Warm Frost
The day was waning as the cloaked pony walked through the wood. All around, the trees were wreathed in thick blankets of snow, and through the heavy furs of the cloak, the pony still felt the sharp bite of the frigid air. Ahead, about a good half day’s trot, was a unicorn settlement, and the pony hoped to be able to sell some of the wares in the sled trailing behind. But still, the pony had to deal with the dangers of the wood and chill before safety was reached.
“Nothing ye can’t handle though, ain’t that right ‘Walker?” the pony said, the deep tones of the voice marking the figure as a stallion. “After all, ain’t like you can’t buck a wolf in the face or nuthin’, right?” The stallion, Walker as he was known amongst his tribesponies, chuckled to himself as a rare sliver of sun cut through the cloud cover. He stopped, paused to reach up with a hoof to pull down the hood of his cloak.
Fur the color of rusty earth stood out amongst the sterile white of winter, and the forest green of his eyes shone with an inner warmth as Walker looked up at the sky. “Well, ain’t that somethin’?” he said to himself before his ears twitched. Narrowing his eyes, Walker scanned the woods around him warily for any signs of wolves… or worse. Seconds later, through the wood, a faint cry could be heard.
Walker stood stock still for but a moment before charging forward, his hooves slamming through the snow underhoof. The crunch of snow was the only other thing that could be heard for a few minutes as he tracked down the source of the sound. “Righty then, now here’s a right royal conundrum,” he muttered to himself. “Of all the places out here, in the frozen middle of nowhere, what’s a young’n doing all the way out in the cold? What possible reason is there for that? What do ya think ‘Walker?” Rounding a bend in the woods, Walker looked and stopped, his sled slowing down and stopping only when it hit his back legs.
There was indeed a young foal out in the cold. Said foal was a unicorn, and garbed in the thickest robes that Walker had ever seen, with fine furs sticking out of the hood as the young one wailed. “Hey now, there ain’t no need for that!” Walker barked. In an instant, the little foal silenced, and finally opened their eyes to look at him. Forest green met liquid quicksilver. “...huh,” Walker commented as he unhitched himself from his sled, trotting over to the young foal. “Never seen silver eyes before.”
The little pony babbled to him with a high pitched, lilting tongue, and the earth pony had to chuckle. “Sorry little one, can’ understand ya,” Walker told the filly as he walked over and plucked the foal out of the snow. “But I think I know somepony who can.” Taking the foal back to his sled, Walker hooved a few things out of the way so that she could have some room to sit in. Once the foal was situated, he pulled out a heavy blanket and draped it over the little one. Satisfied, he hitched himself back into his harness, testing the straps before grunting in approval. He began pulling the sled, a process that went by slightly slower than he was used to due to the nervous little foal now in the middle of his sled.
Hopefully, that wizened old coot of a unicorn that helped Walker trade with this particular town was still alive, otherwise -
A low howl echoed through the woods, sending the hairs along Walker’s mane on end. “Oh Faust,” he muttered, stopping to look around fearfully. Wolves he could handle. The things that made those bone chilling moans… weren’t something an earth pony could simply buck in the face. Rolling his shoulders, he looked back at the young filly in his sled. “Git ready for a bit of a bumpy ride,” he said. The small unicorn nodded uneasily, and Walker gave the best comforting smile he could.
“Don’cha worry, we’ll be just fine.”
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Night had fallen, and everything was not fine for Walker and his charge. As the sun descended from the sky, the lightly frosted ground grew thick with snow, making each of Walker’s steps an arduous effort. The sled itself was moving almost glacially as it was forced to push snow out of the way, the tiny unicorn in it starting to shiver once more. “D-Darned cold!” Walker muttered, shaking his head briskly. Behind him, he was sure that the unicorn agreed with him in her own tongue.
Now, the sun was gone, and the stars above were about to be overshadowed by clouds. “Welp, ain’t nothin’ I can do no but hunker down with ya and get us a fire goin’,” he stated, coming to a stop in a patch of relatively thin snow. The unicorn filly blinked up at him as he pulled his harness off. “Now, scooch on over, I need to-,” Walker told her, waving a hoof in the direction indicated when the mournful moans from earlier came back, this time louder than ever. The two froze. Walker slowly looked around, his ears twitching everywhere as the woods that had recently been filled with the sounds of nocturnal animals suddenly went silent.
A chilled breeze ran through the wood, the cold cutting through the heavy cloaks.
A flash of spectral white flickered in Walker’s vision, and he panicked. With a great lunge, he gripped the unicorn filly by the neck of her cloak, and like the sack of red fruits his relatives cultivated in warmer lands, slung her onto his back. “Hold on!” he bellowed, charging out of the clearing with his charge on his back, the wails of the Wendigo behind them swiftly being joined by many, many more.
Need to find a place to hide! Walker thought, panting heavily as he galloped as best he could through the snow, charging through snowbank, hardy shrub, and low hanging branch alike. Gotta get us warm, otherwise-! With a sharp cry, the unicorn on his back shouted, pointing a hoof past his head. Walked glanced back at her, confused. “What’re you-?”
Without warning, the foliage that had plagued his sight was gone… only to be replaced by a great expanse of sky, and for a brief moment, Walker and the unicorn filly had an idea of how a pegasus felt when flying. Which was then changing to terror stricken screams as they both began to fall to the ground.
The ground below was hard and unyielding. There was a snowbank several gallops away from the cliff base.
Time seemed to slow for Walker. It let him think.
They were halfway down the cliff, the Wendigos out of sight and hearing. But no one else would see them falling.
They were now too close to the ground. Walker twisted his body, teeth gripping the cloak.
The snap of rushing wind mixed with the ground, and Walker’s vision went black.
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Walker came to, groggily moaning as he felt something shake him. “W-Wha-?” he murmured, seeing a small, blurred apparition before him, a tiny stub of a horn above teary, fear filled eyes….
The filly!
Walker went to get up and reassure the filly when a lance of agony shot up his spine, bringing him low. The filly cried out, her face looking to his side. Following her gaze, Walker saw that his rear left leg was… well….
In the histories of those who had broken bones, Walker took the sight of his leg bones literally sticking out of his skin and fur in a near frozen, red stained spire of off-white rather well. Which was to say, he screamed in shock, making the poor unicorn filly next to him flinch.
“GYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!” Walker bellowed as his breath quickened before he closed his eyes. No way I’m gonna make the night, not with the Windigos out! But the filly…. Walker opened his eyes back up, and gently grabbed the filly’s shoulder with a hoof.
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice shuddering as he tried his best to ignore the pain. “I… I need you… to stay calm. Jus’... jus’ stay calm there.” Gritting his teeth, Walker pulled his three good limbs under him. With a strained grunt, Walker stood up, only to fall right back down to the ground, the filly rushing over to him. “I’m alright!” he told her, offering up a pained smile. The look of blunt disapproval on the filly’s face needed no translation. “...aw, fine, help me up.”
The filly moved under him, and with another pain filled grunt, managed to help Walker back up to his hooves. “‘Right, let’s get goin,’” he hissed, taking the first hesitant step forward through the snow, the filly tucked against the left side of his barrel. All around them, flecks of white lazily drifted down and settled on the cloaks of the slow moving pair, their breathes coming out as small clouds that vanished as soon as they appeared. Walker was glad for it. With each inhale of breath, the cold air stabbed the inside of his chest, helping to numb the pain of his shattered leg.
Silence kept them company as the two of them trudged through the snow, the occasional gust of wind cutting through to the bone with each of them. A break in the clouds let Walker know that about a quarter of the night had passed, judging by where the moon was in the sky. He looked under his barrel and saw the little filly shiver, her cloak not keeping the cold out as much as it should have. With a pained hiss, Walker adjusted his cloak, the heavy furs of his garment covering the filly almost completely. She peeked out from the front of her ‘new’ cloak, looking up at the much larger earth pony, babbling in her native tongue.
“Heh, don’cha wo-worry now,” Walker chattered, his teeth beginning to clack together. “I-I’ll be j-j-j-just fine, ‘right?” The filly didn’t look convinced, but the duo continued forth. With a lifting heart, Walker felt his charge shiver less, her body warmth trapped between his cloak and his body. But now he had a new problem. His shattered leg was beginning to hurt less and less… as in, he wasn’t feeling anything at all. “Ah, h-horseapples,” he swore.
The filly said something he didn’t understand. Walker chuckled as he looked behind them, seeing something white and ethereal flutter through the wood behind them. The two of them came up to a small rise, a break in the trees providing Walker a clear view of the valley. And there, in the middle of the valley, was the swirling form of a Wendigo storm circling what had to have been the unicorn settlement. The filly beside him gasped, and Walker put a reassuring hoof over her shoulders.
“H-Hey now, ain’t nothin’ but some bad snow,” he quipped, narrowing his eyes. “Now come on, w-we need to git down there, g-g-git ourselves warm.” The filly looked up at him, and then at the village, and then back at him, nodding. Walker smiled weakly as they began to walk once more.
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The storm had gotten worse as Walker felt the filly shiver against him. At the rate they were going, there was simply no way that either of them would make it to the settlement alive, not before the Wendigos fed on them. Through the blinding white, Walker spotted a small opening in the ground where the blizzard hadn’t managed to completely overwhelm.
“Git in!” Walker huffed, shoving the filly into the hole in the ground before he gingerly laid down next to her, shielding her from the worst of the cold. His body was shaking as he made sure to cover the filly as best a he could with his cloak. But that exposed himself more to the biting cold. But strangely, he was barely feeling it. “We’ll… we’ll rest… here, fer now,” he mumbled, his eyelids drooping. With a start, he shook himself awake, just in time to see a Wendigo pass close by, its head facing away from them.
He looked over to the filly pressed against him, and his heart fell. She didn’t deserve this… not when she had a full life ahead of her. “You know, I been thinkin,’” he told her. “We never got properly introduced to one ‘nother. See, my name’s Brushwalker, ‘Walker to most other folks. Got a bunch of kin living down south where it’s a bit warmer, most of ‘em farmers.” Walker chuckled, his teeth chattering. “Mostly fruits ‘n whatnot. Pears last I heard. Weirdest crop I ever saw, I’m tellin’ ya.”
All the while, the Wendigos gathered, one by one. Each of the pale, spectral entities looked at Walker hungrily, their blues eyes glowing brightly even in the near whiteout conditions. Walker felt the chill drop even lower. His body shuddered heavily as his skin grew numb under his fur. Walker looked at the spirits, and grinned.
“I remember, th-this one time, me a-a-and my cousin, bit of dumb one he was, well, we w-was out, out in the grove, pickin’ them darned pears, and he, he gets this daft idea to go up in the tree to get ‘em. I told him, ‘Prickly, you g-gun hurt yerself s-s-somein’ fierce doin’ that stupid!’ But, ah, w-w-well, h-he ain’t the sort ‘t listen to reason, if y-ye know what I mean.” Walker kept talking to the little filly, his body shaking until it stopped.
By the time the moon poked through the clouds once more, Walker wasn’t cold anymore. He looked behind himself and saw that the filly was dozing, her breathing steady even as she shivered. She was warm, for any given definition of warm for this night. Walker looked at the Wendigos, most of which simply stood in place, watching him. Walker smiled, and closed his eyes.
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The forest was warm and full of life as Clover followed the path, Pansy and Smart Cookie following her only a few hooves behind her. “Ye know, you never mentioned why you didn’t hate the other tribes back at that get together,” Smart Cookie commented. Clover sighed as she looked around, her eyes narrowing in thought.
“Well, it’s a bit of a sad story,” the unicorn replied. “Besides, no one asked.”
“Well, it would make sense with Princess Platinum,” Pansy mumbled loudly, fluttering in the air as she ducked and weaved through the boughs of a couple of trees. “B-but, umm, maybe you’d like to tell us? You know, to help spread harmony?” Clover stopped, her two friends stopping as well. The unicorn sighed as she closed her eyes.
“Okay, but… it… it’s not a good memory for me,” she told them. Smart Cookie huffed.
“Sugar cube, ain’t nothing that can be that sad that ain’t happened to one of us before,” the earth pony retorted, trotting over to throw a comforting hoof over the unicorn’s shoulders. “Now come on, get it off your chest.”
Clover smiled weakly at the larger pony. “...I was a filly, about seven or eight summers old. I had just had my first vision, and it was when I was travelling with the caravan. Anyway, it was in the middle of one of the worst winters we had had in a while, and… we were heading into this valley when the pass we were in was… it wa flooded by a snow flood.” Pansy gasped in fright as Smart Cookie winced. Snow floods were never non-fatal. Somepony ALWAYS died in one.
“I don’t know how I managed to survive, but I did,” Clover continued, restarting her slow walk through the woods. “I was the only one to survive, and so, I tried to reach the settlement in the center of the valley, thinking I could make it there before nightfall. I… didn’t. I got lost, and I was in a clearing crying my eyes out when he showed up.”
“Who?” Smart Cookie asked.
Clover sniffled, wiping a tear from her muzzle. “An earth pony stallion, a wandering trader heading to the same settlement I think. I didn’t understand a word he said, but he took me out of the snow, made sure I was warm in his sled, and tried to get me to safety. Night came back, and… we got caught in a blizzard. Wendigos were out.
“Somehow, in his flight to evade them, he accidentally sent us over a cliff, and he… he shoved me out of the way. I landed in soft powder, and he….” Clover paused, her breathe shaky as she recalled the snap of bone, still so clear to her after all those years. “He broke his leg, badly. Bones were sticking out of his skin, but I don’t think he wanted me to worry about him. He was… stubborn like that. Always made sure that I was covered up by his cloak, even as I helped him limp along like an elder. We went as far as we could, but, even with his cloak covering me, I was freezing cold.
“So, he spotted a little hole in the ground, pushed me in it, and put himself almost on top of me. He kept the cold at bay, and he made sure I was awake the rest of the night. He… he talked. He told me funny stories, I think. He made me smile.”
“So… how did he… how did he die?” Pansy asked timidly. The three of them came into a clearing, where a large, dead tree lay on the ground, a smallish indent between it and the thawing dirt. Clover trotted over to the hole slowly, blinking away the tears.
“He made it to morning. By then… he… his skin was cold and hard, and he had stopped shivering,” she said softly. “He pointed out the smoke of the village, and I went to get help. The town, well, they were just ecstatic that I, a little filly, had somehow managed to weather the storm. When I told them about the stallion, one of them, I forget his name, he said something about knowing that pony, and asked if I could lead them back to him. I did, and… when we came back, it looked like he was only sleeping. But… the saddest part for me was that, he was all alone… all alone, and smiling. He was alone, frozen by the cold, and he was smiling!” Clover snapped, stamping her forehoof down hard into the dirt. By now, the tears were falling freely from her face, and silently, both Smart Cookie and Pansy flanked the distressed unicorn and simply let her cry.
“...I don’t know about you, but, maybe he was just happy to know that you were safe,” Smart Cookie offered, once Clover’s sobs died down a bit. “Think about it. If he hadn’t saved you, you never would have become Princess Platinum’s assistant, and if THAT never happened, well….” Smart Cookie trailed off, leaving the rest to Pansy and Clover’s imaginations.
“So, a nameless pony who had no obligation to save a foolish filly is responsible for helping create harmony between our tribes?” Clover deadpanned. Smart Cookie rolled her eyes as she sighed.
“Clover, sometimes, it’s not the name that matters,” she told the unicorn. “I think, that whoever this pony was, he would’ve been happy to know that you lived to do something amazing with your life. Now, is this… is this where he…?” Clover nodded. Smart Cookie hugged her friend before looking down at the hollow. “Well, howdy there stranger,” she said. “My name’s Smart Cookie. You don’ know me, but my friend Clover here, well, she’s said nothin’ but good about you, so, I s’pose that counts for something.
“See, Clover, well, she and Pansy, our pegasus friend here, well, they helped save all our tribes. We all drove back the Wendigos. But really, I think I should pass this over to Clover, I think she’s got a few words to say.” With a gentle push, the earth pony slid the unicorn seer forward, and Clover gulped nervously.
“Umm, well,” she stammered, shaking, “I don’t know if you can hear me from wherever it is you are, or if you can even understand me, but…,” Clover started sobbing once more, wiping the tears from her eyes, “I want to say thank you! Thank you for saving me, all those years ago! And I’m sorry that I couldn’t get help for you fast enough, because I know you deserved so much better! I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry! I’m… I’m sorry….” Pansy and Smart Cookie looked at Clover and waited as she cried, when a gentle breeze blew through the clearing. To the earth pony and pegasus, it was just wind, yet the unicorn froze up as the breeze caressed her coat, and Clover felt a solid, caring warmth bloom in her chest.
“...okay girls, I’m… I’m ready to head home now,” Clover said after a few moments. Smart Cookie and Pansy looked at each, and with Clover, turned back and left the way they came.
The wind blew, and Brushwalker slept in peace.