Building Ponies

Sapphire looked upon the fields around her and all she could feel was awe. Fields of food, growing under the tender care of these Earth ponies. Marsh Steps, the giant mare Healer Thistle Burr had introduced her to, had taught her what was a weed and what was growing food. Marsh Steps worked now with a filly sitting on her back, babbling nonsense with the occasional ‘Mama’ thrown in.

A kick from the foal inside her reminded her that soon that would be her. She’d be out here tending these fields with a colt or filly sleeping in a basket or curled up on her back. How did mares know how to carry a foal without dropping it? Did it take a lot of practice?

Oats, radishes, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, assorted flowers, even rows of blackberries and blueberries. All this food that they didn’t have to forage for.

She was standing in the carrot field now. She had to look closely to avoid stepping on the sprouts. Marsh Steps had told her that it was best to remove the whole root of the weed or it would just grow back. It was hard on the neck, but it left more room for the carrots and they would grow bigger for it.

Sapphire remembered winters where her dam hadn’t been able to find enough to feed her and her sisters. Her oldest sister was given plenty to eat, but Sapphire and her younger sister had only the leftovers, if anything at all. Rose Quartz hadn’t survived that one winter.

There were so many foals here! She’d never seen so many all in one place.

“Excuse me, Marsh Steps?” She caught the older mare’s attention. “I…that is…”

She used to pity Earth ponies because they didn’t have horns, because they couldn’t lift things with magic.

“What’s your question, Sapphire?” Marsh Steps smiled with utmost patience.

“How…How does your herd care for so many foals?” She forced herself to ask. “I understand that you clearly have no shortage of food, but they take so much time and energy, and every mare over fifteen seems to have at least one.”

“My friend, Holly Berry, watches foals for the ponies who are busy. And well, foal-watching duty gets passed around in most groups.” She shrugged. “There’ve been a lot fewer foal deaths since Healer Burr learned her craft.”

Healer Burr, that’s what everypony called her. Always Healer first.

“Foal-watching gets passed around in most groups?” She didn’t feel ready to ask about Healer Burr just yet.

“Yeah?” Marsh Steps frowned, nodding. “Didn’t your dam ever have one of the other group mares watch you from time to time?”

“Now when you say ‘group,’” She cocked her head curiously. “You don’t mean herd, do you?”

“Maybe you have another word for it.” Marsh Steps looked over her shoulder to check the filly. She’d stopped babbling and appeared to be watching the conversation with great interest. “A group, all the mares following a stallion, with all their foals. Like, I’m following Tender Roots, he’s my stallion. And Holly Berry is in my group, but she’s not following a stallion right now. So everypony in my group is Me, my fillies, Tender Roots, Holly, and her fillies. Get it?”

“I’ve heard the term ‘following’ before, but what does it mean? Your herd doesn’t travel anymore.” She knew that certainly wasn’t the arrangement unicorns had.

“Well, uh,” She stomped her hoof. “Look, let’s sit down for a bit and I’ll explain everything for you. Come on now.”

“Following is…Mother Earth, I don’t know how to explain this. Following just is. Most foals pick it up just watching the mares and stallions around them.” She grimaced. Sapphire watched her slide her foal off her back in a neat, practiced motion. Somehow without dislodging her baskets.

“I can’t quote Herd Law for you, but Following is a big deal. When you Follow somepony, you have a responsibility to them.” Sapphire listened intently.

“A mare Following a stallion is saying she’s depending on him to keep her and their foals safe, and in turn she provides companionship and bears his foals.” She started. “A stallion Following a mare is saying he’ll keep her and all their foals safe, in return for that companionship and carrying on his bloodline.”

“So its just mating?” Sapphire blinked. Marsh Steps was acting like this was a much more complicated concept. Sapphire didn’t need mating explained to her.

“No, it’s not.” Marsh shook her head. “See, me and Holly? We’re also Following Thistle Burr.”

“That means, we’re her go-to mares when she needs something done. Like all this planting?” Marsh waved a hoof over the fields before them. “She put me in charge of all of it. I get to decide what gets planted and where and when. She trusts me to do that and make sure there’s enough to get the herd through winter every year.”

“And that means, I’m also counting on her to…to be herself. To be her Blessed self.” Marsh laughed softly, pulling her filly in for a hug. “I would have died if Thistle Burr hadn’t saved me and it’s thanks to her that I have Lily Pad here.”

“Blessed?” Sapphire repeated softly.

“Magic Blessed and Magic Touched,” She nodded. “Magic Touched is when you have a mark and a passion and you make things, things that last. Like those buildings? They’re gonna be here long after the rest of us have been put in the ground. These fields? Ponies will be growing things here hundreds of years from now. That’s Magic Touched.”

“Magic Blessed, that’s all Thistle Burr. None of this would be possible without her.” She said seriously. “You could trace everything that’s happened since the Light-That-Wasn’t came to us, and none of it would’ve been possible if Thistle Burr didn’t exist.”

“Huh,” Sapphire thought about that.

“Unicorns don’t do groups.” She startled herself by saying. “We…Mares aren’t supposed to take on more than they can handle. My mother had three fillies, and when she couldn’t feed all of us, she chose to feed the two with the best chance of surviving.”

“I remember some mares doing that.” Marsh nodded sadly. “Nowadays the idea makes me feel sick, and nopony has done it since Starlight cast Light out, but that was just a few weeks after the Light-That-Wasn’t.”

“Bloodlines are watched, but if two mares are following the same stallion they usually avoid each other.” Sapphire informed her. “Daze and me? We’d never said more than two words to each other before we left.”

“Far be it for me to criticize how other ponies do things,” Marsh frowned in concern. “But what kind of sense does that make? I don’t live with Tender Roots’ other mares, but if any of them ever needed somepony to mind the foals I’d always volunteer and I know they’d do the same for me. If you don’t have that support then when times are lean, you get left behind.”

“I think it’s just something that started because mares got jealous because sometimes the stallion would spend more time with one mare than the other.” She admitted. “But if all the mares avoided the mares following their stallion, then it was easier to ignore how much time the stallion spent with somepony else.”

“Well, I guess that’s one way to do it.” Marsh’s snout wrinkled. “Geez, if I got in a fight with Flood Plains every time Tender Roots slept in her hut I could definitely see some new rules being made.”

“Flood Plains?” A name she didn’t know.

“Oh you’ll recognize her right off. Flood Plains is the biggest mare in the herd.” Marsh chuckled. “She isn’t more than a hoofstep shorter than Lead Rockslide himself.”

Stars Above they grew their ponies big here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“And you do this…everyday?” Light didn’t blame the unicorn for her disbelief.

Helping Holly Berry mind the foals wasn’t a job for the light-hearted.

Fourteen foals between the ages of two and eight. Watching one or two foals wasn’t so difficult, but more than a dozen? Well, Holly had a talent for this and Light told stories, that usually drew them in enough to stay in sight.

“Story! Story! Story!” Five foals chanted, building on each other louder and louder.

“Just run along the edges real quick and count them. If any are missing, tell Holly.” Light instructed her charge for the day. Daze left in a…daze.

“Alright everypony, does anypony have a request?” She addressed the crowd. A few foals were lingering nearby, waiting to see if it would be one of their favorites before deciding to run off again.

“The Bad Stallion!” A filly raised her hoof, waving it haphazardly through the air.

“No, the First Pony!”

“Foal of the Wolves!”

“Okay, okay,” Light reared on her hind legs to get their attention. “Today, we’ll be telling the story of the Foal of the Wolves!” A cheer rang out. Some of the older foals came closer. Foal of the Wolves was a favorite among them.

“I counted, everypony’s here.” Daze came back and sat beside her. Light nodded and squinted, trying to make out Holly Berry behind the crowd of foals.

“It starts, as all foals do, with their dam and sire.” She began.

The Dam and Sire were normal ponies. They followed the herd and did everything expected of them. When the Dam’s heat came, she and the Sire worked together to bring their first foal into the world. Job done, the Sire left to service his other mares and left the Dam with their unborn foal. Months passed, and eventually a colt was born. All the other mares the Sire had seen bore fillies, so he was the only colt that year.

When he was small, he played with the fillies because they all loved the same games. He knew when he was older he would run with his Sire and learn everything a Stallion must know, but that felt a long ways off.

One day, when the herd had stopped in a mountainous forest somewhere, he heard a strange sound. It sounded like an animal that had been hurt, and the Colt felt bad about this. He followed his ears trying to find it, never noticing that he was being drawn further and further away from the herd.

Finally he found the creature! It had silvery fur and big ears and a soft, swishy tail. It had fallen into a hole and couldn’t climb out. The Colt realized quickly that the animal was a baby, but he didn’t recognize what kind. It couldn’t be a squirrel, it was much too big for that. And it wasn’t a rabbit, the ears were not long enough.

It looked up at him and whined, sad and scared. The Colt stopped trying to think of what animal it could be and focused on how to get it out of the hole. He found some rope and tied a knot into it, then swung it down to the baby below. Careful to not get it around the neck, he was able to slowly pull the baby up.

He untied it, feeling proud of himself for saving the baby animal. He was sure the other foals would be very impressed.

It was then he heard a terrible growl.

Even a foal knows the sound of a hungry wolf. The Colt wanted to run, but he was too afraid. Slowly, he turned and saw the monster behind him.

It had silvery fur and big ears and a soft, swishy tail. But it didn’t whine. It snarled, flashing sharp teeth. It was then he knew his mistake, for the baby he’d saved was nothing so harmless as a squirrel or a rabbit. It was a baby wolf and the mother was here to eat him.

Too scared to run and too small to fight, the Colt fell to his stomach and covered his head with his hooves. He heard the growling stop, but he could smell the wolf coming closer. It was sniffing him, the same way he sniffed a flower before he ate it. He wished then that he hadn’t left the herd. He wished his Dam was there to hold him and his Sire was there to kill the wolf.

But the wolf didn’t eat him. Maybe it wasn’t hungry right that moment or maybe it felt grateful to the Colt for saving its baby. Either way, it didn’t eat the Colt, but instead picked him up and carried him away.

The Colt was taken to the wolf’s den, where it met the other puppies and the rest of the pack. He thought for sure that they were going to eat him, but they didn’t.

He tried to find his way back to the herd, but they had already given up searching for him and had moved on. Unable to find them, he was left with the wolf pack.

Over time, he began to forget the life he’d once known. He couldn’t remember his Sire’s face or his Dam’s voice. He couldn’t remember the names of his half-siblings. Eventually, he forgot words altogether.

He lived with the pack. Although he didn’t eat their meat, he did sleep with them and played with the pups the way he’d once played with the foals. By the time he’d grown into a Stallion he was more wolf than pony.

It was then that another herd passed through. The wolves stalked these ponies, waiting for them to fall asleep and drop their guard. The Colt watched the herd too, barely remembering that he was of their kind and not merely a strangely shaped wolf himself.

One mare wandered away from the herd. Not far, but far enough. He looked at her and thought she seemed sad and lonely. He thought she looked pretty.

The wolves had noticed her and moving in slowly so as not to alert their prey. The Colt was conflicted. On one hoof, the wolves had raised him and he barely recalled being a pony. On the other, he didn’t want her to die.

The wolves crept out, eager for the hunt and they reveled in the fear the mare showed. They separated her from the herd easily and were ready to run her down.

But the Colt stopped them. He barked and growled just like a wolf, and faced the alpha male with his own icy gaze. Never before had he stood against the wolves, the alpha male was the same pup he’d rescued so long ago.

The wolves left. Maybe they didn’t want to fight the Colt they’d grown up with. Maybe they decided to look for an easier meal. Either way, the Colt knew he would no longer be welcome at the den.

“Kind Eye, is that you?” The strange mare asked him. The Colt did not recognize the name and grew nervous when the herd crowded around him. “It is you, Kind Eye! The colt who vanished from here ten years ago! Look at you now, a stallion who even wolves fear!”

The Colt did not speak. He didn’t remember how.

“Don’t you recognize me? Our Dams were friends and we often played together! It is me, Dawn Flash!” He remembered then one of the fillies he’d once played with.

“It has been so long! How did you survive so long in these mountains without your herd?” They crowded him more.

Finally, he couldn’t take anymore. He snarled like a wolf and drove them back. He galloped a distance away and then stopped, not knowing where to go. The herd approached him again, but Dawn Flash stopped them.

“I can see you have been alone for too long, Kind Eye.” She spoke softly, as if speaking to a scared foal. With no herd and no Dam and no Sire, that’s all the Colt was. Though his body had grown larger, his mind was the same young colt that had wandered too far. “Run with us, Kind Eye, and we will teach you again how to be a pony.”

The Colt did not know what else to do, so he followed them. After some time, speech began to return to him. He told them some of what had happened to him. He taught them the ways he’d learned for fighting wolves and how they hunted. He showed mares to sleep in circles with their foals shielded within. He taught stallions to sleep at equal distance, standing and ready to run.

And what he taught was spread through the herds. Before where wolves had decimated their numbers, now ponies knew how to fight back. They knew numbers was their greatest advantage and that a wolf never truly hunts alone. They learned to treat the wounds caused by claw and fang and they learned to recognize the signs of their passing.

Kind Eye became Wolf Eye and was welcomed as a Stallion. He never became a full pony again, but Dawn Flash stayed with him through all the hard times.

And thus the Foal of the Wolves returned to his herd.

Daze blinked out of her…daze. The foals cheered at the conclusion of the story and began separating themselves into groups of ‘wolves’ and ponies, with one pony to be Kind Eye.

“My, they’re always a little more manageable after a good story.” Holly Berry walked up to them. “I don’t have to worry about any of them wandering off for at least an hour now.”

“Hopefully I’ll have some new stories for them soon.” Light looked sideways at Daze. The unicorn mare took a moment to realize Light was talking about her.

“You want to hear unicorn stories?” She asked in confusion. “Why?”

“Because they’re stories and I don’t yet know them.” She offered honestly. “I’ve always loved stories and I love telling them even more. If we have unicorns in our herd then we should have some unicorn stories too. I’m sure your future foals will appreciate it.”

“Right, my…future foals.” Daze mumbled, fidgeting uncomfortably. “We’re not all that big on stories though, I don’t know more than two or three.”

“Really?” Light boggled at this. “But…how do you pass the winter hours? What do you do to make your foals tired enough to sleep in summer?”

“Well, we sing.” Daze shrugged.

Sing? Some ponies sang, sure, but for that to replace stories?

“Sunstone, oh sunstone,
Shine brightly for me
Moonstone, oh moonstone,
How kind can you be?

Diamonds and emeralds,
Sapphires and more,
Rose Quartz and Feldspar
dug free from the core.

There’s rubies and garnets,
for ponies to take
But beware of the pyrite
that cursed gold fake

They gleam and they glisten
under the light,
Topaz and Zircon
Are a pony’s delight.

So keep your eyes open
and never do fret
The first gem you find
You never forget.”

It was Light’s turn to come out of her daze. That was different from the two or three line ditties some ponies made up while working. The song continued for ages, naming gems Light recognized from her dam’s stories but had never seen. Some of them seemed associated with protection or foalbirth, others were warned against for being unlucky.

Light considered herself to have a good memory but she had no idea how Emerald Daze was keeping all those gems in order. She had her eyes closed as she sang, smiling softly from verse to verse. The foals had all noticed and had abandoned their game to listen.

When she finished it seemed to take Daze a few seconds to gather herself. Light almost thought she’d throw herself into another song, but the foals intervened.

“That was so pretty!”

“What’s a lapis?”

“Are gems like what Starlight has?”

They clamored with their questions. Daze clearly didn’t know how to handle it. Light winced in sympathy, remembering when she first started coming here to help Holly. She hadn’t been any better at dealing with foals then. She couldn’t even play the same run and shout games they enjoyed thanks to her poor eyes.

“Alright everypony, that’s enough!” Holly clapped her hooves together. “Can’t you see poor Emerald Daze is overwhelmed? Be polite and ask your questions one at a time.”

Light settled back to watch.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“So, we are building a wall.” Onyx eyed the pile of rocks. None were smaller than his head. Most were quite a bit larger.

“Not by ourselves,” Pink Peach smirked at his look. Already several ponies were lining up and hefting the largest stones onto their backs. The biggest ones would be the foundation. “I’ve stuck branches in the ground to mark the line for the walls. Should be about as thick as a stallion, well,” She looked him over. “An Earth pony stallion anyway.”

“And…how high?” His eyes followed the ponies spreading out. A dozen pairs looked back at him.

“I’m thinking twice as tall as Lead Rockslide.” She rolled her eyes and elbowed him in the ribs. “C’mon, it’s a big project but this wall is going to save a lot of ponies. There are monsters around and I’d like to keep them out of the village, wouldn’t you?”

“Ah, very well.” He eyed one of the big rocks and narrowed his eyes. She hefted a good sized one onto her own back and looked back over at him.

Still glaring at that rock. He wasn’t going to be moving it like that. Sure he wasn’t any bigger than a regular mare, but he’d pulled a whole sledge for a fair distance yesterday. He couldn’t be balking at the first stone!

Pink’s rock tumbled from her back as a glow wrapped around Onyx’s rock and lifted it into the air. It did not fly with the ease and grace of a bird, but it hovered a full two feet over the ground. Nothing underneath, nothing but a sunny glow wrapped around it.

Onyx grunted, a glowing line connected the rock with his horn as he pulled it along behind him. His eyes darted back and forth between the path he followed and the rock. Every time he looked away from the rock, it fell two inches. Every time he looked back, it rose two inches.

Pink picked up her rock again and followed. When they reached one of the markers Onyx stopped whatever he was doing and allowed the rock to plummet back down to earth. It settled hard enough to kick up some dust. She put her stone right beside it, fitting them as close together as she could.

And then she whirled on the unicorn.

“What in the name of the Good Mother Earth was that?” She demanded.

“Magic.” Onyx took a deep breath. He didn’t look exhausted but it clearly hadn’t been effortless.

Pink wanted to keep gawking. Unfortunately, everypony else wanted to keep gawking too. She stretched a crick out of her neck and turned towards her volunteers.

“Back to work everypony! I’ll figure out what’s what!” She promised. Most of them started moving again, but Pink knew she wasn’t imagining the eyes following them as she pulled the unicorn some distance away.

“You moved a rock without touching it, how?” She narrowed her eyes at his horn.

“When the Light-That-Wasn’t came to us, it took some time for any of us to realize anything had changed. It wasn’t until a Manticore attacked and a stallion lifted a branch to fend it off that we discovered this magic we now have.” He demonstrated by lifting a pebble. Pink poked it. It stayed in the air in defiance of every natural law she knew.

“This is something all unicorns can do, provided they are above a certain age.” He explained. “We call it telekinesis. Most unicorns are only able to lift two or three objects at a time, and even then only of a certain weight. Stronger unicorns can lift more heavier objects, such as large stones.”

“Is that so?” Pink scratched her chin. “How high can you lift things?”

“Pardon?” She poked the pebble again.

“I mean, if you had a rock like one of the foundation stones, how high could you lift it? How close do you have to be to lift something? Could I chuck this pebble to the other side of the village and you pick it back up from here?” She asked. “Work with me here, this could make my building project so much easier.”

“I can only move something if it is within my line of sight and no heavier than what I could lift with my body. Small things are obviously easier to move.” He lifted up two more pebbles.

“Now this could be useful!” Pink rubbed her hooves together. “C’mon, Onyx, let’s see how much foundation we can lay before running out of rocks. After that little display I’ve got a feeling my volunteer rates are going to soar!”