttershy gave an empty smile and nodded. She walked ahead of Applejack and soon passed the apple trees. And there was a rather overgrown one, alongside multitudes of wagons of apple barrels.
Applejack walked towards the wagons.
"Holy smokes! Ah guess Ah won't have ta worry about applebuck season after all!"
Applejack, in her joy, couldn't see Fluttershy's despairing facial emotion until it was too late.
Fluttershy wailed loud enough to scare a few geese out of the Everfree Forest. She couldn't hold back her tear-ducts, and soon enough, her floodgates couldn't handle the pressure anymore.
She sniveled in light of Applejack's happiness. Feelings of guilt, anger, and betrayal had emerged and pained her heart to endure such a dynamic of emotion. The rage in her chest wouldn't stop, so all she could do was cry on Applejack's shoulder.
The tearful outbursts of Fluttershy had woken up a sleeping hummingbird near the large apple tree. It started to wake up, and recognizing the source of the voice as Fluttershy's, started to wander towards her.
The hummingbird flew up and landed on Fluttershy's crinkled nose and whistled a cheerful tune.
Fluttershy, stopped with an abrupt hiccup, and opened her blurry eyes. She saw her fellow hummingbird.
She gasped loudly. "You're here! You're still alive! I was so worried about you! Where are the others?"
The hummingbird....well, hummed how the rest were on the "large animal" (Fluttershy didn't understand this) or at the cottage.
"But what's this about a large animal?"
The hummingbird continued how an animal that worked at the fields during the day had rescued the birds from the timberwolves and brought them back to the farm.
"Well where is the animal working at the farm?"
Applejack interrupted. "Wait. It means the pony that helped me get in all of these apples for applebuck season? Well ah'll be. I have ta personally thank him for doing all this. Where is he?"
The hummingbird whispered in Fluttershy's ear.
"He says that it isn't a pony."
"Wha?"
"And he says that it's right over there."
Fluttershy fearfully pointed with her hoof at a breathing, matte-black mass next to the tree.
Reacting to the sudden noise, and ever the light sleeper, Cyr began to open his orange eyes.
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Squee!
Hmn, interesting sounding premise, but the Tragedy tag on this is making me a tad nervous. How much tragedy are we talking about?
Brace for loud screams! Also
Applebick?
1295382 Well, his family has probably been executed by now if they haven't managed to escape. Other than that, I'm guessing the tragedy is his tragic past.
1289677 Take all my yes. Then wait a day and then take all the yes that I have that day. Wash rinse and repeat.
I hope that hummingbird stays with Cyr. He could use a friend.
fluttershy and AJ are going to freak the buck out. I can see it already.
keep it up, its shaping up into a great story.
Ahhhhhhhhhh
IM LOVING YOUR STORY!! ....MOAR...if thats ok with you 
Aww, poor Cyr. He's about to scare the almighty frack out of AJ and Fluttershy.
Keep writing, you glorious author!
Cheers
GM
Yay! Flutter shy is Gina have the living hell scared outta her! Well, she better
Oh My Dear Goddesses!!!! Fear induced SCREAMING inbound.
Ah man. You glorious author you. I laughed when he realized he called himself a stupid animal
A few spelling mistakes but I'm sure thos have been resolved. Ehem...also MOAR!
Cyr reminds me of Morgan Freeman. Lol. Oh, and great story!
Lol, OK, I like this!
When I read this passage, this is what came to my mind:
t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRX4iLfRGtvYjLoaQGE-kdTSW-nIwU4wgvOP1ZbiZsf1RG2M9EbwA
"Bring it, son!"
Cyr, the Badass Geezer of the Changeling Hive.
Nice story. Needs some polish in a few places, but nice to read.
...wait a second. Are there other Changelings like Cyr?
Cyr:: "AWWWW SUNUVA-! So much for retirement!"
And so shit met the the fan. They had a wonderful time.
Poor Cyr
Applejack hopefully won't buck him clear to the Everfree.
Glad I took a look at this. Not bad, not bad at all.
1297117
Sorry about that. Got distracted by something really shiny when I read your comment. Fixing the grammar atm.
EDIT: Fixed. I'm srs this time tho
1295398
Fixed.
1299997 Eh i cant wait for more man
...well now i need to see who just ran over a lightpole outside my apartment 
...its going to be a long night
1295372
th02.deviantart.net/fs71/200H/i/2012/043/5/f/sweetie_belle___squee__by_martybpix-d4piscr.png
1295887
Ummm...sequel to what? My other stories or stories by other authors? Because the answer to either is neither. Have a nice day.
1295437>>1295555>>1295561>>1295597>>1298646
To everyone that complimented my writing: I will thank you....IN SONG
static.fjcdn.com/pictures/The_5924a1_2755549.jpg
1296056
Grrrrr. Take that back. I hate Morgan Freeman with a passion!!! I despise his monologues with a burning 4 million degree hate!
But thanks for the compliment
1295522
Hmmmm. That's a thought. I'll be sure to include the hummingbird and the woodpecker, for some reason, later on!
1296154
Well I was going to explain this in the story in later chapters that, taking into consideration the somewhat greedy, selfish behavior of other Changelings and the size and power of a Behemoth, Queen Chrysalis wouldn't really want to have a power struggle with an ARMY of them.
So no. It seems he is forever alone.....for now
1295382
Don't worry. I'll be focusing more on his present activities than on his past.
1295421
Oh don't take them out of the picture just yet....
1300043 okay I take it back! I do have to ask though, why? I'm curious as to why you hate his monologues. I'm neutral about him, I don't hate people. He does emminate wisdom though.
Oh and you're welcome.
1300592
I was kidding about hating. I don't really hate people either (except for a few people in history, like Hitler, Stalin, Kim-Jung-Il) but his monologues, and especially his dealings with Through the Wormhole, especially irritates me for some strange reason.....
Don't ask. Just better not to question things in the possbility of me exploding trying to explain myself.
My friend you have out done yourself! This is going great! Keep up the good work.
1305408
Thanks!
I'll try not to let you guys down!
lol. This got 123 likes.
ME REALLY LIKE CYR.
Hmmmm.. surprised no one pointed this out before, but erm... Wolves. Trapped birds. In a tree? Let's ignore for the moment that wolves Do not eat birds, and instead focus on the fact that the wolves are trapping the birds. In trees. Ynow, the four legged ground based creatures, ancestors of dogs, wolves yeah? They can't fly. Birds can. Erm... yeah. They could just ynow, fly off? Even if the birds were 'innocent' and didn't know the surroundings, they could still just fly high up to where they can see. It's also highly unlikely that in a flock of birds that large, none of them would know the area. The birds have to come from somewhere to get to Fluttershy, ynow?
Its called a plot point, roll with it.
Oh, and, Tactical shit-storm Inbound.
1296154
Mares dig giant robots. \m///dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Lyra.png \m/
1300112
So the earlier test subjects didn't make it, then? Dang. But even then, while an army is out of the question, it is equally silly to only have one enforcer.
Hee. The conversation with the bird is really cute :)
Corrections and remarks:
> She heard some hoove-steps
"hoofsteps"
> How's Applebloom and Granny Smith?"
"Apple Bloom". Two words.
> work to preoccupy him...until
Small hint: most html renderers and word processors don't break lines on dots, to prevent the period at the end of a sentence from appearing on a next line. This will also cause things like the "him...until" in this sentence to be one unbreakable block when it comes to line splitting. It's best to always add a space behind "..." to prevent that.
> until the Princesses decide what to do with him next.
The story is written in past tense, so use either "decided", or "would decide".
> They were probably familiar with eachother.
"each other" is two words.
> more of a 200 decibal sonic roar.
"decibel". The basic unit of sound is "bel", after Alexander Bell, inventor of the telephone.
> After about 15 minutes of walking
Again, write "fifteen" out as word.
1781841
One word:
Nope.
I think my chest just imploded.......
dumb birds
y u make fluttershy cry?
1905735 me too, but from the sheer quality of this Fic...
Cheer up, Cyr, at least you're a big dumb animal they like.
I swear if that woodpecker's name is Woody...
Big dumb animal
Wow flutters you're exceptionally moody, are you preggers?