He walked. Not alone, with family. Nice and warm it was, but the air was cold and black. Family heard me and gathered around me, warmth emanating from them, chasing away cold. Family was good to me, like they should be. He felt bad, they didn’t seem fine, but they were. He could feel their past in his head and they weren’t the same. He didn’t like it, but their warmth and love for him made him forget that.

He scratched one behind the ears like the memories said to, avoiding the lump of massive flesh growing behind its right ear. He liked this one and the other beside it. Sisters before his family and showing him family. It was a shame they looked different though, sure they were warmer and friendlier with him but he liked how they were soft before. Looking over the rest of his family he thought the same, but they were all family now so it was worth it.

But out of all his new family the two sisters who found him and brought him to the new family were his favorites, and as such they were always by his side, even more so when he thought about the cold. Loyal family they were, he thought to himself as the two sisters nuzzled against him and warmed his skin with their fur.

The only reason they weren’t in his home was because he felt their memories telling of potential family. Another town, with family, it’d be good. He’d help them as best he could to be family, it was a scary world all alone in thoughts. But with family it was easy to figure out, have others to comfort you. Not to mention his gift of speed and strength would help them. Walking on he looked at the world through the family’s eyes and vice versa, a wonderful world of green and light blue crossed with red and heat.

The ground cricked and cracked underneath him, feeling wet and stinging but yet also dry and comforting. Clash of senses all through his mind and he loved it, his family mirroring his sentiment back to him. But they were hungry and by relation so was he, stomachs and throats growling more so than ever before in any of their memories. He was fine with eating the plants themselves for sustenance, but the family wasn’t.

They had to eat meat which he didn’t like, restricted to only one type of food. That would starve them someday.

But not today, sifting through the memories of the family he found another town full of their previous kind, before being family, nice and meaty. As nice as they might be compared to the humans with their knives and cells, his new family came first. So he gave a mental shove to the family and sent them into a blood-rage, promise of warm, succulent and juicy flesh just over the horizon, the family breaking out into a full-on sprint.

His thousand member family charged through the trees, regardless of past inflictions or how bent their legs were, how huge and misshapen their tumors or limbs were, they were blurs in the moonlit night. He walked behind them, not wanting to see what would happen. But he would. After all they were family and family always knew what happened to family.

Nonetheless he walked behind them and let the family run on ahead. He saw nothing but green for a few minutes through their eyes, but after a short time he saw their previous kind in a town, a couple of whom were busy sitting on a bench and whispering to one another. He had no idea what they were doing but it didn’t matter as the two ponies noticed his family running at him and they began to scream. Then they tried to run from family.

Then they turned red, liquidy and chunky as the family fed. He could taste them on his tongue. Stringy. Tough. Juicy. He could even taste the fear. It was delicious but he didn’t like it. But the family did and that’s all that mattered, so he just kept walking on as they ate. The screams and snarls made some of the windows light up as more ponies checked to see what the noise was.

And the family noticed them as they checked outside and were subsequently targeted by his family, more and more of his eyes being filled with blood and meat. The cycle went on and on, the more his family hunted, the more the ponies screamed, the more looked and the more they hunted.

He eventually reached a hill that overlooked the town, a single tree growing up on top of it. He neared the bottom of it and looked up, seeing apples hanging from several of the branches. A little hop up and he grabbed an apple then sat down and watched through his family’s eyes as they ate, the town below screaming in pain and fear, both through his own ears and the family’s ears.

The only thoughts that ran through their minds was the fact they were no longer hungry, not worrying about their previous morals, lives or families. For they were his family now.

And he was taking care of them now.

Author's Note

Mini-chapter because I haven't been able to write that much lately.