Wish Fulfillment

It might have been about ten degrees outside, but Rally felt like it was eighty five degrees in the sleeping bag. She and Shorey were pressed back to back in the small thing, both of them sweating through their coats. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, and made the stallion wake up in the middle of the night.

“It’s way to fucking hot in this sleeping bag,” she announced as she woke up. “I’m not going to be able to sleep like this. Do you mind if I open up the tent flap a little bit?”

“I have a migraine,” the mare whispered, practically inaudible.

The news surprised Rally, but she knew it shouldn’t have. Shorey told her before about how she got migraines all the time. However, she somehow expected that not to be an issue as a pony. It made the stallion wonder about herself and consider if she would still have some issues she had on Earth, like GERD or dysphagia. It would be something to watch out for.

I still have dysphoria, so that’s some proof that things will probably still be the same, she thought. She imagined that the mare was trying to use magic for too long and pushing herself, since it gave Rally a headache before. Knowing Shorey, she was probably way too intense with trying to get it to work.

“Is there anything I can do?” Rally asked, unsure and still not moving.

“Get some cold in here,” she whispered slowly. “And please speak more quietly.”

Rally did exactly that, a strong gust of wind pushing into the tent as soon as she opened it. It chilled her to the bone, but she loved it, shivering from the relief of the awful heat in the sleeping bag. She turned around to see her friend sighing in relief, too, not to her surprise.

It was still very much night outside, the star shining brightly and the moon hanging high in the sky. Rally thought it was beautiful, and wondered if Princess Luna painted the picture herself. She took a minute to appreciate it until she remembered that the princess left her stranded on top of a mountain because an Equestrian law said she couldn’t save her. It was safe to say it ruined the beauty of the night a bit.

She stared at the sky for another minute before heading back in, closing the tent flap about three quarters of the way so cold air could still make its way inside. Then she settled back into the sleeping bag to rest for a little while longer.

She didn’t nod off immediately though. She found herself distracted by her thoughts, mostly of she and Shorey and what they might have together. Of course, the answer right now was nothing, and would remain nothing for a long time. But she knew it was not a secret to anyone that she liked the mare. The stallion couldn’t help but make it obvious, despite her attempts to be subtle.

Sometimes Rally got the feeling that she liked her back, but never said so. She didn’t ever explicitly tell her no to her advances in the past though, even when Rally asked for a no. Her phrasing was always that she wasn’t ready ‘right now’, something she did intentionally. She wondered if a time would come when she was ready. She could imagine that being in the middle of nowhere wasn’t the appropriate time to bring it up though.

“Can you please go to sleep, Rally?” the mare suddenly asked out of the blue, catching her by surprise. “I can’t fall asleep if you’re still awake,” she whispered tiredly, painfully. “All of your sighing is keeping me up. Your breathing isn’t steady enough.”

“Sorry,” she whispered, letting out one last breath before turning over and closing her eyes.

Both were waking up a while later, Shorey opening her eyes at Rally’s movement. She looked like she was still in a great deal of pain, and turned her head away from the sun that was shining in her eyes. It made Rally frown sympathetically to see. She’d never had a migraine, but she could assume that it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

“I’m gonna need sunglasses,” the mare whispered. “Do you have any water?”

“Yeah,” she replied, already getting it out of her supplies, not bothering to ask if she still had a migraine. “If your head hurts too much, we can stay here for a while. I don’t want you to be walking around in pain and having to look at the sun against white snow.”

“I’ll be fine,” she dismissed. “I can walk if we go slow. The cold will help, too.” She crawled out of the bag, but looked unsteady, and took a breath like it took effort just to stand up.

“Are you sure?” Rally asked. “I can let you lean on me if you need it.”

“I’m fine. I probably won’t be much use carrying supplies though. I’m sorry.” She grunted as she looked at the sun while Rally got the tent disassembled and the sleeping bag rolled up. Even in spite of her pain though, the stallion noticed her smiling as she looked down at herself.

“Wow, I’m still a mare,” Shorey whispered happily in between the pain of her migraine.

“So you are,” Rally agreed with a smile. “And I am, too, except only on the inside unfortunately. But that’s why we should start moving, so I can be one on the outside, too. Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah. But slowly, please.”

Slowly was the pace they moved at, walking through an endless white sea of snow that stretched out in front of them. Their pace was broken by nothing until around lunch, when Rally finally spotted the dot of green she saw at the top of the mountain days ago. A few more hours of walking brought them upon a large, long, looming treeline, one that came up upon them suddenly and moved from left to right across their sightline. The Crystal Forest, from what Rusty Bucket told her.

“It shouldn’t be too much longer now,” the stallion explained. “He said it would be here. That means only a couple of more days until we get to the Crystal Empire. Maybe even by tomorrow.”

“I hope so,” Shorey said, speaking a little louder as she started to feel better. “I could go for a bubble bath. Or even just a shower. I don’t know how you went a week out here with nothing.”

“I took a shower a few days ago at Rusty Bucket’s house, but yeah, a bath would be nice.”

That, and a bed to sleep in, and a week to rest, and some clothes, too, Rally thought to herself. Although she was starting to get used to the fact that she was naked all the time already. Or maybe it was just Shorey, since she was a mare. She had to admit, being around Rusty Bucket made her feel a little bit uncomfortable because of a lack of clothes.

They carefully made their way inside, but were only to get a mile or two of distance covered before the sun went down again. In a minute, the moon was up and the sky was full of bright stars.

“Do you want to keep going?” Rally asked. “We can stop if you’re still feeling bad.”

“I’m fine to keep going,” Shorey replied, going back to wearing the smile Rally saw on her yesterday. “I want to make up for some time we missed from walking slower this morning.”

The stallion smiled back at her and led the way, feeling pretty good about it. This was the fourth day of her journey if she was remembering correctly. In theory, the Crystal Empire should have been coming up upon them at any time now. After that, there should’ve been a train direct to Canterlot or Ponyville, according to both Rusty Bucket and Rally’s own memory of the show. If she became a mare– when she became a mare– this whole experience would be worth it.

But right now, the focus was on getting there. There was hardly any snow she noticed, the floor of the forest being almost entirely grass. It was also a bit warmer, much closer to an early spring night than the January temperatures she’d been facing. She wondered if this area marked where whatever weather ponies worked in the Crystal Empire did their job. The change between the field and the forest was quite abrupt.

“I bet you we can get to the Crystal Empire tonight,” Shorey said aloud as they walked, surely noticing the same thing. “I’m pretty sure we’re close if that stallion you talked to was right. This forest is tidier than any forest I’ve seen in real life. Or maybe that’s just because it’s Equestria.”

“I don’t know, but I hope we can get there tonight. You’ve only been here for a day, but this would be the fifth night this week I slept on the ground, and I want to try and… what’s that smell?”

Rally’s nose scrunched up and her eyes started to water. Whatever it was, it was strong, and it was bad. The scent must have been a cross between mildew, mold, rotting wood, and an old dumpster. She knew it wasn’t either she or Shorey, but looking around, her eyes didn’t catch anything that might be causing it.

“It smells awful,” the stallion said. “Like the garbage can behind McDonald’s that was filled with yeast.”

“I don’t smell anything, but…” Shorey’s face was scrunching up a second later, too, and she looked like she wanted to retch in disgust. She covered her nose with a hoof and was about to say something else before her mouth shut and her eyes went wide.

“What is it?” Rally asked, raising an eyebrow, only for Shorey to put a hoof on her mouth so she could stop talking, too. Then, she mouthed a word that made the bad smell make sense.

“T-i-m-b-e-r-w-o-l-v-e-s.”

That made her heart jump. There were timberwolves in this forest because of course there were. Nothing about this could possibly be easy, could it? There was no way Rally would ever believe that Lord Zulu didn’t intend for her to die every step of the way. All for making a few tiny jokes.

A second later, the stallion could see them.

It was a pack of about seven or eight, stalking through the woods, perhaps a few hundred yards away from them. She could see them sniffing the air and looking around, clearly searching for prey. Rally didn’t have to wonder who their prey would be.

They looked now like they did in the show, maybe larger, standing fifteen or twenty feet on their hindlegs. They were made of a mixture of sticks and rocks, and had a sickly green glow in their eyes. They seemed smarter than Rally imagined, too, one of them waving to the others with its paw to follow it. It made her deeply afraid to see, and she could only wonder how the heck she and Shorey were going to get past this.

She knew one thing was for certain. This was going to be treacherous.