Thunder Rumble’s eyes lifted slowly, the putrid smell of rotting plants and mud wafting into his nostrils. He rolled onto his back carefully, trying not to wake up Fluttershy as he stared at the thatched ceiling. His ears pricked as he heard the sound of a Warped Wasp, one of the most deadly jungle insects blaring a high buzz outside of his hut. The next thing he heard was his love stirring next to him, her hoof stretching out and caressing his ribs softly for a moment as she awoke.
“Thunder Rumble… good… morning…” she managed through a few yawns. These yawns remained the cutest thing he could’ve ever hoped to wake up to in the morning.
Rolling over and onto his hooves, he stood up, and stretched his legs. He had grown stiff from lying on the loamy jungle soil on nothing more than some old banana leaves. He reached down with a soft smile and brushed his front right hoof across Fluttershy’s soft cheek, eliciting a moan of happiness from her before she stood up herself. The two then walked, side by side, out of the hut and into the sheltered sunlight of the jungle.
The sight of ponies, covered in mud and painted up with a magical green rub walking through the clearing in the jungle reminded Thunder of where he was. It was a place far removed from the tranquil dream he had been having of life back in Ponyville before the war. They were all milling about their business, readying their spears and knives for the next offensive surprise attack on the west bank of the Vine River. The changelings were likely to be resting after their attack on the village of Greenburrows, and the ponies needed to take advantage of this while they could. Luckily for him and Fluttershy though, they were on anti-patrol duty, checking the traps they had set for advance scouts.
Before this could get underway, however, they needed some of Lady Zecora’s “morning soup”, of which waking ponies were lining up for. As they walked, Thunder couldn’t help but stare at Fluttershy’s brilliant hair. Though it was braided and most of the finer ends of her sleek mane had split, it was still by far the most stunning in camp. Even moreso than Pinkie’s, who seemed to give little attention or forethought to more than setting surprise traps that the enemy could not detect.
“Good morning, Fluttershy and Thunder Rumble,” Lady Zecora, director of the Poniet Cung for this group greeted the two as they walked up to her with bowls in hoof, “On your assigned tasks today, take care not to stumble.”
“Yes, Lady Zecora… we shall do our very best…” Fluttershy assured her, with the calm, serene voice that she had retained from happier times.
Lady Zecora dipped her head to her out of respect as she turned to the next pony in line, who had his spear slung up in his green, cotton vest. All ponies in the camp looked up to Lady Zecora as though she were their own mother, as her endearing way of speaking in rhymes seemed to remind everyone of a simpler time where things such as rhyme were spoken with laughter and glee. She was also a fierce fighter, perhaps the most of them all, being a zebra, and earned the respect of her fighters through matronly treatment and even temperament as she led them against the Changeling invaders. As a powerful figure in the guerrilla movement to force the Changeling army out and return ponies to their previous way of life, Lady Zecora had been successful in many surprise attacks and maintained her stronghold, tucked deep in the jungle longer than most had. Another feather in her hat, and perhaps the most important, was the formulation of the “Changeling rub”, a green concoction made of local plant saps and juices that would reveal if a pony was actually a Changeling or not.
Carrying his leader’s invigorating bowl of breakfast, he followed Fluttershy to a patch of ground where his best friend, Silvermane, sat eating his breakfast. A barber before the war with the Changelings, Silvermane was a master at weapon maintenance, and actively helped the camp devise better blades and spear tips when he wasn’t fighting. He looked up to the two with a glad smile, and nodded to them as they sat down.
“Looks like it’s going to be a large skirmish at the Vine River today,” he said as he tightened down his knives.
“Yeah, I hope we can thin the Changelings out some more, Pinkie seems to think that if we win this battle we might be able to move closer to the fields, and take action towards them,” Thunder Rumble mentioned as he took a long sip of the warm, full bodied soup, slurping up a red thorn berry as he did so. Fluttershy nodded quietly as she blew on her own.
“Hmm… perhaps we could even set hoof in Ponyville once again before year’s end,” Silvermane hoped quietly as he finished downing the last drops of his own soup.
Just as he did, the haunting sound of a violin, made from jungle scraps with tight vines as strings began. The plucky, thronging tones were a part of an old tribal song from the area that were meant to ask why ponies had to waste their lives in war. It was a song often played before they went to battle, a lamentation, but also a song of respect for those that had been lost, and a recognition of a courageous, though destructive cause. As the song cascaded through the dense green rainforest, Thunder felt a sinking feeling that this could very well be the very last time he ever spoke to his friend. As he considered this, he heard the sound of Pinkie calling out to the fighters that it was time to get into squads.
“Well, it looks as though it is time for me to be off to the rigours of combat,” Silvermane said as he picked up his spear and turned to the squad forming on the far right of the group.
“Hey, Silvermane,” Thunder began, and put a steady hoof on his friend’s shoulder, “May the winds of fortune and victory carry you forward.”
The grey pony dipped his head in silent thanks and walked over to his waiting comrades. Thunder watched them as they split up and made their way silently into the depths of the humid jungle, swatting mosquitoes with their swishing tails. Once they had gone, Thunder turned to Fluttershy and spoke to her softly.
“I hope they beat ‘em. I’d like to see your cottage one day.”
“Oh… I’d love to take you there, if the Changelings didn’t burn it down. It’s wonderful there…” Fluttershy informed him as she took the final sip of her rejuvenating brew.
“Of course it will be,” Thunder assured her and pressed his face against hers.
The two sat next to one another for a short while after, Thunder finishing his soup and feeling the beat of Fluttershy’s heart as he moved over to her side. Both enjoyed one another’s closeness until they felt it was time to get out and check the traps. Side by side, they walked into their hut and retrieved their spears. They shared a heartfelt good bye before setting down separate paths to look for enemy combatants that were caught or killed.
While he walked, Thunder Rumble listened to the raucous screeches of brightly coloured birds, and peered amoung the brilliantly verdant leaves that sprouted from a number of ferns and the fruit bearing trees that grew overhead. The canopy seemed to hold in the humid, sweltering heat of the rainforest, and made the jungle a dark and foreboding place from which any number of vicious creatures might leap. He had himself become a master of weaving his way through the abundant underbrush, and had been taught to slink quietly amoungst it, making no more noise than a tiger on the hunt. It was odd to believe that he had once been a weather planner in the rural town of Ponyville, now that he was taught how to effectively sneak up and dispatch enemy forces. The Changelings, on the other hand, were noisy and generally unaware of their surroundings, which often made them easy targets, especially for the many traps that lay hidden in the jungle.
Nearing the trap that he was tasked with checking, he heard the sound in the jungle that put more fear into his heart than anything… a pony moving through the brush. Carefully posting himself up behind a tree, Thunder sank into the leaves of the wide bushes that surrounded him, his green and brown camouflage helping to conceal his form. His ears turning carefully upon his head towards the origin of the sound, he ascertained that it was either a pony walking, or a Changeling in the form of a pony. Gripping his spear tightly, he also figured that it must be short in stature, listening to the short intervals between steps. He would simply wait here until whomever it was triggered the trap… as everyone in camp knew where they were situated. It wasn’t until the voice of the little pony on the road sounded that daggers of doubt and regret icily pierced his heart.
“Hello? Is anyone here?” came the sweet, innocent voice of his daughter Blue Lily, shredding through the rotten leaves covering a time nearly forgotten.
Hearing the precious sound of his daughter’s voice, almost as if from an age gone by, froze every muscle in his body. The shock and surprise of hearing from a daughter he thought had been killed years ago prevented him from moving as he swallowed thickly. He wanted to turn, and rush out to her, to hold her, and kiss her and tell her that everything would be-
The dry, echoing thwang of a taut wire snapping went from Thunder’s ears in an intense reverberation that reached his very bones as his daughter stepped on the trip wire. Thunder’s eyes went wide with panic as a massive log lined with razor sharp wooden spikes swung down directly in the path of the wire. The next sound that Thunder heard was the sickening squelch of the spikes pushing deep into flesh, cutting their way into the internal organs of the little filly on the path. He was still frozen momentarily as he heard her body collide with the ground a little farther up the path than he was.
Finally finding the strength to move, he dropped his spear and bolted through the brush loudly, his eyes clouding over with tears that were already leaking from tired, well used ducts. As his hooves made contact with the soft track of the path, he blinked away his tears and caught the sight of his daughter laying on the forest floor, impaled along the full length of her body by the deadly trap that she had triggered.
Her hooves were making small, involuntary kicks as her torn nerves tried to compensate for the lack of brain communication they were receiving. She lay in a puddle of dark blood, some of which had spurted from her neck and major arteries in a crimson spray across the log and surrounding plants. Her laboured breaths came in tiny, desperate and fearful gasps that pushed through her open mouth and past her hanging tongue as blood rushed in to fill her lungs. Her eyelids twitched rapidly as her eyes darted all around the jungle, her body overwhelmed with sharp, excruciating pain that her brain was having trouble even registering. She only had a few more agonizing and soul burning seconds alive before she bled out into a warm puddle amoung the jungle grasses.
Thunder collapsed on the ground not inches away from her, taking in the grisly sight as shock was replaced with a feeling of soul crushing hopelessness. He was silent for a moment as his chest heaved with quiet sobs that prevented him from speaking. His head was ringing with singing blood pressure as his heart beat furiously in his chest, going cold as he watched his daughter’s eyes fail to recognize that she was not dying alone. Without anyone near to comfort her in her last moments.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Nnnn..nnn…nnnooooooooooooo! Lil……ey…. Lily nooooooooo!” erupted feelings of sorrow and grief as he watched his daughter’s eyes glaze over, and her back legs give two final kicks before resting still.
The often strong and steady colt collapsed into a sobbing, blubbering mess on the ground, all the strength in his legs failing him. Scenes of a better time, of a better life, flashed before his eyes as tears flowed endlessly without letting up even between fitful sobs. He remembered sitting at the end of the kitchen, watching her take her first steps into his hooves. He remembered her and her mother sitting at the table, sewing and laughing as they patched up his clothes. A memory of the first time they went fishing also passed by, with him carefully holding her hooves as he showed her how to cast.
After this, darker, more sinister memories came to mind. Recent ones, of him working with Pinkie to tie the rope that held this trap together. Of her overseeing his sharpening of the sticks, honing them to a fine, killing point. How they had cut the rope nearly halfway through to ensure that even the lightest step would snap it. He began to shake with uncontrollable regret and pain as he recalled smiling after it was all set up, proud of his first successful full sized trap.
“I…I…I… Oh… Celestia…. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” he whimpered pitifully as he lay in the grass, his eyes conveying how broken his soul was to any creature that may have been watching from the trees.
He lay there a moment longer, when the sound of hissing caught his ear. Shutting his mouth, he blinked his eyes and repositioned himself as he watched with complete and utter amazement as the corpse of his daughter slowly melted into the form of a fallen Changeling, which then melted, as they all did, into a black, oozing puddle before evaporating into thin air. For a few minutes, he stared at the deadly ends of the spikes, now clean of any blood or ooze. He took a few minutes to catch his breath, and felt his feelings of despair melt away into dull rage.
“Fucking Changelings!” he snapped furiously as he spat a fat gob of saliva onto the place where the Changeling combatant had been laying.
Sometimes they did that, turned themselves into kids to make the ponies hesitate. Wiping the tears from his eyes, Thunder felt the anger boiling in him as he went back for his spear. Once he had, he checked the surrounding area for any other enemies that might be in hiding. When he found nothing, he began the walk back to the encampment. As he did, he found himself thinking about his wife and daughter… who had both, as far as he had known, perished in the attack on Ponyville. He found himself thanking Celestia that he hadn’t had to watch either of them die… this trickery had been enough for one lifetime.
Despite his mind wandering back to his family before the war, he also found himself thinking of Fluttershy, who had probably already returned to camp by now. He had to live for her now, as she was his hope and the only way out of a past filled with death and despair. He felt whole when he was by her side, and she at his. He thought of these things the entire way home, whilst trying to keep an eye and ear on his surroundings.
Upon arriving at the entrance of the camp, he was greeted by the sight of his comrades working at building additional spears and boiling medicines of all kinds for when the injured attackers returned with their wounds. Scanning the camp, he noticed Lady Zecora and Pinkie having a quiet conversation over their usual “lion root tea”, as they talked logistics and strategy. He also noticed Berry Punch canning various wild berries from the jungle for meals while traversing the thick underbrush. Then finally, out of the corner of his left eye, he noticed Fluttershy. Turning his head to look at her, he took in her gorgeous yellow figure and her pink, flowing mane, happy to be coming back to her again.
The single ray of sunlight pushing through his murky canopy…
