Little Octavia and the Breezies
Little Octavia's Little Adventures #1
Little Octavia prodded the flower hard in the face with her hoof. She continued prodding it until the stem broke and the petalled head fell over onto the soft, fresh grass. She sighed.
Folding her forelegs beneath her, she rested her chin on the ground in her little puddle of sunshine. She swept her gaze around her, at the grass and the flowers surrounding her, at the trees surrounding the clearing, at the silvery sunlight shining through the trees. She inhaled the fragrant smells of the flowers. She exhaled and made popping and clicking noises with her mouth. Then she hummed for a few minutes. Then she poked some more at the flowers, breaking several of them. She sighed again.
She blew on a dandelion puff, obliterating the fluffy white sphere. The breeze rippled through Octavia's grey coat and short black mane and carried the dandelion seeds away toward parts unknown. The gentle gusts of wind were cold against her sweaty coat which was hot and matted from lying in the sun. The coolness made her feel lighter and her limbs feel springier, surging with youthful energy, eager to do rather than to wait. She dragged her restless hooves through the grass, making troughs in the loamy dirt, releasing moist, fertile smells. The hot summer air was seasoned with sunbaked earth and pollen. The sharp smell of sweet, drying grass tickled her nose as she breathed. She was lying upwind of the smoke, but she could still smell it clinging to her and the forest clearing they had landed in.
She flicked her short black tail once.
She cast her eyes upward, looking into the gently rustling branches and the dappled sunlight shining through them. Birds sang, woodpeckers hammered and insects buzzed – all unseen in the all-concealing leafy canopy. The sun had moved so that her left foreleg was now in the broken shadow of the tree.
The little filly rolled over onto her back, looking at the upside-down forest, once again in the full light of the hot sun. She was experienced with basking in Celestia's sun now. When she had first seen it a year ago she had hidden from it, cried thick, salty tears when it burned her eyes. No one had ever told her she couldn't look straight at it. No one had ever told her how it felt to lie in the sunlight. No one had ever told her she would one day see it for herself.
She kicked the air above her, punched the breeze with her little fore-hooves until her forelegs were tired and she curled them back against her chest. She rolled back over, right-side-up. Then she batted at more flowers with her fore-hoof. Then she sighed again.
After repeating these actions, in different and varied combinations, warming her sides and back and belly in Celestia's sunlight, getting grass and dandelion seeds and defeated flowers tangled and crushed into her coat, Octavia lifted up her head and craned her neck to look over her shoulder. Behind her, the big blue police box still stood, its doors still open wide. The oddly indestructible exterior panels of the police box (which weren't really wood) weren't even singed from flying through that star, though they were still creaking and hissing as they cooled. There was a lot less smoke pouring out of the box's interior now, and the banging, wheezing and clanging noises from inside weren't quite as frequent or frantic as they had been. "Doctor!" Octavia called, her voice warbling with a childish lilt.
"Yes? Octavia?" came the Doctor's voice, followed by a bout of coughing and the clang of a heavy tool being dropped on the ship's deck. "Something the matter?"
"Doctor! I'm bored!"
"Oh," the Doctor said. There was the sound of him banging on the console with something heavy and metal.
Octavia rolled over onto her side with yet another sigh. "Stupid TARDIS," she pouted. The TARDIS began clanging its cloister bell, and the Doctor began shouting again. Octavia scrunched up her nose and glared at nothing in particular, pressing her ears down and puffing out her cheeks in annoyance. Eventually the cloister bell stopped and the Doctor began praising and patting the TARDIS in a self-satisfied tone.
She had been given very specific instructions not to leave the clearing and to not go out of sight of the TARDIS until the radiation levels within the ship were safe for her again. "And I mean it this time," the Doctor had said. "Don't wander off!"
Octavia got up, shook some of the grass out of her coat and mane, and walked into the forest.
The forest floor was covered with dead brush and live ferns. Flowers climbed up the roots of trees and young green saplings sprouted fully formed from the trunks of their fallen parents. As Octavia went farther away from the TARDIS, and the acrid, stinging smoke it was belching, her sensitive nose began to smell other, more subtle smells than the trees and the grass. She smelled the stench of animal spore, the scummy smell of water, the ripe smell of rotting leaves and wood and the musty smells of hanging moss. She could also smell mice and squirrels and rabbits. These latter smells made her thrust her nose into the air and sniff vigorously. Her ears pivoted about, focusing in on tiny rustling noises.
Octavia dropped herself very low to the ground, creeping on steady, sure hooves into the underbrush. She was small enough to be able to pass below the large leafy fern leaves, and the ground was sparsely carpeted with soft dead leaves not yet dry enough to crunch under her hooves. Her movements were fluid and precise, a sliding, slinking motion, her shoulder muscles moving visibly under her coat across her back. She was a wiry, lean filly with large, unblinking eyes that had become used to dim light or near total darkness. Her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air. The smells coming from upwind of her were both of fur and sweat and of feathers and oil. The sounds were a mixture of flapping and tiny, shrill squeaks. As she crept between two large, gnarled, crooked trees, she could hear the squeaks as more distinct tiny shrieks of animal terror.
Octavia peeked out from under a fern leaf. A two foot drop into a wide gully stood just beyond the clump of trees and underbrush. The gully floor was blanketed with moss and clumps of damp soil. On the far side from Octavia, at the base of a tree, two ravens were flapping their wings and shoving their heads into the hollows between exposed roots, occasionally throwing their heads back, choking down food. The screams of fright were coming from behind these roots, a shallow concave depression that had formed beneath the roots during some forgotten rainstorm. Octavia's ears went back against her short mane.
After a moment of adjusting her stance and sucking in many deep breaths through her nose and clenched teeth, there was a scraping of earth and rustling of fern leaves as she burst into the air. She hit the mossy ground running at a full gallop and leapt into the air half way across the gully, one foreleg out in front of her, the other drawn back behind and over her shoulders.
A thunderous crack rang out as she shot her drawn foreleg down onto the back of the raven's head, crushing it against one of the exposed roots. It flapped and twitched and spasmed under her hoof, its mate staggering away with flapping and rasping squawks. Octavia retracted her foreleg, letting the raven fall from where she had pinned it. The crushed head hung from the body by skin and tendons, flopping around as the body spasmed. The dead raven landed on its back, wings twitching, feet running in the air above it.
Octavia turned her back to the other raven and was looking at it over her shoulder. It charged her, talons first, descending from above. She bucked at it and hit nothing but wing feathers. The raven clawed her on her back leg as it fell back to ground. She bucked again and hit the raven's talons with the bottom of her hoof, knocking the bird back into the air. She began running as soon as her rear hooves hit the ground. Moss and leaves flew into the air behind her. The raven dove in a fluid arc toward her, beak first. As the bird overtook her it flapped back and bared its talons, cawing a grinding, gurgling shriek. This slowed the bird down, suspending it in the air above Octavia for almost a full half-second. The filly took the opportunity to spin around, all four hooves off the ground, her forelegs swinging up and around into the side of the bird, dragging it down as she flipped around.
Octavia landed on top of the bird, talons grazing her belly without puncturing, and a beak snapped wildly for her ear and missed. As she jumped up, she stood on the bird's chest. When she was on all four hooves, she lifted her right fore-hoof from the bird's chest and slammed it back down. It pecked at the hoof crushing its sternum and clavicle. Octavia ground her hoof down into the raven until things inside the bird started to pop and squish. She gritted her teeth and began thrusting her weight down onto her right foreleg, throwing her shoulder into it, feeling the bladed sternum break free and push out of the bird's stomach, slicing through flesh like a knife from the inside. Ribs snapped and popped like toothpicks, red blood welled up in the black feathers around her hoof, oozing. And then bubbling and spurting. No more sound came from the bird's beak. Black eyes stared into space, seeing nothing. Clenched talons shook and twitched, locked closed into little bird fists that would never open again.
Octavia eased off the pressure, slowly lifted her hoof. The bird's body jumped as its wings convulsed, once, twice, then stopped moving.
Octavia heaved a heavy breath and sat down on her haunches, gasping as her cut hock brushed against the ground. She sniffed at her right fore-hoof, watching the raven's claws twitching. She licked some of the bird's blood off her hoof, spitting as she felt little black feathers tickle her tongue and lips.
She stuck her hind-leg forward and inspected the damage. The grey hair above her hoof was a matted bloody mess, and the shallow cuts stung. She licked at it, clenching her eyes shut as she licked against the natural direction the hair to part and clean out the matting. She tasted blood and hair and sweat. She kept licking until she tasted skin and warm, clean blood. Then she licked the hair into its naturally growing direction to cover the cut as it continued to bleed and scab.
Standing, opening her eyes, she looked to the bird again, now almost entirely still. She lowered her face down to the bird's flattened chest, sniffing deeply, inhaling the rich, heady, sweet and earthy smells the poured from the ruptured chest cavity. It smelled of the forest, and night and woody nuts and sweet berries, of hickory and carrion, of sunsets and maudlin thoughts and mysteries as deep and bloody as the night itself. Octavia's eyes fluttered and her breath caught in her chest as she exhaled, shivering from the bottom of her stomach to the base of her skull. Metallic tastes stung at the roots of her tongue, and her lips pulled themselves back from her gleaming white teeth in a broad, predatory smile.
Her teeth plunged into the bird's chest cavity, gnawing already smashed flesh further into pulp and gristle and feathers. She put a hoof down on the head and another hoof down on the legs. She yanked her head back, tearing up feathers and skin, spitting and plunging again. Her teeth scraped against the broken blade of bone at the crest of the bird's ribcage, tearing away breast-meat and, throwing her head back wolfed down bite after bite of flesh. When the broken, displaced keel-bone was exposed, she gripped it with her teeth and tore it out and away, exposing the tight bundle of organs. The liver came first – sharp, metallic flavour, soft and juicy. Then the lungs – bubbly and fleshy, popping as she chewed. Rubbery intestines and oesophagus, spicy with acids and ichor.
Then, the heart. Round and fat, twitching still, spurting; she sucked it whole into her mouth, biting through the blood vessels and connective tissues, ripping it out with gusto. She stepped back, staggering, eyes closed tight, squeezing the heart between her molars, squirting thick, syrupy blood into her mouth, hot and rich and sweet and tangy. The organ was rubbery and chewy but so flavourful, packed to bursting with fat and dense muscle.
She popped it between her teeth, and groaned in pleasure, spreading out her hooves to steady herself as she chewed. She spread out the heart flesh, continuing to chew. She sighed and opened her eyes. Chewing with her mouth open, she looked around her, catching her breath, dizzy. She slunk back to the first raven. She squinted, cocking her head to the side.
The first raven she had killed was now surrounded by giant insects wings, white and papery. When she came closer she saw they were attached to tiny creatures, pouring out of the hollow beneath the tree's roots. There was high-pitched chattering coming from the bright pastel coloured creatures, which slowed and then died away to silence as she approached.
Octavia swallowed the heart mash, licking her lips as she regarded the tiny butterfly-winged critters. The chattering began again, more energetic, louder. Octavia sat down on her flank, favouring her cut leg.
"Our hero!" came one of the high-pitched little voices. Then cheers and little whoops and yips.
Octavia's ears perked up and she lowered her face into the swarm of creatures. "You can talk?" she said, her snout almost touching one of them. She sniffed at it, and the exhale almost knocked it off its tiny legs.
"Whaaa!" the creature stumbled back, flapping its oversized wings and sending itself into the air. It landed on Octavia's snout and looked her in the eyes. "Y-yes. You can understand us?"
"I can," Octavia said, sitting up. "What are you?"
"We be breezies," the thing lilted. "We were separated from the others while gathering our pollen and attacked by these devil birds!"
Octavia looked down at the bird she had killed, then refocused her eyes on the breezy standing on her snout. "Why?"
"Why what?" The breezie said, tilting its head, making its antennae bounce. The voice was too high pitched to tell what sex the little thing was. Its legs ended in tiny hooves. Its long, fragile wings were easily three times the length of its body.
"Why was it attacking you? Do you taste good?"
"I..." the breezy said, taking a step back, standing on the very tip of Octavia's snout. "I don't know – maybe to a bird? I could not say..."
Octavia sniffed, tilting her head back. The breezy had red puffy hair for a mane that was larger than its head in volume. Octavia brought a foreleg up to her mouth and wiped little dribbles of blood and feathers off her mouth and chin.
"Y-you be an earth-pony, yes?"
"I'm... a pony." Octavia nodded, almost sending the breezy tumbling off her snout. "But I'm not an earth-pony, that's a different tribe. But the Doctor says I'm not supposed to tell anypony that. Are breezies a type of pony? You look like bugs."
"We are not bugs!" the breezy said, stamping its hoof on Octavia's snout, and then wincing as it realized what it was it had stomped on.
Octavia didn't flinch or twitch at the tiny impact of the breezy's hoof. "So, then, you're a pony too?"
The breezy was looking down and around at its companions, and then back at Octavia's eyes. It rubbed one shoulder with the opposite hoof. "Um..." it looked around a moment longer, shifting weight from hoof to hoof. "Yes?"
Octavia threw her head back, throwing the breezy up off her nose. She snapped at the breezy and managed to get most of its body in her mouth. The wings were still sticking out from between her lips, as was the head and one foreleg. She chewed and the head fell to the ground, as did one wing. She slurped up the protruding leg and brought her hoof up to wipe the other wing away – it came away easily. She looked down at the other breezies. They were screaming again. She stomped on one and it squished under her hooves – she snorted with laughter, a little blood dribbling out of her mouth as she chewed. She covered her mouth with a hoof and wiped the blood on her fetlock. Then she batted another breezie out of the air and stomped on it. This breezie didn't completely squish, so she leaned down and took its broken little body up in one bite, this time biting the wings clean away with her incisors – they wafted to the ground.
Her cheeks bulging, she watched the screaming breezies flapping away very slowly. She sat down and watched them "flee", chewing. After she had swallowed her two breezies, she strolled slowly after them over the mossy ground. They weren't quite as slow as snails, but they were slower in flight than the fat, lazy cockroaches she used to hunt when she was little. She snapped another breezy out of the air and crunched it between her teeth. Its fluffy hair tickling her soft pallet and its little screams vibrating through her teeth and made her giggle, and she lifted a fore-hoof to her mouth to stop herself from spitting anything out.
Breezies tasted like honey and cinnamon – like the foods from the TARDIS kitchens that the Doctor was always eating. Their blood was sweet – very sweet. Cloying and saccharine like when the Doctor tried to get her to eat "pancakes and maple syrup". She swallowed the pulped breezie and stood up, strolling after another pair of frantic, wafting breezies. She bit them both out of the air with one bite, both breezies hanging out of her mouth, tugging at her chin with their fore-hooves. She slurped them both up, chomping them farther and farther into her mouth until only the wings were sticking out. She had sat down again, chewing the bits of breezies and trying to get the wings out of her front teeth.
As she chewed, she spotted one of the breezies trying to turn midair and not fly straight toward her head. It flapped and flailed, but all of their movements through the air were laboured and sluggish. Octavia batted at the breezie with one hoof, and it flipped around and spun in midair in the gentle current of air her hoof made as it lashed out. She swung her foreleg again, back and forth, which propelled the breezie back and away.
Swallowing, Octavia sat up and strolled over to the tumbling breezie. She puckered her lips and blew on it. It went tumbling toward the ground, its fragile wings broken. It hit the ground softly and struggled under the weight of its crumpled wings to get back up on its spindly legs. Octavia blew on it several more times. Sending it tumbling over itself, but it didn't go back up into the air. She smashed it with her hoof, the splatter soaking into the light green moss.
She licked the blood off her hoof, the sweetness of the blood mixing with the savoury dusky flavour of the moss.
"Octavia!" came the Doctor's voice from far off. Octavia jumped and strained her ears. She heard him calling for her again. She dashed back over to her dead raven with the broken neck and its heart still in its chest, and, struggling with the size of the bird, for it was the size of a full grown rooster, she picked the bird up with her mouth. She leaned her head back so she didn't drag it along the ground. She was about to dash off in the direction of the Doctor's voice when she jerked to a stop, seeing there was another breezy on the ground, tangled up in its own wings, thrashing frantically with its toothpick legs to free itself. She stomped it once, rendering it brightly coloured paste. Then she set off in the direction of the Doctor's voice, her prize held high.
"OCTAVIA! Where are you! I said don't wander off!"
Octavia came running out from a clump of ferns, dragging the raven along with her. She sat in front of the Doctor, holding her head up high, the bird held firmly in her mouth, eyes bright and looking up into his.
"Agh... Octavia..." he said, taking a step forward, frowning.
Octavia set the bird down on the grass in front of her, and drew breath to speak.
"What did I say about bringing dead birds back to the TARDIS?" he interrupted.
"Nothing," Octavia answered. "You told me not to bring you dead rats and rabbits. This is a bird – you eat birds all the time."
"What? No I don't! I mean-"
"You got really sad when you ran out of those chicken fa-hee-ta burrito thingies in the frigerator. Now you can make more," she pointed down to the dead bird with a hoof, staring up at the Doctor with big, round eyes.
"Ah... I..." the Doctor sighed. "Thank you, Octavia. That was very thoughtful of you," he said, his voice dry and without inflection. "Come on," he said with more enthusiasm. "The TARDIS is safe now, we need to go – 'Work to do!'" he said, his usual catchphrase at the end of his sentence making Octavia bounce and giggle.
She picked up the bird again, one wing and its crushed head dangling loosely. She trotted toward the open doors of the TARDIS.
"Wait!" the Doctor said, halting her. With one brown foreleg, he turned Octavia's head so he could look at her cheek. There was a bit of blood and a long white antenna stuck near the corner of her mouth. "Octavia, now what did I say about eating bugs?"
Octavia put the bird down so she could answer. "You told me not to eat them."
"Right – so why have you an antenna on your face?"
"They weren't bugs, Doctor. I asked them, they said they were a type of pony called breezies."
"You..." the Doctor stammered, his eyes gone wide. "Wha... h... you... WHAT?!"
Octavia watched him for a moment, then nuzzled the top of her head against his chest. "There there," she said. He got confused like this a lot. "It'll be okay, Doctor, come on, you can show me how to cook birds!" Octavia picked up the bird again and trotted back into the TARDIS, en route for the kitchen.
The Doctor followed her in, and stopped just inside the doors, his face still a confused contortion of lips and eyebrows. "... WHAT?"
