To Stand and Watch the Lake
I think my name is Clover Leaf.
I stand by the side of a lake, just watching. Watching and thinking, as the sun rises over the water. The wild winds of this place play with the surface, creating small ripples, even waves that propagate across the lake.
I feel it playing with my long green mane, strands of hair swaying at the whims of the forest air. The winds aren't strong. Just enough to create movement, to create life in the stillness.
I've always liked the Everfree forest. Something about its independence, the way nature works on its own here, without ponies guiding it, fills me with a sense of some greater force. Life. Where so many ponies see this forest as death and terror, I see life and freedom.
It has its dangers, of course. When I was a little filly, I would often break my parents' rules by going into the forest alone. It's a wonder I survived half of those trips. One time, I almost looked a cockatrice in the eyes. Even the little glimpse I got before looking away left my fur looking like a pukwudgie's spines for weeks, which wasn't easy to explain away to my parents. For many years after that, they would tell stories of that one time I kept mixing up fur shampoo and mane gel.
But on those trips, I learned to see both the beauty and the danger of the forest's wild nature, and how they could coexist. I learned to navigate the forest in a safe way, to avoid the timberwolves and the dragon's cave. I learned to find the best clearings for picnics, just for me, myself, and the occasional creature coming to steal my food. I learned to share, to care for the little creatures and the big ones. Manticores are surprisingly docile if you don't intrude on their dens.
As I got older and began to learn biology in school, I studied the plants of the forest, from the smallest clover to the largest hauntwood tree. I watched how they lived on their own, and tried to work out how nature could be so free out here.
Of course, my teacher at school was never happy when I would bring in a mare-eating trapsnatch plant or a timberwolf sapling to class projects. It usually ended with a stern lecture from my father about how I shouldn't be "messing around" in the Everfree forest.
I didn't care. Soon I got my cutie mark – a three-leaf clover, just like my name. It was what I was meant to do, I knew. I knew my life would be one of studying plants and nature, learning everything there was to know about the wonderful world around us. Perhaps I could even, one day, figure out how to spread the freedom of the Everfree forest's nature to the rest of Equestria?
I think that's what I want.
My dad, of course, never approved. "Why don't you do something useful, Clover Leaf?" he would say. He had wanted me to become a construction worker like him, not "somepony who does nothing but watch the grass grow every day", as he put it.
But what I did was useful. I was figuring out secrets of the world itself, secrets older even than Celestia's rule. Didn't that have just as much value as building the new town hall, if not more?
What time is it? The question is a stray thought among all the rest. I look at the night sky, the way Celestia's moon hangs above and is reflected at the water's edge. It really is beautiful here. A lone timberwolf lurks on the other side of the lake, sniffing the ground for growdents. I stand and watch.
My mom was more supportive. She would tell me I could be whatever and whoever I wanted to be. With her help, I began importing plant specimens from all over Equestria to study in my little hut at the edge of the Everfree forest. Manehattan fire lilies, boltroot from Vanhoover, robbingsbane from Trottingham, exotic flowers from everywhere.
My life was good for a while. My studies made progress, and I even made some friends who didn't think I was too weird to talk to. Their names are Apple Buttercup and Chiffon Swirl, I think. They're both such sweet mares, showering everyone around them with kindness. Buttercup of course saves the most kindness for her husband, Bright Mac, and they even have a foal on the way.
…had…? How long has it been? I don't know. I stand and watch as the sun rises over the lake.
Then my mom died. It was like a bouldernut fell on my heart when my dad told me what had happened. She had been sick for weeks. He hadn't told me. He hadn't let her tell me.
Apparently, he had been worried that I would try to "cram ridiculous plants into her mouth" in an attempt to heal her sickness.
I am no doctor, he said, and it's true. I don't normally do medicine. My interest lies in how the plants live, not in how they affect ponies. But when I found out the cause of her sickness, I was furious.
A brightshade mushroom, remarkably similar in appearance to the more common, edible minotaur's hoof, had found its way into her soup by accident.
Brightshade poison is slow-working but often deadly unless countered with sap from flowering brambleweed vines. I knew that. There are brambleweeds right here in the forest.
I would have been able to cure her.
I remember the fight as if it was yesterday. Was it yesterday? No, the sun is about to rise again. I don't think it was yesterday. I stand and watch. The waves stirred by the wind lap up at my hooves at the water's edge and I lean down to drink.
I confronted my dad in my hut. It was bad. We both said a lot of things we didn't mean. We both said a lot of things we did mean, but would never admit we meant afterwards.
Our body language got more and more aggressive, until I accidentally knocked the glass case off of one of my sample flowers with a stray hoof. It was of an unidentified species, apparently found in a small ghost town along the eastern coast of Equestria. It puffed up some spores in response to the auditory stimulus.
As I was coughing, I furiously told my dad to get out of my house and out of my life, then crushed the treacherous flower.
I haven't seen him in… a week? Has it been a week? A month? I stand and watch the sunset.
I've been here a while now, haven't I? At least a few hours. It's such a nice view, though, and it's a great place to come and just think. A great way to get my mind off my disease.
As the sun rises, I hear the rustling of leaves behind me. I look and see a yellow pegasus I've never seen before arrive at the lake, alongside a striped earth pony I've seen pass by the lake a few times. Odd, those stripes. I've never seen that pattern on a pony before this one.
The newcomers don't seem to notice me and I don't make an effort to change that. I'm content to just stand here and watch over the lake as they begin to gather some crisscross moss from the lakeside.
I think about my mom, and how she once helped me with the same task. She didn't know much about plants beyond what I told her, but I needed more hooves and she wanted to help. We had a good time gathering that moss, I think. We… we had a good time, I'm sure. Right?
A single tear falls into the lake, drifting with the rest of the water as the wild winds dictate. As strange as it seems, I can almost distinguish my tear from the rest of the water as it floats away from me.
The striped pony talks to the pegasus. I can't make out the words, but they seem to decide that they need more moss, because the striped pony starts using a tree branch to try to grab some moss that is floating on the lake. With a splash, she falls into the water near my tear. A puff of spores catches her off guard.
As the ponies leave, the pegasus seemingly in a hurry, I look out over the water again. I stand and watch as the moon rises to hang above me, reflected in the water next to a large tree. My tear floats to the other side, where a curious growdent sniffs the water curiously. I stand and watch as my tear releases its spores. Why was I so sad, anyway?
It really is beautiful here.
