The Long White

by The Real Darkness

Her Bitter Claws

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"What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question." - Margaret Atwood

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Next was the tracking, the awful part of hunting as his dad explained on his first trip. That was with a rifle, not a bow. His dad also took that shot and down the animal right then, not awaiting a couple minutes.

Kacie didn’t take off after it, but after a time he felt was fifteen minutes, he ran as quick as he could, following the bloody trail the deer left. He could feel the wind chill through the clothing he wore, robbing his heat. The gales were picking up and his makeshift winter gear was showing that it had no worth in the harsher aspects of the new climate.

Kacie had to fight to plant his feet into the snow the correct way, burning more and more calories, losing more and more energy, “in hindsight, should have waited to go hunting.”

Never take unnecessary risks. Sure, do it in financial endeavors, do it in any kind of gambling hall, take a risk on whether that fast food mexican will keep you on the toilet for an hour. Out here, don’t take that risk. It was something he learned many times watching other people out on trails suffer from slight dehydration, low hunger, some prolonged cold, and heatstroke. It was a lesson he was learning the hard way because of his stubborn nature.

The only man in Equestria finally happened upon the deer as a light snowfall began and he quickly looked around, using the deer as a land mark, some nearby trees in the snowy wasteland, “god, fuck,” the bitter cold was sinking into his fat, his muscles, it had long clawed past his clothing and skin, “fast, fast,” he took the kitchen knife, stabbing into the deer and starting with the pelt first and going quick, a bit sloppily, but that was something he could fix later when he got to sowing and punching.

His head snapped up and he noted the location and direction of Twilight’s abandoned castle, home, shelter, sanctuary. The knife was going, not as quick as an actual hunting knife would, but his strenght made up for that, “gonna be dull as fuck, abusing a knife like this,” and he started butchering the skinned carcass, carving chunk of meat after chunk of meat and placing them in the inside of the pelt before he just yanked intestines and guts out, cutting them as if he was swinging the knife to attack the cold that was killing him.

Panicking, this was panicking, but it was a productive anxiety driven action, not just a waste of resources and needless higher blood pressure. Kacie’s lungs burned, the cold was eating him from the outside and now the inside. He finished his harvest and began to book it back to Twilight’s castle in...the direction he...

believed was right.

”FUCK ME!”

He bellowed as he pounded his feet as quick as he could in the crosswind of the now raging blizzard. If he had a mouth to laugh at the last curses he brought ponykind, Sombra would surely be heard three times around the world.

In this blinding white hellscape, he quickly lost track of how long he was walking, ensuring he was remaining on a straight path by checking the quickly fading footsteps behind him. Five feet of vision was all he was afforded while Nature bore her full fist aimed at him, everything outside the countless powdery punches was still white.

“How much longer?” He swore it was an hour or two that he had been trudging, not that the clocks in the castle would tell him how long it really was.

The snow crunched until it didn’t, or he just couldn’t hear it outside the wind howling. The wind howled for a very long time, until it didn’t.

Or he just couldn’t hear anymore. Is being frostbitten a possibility for him? Of course it was, if he was getting close to that, who knew if he was already hypothermic or not. He shoved one of his hands into an armpit, trading off with the other as he gripped the pelt filled with meat and guts with alternating hands.

“Shit...tired...go,” he mumbled. Every step was a mountain, every time he bent his knee it was an entire staircase climbed in the single movement. He was exhausted.

“Where...castle, right?” And his cognition sucked.

Salvation was in sight now that he saw the purple base of the crystal tree. He went around, climbing the steps with the strength he still had and the will to make it all this surviving work. Kacie was not in any good condition, but he managed the door open and shut it behind him, feeling some warmth return from his own body’s effort. He threw the filled pelt down and looked through some of the other kinds of supplies Roseluck had brought back once he looked at his bare fingers.

No yellow, no ghostly white or bruising, skin had just the right amount of cushy give; he was frostbite free. He wiped the wet blood onto the scarf around his neck, throwing it off of him and peeled the dried red off his hands. He grabbed a blanket from the randomized supply pile and willed his diaphragm to heave a bellow through the castle.

“Roseluck!” His voice echoed off the crystal walls as he began to uncloth his core, taking the head punched blanket off and all the colorful sown together scarves before his shirt. He wrapped himself in the new, warmer only in relativity blanket and watched as the earth pony mare came barreling, now wide awake, down from the balcony of the foyer and toward him.

“K! What-what’s going on?!” She shouted as she galloped down the stairs and to him. Kacie opened the blanket, revealing the pale torso underneath, “h-hey, keep your clothes on! It can’t-,” and he wrapped the mare in the blanket with him, bowling her over to the floor in his exhaustion, “what the b-buck are you doing?!” Roseluck manage to shout at him, “you’re freezing!”

“Sorry,” he voice mumbled out, “sorry. Don’t let me...sleep until warm,” his mind was a haze that his mouth had to rip every word out of.

“You owe me, human,” Roseluck sighed out, volunteering to hug him with her hooves in an effort to better warm his body, a blush overtook her body as they exchanged heat and cold. The earth pony kept shaking him, watching every now and then to make sure he was blinking.

---

Hours had passed, hours that Roseluck desperately wanted to use for her own sleep. She instead was stuck holding to this human she had just gotten acquainted with. Thankfully, her ordeal was over as he stood from her and put his clothes back on along with the weird scarf shirt thing he had made and the blanket poncho.

Kacie nodded his head, “thanks, I...need your help still. Get some matches,” coherency is a good sign in the face of frigid weather, “and some firewood and go to my room,” he took another blanket from the stack of supplies and wrapped all the meat into it, leaving the pelt and guts out in the open air to dry out properly.

“I...okay,” this time there wasn’t any real hesitation in her words. Clutching to someone on death’s door, rather clutching to anyone, could make some kind of a trust between them. Kacie mad ehis way, slowly, to his own room, watching Roseluck head off a different direction from the foyer.

Shortly after he arrived, there she was and he took a book, cracking it open and riping a couple sheets out into a loose wrinkled roll, “light the match,” and she did. He took the roll of paper and lit them with the match before setting it onto the book, watching the book pages catch flame.

He transferred the book to the empty fireplace, setting a piece of firewood atop and watching it light before he followed it with two more pieces of firewood.

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"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage." - Seneca

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“Smart,” Roseluck complimented his firemaking method.

“Our survival comes before theirs, Twilight will understand,” Kacie placed, on the stone of the fireplace in the crystalline castle, meat. Venison would cook right there for him to eat over the next days.

“And that’s grisly.”

“I would never...never eat you or any other pony. This...just, I have to. I don’t want to eat the only thing you can eat also,” Roseluck smiled at his words while he sat with glassy worried eyes.

“No no, I get it. I’m thankful you’re even doing this now when you almost ended up dead from this blizzard tonight. Try not to get yourself killed, though.”

“What do you care?” He asked, turning back to the fire, “what changed? You were rather indifferent about me even being here.”

“I...don’t know. I think I’ll just live better with you here,” that came from the pony inside the panicky florist. That was Roseluck after her thorns.

“That’s a sweet sentiment,” Kacie commented, feeling warmth come back to him proper while he sat in front of the fire. Roseluck came over to sit next to him, right in front of the flames to get that extra bit of heat, too, “you...you owned a flower shop before all this, right?”