"Awwww... shewt!"
Apple Bloom fumbled about, wincing in pain. She felt like a grade-A dummy. Very slowly and oh-so-carefully, she tried to put her weight onto her hoof-
"AEIOW!! Sheee-- MMMMMnf!" She bit her lip. Yup. That ankle was definitely broken. She glared at the knotty root which had tripped her up and caused her to tumble, only just barely containing the urge to kick it. Who puts a root like that there anyways? Poking up out of the dirt like that, it was almost like one of those traps the mares always stumbled over in Rainbow Dash's Horror-story books. You know, the kind where some dumb skinny city-fillies were all running from some masked baddie in the woods as he chased them all down one by one and...
She shuddered. taking in her surroundings, maybe that wasn't something she needed to be dwelling on. Looking around for the first time she realized with some dawning horror that she had absolutely no idea where she was.
The mare had been walking through the orchard for hours, muttering to herself or just cursing out loud. Neither getting older nor getting hitched had done a thing to calm the energetic mare. It had also done nothing to calm her temper. Much like her elder sister, she had a good head for business, a strong respect for family tradition and never backed down from a challenge to her pride. This all-too-often got her into shouting matches and cider-house brawls. This had earned her quite a reputation in town, and a hefty tab for broken bar-stools. As her cousin Fiddle-sticks would put it, 'That mare would wade through Tartarus to lay hoof to a circle saw, if'n it gave her tha eye.'
In this case it had gotten her into yet another argument with family which ended in her saying some things she would regret later before storming off. She would cuss a blue streak at anything in earshot, kick any random debris she encountered and wander without direction for a while. Generally this was until the heat in her freckled cheeks stepped down from critical mass. Normally, her sessions of cussin' and fussin' would only take her as far as the the other side of the Sweet Apple Fruit-Bat Preserve or maybe that Summer Cottage they built for Cousin Braeburn and his Feller. This time, however, she really had no idea where she was.
The woods around her were heavy, dark and not at all welcoming. With a nervous glance above, she confirmed her fear. She must have been walking for hours. As thick as the trees were here she could only barely see hints of the sky peeking through the treetops. There was no wind here, only still leaves in the canopy above. Between their branches, she could see the hues of the changing colors of the sky teasing the coming sunset. How far had she wandered off? This couldn't be the Everfree Forest. She knew she hadn't headed off in that direction or nearly that far. She hobbled about, much more carefully now, examining the trees for any familiar signs. With the dense woods and fading sunlight, there was little to go by.
This was bad. Apple Bloom had heard enough ghost stories and campfire horror tales as a filly to put the fear of Faust into a dozen-dozen foals. She knew most of them to be the spooky fun of any good weekend scare-away. Being a country pony, she also knew how many of them had some truth to them and how many things really did go bump in the dark places of the woods. There were good reasons ponies didn't settle this far away from civilization.
Very good reasons.
This far out, if her best guess was right, she was in territory which was no place for ponies. It was a place for other things. This far from home was where the older things called home, the things with names no pony alive could recall.
She peered into the dimming light which crept in from the treetops. How could she be this stupid? So far gone into the wooded lands, the trees were clustered together too thickly. It was impossible for her to find the sun or gauge her directions to get back home. This wasn't the kind of thing an adult mare did. This was the kind of mess she would've fallen into as a foal, a "Cutie-mark Crusader". Back then it was always like that. She and her friends would get into mischief. Her older sister and her friends would get them out. After a light scolding, they would reconcile, hug it out and go home for a nice dinner with Granny.
But she was an grown-up now. There were no more "Cutie-mark Crusaders". Her friends had moved on to their own lives. There wasn't likely any dinner waiting at home. Granny was getting too old to work these days and her sister was more concerned with her own family to swoop in and save the day for her.
Lost in thought, she began to feel the creeping cold of fear in her gut. How late was it? Even in the unknown terror of the woods, Princess Celestia's sun drove away the horrors of the terrible dark but here in these woods, what was the day? Where was the halo of the morning to protect her? The icy bile slowly and maliciously dug it's nails into her stomach and snaked it's way up her throat. She could feel them, the eyes of the things in the woods. They were out there, she knew it. She couldn't see them yet but she knew they were there. In a short while, she knew they would come for her. Then, her worries would be over with.
Something grabbed her from behind, harshly jerking her off her hoofs and sending her tumbling onto her flank several meters away. She crashed into the tall grass with a painful thud. The blunt pain in her plot was nothing compared to the daggers which shot up from her injured hoof. She yelped as much in agony as sudden fright. Doubled over, she hugged her broken limb to her stomach. Already, her eyes were bleary with tears from the sharp razors slicing up and down her spine from her hoof. She could feel the bones inside her limb, jerked about unnaturally, cutting and turning.
The ghosts of the deep woods had come for their dinner.
No.
She gritted her teeth. Flecks of spittle hissed out through a clenched snarl. She tossed her rusty red mane from her glaring eyes and bit back the pain like a cornered hound. She was an Apple, and she was the toughest mare on the farm. Whatever thing of the bowers that had come for her, it was going to have to work for it. She wasn't Granny Smith's baby foal. She was Apple Bloom, the terror of Ruby Red's Cider Stall, the barehoof-brawlin' champion and the only mare to lay out the entire Manehatten Buckball team with nothing more than her own two hooves and a mean-streak. She was nobody's breedin'-stock and she had the dragon's tooth she bucked clean outta Ember's head on a necklace to prove it. Rallied, she scrambled backwards and clambered to her hooves, ready to buck the ever-lovin' horse-apples out of whatever midnight monster had decided to try its luck on the Rusty Pride of Sweet Apple Acres.
What she saw was not at all what she expected.
She rose to find not a monster but a mare. In the dim light, she made out the unkempt flowing mane of long golden-hay straw flowing from under a worn stetson. For the briefest moment, it looked for all the world like...
"Applejack...?"
She squinted and rubbed her good hoof at her eyes. Wiping away the dust on her cheeks and the stinging tears, she could make out the stranger now. No, not Applejack. This wasn't her sister.
The mare was an earth pony, square-shouldered and all lean muscle. She wore a ratty, tattered over-shirt, a paler shade of rust red than Apple Bloom's mane, this over a torn white undershirt. A very long mane of dusty blonde, the same shade of golden straw as her elder sisters, draped, frazzled and haywire from under the brim of her chocolate-brown stetson to flow past her barrel. She couldn't make out the strangers eyes in the shade of her hat but she could feel their intensity bearing down on her as she shifted a toothpick from side to side in a set jaw.
The stranger regarded her in silence as she coiled what looked to be a rawhide whip around a hoof, sizing up the smaller mare. Apple Bloom huffed, tucking her wounded limb to her stomach protectively. Not about to back down, the scrappy Apple bowed up, ready for the fight. "Stranger, I don't know who you are but you just bucked yerself into a heap'a hurtn'."
The mare tilted her head and chuckled. "Now, don't yew go gittin' no prickly-pears under yer saddle, missy. I din't mean yuh no harm." Her thick, backwoods accent was as heavy as Granny Smiths when she was four mugs into a fresh barrel of cider, maybe more. Her tone was stern but warmer, friendlier than Apple Bloom had expected from her glare. The resemblance to her sister was uncanny. She even sounded like Applejack. The mare made a motion with her head towards a ankle-high pile of earth and debris a few meters away. "Yew wuz about ta step hoof-deep'n thet there moss-widder mound."
Apple Bloom narrowed her eyes and studied the earth and twigs. Sure enough, the stranger was telling the truth. From within a tiny crevice of the broken soil, Apple Bloom spied the sharp, grasping forelegs and beady jade eyes of the flank-sized arachnid.
She gulped. Within that earthen mound was one of the most poisonous spiders in Equestria. Moss Widows were known for vicious tempers and not discriminating as to what prey they sought. That little heap of dirt could have been the very painful end of her and she nearly walked right into it. The mare had just saved her life.
She picked her slack jaw up and turned back to the mare who seemed to have busied herself gathering up a creeping vine from a nearby tree-trunk, yanking it down with her teeth. "I'll be... Thank you kindly, stranger. You... you done saved my life."
"Shewt. T'wern't nuthin'. S'what anypony should be doin' anyhow." She spit out the vine and coiled it around her other limb. Turning to Apple Bloom now, she pointed to her injured ankle. "Looks like yuh dun got yerself a busted-up post, too, sugar. " She gave a *tch* of sympathy and shifted her toothpick again. "Ah'm pah'rful sorry 'bout knockin' yuh over, there."
Apple Bloom found herself smiling. The stranger had a very stern look but her demeanour was almost as familiar as family. She was beginning to feel like she was about to get a scolding from Granny Smith... "Yeah... I done tripped over a root maybe a half-a haul back that way."
"Mnnhmm. Not payin' no 'tensh'n wuz ya?" The stranger's lips were still set in a stern grimace, almost a scowl but her voice seemed to be concealing a smirk, a hint of a tease within the condemnation. Apple Bloom could hardly be upset with the treatment. She was right. She had been too wrapped up in her own head to notice the root and then AGAIN with the spider-mound. "Well... we'll toss yuh a splint on thet busted fence n'then yuh kin explain whut yer doin' this far out'n th'white-tail woods?"
"The WHITE TAIL WOODS?" AppleBloom winced as the stranger took ahold of her hoof and elbow and examined the leg. She could tell from the strangers direct motions, she had done this many times before. She was in the hands of a genuine shade-tree surgeon. Her ankle had taken on a purple tone and the limb was already swelling.
"Yes'm. Ah reckon you must be a'runnin' from sumthin', eh?"
Apple Bloom considered the strangers question. In a way, she had been. The fight, the shouting, her own temper, the pressure of stepping up to run the farm, the questions of where her marriage was going. As much as she prided herself on being a fighter, never backing down... she certainly made a habit of running away from things when she got too hot. "Well, I suppose you might be onto something there m- YAIOW!!"
She went wide-eyed and screamed as the backwoods doctor set her bones in place. The best way she could describe the feeling would be as if two tiny Discords had snuck inside her shin and were having a gang-land knife-fight over her foot. The pain was blindingly intense, bringing the stinging tears back to her eyes. "AaayYEEOW! Why Didn't you TELL me you were gonna do that?!"
"Don't go gettin' persnickity. If'n I had, yu'd jest tens't up n'made it werse, yet." the stranger stated matter-of-factly. She pressed the wounded leg between two thick branches and began to wind the vine around them in tight coils. Her motions had the practiced grace to them of a mare who'd been sired in the woods and never left. For her part Apple Bloom gritted her teeth and growled her way through it. She took the opportunity to cycle through her collected dictionary of swears she'd picked up over the years. She'd found having the occasional changeling as a seasonal hired hand to be particularly fun and educational for this. Their natural language of Hempid was mostly a bizarre chain of clicks, chitters and hisses and it made for the most delightfully unsettling cursing. Apple Bloom grumbled several of these through her clenched jaw.
"There yuh are." The stranger gave the tightly bound limb a careful squeeze as she rose with a snort, turning her head to spit over her shoulder, taking a nearby biting insect out of the air. "Yuh won't be puttin' no weight on it f'r a bit yet, but at least yuh kin heal thet hoof back pointin' th'right way now." For the first time, her stern glare softened to almost a smile.
Apple Bloom carefully put a measured amount of pressure into a step. A sharp pain shot up from her joint, confirming the strangers assessment of the limb. The stiff wrappings helped, without a doubt. The pain was more of a dull throb now and was already fading to more of a aching numbness. "Thank you, stranger. That was right kind of you to do for me." She hobbled about in a small circle. She could manage a loping gait. "I don't know how I can repay you for this."
The stranger regarded her with her shaded, stern gaze. "Ah dun told yuh, miss. T'wernt nuthin' t'mind over yet. S'whut anypony should be a'doin'."
It might be enough to get her home, assuming she could figure out where home was from here. She looked up to the high treetops. She still had no idea of how late it was in the day but if she had made it all the way out to the White Tail Woods it would be hours before she got home. It would be dark soon and with this broken limb it would be quite a hassle to make it safely. She needed to get out of these woods and into the safety of familiarity, the protective shield of civilization, before the myriad spirits and fiends of the woods found her as their wounded prey. "If'n you could be troubled to point me in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres, I could get up outta your hair and head on home."
The stranger scoffed. "Sweet Apple Acres? Sugar, yew ain't a'gettin' thet far on thet there cracked-up timber. " The stranger turned about and knealt, offering her back to Apple Bloom. "Come on, now."
Apple Bloom regarded the pony with a twisted brow. "Are you offerin' to- WOULP!" She was cut off as the stranger ooched under her belly, mindful of her foreleg and hoisted the mare onto her back. Apple Bloom's limbs swung awkwardly from side to side as the mare came about in a circle.
"I told yuh. Yuh ain't makin' it t'no Sweet Apple Acres frum here by nightfall, 'spesh'ly on thet split stump yer wobblin' on." She gave a shrug of her shoulders and adjusted Apple Blooms weight. "Well, let's git a move-on." With a shifting of weight, the hermit saviour began on her way through the woods.
Apple Bloom let her limbs go limp and sighed, more than a little relieved for the help. She looked to the stranger's face, shaded by her hat. Even from this close she still couldn't quite make out her strange guardian's features. The unkempt blonde tresses of her mane concealed what the dusty tattered felt of her stetson didn't already. All she could see was that somewhat stern grimace and the shifting splinter of wood between her teeth.
"Hey, my name's Apple Bloom." She raised a hoof to offer a congenial shake.
The strangers gaze remained fixed ahead on the darkening woods. If she noticed the cordial gesture she paid it no mind as she trudged onward. Whatever dangers the mare catalogued, she kept to herself.
"Mnnhmm."
Author's Note
My first multi-chapter story listing here on FimFic. The first of many! The art image present will be a placeholder for the cover until I complete the process.
I have a long list of stories I'm currently working on, from romance and drama to more saucy comedy but this one just appealed to me at the moment- a bit more of a spooky/thriller story.
I hope everypony enjoys!
