Hunter's Soul

Cutie marks. They are the cornerstone of most ponies' lives, the one thing that assures they are unique and have a place in the world. They appear when a pony discovers their special talent, and lead them through to find their destinies.

Smithy Souls knew almost exactly how he was going to get his cutie mark. It seemed rather obvious, really. The blue-coated, straw-maned colt had been a very young, a bit lanky for his age, when he had hid for hide-and-seek in the village metalworking shack, and been distracted by the glow of the coals and sparks of the hot metal. He had stayed for hours, and came back the next day, when old Damask had put him to work on the bellows and fetching water. The weeks went on, until finally Damask trusted him with the press to cut thin iron rods to length for nails, and then heating and pounding them to shape in the nail-anvil. For the next four months, Smithy made nails, rivets, and sometimes hingepins for the village. It was tedious, but it made him strong, and he never once complained. He could feel it every time his teeth rattled as the hammer struck metal. This was part of his destiny.

When spring came, the village of Little Flanchard cleared the tracks and waited for the trains to come, bringing supplies they could not make or grow themselves and carrying away the gems from the mines. Damask always took the first train to Yanhoover to buy new iron and coal for her forge, and Smithy's own mother went to seek out spices and salts for the village lodge, leaving his father to mind the lodge and the foals. Smithy knew this, and made his own plans. The very hour Damask's train pulled out of the station, Smithy Soul trotted into the shack, lit the forge, and set about arranging everything he would need. Buckets of snow pushed next to the furnace to melt for quenching-water and fire-fighting. The tong-harness he would need to hold the ingot steady, and the other tongs he would need to move it in the fire. Each hammer he would need as he reached a different stage of the forging. And the flat, short ingot he reverently placed in the heart of the coals as they reached the appropriate heat.

He only planned it as practice, originally. Just a trial run to see if he could, if he had any real talent with the hammer and tongs. Hopefully old Damask would be impressed at how much he had learned as he watched her. At best, he might earn his cutie mark, a thought that made him giddy.

Smithy Souls decided to start simple, and made a knife. He had the image of what he wanted in his head; a simple, curved blade with a straight jaw-grip, easy to hold and use, like the ones his mother used in the kitchen. Just a humble tool, nothing fancy. A simple, sturdy iron blade.

The first day he pounded on the edges of the ingot, hammering one half in narrower to form the handle. It was difficult, striking it hard and straight without twisting the heat-softened metal. He left the very end a little less done than the other knives he had seen, as every time he worked that segment the forming grip would twist and Smithy would spend even longer fixing the mistake.

The following two days Smithy carefully pounded out the blade. Halfway through the second day, he realized he had made a great mistake; the ingot he had used was a flat rectangle, completely unsuitable for making a curved blade without the time and strength Smithy did not have as a young colt. Perhaps it could have made a lightweight cleaver, but with the amount Smithy had already flattened the edges, there was no going back. Smithy finished as best he could, heated it one last time, and dropped it in the quenching-barrel. It erupted with a hiss and gout of steam, and the colt awkwardly fished it out of the bottom, resolving to hold on to the item next time he needed to quench it.

The blade was an ugly, cruel-looking thing. The grip was straight, at least, but too short for an adults jaw, and capped with a unneeded flare of a pommel where he had failed to hammer it narrower. The blade started straight, but then suddenly widened near the end and curved sharply, ending where it met the spine at an awkward ninety degree angle. All in all, it was useless for anything but chopping very small sticks. A disappointing, but worthwhile, first-try by an inexperienced apprentice.

Smithy Souls was absolutely disgusted when his older sister, overjoyed, pointed out that the blade had become his cutie mark, complete with a orange-tasseled grip. He had spent the next four days crying in his room, lamenting that his destiny was that of a failed project, until Damask had come back from Yanhoover with her crates of coal and bodily drug him back out to the forge, where she taught him how to make a proper blade, and then a pickaxe head, then shoes, and more. Eventually, as the years went by, Smithy forgot about his useless cutie mark and focused on other things; his work, his friends, the Unicorn filly about his age that moved here to live with her uncle. Anything but the pointless and useless image on his flank. The knife itself had been bound with a matching orange tassel and was stuck firmly into the log wall of Smithy's room, a hook for the knitted cap his sister had given him that fall. Smithy grew, maybe not happy, maybe not content, but healthy and glad to live in the village Little Flanchard.

And then the Shadow In The Snow attacked.