The Dreamcatcher

Chapter 2: Strangers

The next day, I was on harvest duty in the central garden. It was one of my more favorite jobs as an apprentice of the town’s potionmaker clique. The quiet time was very well needed, because most other days I was sitting in a cramped room reeking of boiled plants and smashed roots, listening to my superiors bark out orders. I was a good learner, but I have never known anypony who thought learning was fun. Out here in the garden I could actually stretch my legs and hear my own thoughts.

I ambled through the rows of plant-life, between thick bushes of kindleberries and the hanging, fuzzy tendrils of aercrest. Part of me wanted to just frolic through the soft grasses and take a long nap in the leaves, but I had a job to do at the moment. As I filled my saddlebags with fresh sprigs and ripe fruit, I scanned the town.

The garden was essentially the heart of Arbor, a fact that was confirmed by Grandma last night. Its emerald greens stood out so vibrantly from the brown and grey behemoths that surrounded it. Behind all those dinged-up shacks and towers, an even darker, almost menacing wall of thick steel surrounded the town. It looked as impregnable as ever minus that space over there, towering over-- wait, was that a space!?

In between two buildings I spotted a rather obvious break in the wall. Daylight poured through like a bright scar on the smoke-grey surface. Has that always been there? How has nopony noticed it before?!

Needless to say, this new discovery hastened my plant-picking efforts tremendously. Within a few minutes, my saddlebags felt like they were full of gravel. I trotted over to the garden overseer.

“Hey Rosethorn,” I said to the mare. Rosethorn was slightly my elder, but not by much. Her pale pink coat made her easily visible through the flora. “I finished picking all the stuff Professor Manedel wanted me to,” I continued, dropping my saddlebags in front of her.

“Good job,” she beamed, pleased by my abnormal hastiness in completing my chores. “Let me see what else there is for you on the list,” she said, lifting a piece of paper up to her face. I glanced over at the alleyway I saw the crack in. From here I couldn’t see the opening. Maybe I had just seen a sunbeam or something…

“Actually, it looks like that’s it for the day,” she told me, looking up.

“Am I really free to go or are you just pulling my leg?” I asked, smiling.

“Since when was ‘time off’ ever joke material for either of us?” she responded. “Go on, have a nice day. Just don’t dent any roofs with all your jumping around, all right?”

“I won’t!” I called back, already darting towards the exit of the garden.

I crept towards the light in the alley, as if it were some mysterious beast. I made sure nopony saw me coming here; they all assumed I was still working. For a while I contemplated telling Mushroom, but he would almost certainly want to come. I didn’t know if it really was dangerous out there, but I didn’t want to risk him. So I crept into my home alone, stuffed a saddlebag with some water and bits of fruit for snacks, and made my way to the hole.

It wasn’t as large as I expected it to be, although a pony could definitely fit through. Looking closer, I could see that it was formed by the two sections of wall not lying straight against each other, like two playing cards. The triangular passageway seemed like some forbidden portal to me, but my heart was aching to explore the mysteries on the other side. I promised myself I’d be back in just an hour or so, but just in case I wasn’t I had left a note on my bed that I was spending the night at a friend’s house. That would definitely elicit punishment, but nowhere near as much as if anypony discovered I had gone outside the walls.

Gulping down a lungful of air, I crouched and edged through the hole. It felt strange at first; I was expecting some alien ground or a different colored sun or something, but it all felt the same. As I tugged my saddlebags through the pass, nearly ripping the straps in the process, I looked up.

“Wow,” I whispered to myself. From the outside the walls looked so different. They towered above, bolted together in some places and hanging loosely in others. From the outside they looked a lot less uniform than what I had expected. Still, they were at least a foot thick as I had discovered going through the hole. It was great protection, but from what?

I shook myself off, brushing stray bits of dust and dirt off of my coat. The first thing I noticed about the outside was that it seemed awfully… dead, for lack of a better word. The ground of Arbor was similarly dry and dusty in places, but at least there were places where green grass sprouted. Here, it seemed to be a vast canvas of grey. The only plant life here was the pale, dead patches of grass and the occasional gnarled tree trunk.

For a moment, I considered turning around and heading back in. That would be the end of it, and I could live the rest of my life peacefully at home. But my heart was crying out that there were so many more mysteries out there. Was Arbor alone? Were there any places like it?

Curiosity overrode fear and dragged me through my first steps into the outside.

I had walked for about a half hour now, never feeling as free before in my life. Although my brain knew otherwise, I felt as though the world was mine to walk in and explore. Arbor was a distant speck of grey behind me now, obscured by hills and other raised terrain. I made sure to drag my hooves through the dusty soil just in case I got lost so that I could follow them.

Ahead of me, a particularly tall piece of jagged rubble stood jutting out of the ground. Perhaps it was a wall at one point, destroyed by an unseen force. Rather than ponder the possibilities, I quickly began to scale the shard of concrete.

“Good thing I learned how to climb early,” I mused, recalling all my previous adventures climbing on top of Arbor’s rooftops. I didn’t lose my hoofing even once before I made it to the top.

At the summit of Mt. Rubble (A name deemed fit by yours truly), the world opened up like a storybook. The familiar grayish ground stretched for miles in every direction, but now I could see that it was far from empty. Ancient looking towns dotted the horizon, visibly crumbling even from this distance. The sky spanned endlessly around me. In Arbor, whenever you looked up the walls were always in the corners of your vision. Now the pale, colorless sky seemed sickeningly wide.

I dropped my head down and sighed, unable to do anything but smile. It felt like an anvil had been lifted off my back, one that I had never known was there. I was as free as a bird! And as long as no one finds out I can come here all I wanted! If I wasn’t standing on top of a dangerously tall cliff of broken concrete I would have danced in joy.

Just as I was pulling a bottle of water out of my bag, I spotted three, no, four black shapes in the distance. Normally I would have just shrugged it off as being a few of the trees that sprinkled the land, but these were moving. Moving slowly towards me.

I froze. Was it a search party from Arbor? It couldn’t have been, they weren’t coming from that direction. I could feel my skin tingle and adrenaline jolt through my veins. Thrusting the bottle back into my sack, I began to practically leap off of the rubble. One glance back revealed that they were now sprinting too. And they had wings.

Genuine fear was new to me. Sure, foalhood games and scary stories got my blood pumping when I was a filly, but now true dread welled in my belly like a balloon, making me feel sick. I regretted leaving Arbor, because now some winged monsters were pursuing me.

I could hear wingbeats getting closer. I was sprinting as fast as my legs could carry me, my saddlebags bouncing against my sides painfully. Where was I to run? I couldn’t bring them back to Arbor, what kind of pony would I be to lead monsters to my home? Maybe this is what the guards were protecting us from. I feared for my life as I darted into a small indentation in a hillside I saw. It was barely a cave, but maybe, just maybe it would save me. I pinned myself up against the wall of the mini-cave, the fine dirt cold against my trembling back.

I barely managed to keep my breathing down, feeling as though I was a few seconds from puking my lungs up. Every moment felt ten times as long. Dammit, why did I leave the walls? I’m going to die here and--

“Hello? Pony?” A male voice called out, just several feet away. I couldn’t help but squeak in terror. Oh great, I thought. I’m going to die because I made a wimpy sound.

A face began to peer into my pothole. It was… beaked. And feathery. And didn’t look much like a monster. It was a griffin! There was a family of griffins back home, and they were pretty friendly. Just like us ponies.

“Oh. There you are,” he said, a little bit surprised. He walked forward, revealing his entire form. He was a bit larger than me, his coat slightly dirty. A few scars were visible on his face, like tiny little ravines in his feathers. He beckoned with a claw to the sky, and almost immediately three other griffins came landing down.

“What do you want?” I managed to say. “P-please, don’t hurt me.”

The one who discovered me laughed. “Hurt you?” he asked, smirking. “I wasn’t planning on it. What’s a pony like you doing all the way out here?”

I stood still, hearing my own heart violently thump in my chest. My throat was closed in terror like a vice.

He looked concerned. “You all right? C’mon, we didn’t mean to scare you. You can come on out.” He held a claw out.

No point in sitting in this whole all day, I thought. His demeanor seemed kind enough. I highly doubted anything this polite was going to rip my guts out. I placed my hoof in his talon, his touch rough and abrasive against mine. Gently but firmly he tugged me out of my hiding spot.

“My name is… Jadeleaf,” I said, working up the courage. The other griffins didn’t say anything. In the group, there were two males and two females. All of them looked weathered but not awfully so.

“That’s a pretty name,” he said, his voice dripping with excessive kindness. “I’m Firebeak, that’s Razor, she’s Talon, and she’s Stonewing,” he said, pointing a claw to each as he introduced them. “We’re just travelers. Where are you from?”

“I’m from Arbor,” I said. He cocked an eyebrow.

“Arbor?”

“Yeah, it’s that town down that way,” I pointed with my hoof. “It’s in this valley sort of thing.”

Firebeak looked around at the other griffins, sharing an interested look. “Is that so?”

I nodded. I wondered if they were from a settlement like ours, but I was still a bit too shaky to ask.

“Well, how about this,” he said, stroking the feathers of his chin. “We’ll bring you back to Arbor tomorrow morning. It’s getting late out, and it’s not safe at night. We have a camp up north, maybe ten minutes away on foot,” he told me.

I was hesitant. He was right; the sky was turning the familiar pinkish-purple of twilight. If I trotted fast I could make it home before anypony noticed. But these griffins definitely had more experience than me with all this ‘outside’ business. In addition, since I was apparently so easy for this group to find, I doubted I’d be a difficult hunt for whatever prowled about under the curtain of night.

“Sure,” I said, figuring it would be better to return to Arbor late than never at all. “As soon as the sun’s up I want to go home though, is that okay?”

“Not a problem,” he grinned. I was still nervous. The others were dead silent, but their expressions had softened. One of the girls -- Talon, I believe -- was looking at me almost sad. I guess they did care about me. After catching my breath for a moment, we headed towards the camp. Following behind them, I noticed they were carrying weapons: knives, bows, and one of them even had a crossbow, a weapon I hadn’t seen before outside of my books. I hoped we wouldn’t have to use them tonight to protect ourselves.

The camp was more high-quality than I expected. It was a single house in the middle of nowhere, a good half of it collapsed. The other half consisted of two rooms: one was used as a storeroom and the other as the living area. To my surprise, there was a functioning fridge in the place. It didn’t look like it was permanent lodging though, but it was safe.

“There used to be these things called seasons,” Stonewing was telling us, ripping another chunk of meat off of her stick. It was now night, and the cold air had swept in. They lit a fire and began cooking a heaping mound of  assorted meats that they stored in the fridge. I crinkled my nose when they offered me some; didn’t they know ponies don’t eat that? The smell made me uncomfortable, but there were plenty of things that gave me that same feeling tonight. I didn’t completely trust these griffins, but I didn’t see a choice other than to stay with them.

“Yeah, apparently in one of them this cold white stuff fell out of the sky,” she continued. “And in another, it was the exact opposite! It was crazy hot they said!”

“Shut up and eat your food,” Razor growled, droplets of meat-juice dripping from his beak. I got the feeling that the two weren’t particularly fond of each other. “That’s all a bunch of hatchling-tales.”

“No it’s not!” Stonewing cried. “Ask anyone older than you, featherbrain.”

Firebeak was shaking his head and chortling, otherwise quietly enjoying his food. I was nibbling on a crisp, honey-sweet apple I brought from home. My belly wasn’t very accepting of much more than that.

I looked around the group. They were all fairly young from what I knew of griffin physiology. They looked like they had been through quite their share of adventures though. ‘Menacing’ would be the best word to describe the two arguing ones. If it wasn’t Firebeak that found me I’d probably have screamed. He was no prince himself, but the others were unsettling, to say the least. Judging an individual on their looks was shallow though, and by the way they had treated me I had no reason to doubt them.

There was one who had barely uttered a peep since the group found me. Talon was her name. Her plumes-- feather coat-- whatever a griffin’s head feathers are called were a faded steel color, not unlike that of Arbor’s walls. Her lion half was a slightly darker shade. If it wasn’t for her yellow talons and eyes, she’d be about as monochrome as a thing could be.

She caught me observing her and I quickly averted my gaze.

“All right, we’re gonna need rest for tomorrow. Time to hit the hay,” Firebeak commanded. I wondered why we would need rest for a simple short walk back, but I didn’t ask. After they blocked up the windows with wooden boards and rolled out sleeping mats (they were kind enough to give me the cleanest), the four beasts curled up and fell asleep with surprising speed.

I couldn’t stop thinking how bizarre it was that just a single night ago I was staring at my ceiling, in my own bed, in my own house. Now I was watching a pack of griffins doze off, trying to get my own sleep on this stiff bedding. I felt like a stranger to not only them but to the outside world as a whole. It was thrilling, but I was certainly looking forward to coming home. Even if I was walking into a world of punishment.

Sleep didn’t elude me for long, however, and I soon slipped into peaceful respite.