Chapter 3: Follow the Road
My Little Pony: Don’t Starve
By: TheBobulator
Chapter 3: Follow the Road
It took a few moments for Twilight to realize the tree was on fire. On the bright side, the dying campfire suddenly had a suitably piney replacement that cast much more light, though oddly enough, only the base of the tree was burning. For safety’s sake, she decided to back away from the flaming tree.
Suddenly, time froze as the moon fell and the sun (that wasn’t Celestia’s sun) launched itself into the sky. The shadows of the night were immediately replaced by the deceptively innocent sunbeams of the day. It may have been Twilight’s imagination, but she swore she could hear the sound of gears turning. Once the world had arbitrarily decided that, yes it was definitely sunrise now, it informed all of its potential inhabitants with a cheery dinging noise.
In the few moments that it took for day to break, the entire pine had been burned to a completely blackened crisp. Twilight dismissed the happening as another construct of this unpredictable world.
The noise of her growling stomach brought the unicorn back to the present. “Food... I’ll start having trouble thinking clearly if I don’t get some more food...”
As her thoughts drifted back to when she’d been attacked, she recalled that the monster had only bitten down and allowed her to flee rather than holding on.Now that she had some time, she noticed there weren’t even any traces of injury. Her hindleg looked and felt fine, if a bit sore.
Twilight pondered. “A dream? No, definitely happened.” Her stomach growled again, dismissing all previous thoughts and prompting her to focus on what was at hoof. “First breakfast, then I’ll worry about it. Assuming I can find something to eat.”
The librarian examined her surroundings. Yesterday’s carrot appeared to be the only one in sight. She trotted to a nearby sapling to strip it for sticks as she continued to look for something to eat. Noticing a red flower, she plucked it out of the ground and carefully examined it for anything that would identify it as being poisonous.
Twilight hadn’t seen or read about any flower like the one she levitated before her, but it appeared innocuous enough. Unfortunately, looks could always be deceiving. With slight trepidation, she closed her eyes and popped the flower into her mouth and constantly reminded herself that it was a rose between chews despite its blatantly bitter taste. She swallowed, and began to regret even deciding that eating the flower had been a good idea. It did make her feel marginally better, though.
After her less-than-filling snack, it was time to continue down the road as she pondered last night’s events. Things just didn’t add up, not including the ridiculous lack of sense Discord’s entire dimension seemed to have.
A small ring of red mushrooms immediately caught Twilight’s eye. As tempting as they looked, the little conic fungi, they were probably poisonous. She decided to tread on the side of caution just in case Discord had been devious enough to do so. Besides, he’d already created a life-threatening monster that was bad at doing its job.
Twilight chuckled to herself, reveling in the irony that the lack of knowledge on the trickster’s part had possibly saved her life. Farther down the path, a multitude of strange bushes, long grass, and small twiggy saplings were spread out over a wide plain. A few scattered trees jutted out from the landscape. Conveniently though, the dirt path she’d been following cut straight through and right into a suspicious-looking murky swamp..
The first subject of study was the small fern-like bush. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t really a fern and not really a bush either, defying all Twilight knew on the matter of botany.. Its five wide leaves were arranged like a fern’s fronds, with one comically sticking out of the top almost like a hat.
“Why would berries grow right out of the leaves?” Twilight asked out loud, picking them anyway and observing something far more confusing. “Better yet, where do they even attach to?”
Dismissing all of the logical fallacies of the plant, the berries themselves looked exactly like tiny cranberries. Upon cautiously taste-testing a few of them and not feeling any worse, she decided to collect and snack on them as she went about collecting a good amount of grass, twigs, and more berries.
A multitude of things were floating around Twilight at this point, grouped up by what they were. And as talented as the unicorn was, simultaneously levitating this many things at once was a little distracting in case she had to do something else with her magic.
An idea came to mind. She used a few sticks to create a small three-dimensional rectangular frame bound together with the grass which had proven itself to be much more durable than expected. Once that was sturdy, she began to cover the frame with roughly woven grass (Weaving in the Wild, Beginner’s edition) interspersed with more twigs for support.
“There! All done.” Twilight dusted off her brand new makeshift rucksack. “Too bad Rarity isn’t here. Hers would probably look nicer.”
She promptly began to fill the fashion-wrecking bag with the things that she’d collected. The remaining bits of grass were tucked into one end, the sticks went into a sling along the bottom of the pack, and the berries were placed comfortably on top of the grass.
Scattered around here and there between flowers and stripped bushes, little sharp pieces of flint poked out of the ground. Twilight stopped to think. Even though her magic was powerful, it wouldn’t help if she couldn’t see what she was attacking. In case the monster came back in the darkness, there wasn’t time to cast a wide-area spell before it would be able to get an attack in first. Times like these called for unusual solutions.
She was distracted by a small peculiarly-patterned red bird landing a short distance away. It pecked at the ground, looking for seeds. The second it saw the lavender unicorn intently staring at it, it chirped wildly and took off.
Twilight shrugged, then stopped to remove the remainder of the grass in her new pack and quickly turned some of it into a thick woven binding. She sifted through the collection of sticks she’d gathered and picked out the largest and sturdiest of them. Using the binding and a particularly sharp rock, she managed to create a crude spear.
Of course, Twilight had never attacked anypony or even used a weapon, but this was all going to be in self-defense. In case the monster came back this night, she’d be ready this time. However, the more pressing issue was that she’d used up the rest of her grass on making a weapon she didn’t really didn’t know how to use- Early-age Tools and Historical Artifacts Volume 2 hadn’t covered much about combat as much as it had on gathering.
“Gathering tools! That’s it!” Some of the trees in the area suddenly became prime targets for wood harvesting. “Now, how do I make an axe?”
One axe-assembling later, Twilight approached the copse of trees determined to liberate some wood for a fire. “Sorry mister tree, but I’m going to need some wood.” She approached the first tree, axe floating by her side.
The sensible thing would have been to cut it down from the top, but it would be faster to cut it down from the bottom just so she could take it with her in case darkness fell first. After making sure her telekinetic grip was sound, she began to swing at the base of the tree.
“Good thing this isn’t an apple tree or Applejack would freak.” Twilight told herself.
With one more good swing, the tree’s trunk gave. The librarian leapt out of the way to dodge the falling trunk, but it never happened. Instead, the entire tree disintegrated and burst into several neatly cut logs.
“Oh, of course.” A few pinecones materialized out of thin air and rolled to her hooves. “And here I was, expecting to have to chop this all up by myself.”
The sky began to darken, which made the unicorn put some extra spring in her trot. She quickly gathered the wood and the pinecones area, including some of the rocks and a good amount of the flowers, just in case the meager supply of berries that she’d procured wasn’t enough.
Although the swamp seemed like a scary place, Twilight would have to cross it at some point. Far off in the distance, she could barely see a dense evergreen forest at the end of the path. With all due haste, she followed the path at a brisk trot and hoped that spending the night in the swamp wasn’t going to happen.
Correction- this was more of a marsh, not a swamp. On that note, the local fauna didn’t seem to be doing too well. What passed for grass or turf appeared to be a very dark shade of purple. The trees were no more than jagged branches and gnarled stumps, as were the bushes. The only vegetation that seemed to have survived were dotted throughout the marsh in all their reed-like glory. One of them were sprouting right out of a crack in the edge of the path right ahead of Twilight.
Without any doubt, these were cattails. Nothing seemed to be explicitly wrong with the plant itself, aside from its isolated state. She looked it over and poked at the reeds with her spear in case something wanted to leap out and scare her.
Twilight pulled at one of the reeds. “Are you also created with convenience in mind?” She didn’t react when the entire plant harvested itself in an instant, transforming into a neatly shorn bundle all tied up with a single reed.
“Of course you are.” She sighed, collecting the bundled and processed plant. “What did I expect.”
Darkness began to swallow up the edges of the marsh and Twilight stopped in her tracks to retrieve the logs from her pack. Quickly arranging a few in a sort of star shape, she piled a few bits of grass on top and lit the entire thing ablaze. Just in time as well, as the immediate area was sucked into the abyssal darkness as well.
Spear at the ready, Twilight sat before her fire and slipped off her bag.“Now we wait.” She grumbled, floating out a small pile of berries to roast over the fire.
Somewhere in the marsh, the ground gurgled and squelched. A frog croaked and insects buzzed nearby. However, these sounds didn’t startle the lavender unicorn as much as the deep heavy rumble that seemed to emanate from all around her.
“I’m ready for you this time!” Twilight warned, a bit of panic in her tone. “Get back!”
The rumble abruptly ceased.
“Whew. I guess I managed to scare it off.”
To prove her wrong, the rumble picked up again- much louder, and just a bit closer.
Twilight whirled around and gasped in fright. Nothing there. She added a pinecone and a few sticks to the fire for extra light in hopes that she could see where the sounds were coming from. For a moment, she hoped that the sounds were only her imagination playing tricks on her.
To the best of her knowledge, her imagination didn’t usually shake the ground beneath her hooves. “G-get back!” She warned, wildly gesturing at the darkness with her spear.
There was a muted roar from behind Twilight that caused her to falter and drop her spear. The wind whipped and something distinctly slimy slammed into the back of her head, knocking her to the ground. She tried to flip herself over to fire off some kind of kinetic spell, but something slammed into her side.
The next thing she knew was darkness.
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Was the "spelly" at the end intentional? If not, I hast found an error.
2898627
You saw NOTHING!
2899311
Nope, I'm sure I did
Just kidding, I see it's fixed, now.
Intriguing, is it really like this in the game? Also, librarian vs wild. LoL. Where is your knowledge now, Twilight!?!? Huehuehue
As always the story flows flawlessly~
Five readers you say? Lies. There's at least six.
No Wilson?
She needs to meet Wilson! They'd be perfect together!
Twilight X Wilson! Boom! It's done!
4348809
I'd hate to burst your bubble, but I don't know whether I'll be able to complete this. This hearkens back to ye day when Don't Starve was in beta, and stuff may or may not be outdated at this point. I'd like to pick this back up in the future, but Memories is taking up all my time at the moment.