It was an unassuming little hut. Just a wooden structure off the beaten path. Nopony had been there for years, and it was content to remain undisturbed.
Luckily, or unluckily, Cloverleaf was not a mare who followed the beaten path. She was always adventuring, literally, always.
She was an explorer, striking it out on her own, never settling down in one place for there was nowhere to settle down. That led her right to the feet of the very same undisturbed hut.
“Whit the hell is this?” she asked, looking at her map and realizing the place was unmarked. She wasn’t following the trail anyways, she’d already followed them all and was looking for something else.
After a quick survey around the building, Cloverleaf figured there was nothing inherently dangerous about it. It was just a little run-down old building. She put her old map in her saddlebags and prepared to head inside.
“Might ‘s well take a look,” she said, heading inside the old building. After all, she liked exploring, so why not explore some old abandoned places?
The very first thing Cloverleaf noticed was the thin layer of dust that caked everything.
“ ‘Is had to be abandoned fer a long time,” she observed, dragging her hoof and creating a very visible path.
Cloverleaf took in the details of the place around her. The details that told their own little story. Most of the furniture was made from a certain type of fake leather that only griffons produced. Thin, sleek, and cheap, as griffon things tended to be. All covered in a thin layer of dust, the same that coated the rest of the cabin. The leather was worn, used lovingly throughout several years or decades.
The couch shared the room with a bookshelf. Loaded with old books, mainly travel guides, and a few pictures. Cloverleaf thought she recognized some of the ponies in those pictures. A couple almost looked like her parents… what she could remember from them. It’d been a while since she’d seen them. The sight of ponies that even looked similar…
Cloverleaf shook her head and thought about what this could mean. It only served to spur Cloverleaf’s curiosity, if an exasperated variety, on more, so she looked around.
There actually weren’t very many rooms. Admittedly, Cloverleaf wasn’t expecting much from a small cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Attached to the living room, there was a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen. There was nothing else. Whoever lived here was content in their simple life, or simply had no drive or resource to leave it. Cloverleaf silently wondered how they could do such a thing.
Cloverleaf realized that there was a possibility that they weren’t explorers, but she couldn’t imagine a life outside of roaming.
Suddenly, she heard an echo from her past… but she couldn’t bring herself to confront it. She’d hadn’t done anything that they’d be proud of. Pushing it away, Cloverleaf turned around towards the little arch that led into the kitchen.
Cloverleaf went into the kitchen, a modest table for two positioned right in the middle. The simple wooden cabinets covered in herbs a pony would find strewn about. Some herbs were dust by now, but others, dried thyme and cumin littered around, showed how much this little hut was used, specifically this kitchen.
It was a mess, but it was quaint, and Cloverleaf couldn’t bring herself to hate it in the slightest. Besides, she could only imagine what the herbs would’ve smelled like. A nice Sunday evening at home, parents cooking something, Cloverleaf trampling around the backyard, pretending to go on a grand adventure.
The thought of it made Cloverleaf smile. Too bad those days would never happen again.
She suddenly got a gloomy thought, she shook it off and focused on the present.
In fact, she almost didn’t want to poke through the cabinets, she felt that the hut had a serene beauty that didn’t want to be disturbed. That’s when Cloverleaf noticed how the table was set up.
The table was half-set, specifically. A plate for one was set up, but the other seat was conspicuously empty.
“‘At’s odd,” she muttered, wondering where the other plate had went, or if it was even set up at all.
As much as it could be coincidence, Cloverleaf found the one plate setup with nopony in sight to be strange, it was put there deliberately, but by whom?
Cloverleaf put that thought aside and moved to the other half of the quaint little hut, the bedroom.
In the bedroom, she found an interesting sight. The bed was perfectly made. Nopony was in it, but they had the common sense to tidy it up before they left. It would almost seem to imply that whatever pony was here had left a short time ago, if it weren’t for the omnipresent thin layer of dust that covered everything, including the bed.
It was a quaint little bedroom, with a bed, also of a sleek minimalist griffon construction, and a nightstand with no light, but a small stack of reading material. Most notably however, was the scrapbook laying on the bed proper, which Cloverleaf went to pick up.
Cloverleaf paged through the old scrapbook, starting at the beginning. The scrapbook showed a mare and stallion, both foals, playing and laughing with each other. As Cloverleaf paged through more, the two ponies grew up, always staying together, and giving Cloverleaf a certain familiarity with the ponies inside. The pictures gradually got less blurry.
There was the two of them, laughing and playing frisbee as teenagers, saying hello to each other over their fences. The mare always seemed to stand taller than the stallion, unusual, certainly. However, all the same, it was enjoyable when the pictures showed the mare rubbing the stallion’s head, both looking happy, smiling, laughing.
There was more, of course, the entire scrapbook was full.
Cloverleaf looked at the two ponies going to a school dance together, intriguing because it didn’t seem like they went to the same school. She just assumed based on the fact that there weren’t any school photos in this scrapbook.
Then there was, of course, the all-important proposal photo, likely snapped by the mare’s friends on the sidelines, she was the one giving the ring, after all. Followed shortly by a wedding photo, or several, enough to fill pages and pages of the mare and stallion enjoying the company of other ponies. It looked fairly elaborate, too. Sugarcube Corner may not have been a thing, but these ponies seemed to have raided the Princesses’ pastry cabinet, and then some. In the photos, bread, cupcakes, cake, sprawled across the table, almost trying to take over the main dish.
Cloverleaf had a hunch that they were farmers, or at least knew some ponies. The thought made her remember her old house. Suffice to say, they had a really big backyard.
After the wedding photos, with the photos getting continuously clearer, Cloverleaf saw the two ponies settling in a nice rural town. Maybe Ponyville, she knew that was right up the street. Cloverleaf saw pictures of the two ponies taking care of two foals, cute little things. The foals, too, grew older.
Soon, the pictures of the foals disappeared, and instead, were replaced by pictures of the two older ponies traveling through the forest, but likely the Everfree, with smiles gracing their faces. The lines on their faces grew clearer, the torch became a lantern. The lust for adventure appeared to continue, with photos of some forest or another always every couple of pages, often interspersed with the two ponies enjoying their leisurely life, knitting, baking, whatever they could put their hooves to work doing. They all instilled Cloverleaf with an aching familiarity, not only for the ponies, but the settings she saw them in.
Finally, as the pictures began to thin, Cloverleaf saw the couple move into a little house on the outskirts of a forest. Fixing up the place, and spending the last few years of their life happy, content with a life of adventure and fun.
Cloverleaf reached the back cover and she saw, in immaculate hoof writing… “To my darling, Forest Green, who allowed me to well, see the forest for the trees. I’ll never forget you. Wherever you are, I hope we’ll meet again sometime.”
Most notably, however, was the picture of Cloverleaf herself. It was put loosely in the back cover, and almost fell out. Cloverleaf examined it. It was her alright. A foal, radiating a crisp coolness, like a gentle breeze after a scorching day, smiling, in a crooked aviator’s hat.
“And our grandfoal, Cloverleaf, for keeping the spirit of adventure alive.”
Cloverleaf looked at the picture. Tears welled up in her eyes.
Cooverleaf stuffed the picture into her saddlebags and hung her head. She couldn’t settle down— her parents wouldn’t let her. She hadn’t done anything. Nothing.
She was alone, roaming, and nothing else. If only she could do something that would allow her to settle down… if only she wanted to.
If only she hadn’t ran off after that argument.
Cloverleaf ran out of the hut, leaving it undisturbed, trying to forget. The picture, she took.
Author's Note
This one might be a little rough. However, the end of the month is approaching and it’s more-or-less fine, not gonna win any Newberries, but I think people will enjoy reading it enough.
And yes, Cloverleaf’s accent is vaguely Scottish, blame Sunny, they convinced me.
Otherwise, there will be a supplementary blog post for this, so be on the lookout.
