Twilight and the Lost Islands

by WolvenHeart

Is it getting warm in here?

Twilight stopped and sat down on the path, shaking some sweat off her brow. She'd been hiking nearly a full day, and the dormant volcano seemed no closer than when she started. She resigned herself to spending this night, at least, sleeping outdoors. Her heat was beginning to really become an annoyance. She felt skittish and hot, hotter than it actually was outside.

She saw a large tree and its sheltering canopy some yards off the path, and she decided this was as good a place as any to rest. She left the path, picking her way through the underbrush. Before she got to the tree, she discovered a shrub along the way that had been encumbered with a vine growing up its side, and from this vine, large, long vegetables were growing. She sniffed at them - cucumbers! But they were at least twice the size of the biggest cucumbers she'd seen in Equestria proper. Equestria Incognita (as she had dubbed these lands) did have its pluses after all, she thought. she took two of the cucumbers with her and settled down under the canopy of the tree for the night. One cucumber became dinner. The second became... something else entirely.

The next morning, she tossed the well-used cucumber off into the woods (she couldn't bring herself to eat it), grabbed four more from the vine, and set off up the path again. She had traveled no more than fifteen minutes when she heard the distinct sounds of hoofsteps up the path. Since the path was bracken and dirt, the walker must be close. She would have run up elated to ask for help from the stranger, but the totem she found on the path the day before gave her pause to consider, so she dove off the path and under a large shrub whose low hanging branches and leaves would hide her.

Or so she thought. The branches on the side of the shrub facing away from the path lifted suddenly, and a pony's head appeared, nearly upside down as it looked under the branches she had lifted. The strange mare sniffed the air and smiled, and Twilight realized her heat had given her away. "By the Elements!", she swore to herself. The newcomer spoke a few words in a language Twilight didn't understand. She instinctively tried to bring her magic up to defend herself, her horn glowing, lighting up the entire area under the shrub, and the strangers eyes widened before yelling urgently in more of the strange language. Twilight closed her eyes and drew in the magic she needed to let her teleport away.

And nothing happened except for a few stray sparks that fell desultory from her horn. She couldn't reach out to the magic and pull it to her. Something was damping the magic down.

"What..." she spoke, alarmed and bewildered by the failure of her magic, but before she could get another word out, the branches lifted all around the shrub, the work of several sets of hooves. She let out a yelp as she was yanked out of her cover from behind, and set down abruptly on her feet, facing her assailant. She found herself looking at the largest stallion she had ever seen - even bigger than Big Mac. Her head barely reached up to the front of his roan-brown chest, leaving her straight ahead view momentarily pointing to the bottom of his body... broad chest... firm tummy... this guy was BUILT, and look at the size of..."CONCENTRATE TWI! NOT NOW!" she berated herself, realizing where she was staring, and snapped her head up to look at his face instead.

She found him looking down at her, a bemused look on his face. Her cheeks flushed a bit under her fur, realizing she had been caught looking. He turned his head to a saddlebag on his flank and, using his teeth, pulled out a necklace with more of the colored stones; its pendant was a semi-transparent crystal that seemed to shimmer inside through the entire spectrum of colors. He nodded down at her and made a grunted sound softly through his teeth. He wanted her to put the necklace on.

She considered for a few moments, her heart still racing inside her chest from the abrupt events of her discovery, being surrounded (as she now saw) by several huge stallions and mares, all a similar roan color, and all as fit as this stallion, with their well built, well endowed bodies... "I SAID NOT NOW TWI!" yelled that little voice of sanity in her head as she found her mind wandering down more intimate paths again. She shook the distraction from her head. "Great, now you're yelling at yourself in third person. You're going crazy, Twi!"

She returned her gaze to the necklace (and ONLY the necklace) and considered again what to do. If he was trying to capture her, this had to be the nicest abduction she had ever heard of, apart from getting ponyhandled from under the shrub. The giving of the necklace reminded her of being taken by her beau on a date. "Oh sure," she thought snarkily, "Buy a girl a beautiful piece of jewelry and she'll return the favor later, right?" She calmed herself, and used her horn to carefully hook the necklace, and he let it go. A flick back of her head let it fall down around her neck, the pendant landing on her chest.

"Thank you," said the big stallion before her. His voice came deeply from his chest, mellifluous and non-threatening. Startled for a moment, she then laughed to herself in relief. It was a translation crystal. "Didn't you see the warning on the tree down the trail?" he continued, sounding a bit exasperated. "This place can be deadly to you magical unicorns - you shouldn't be here!"

"I couldn't read the runes on the stones!" she protested. "Maybe you should have left this..." she nodded down to the translation stone, "...with the totem so I could!" Now that the initial fear and excitement had faded, her usual strong-willed manner was asserting itself again.

"I would have thought the carving of the skull was clear enough," the stallion huffed and stepped back before walking around in a small circle in apparent frustration. As he was circling, she was able to get a full appraisal of him... his roan-brown coat blended to a solid chestnut-brown coat on his rump and tail and rear legs. He had no cutie mark on his rump. That firm, perfectly-shaped rump and his big... "DAMMIT, TWI!" she shook her head again. She needed to get her heat under control. However, she didn't think they were going to let her whip out one of the cucumbers from her saddlebag right now, she thought with a stifled giggle.

She got the impression from his behavior that unicorns showing up here had happened before, and he was getting tired of it - which didn't make any sense, since she knew about all the lands in Equestria, and the world, thanks to her studies, and she didn't know this land was here - so who would, and why hadn't she heard about it? The big stallion stopped circling to face her again.

"I am Melbow," he told her. Apparently his name didn't translate into anything in particular in pony language. "I lead this scouting party with my sister, Elbow." He raised a hoof gesturing to the mare off to Twilight's right. Twilight recognized her as the one who first found Twilight under the shrub.

Elbow smiled, nodding and looking Twilight over speculatively. If she wasn't naked already, she'd feel naked under the gaze Elbow was giving her, and she twisted a rear hoof back and forth a bit on the ground nervously. Elbow's coat was also roan-brown, but there was a solid stripe down the front of her chest and under to her belly, and exotic stripes of brown ran from this down her flanks, tapering to a point on her rump. Like her brother, her rump was perfect, Twilight noticed, then got irritated at herself for noticing.

"My name is Twilight Sparkle," she replied.

"A pleasure to meet you," Elbow practically purred, and Twilight's tail swished of its own accord. Stupid tail. "What a pretty name," Elbow continued, smiling broader and fastening an even more direct gaze on Twilight. "We look forward to hearing why you are here and.. learning more about you." Looking back and forth between the siblings, one thought immediately surfaced in Twilight's mind.

"Uh-oh. I'm in biiiiiiig trouble!"

Comments

[rikithemonk]

Ill give it a few chapters.

Monk