The forest smells different… It smells… Angry…
These were the monster’s first thoughts. It wasn’t sure what had happened. The abomination still had the deer fawn in its mouth, but its appetite subsided as it realized it wasn’t in the same forest.
The creature is like no other. A one of a kind created by foul magics, though it didn’t know that. It was slightly larger than an Alaskan Malamute and was indeed canine. But that’s where the similarities ended. It was covered in a bone carapace, had a smooth head with only a large mouth that sported three rows of carnivorous teeth, and a meter long vertebrae-esque tail with a broad double-edged blade on the end. Its foreclaws articulated like hands, but the longest of them was a good six inches. Its hind legs were large and powerful, suited for the ambush predator’s leaping from the brush at its prey. It had a rudimentary intelligence on par with that of a toddler, but it knew it needed to eat. It quickly scarfed down the fawn, bones and all.
After that, it began to explore its new surroundings, the blind monster hearing and smelling its surroundings. As it was scrambling up a tree, it heard the strangest animal. Like a giant cat, but with wings! It was frightened because even though it could probably win the fight it was scared beyond belief of unnecessary fighting. If it just ran away, maybe it would leave the winged cat’s territory. And so it ran.
As it ran it realized the trees were thinning out. Chances are the treeline would mark a border it should cross, so it picked up the pace, and it began to tear up the ground as it went. It began to hear something… No, someone speaking in a language it had never heard before. Not to say it had a solid grasp on the concepts of language in general, but it understood that certain noises meant certain things and that they were generally more refined than the noises animals made to communicate. It beelined for the voice.
It could hear the outline of a small building of some sort, and many, many animals. It narrowed on the sapient one, the winged pony giving out a muffled shout of fear at the charging monster, which quickly died as it cowered behind her. It whimpered in a very doglike fashion, its head pointed out from behind the pony, looking towards the sound of the manticore. The pony picked up on the sound as well. She said something to it which the monster did not understand. It sat up and cocked its head, then scarfed down the rabbit The manticore had ceased its charge, growling from the treeline. The winged pony patted the monster on the head with her hoof. This, the monster understood, and its tail wagged, eliciting a smile from the winged pony. Though she was unable to communicate with this strange monster like other creatures, she would not force it back into the forest which it seemed to fear.
The monstrosity yawned in the middle of the pony’s cottage. She was taken aback by all its teeth, letting out a sharp gasp. No molars, she noticed. It really did just scarf down food. The pony left to her room, trying to sleep. The monster felt lonely and followed, curling up in the doorway. The pony said something to it and she went to sleep.
"O-Oh dear... I guess it wanted to go home...", Mumbled Fluttershy. It was the next morning, and the monster had left, which Fluttershy was secretly glad about. It was quite scary and she didn't think the animals particularly liked it, even the predators. So the day went on. Thankfully, Fluttershy had little to do since the animals were generally doing ok. Not two hours before she was going to go to bed, Fluttershy heard a shout of fear. Startled, the timid pegasus turned to look towards the Everfree forest where she had heard the sound come from.
Barreling out of the forest was the little monster, once again being chased by a manticore. This second time around it had certainly learned its lesson and was unlikely to return to the forest anytime soon. Anytime soon, that is, under its own volition. Of course, this time Fluttershy saw the danger and ran to the creature standing between it and the manticore, who once again ceased its charge at the forest's edge.
"Oh, you poor thing! Is that mean manticore bullying you again?", Fluttershy 'shouted'. In truth, it was only slightly louder than speaking volume. Nevertheless, it elicited a wince from the monster. While it hadn't actually understood the words, it gleaned that it was being chastised for doing something bad. Fluttershy noticed the effect immediately.
"Oh dear... I'm not upset, just worried.", She said with a genuine smile. The monster figured from the tone that it wasn't going to be punished, despite its obliviousness to the words. But then Fluttershy pat it on the head. Now, this... This the little monster understood. It yipped and jumped around the pony with glee.
~
The monster had followed Fluttershy around and was now watching her teaching birds to sing. The filly thought birds could sing by themselves, but maybe someone had to teach them? Did the parent birds teach the offspring? Was Fluttershy a stand-in because these birds didn't have a family? These are the kinds of thoughts that rolled through its young mind. She liked that idea. That someone would be family for someone without it. It could relate to those birds. It had spent so long looking for its parents after observing a wolf pack with cubs but had since abandoned the search. It had gotten a feeling she didn't have any parents at all. It was then that some loud with a horn frightened the birds away. The sudden noise also scared the monster into hiding behind Fluttershy. Of course, Fluttershy wasn't much better off, basically paralyzed.
~
She had followed Fluttershy to see the princess raise the sun. She had never seen someone raise the sun before and was curious as to how it would be done. But she didn't see the princess. Instead, there was... No one. A pretty looking pony had pulled up the curtain but no one stepped forward. Then a cloud appeared, followed by a big, scary-looking pony. The filly ran away immediately, all the way back to Fluttershy's cottage. She had little interest in big scary monsters. Ponies didn't have sharp teeth, after all.
It had cowered for a while under a table. It had noticed that the sun hadn't risen yet. That scared her a lot. The sun was supposed to be up. It was supposed to be warm. That was when she heard the loud pony and even Fluttershy going into the Everfree forest. She didn't like that. There was a scary manticore in there! She had to save Fluttershy!
~
She was frozen. She only saw two options, both of which terrified it. On one hand… Or hoof… Maybe claw? She could stay safe in the cottage, protected from the dangers of the forest by the woods’ edge. However, on the other appendage, she could go in and protect her new friend. No… She had to. She knew she was more durable than Fluttershy. The little monster took a moment to steel herself, then bolted out the door and into the forest. She ran and ran, following the familiar scent of Fluttershy, as well as the less familiar scents of what the monster presumed to be her friends. She followed and began to transform, skidding to a halt as her pony skin either calcified or ruptured to make way for a bony carapace. Teeth sharpen and push through gums, eyes sink and dissolve and claws push through hooves and flesh. It resumes its sprint, much faster though it had lost time. That’s when it heard the roar.
The manticore roared at the ponies, who mostly shrink back. Fluttershy makes a stand, though, approaching the creature. She was taking a total gamble here, but recognized that the manticore was well out of its territory. It was being abnormally aggressive, so something must have been wrong. As she was about to ask the manticore to show her its paw, her face was suddenly smattered with flecks of blood as a familiar little monster launched itself at the manticore’s throat, its powerful jaws locking on. The powerful inertia from its speed and weight did the work of ripping the beast’s throat open. As the manticore gurgled, pawing at the mortal wound in its throat, a sort of blood haze took over the little monster and it jumped at the dying manticore again. This time it used its tail to help anchor itself in the manticore’s back, claws tearing into its back to reveal its spine, which it began to pull out of the manticore with its mouth slowly and with great strain. This was the natural method of killing for the monster, a sight too gruesome for many of the ponies. The purple, blue and white ones threw up. The orange one looked away and the pink one was frozen, unable to tear her blue eyes from the horrendous scene. They simply hadn't seen this kind of violence before. Except for Fluttershy. Fluttershy recognized this creature and knew it feared manticores. Knowing this she figured why it may have disregarded that fear. So she approached it as it messily scarfed down chunks of the twitching, whining manticore. She had a determined but kind face.
“Hey, thank you for saving us, but you really didn’t need to go this far,'' She says with an almost uncharacteristic straight-forwardness. The monster stopped and “looked” at Fluttershy, cocking its head to the side like a confused dog. It jumps down in front of her. Applejack rushes forward but is blocked by a yellow wing. "No, don't hurt them. They only wanted to help”, She explained, “Besides, they’re obviously a predator. They eat meat and there’s nothing wrong with that.”. The monster’s tail wagged at this, not understanding the language as much as the tone. It sort of hugged. Fluttershy, also curling its tail around her protectively Fluttershy patted it on the head and it pulled back, as if now ready to be the guard of the party. Seeing that it wasn’t really that bad, the others went to it, taking turns patting it on the head and saying nice things that it didn’t understand. But Twilight stood stunned.
“How did you know it wasn’t going to eat you?!”, She exclaims.
“I didn’t.”, Fluttershy says cooly, “I knew that it was scared of manticores, but it came anyway. It probably thought we’d be upset with it, but sometimes you just need to show a little bit of kindness.”
~
Indeed, the monster followed the party, all the way to the old castle. It was there that it recognized the scary thing by scent. It started barking at Nightmare Moon. It didn't sound like a dog; it was too deep and rich of a sound. Nightmare Moon, however, simply tilted her head, raising an eyebrow. That changed when it lept at her, claws outstretched for a killing strike. Nightmare Moon was momentarily caught off guard by the predator. She quickly blasted it in the head with magic.
The six gasp as the monster’s head caves in and bursts, shards of bone and bits of viscera spattering the ground. The blast had knocked to Fluttershy’s hooves. She looked down at it horrified. She was no stranger to gruesome injury or death. It wasn’t commonplace but it happened. A lost fight with a bear or manticore, usually. But this… This is wanton murder. But before she could raise her head to let out an inner vicious hate, a stunned Twilight had since regained a modicum of composure. She was fiddling with some weird rocks and Nightmare Moon was monologuing. It was then that Fluttershy heard something from the little monster. She looked down and her eyes widened. The thing's head had started to regrow, the skeleton, tendons, tissues and finally the carapace. Fluttershy was both relieved and revolted at the process. To her bewilderment, it nips a bit of her hair. On the way out it catches a bit of Rarity’s as well. On the way out, because it was frightened of the initially nice voice of Twilight becoming loud and harsh as she and the other ponies slowly floated into the air. That was enough to send the monster running.
As it fled deeper into the forest, it found itself near the manticore corpse, which it began to eat. It had lost a lot of mass and calories repairing itself. Regeneration was terribly inefficient, so it had to scarf down the entire body piece by piece. As it sat licking its claws, it wondered just how it would fit into this society. This was another mystery to it, this innate ability to form infiltration plans to blend into a group. But it never gave much thought to it and this time was no different. It began to read the bits of hair it had nabbed from the two ponies and read what a scientist would call nucleotides. It, of course, had no higher understanding of genetics than a toddler would about sentence structure. It could extrapolate meaning, and understand how to put things together for a desired result, but not actually understand the fine details. It never worried much, though, as it had never encountered a genome it couldn’t sequence given enough time. Indeed, it had immense raw mental power. So it sat, using itself as a testing ground for different combinations of genes before it finally stopped. As of now, it… She was a solid white pegasus filly with stark blue eyes. Her mane wasn’t very long, and she wasn’t happy about needing to use eyes. She would normally induce glaucoma but it had no idea where to even begin with that since that wasn’t in the cards for either pony as far as she could tell. She would need someone with the condition to cross-reference. However, it was then that a brilliant idea struck her. She closed her eyes in intense concentration as she forced accelerated mitosis on her mane until the wild curls covered her eyes. She wobbles around for a bit, getting used to a lack of stabilizing claws. She falls a few times but eventually figures out how to trot and even canter. She soon began to practice a gallop and was pleased when she got the hang of it, at least, after she ran into a few trees and fell. As she ran again, she winced. She realized that, when she looked down, her chest was bleeding. It must have been when she ran into that last tree. She quickly regenerated it, but the damage was done. She heard the familiar howl of hungry wolves. So she ran and ran, all the way to Fluttershy’s cottage.
The filly barreled through the forest faster than most fillies her age. But she continued to accelerate, tearing up the ground and starting to shout in fear. Her immense weight shoved her hooves into the ground, causing her to slow down because of how fast and hard she ran. She went faster. She wasn't completely used to this body but she knew the wolves were close. She went faster and faster until she knew she was almost to Fluttershy.
Fluttershy was tending to her animals when a familiar scene played out. Someone ran out of the Everfree forest, but this time it was a little pegasus. Her maternal instincts kicked in, and she half ran half flew to the filly's aid, but before she could, the white pegasus stumbled. And at the speed she was moving... It wasn't gonna be pretty. And it most certainly wasn't when she tumbled, rolling into the ground headfirst and smashing her snout in. She nearly broke her neck, but shifted fast enough to avoid that. She rolled on her back until her hind legs hit the ground at a bad angle..she tried to stop herself with her fore hooves but only managed to break her left foreleg. She ate dirt as she skidded to a halt on her stomach, cut, battered and bruised. She whimpered, not knowing the language but hoping the noises came across as she wanted them to, and they did. Even as she was tumbling, Fluttershy was skidding to a halt where she stopped.
"Oh my! You poor thing! We need to get you to the hospital!", Fluttershy exclaimed. However, she wasn't exactly the strongest pony. No way to get this hurt filly to the hospital on her own. She could ask a bear or other large animal to help, but that might scare the filly, and the last thing that she needed was to struggle. She tried to think of the closest pony.... Rainbow Dash! Her napping cloud's route should be somewhere overhead. She looked up and, sure enough, the telltale small, low hanging cloud was there. Fluttershy's wings lumped harder than ever to reach that cloud before the filly's condition worsened. She held nothing back, even her inherent shyness not preventing her shouting. "RAINBOW DASH! I NEED YOUR HELP RIGHT NOW!"
Rainbow Dash awoke, only momentarily in awe of Fluttershy's sudden break of character before the gravity of a situation that would make her friend shout hit her. Immediately she darted to the ground, far faster than even the panicked Fluttershy. She was taken aback by the hurt filly. As an athlete, and definitely not some kind of egghead, she was well versed in sports injuries. The tiny pegasus had reached some impressive ground speed before taking a terrible tumble. She quickly assessed that there wasn't likely any sort of spinal injury, so she decided to gently but swiftly airlift the filly straight to the Ponyville hospital. One thing she certainly noticed was that the kiddo was really heavy. Must be all that leg muscle.
The filly never went unconscious. She not only didn't need to sleep, but she didn't like it. More importantly, it was dangerous to sleep when injured, whether it be from a predator or her not regulating her mitosis. While she could deal with a tumor, they sucked out a lot of energy and left her extremely weak. But right now, she needed to actively not heal. Ponies didn't regenerate as fast as she did. She couldn't very well blow her cover that easily. She wished she could shut off her senses, but all she could do was close her eyes and pretend she wasn't soaring above the ground. Rainbow Dash soon landed, deftly getting the filly om her back as the one mare stampede nearly took out the doors on her way in.
"DOC!", Shouted Rainbow. The noise hurt the filly's ears. The natural infiltrator in her mind had been slowly breaking down words and context, but she didn't understand this yet. She was put on a bed and was asked questions. She had a brilliant idea. She would start repeating sounds that she had heard from the race she had first run into, mimicking the hairless apes that had caused her so much fear. She hoped that this would convey that she didn't know the language, which the doctors evidently picked up on much to its relief. It didn't pay attention to what they did, because it was suddenly very tired. It didn't know why, but it believed that it was because it had pushed this body so far. It waited until they went away for it to heal. It slowly set itself up to heal at a moderately accelerated pace, then crashed.
~
She had been out for almost a week. Not much had changed, though. She had spent another week with a pony named Twilight Sparkle learning words and letters, the latter of which she was not very good at. Diring that time it had goven itself a name: Hope. Now, the filly was walking around town with Fluttershy. The ponies didn't really think much of it, which she liked. Fluttershy was taking her to Applejack, who it was excited to meet. Apparently she had come to visit the filly in the hospital a few times while she was asleep. Of course, she loved meeting anything, even a rock. That's hyperbole. Well, usually. Sometimes she would happily greet a rock, striking up conversation the best she could. She said that she was practicing. This worried Fluttershy on some level. Yes, the filly didn't know how to speak completely just yet, but surely she had previous people in its life. Even as she mused, however, the two had reached the gates to Sweet Apple Acres. An orange pony with a funny hat trots up to the gate and opens it. Presumably, this is Applejack.
"Hey there, sugar cube! This tha' filly ah heard so much about?", She ruffled the filly's mane, smiling. "Ah got a sister not much older than ya, maybe y'all can be friends!"
"Friends!", She shouted, hopping up and down excitedly, "Friends! Friends! I like friends!"
It turns out that the little monster would be staying with the Apples for a while, on account of something that the monster didn't know. Hope was chasing a dragonfly, which was far more important. It was also a good opportunity to get more used to this body, which had a higher center of mass than her normal one, and the hooves were not ideal for fast maneuvering. She was also going to try flying… Well, maybe when she wasn’t scared of heights… Falling is scary! But even as she was remembering when a big mean bear had backed her right off a waterfall, she heard a thump followed by other, smaller ones. Sounded like apples. She can’t really digest non-meats, but apples are tasty! So she followed the sounds to their source, where she found the AJ bucking apple trees, making all the apples fall.
“Wow! Applejack is strong!”, it proclaimed.
“Wha’, thank you, sugarcube. Been buckin’ apples since Ah wa’ a filly.”
“I wanna try!”
Applejack chuckles and nods at the young pegasus. Of course, the little monster was actually very, very strong. But she wasn’t really thinking about that. Rather, Hope fully believed Applejack used a lot of force too, and that the harder she bucked, the better she would do. She mimicked Applejack, bucking a tree. There was a sharp crack as the tree's bark splintered, leaving the mighty plant's trunk bent slightly. When she turned around to see her handiwork, she almost cried, feeling terrible for hurting the tree. Even though she was a predator, and had no issue killing and eating prey, whenever something got hurt for reasons outside of being eaten, she simply couldn't stand it.
"Mister tree!", She exclaims with worry.
"Ah… Wow, sugarcube…", sputters Applejack. She was kind of at a loss for words. This is something Big Mac would have done on accident, not a little filly.
The tree in question was, in truth, on its last legs. Probably needed to be cut down soon. But the little monster didn't know that. All she saw was that she caused another living thing harm. It wasn't even like eating. She couldn't eat a tree! The tree didn't deserve to get hurt!
"I… I… I'm…”, she stutters, on the verge of tears.
"It's okay, sugarcube."
This didn't really stop her quivering lip and teary eyes, hidden behind her wild white mane. The little monster was practically mourning the tree, feeling the guilt of murder on her tiny shoulders. Applejack, in her sisterly wisdom, changed the subject.
"So ya don' got a name?". Applejack’s wide eyes returned to normal, her shock dissapaiting as she assessed the damage to the old tree.
The monster smiled, her guilt forgotten. "No, my name is Hope!"
"Ah see…"
Applejack wasn’t really giving the name thing the time of day, Rather, she was trying to figure out how in the hay a filly, let alone a pegasus, damaged such an old tree. It may have been sick, but old trees are strong nonetheless. Her thoughts turned to her sister, who would be excited to have this mysterious white filly as a friend. She felt wary letting this pony near her sister, but she’d just have to wait and see.
It was a dreary day, the sun hiding behind a veil of ominous, dark clouds laden with rain soon to fall on the land below. A soft wind blew through the trees and buildings, which made an inaudible whistling noise that only Hope could hear, though Winona could, too. It didn't hurt, but it was annoying. However, Hope and Winona were playing with each other happily, ignoring the whistling as best they could. As they were chasing each other, a thunderclap sent the two into hiding under the dining room table, both shivering with fright.
Apple Bloom had been up in her room, watching the storm in wonder. She was enthralled by the cracks of lightning and the ensuing thunder. Scootaloo had told her that if she kept the seconds between the flash of lightning and divided it by five, that would tell her how far away the lightning was in miles. The thunder had been sounding for a while, the low rumbles rolling across the sky. The weather team had put together a real number, that's for sure. It was the thunderclap that didn't give her the chance to count past three that threw her off. Somewhat rattled by the surprise, she headed down the stairs to check on Winona and the new filly named Hope.
"Oh, c'mon you two, that thunder ain't gonna hurt ya!", she says with an exasperated tone. She wasn’t really used to actually being older than someone.
"B-But it's loud! And scary! I always hide from the loud noises so it doesn't get me!"
Apple Bloom sighed, shaking her head. Another thunderclap. This time, Hope was so frightened that her teeth had become sharp. She closed her mouth a bit too hard while muffling her yelp, and drew blood which ran from the corner of her mouth. She very quickly licked the blood back, reclaiming the resource rich substance. The momentary pain still showed on her face.
"You okay, Hope?"
"Yeah…"
Hope yawns, feeling tired. She didn't normally get tired, but she hadn't totally figured out pony biology just yet, so she wasn't sure how to suppress sleep. Her regular body didn't even sleep in the first place. She decided that under the table was a good place to have a nap. Far from the windows and under something solid, she felt safe closing its eyes and letting that strange sensation wash over her.
~
It was a bright winter day. The low sun's light reflected on the snow below, though the heat that came with it was lost to the sheer cold present. The little monster was unaware of the beautiful scenery, the eyeless creature blind to the frozen trees and the skyward mountains. It was instead on its perpetual hunt, chasing down a fox. It skidded to a halt, hearing some sort of strange barrier in front of it. It was no longer in the forest, it knew that. The wind was no longer impeded by the great evergreens of its current home. It had come to the cold place mostly on accident, following a strange, tough path that felt like stone but different. It would occasionally hear a very loud, scary noise. It learned the hard way that freezing in fear would hit is hard and crack it open, sending it into the air. It ran away from the sudden heat, understanding that the scary hot fire was angry with it. From then on it stayed to the side of the strange path, and always ran far away when it heard the scary loud things. As it moved farther it seemed to get colder, but very slowly. It knew that some places are colder than others, but it didn't know it could be this cold all the time, even in the day. As it was walking, it made a revelation. When the cold came, many animals would become fat for when they went to sleep for a long time. If it was cold, then all the animals would be fat all the time… Which meant more food! Of this, it was certain, and doubled its resolve to travel this frightening path. And now here it stood, in front of some strange structure. It gave it a push and it splintered and broke, allowing the monster easy passage. As it was sniffing around, something creaked. The sound of a vaguely familiar animal crying out was heard, followed by a strange, clicky sliding sound. That was followed by a loud-
BOOM!
The thunderclap jolted Hope awake. She quickly noticed that a concerned Apple Bloom and Applejack had been trying to wake her up, but more pressingly that she was in a different place than she had fallen asleep in. That, combined with the dream, made her burst into tears. Both the Apples hugged her, Applejack cooing and Apple Bloom asking her if she had a bad dream. It took a while to calm Hope from her hysteria, but eventually she settled down enough to speak.
She breathlessly stuttered,"B-Bad dream! No more sleeping!"
"What happened, sugarcube?", Applejack asked. The concern in her eyes was evident, as if it was her own sister that had the ordeal.
"I… I was in the cold place and the loud noise came and…"
She trailed off, tearing up again. "Shh…", Applejack cooed, "That darn noise ain't gonna getcha here.". Internally, she sighed. Some bad things had happened to this filly to make her such a nervous wreck.
Hope looked at Applejack with wide eyes. "P-promise?"
"Remember Big Mac?"
"Yeah…"
"Ya' think anything's gonna get past 'im?". She was smiling now. Big Mac was physically capable, and she knew that Hope knew.
She was silent. She knew a number of things that could hurt Big Mac enough to get to she. But she shook her head. Then she smiled, breaking away from the orange pony in favor of her sister. For the first time in a long time, Hope felt loved. More importantly, Hope felt that she was actually, truly safe.
“Ya don’t need to trouble yerself with helping around the farm, sugarcube.”
That’s what Applejack had said to Hope when she asked what she could do to help. This didn’t sit well with Hope. Hope needed to do things, she couldn’t just lounge around all day. But there was something more important: Food. Hope was carnivorous and couldn’t change that at all, no matter the change in shape. While that had been something she accepted before, she was now a lot more conscious of it, given that everyone was a plant eater. How could she get food? She couldn’t go back to the forest, that was too scary. She could go at least a week without eating before she began to cannibalize her muscular tissues, but it had already been six days since her last hunt. And Hope wasn’t good at hiding it. She was moving more sluggishly and looked more tired than usual. As it was looking at the now clear sky through the window in Apple Bloom’s room, she heard the filly herself open the door and walk in.
“Hey Hope, ya better stay outta the orchard today, sis’ saw some timber wolves by the forest edge. One of ‘em got Mac, but he’s ok.”, she informed the little monster, “Just don’t head outside.”
“A wolf?”, Hope wondered aloud. She liked dogs and sometimes packs accepted her. Maybe she could make them go away by being nice.
“Kinda. They’re made of wood an’ can put themselves back together.”, Apple Bloom says.
“Oh… I can get rid of ‘em.”, stated Hope. She said it matter of factly. She wanted to help. She didn't really think too hard about being a four or five year old filly.
“Thas' funny, Hope. Whaddya wanna do since we can't go to the orchard? We could always make a run fer town. Maybe get some help-"
But Apple Bloom was cut off by Hope waking by and right downstairs. She looked out the window and, sure enough, she was making her way to the place where the timber wolves were.
Crunch
Crunch went the wolf's body. It reformed but hope crunched it again. Crunch and snap like the bones of her prey when she ground them to dust in her jaws. She was small but she was heavy. The things were held together by vines and magic but they went down all the same. She didn't take any pleasure in this. Quite the opposite. She had tried every way she knew to make them go away, but they hurt it instead. That was ok, she was used to being hurt, though it’s not as if she enjoyed it. More so she didn’t want these to hurt her friends, si better her than them. She didn’t want to lose any friends at all. She shouted the worst thing she knew at them as they tried to reform.
“Bad dog! Bad dog!”, she repeated. She had tears in her eyes as her small hooves stomped the now inanimate wood into pieces, getting splinters in her legs. It hurt, the large cut in her side bled, but not too bad. It was big and it hurt but it wasn’t life threatening, even to a normal filly. “Bad dog!”, sge shouts, “Bad dog-”, but she falters, unable to continue. She falls, crying from both pain and grief that she had hurt and maybe even killed another living thing. And so she curled up amidst the splintered remains, closing her eyes and letting sleep take her, hopefully to somewhere nice.
