Author's Note

Hey everyone. New story for the winter holidays. Gonna make this quick, so you all can get to what you came for.

1st, this story is within the Equestria Trainer's Society Setting, but if you are new there will be no real lore bits from that you need to know, cause most of this is a prequel.

2nd, This story mainly features the Gift Givers of The Grove, and since we only got about 5 mins of screen time with them, I'm playing fast and loose with their lore, by actually giving them some sort of background. Just look at it as this setting's version of the reindeer trio. This is an AU setting, after all.

With that, I hope you all enjoy the story, and know that while it's not complete yet, it will be updated throughout December (and probably into January too).

Mistakes of the Future

“Happy Birthday!” a pair of deer yelled loudly, one a pink doe in the prime of her adult years, while the other was an elderly teal doe, the two going by Bori and Aurora, respectively.

They were two parts of the trio known as the Gift Givers of the Grove, deer who had abilities that aided them in their sole duty to deliver the perfect gifts for every creature who sought their services, never failing in their task. Their well wishes, as well as a sizable cake the two were holding, were being directed towards the third member of their group, a younger doe who had just reached adulthood that day.

This younger, yellow doe was named Alice, and she was caught completely by surprise when she returned from picking up some supplies the Gift Givers would need for the upcoming Hearth’s Warming Eve, having left a full wagon of materials outside. The second she entered the building to get help bringing things in, she was met by the two does laying in wait.

“A surprise party?!” Alice said to the older does, a toothy smile on full display, brimming with happiness for what the other deer had done, “I didn’t even think you two knew when my birthday was.”

“We had to ask your parents,” Bori said, setting the birthday cake down on a table, “Cause it dawned on us that you had been a Gift Giver for a while now, and we’ve never celebrated it.”

The three deer were not related to one another, despite living together in their cozy cottage, but lived together in order to fulfill their role, the three brought together due to their unique talents. Being a Gift Giver of the Grove was an honored responsibility among reindeer, letting those blessed by fate to become one spread joy all over the world, which was something only a lucky three could ever do at one time.

“You didn’t go all the way to my parents house to ask them, did you?” Alice asked, knowing how far it was to the reindeer’s lands from their cottage. The Gift Givers had to live in the frozen mountain peaks of Equestria, as the kingdom was practically the hub of all civilization, close enough to all other nations that it would be impractical to station themselves anywhere else. Other reindeer lived outside of Equestria though, and it was a long day of travel to get to them, even with the magical ability of flight the members of their species had. “You just looked into my past to see when it was, right Aurora?”

“Bori and I didn’t want to pry into your entire life’s history to get a single date,” Aurora said, the older deer having a respect for their newest member’s privacy that the trio didn’t extend to other creatures, if only because it was easier to learn what gifts someone wanted when you knew them thoroughly.

“You two really shouldn’t have gone so far out of your way for something like this,” Alice said, “It really would have been easier to use your powers.”

The three of them had access to the knowledge of events of all time, if in specialized manners. Alice was gifted with the ability to see into the future, and Aurora the past, of all creatures, which was how they figured out what gifts would be perfect for each creature that would receive them. Likewise, Bori could also see the events of any creature she wanted, but only in that exact moment, giving her a certain degree of limited omniscience.

“It really wasn’t that much of a hassle,” Bori assured, “I just went to their house during one of our supply runs. Besides, it’s not a good idea to use our powers to do things outside of gift giving.”

“You say that,” Alice said, “But I don’t see the problem in just getting information when we want it.”

“The kind of information we have access to is very dangerous,” Aurora replied, “As it’s weaved into the very fabric of time itself. You in particular need to be very careful about who’s future you look into, as you might learn something you really shouldn’t. But…” Aurora said as she eased off her position slightly, realizing her words were starting to turn into a lecture, “The occasion peek here and there shouldn’t do any harm, so long as you remember the two important rules we gave to you.”

“Right,” Alice reluctantly agreed, “No matter what I see, I should never attempt to stray from the path of history.” It was an easy rule to follow thus far, since all outcomes she had seen have been positive when it came to gift giving. For some reason, the future always unerringly showed what gift would be the best for any given creature who required their services.

“And?” Bori said, wanting to make sure both rules were understood.

Alice groaned a little at this particular rule, “I’m not supposed to look into any of our futures.”

It was a very strict rule given to her upon becoming a Gift Giver, that she was allowed to look into the histories of any creatures she pleased, save for the Gift Givers themselves. It seemed like a fairly arbitrary rule, since it seemed directed only at her. There were a few times that Bori had used her powers to know exactly where Alice was at any given time, and Aurora has used her powers before to find things she had misplaced. Alice was the only one who had a restriction when it came to the Gift Givers, but she assumed that was because she was the least experienced among the three.

“But I’m an adult now,” said Alice, “Can’t I be trusted with knowledge about what’s going to happen to us?”

“It’s not that we don’t trust you,” Bori said, “You’ve more than proven yourself when it comes to being a Gift Giver.”

“But knowledge of your own future, or the futures of those close to you, is something that can’t be taken lightly. We might use our abilities to provide happiness worldwide, but we must always act as outsiders to maintain the course of history.”

“Right, I get all that,” Alice said, having heard this from the other does countless times now, “But I have to ask… what if something bad would happen in the future, and my foresight was the only thing that could stop it?”

Bori and Aurora exchanged a glance to one another, before Bori replied with, “That’s a very important question to ask,” Bori said, “But also a very serious one, and we should focus on your birthday today. Oh, I know!”

The older doe went over to a table where they had set up a few things for the party, including a festively decorated green, white, and red cake, and a few presents.

“How about we open some gifts,” Bori said while grabbing the closest present she could get her hands on, “Why don’t we start with this one. It’s from Aurora.”

The pink doe handed the wrapped up box over to Alice, who rolled her eyes playfully at the object. The trio wrapped so many gifts together, unwrapping one was bemusing to her. That didn’t stop her from tearing into the paper to get inside, and when she opened the top, what she saw waiting for her was a red piece of cloth, with edges laced in fluffy white material. Pulling it out to get a better look, Alice found that it was a small winter cape, big enough to drape down from her shoulders to her hips. A faintly sweet scent of freshly baked gingerbread could be smelt coming off the piece of clothing, a touch added to add another measure of coziness to the wearer.

“I hope you like it,” Aurora said, “I don’t have your ability to pick out the perfect gift for a person, but-”

The elderly doe was cut short by a tight hug from the youngest among them, Alice squeezing her tightly, “I love it,” she said, “It’s perfect.”

Aurora reciprocated the hug with a light touch of her own hand on Alice’s back, “Oh, you’re just saying that. Truth is, I never know what you youngsters like these days.”

“No, I mean it.” Alice said, releasing her hug, so she could lift up the cape, “It’s my favorite color, and I’ve needed something to keep me warm while we deliver the gifts for Hearth’s Warming Eve.”

Alice might have been exaggerating a little bit about how much she liked the gift, but it was a very nice cape, and if it came from Aurora, then it was very likely hand made. Aurora had that ‘everyone’s grandmother’ type of personality. Old, wise, loveable, instilled with the idea that a practical gift was much better than a fancy toy. While this cape wasn’t something that Alice would have ever asked for, it was a perfect gift from the sweet, aging doe.

“Why don’t you try it on?” Suggested Bori, wanting to see how Alice looked in it.

The young doe took a moment to drape the cape over her shoulders, and tie the string at its front under the ribbon bow she was already wearing around her neck. The combination of those two items looked very cute over the rest of her clothing, which was fairly basic casual wear. Alice took a moment to sway her arms and upper body side to side, ending it with a full rotation of her body, to let Bori and Aurora get look at it from all angles.

“Lovely,” Bori complemented, “Now how about we try some of that cake before we get to the rest of your gifts. We made sure to pull it out of the oven right before you got home, and it will taste better while it’s still warm.”

“Sounds great,” Alice said cheerfully, trying to hide the smallest bit of resentment she had hearing Bori’s statement, as the older deer let slip that she had been using her own powers to spy on Alice while she was out, presumedly to make sure that the yellow doe wouldn’t ruin the surprise by coming home early. While the intentions were pure, the freedom Bori gave herself seemed a little hypocritical compared to the restrictions placed upon the younger deer.

As the day came to a close, the three deer resigned to their sleeping quarters, each in separate rooms of the cottage. The party went well, with Alice getting several more gifts from both the does, including books and trinkets for things Alice had shown a bit of interest towards while in the presence of her counterparts. They were all nice, but in the end the cape really was the one thing that Alice liked the most out of all of it. It might have been a mentality she developed because of her profession, but when you spent your life giving things away, personal possessions became less important, unless it was something really special.

The doe was still wearing the cape as she put the rest of her gifts on her dresser, and didn’t even take it off when she went to her bed. She didn’t see a need to yet, as she wasn’t intending to go to sleep.

“That was fun,” she said to herself, having indeed enjoyed her day of celebration, “But I think it's time I got the gift I really wanted today.”

The gift Alice was referring to was a gift that she would be giving to herself, the gift of being unrestrained. Until today, Alice was more than willing to heed the warnings the other two deer had given her, but now that she was an adult, and had plenty of experience with her powers, the deer felt it was time she breached the rule placed on her from the moment she became a Gift Giver. The young adult doe was going to peer into her future, if only for a moment.

It was something that Alice had wanted to do for some time, if only because the act was so forbidden, but stopped herself from trying until now, if only out of respect for the other two Gift Givers. While that respect was still there, the yellow furred deer just didn’t see the harm in the tiniest of peeks, especially if it was in her own future.

Alice wasn’t even expecting to see much, since fate had made her purpose in life to be a Gift Giver, a destiny that she was very happy with. Because of it though, she was expecting to spend the rest of her days in the cottage, until she was as old as Aurora. That was another reason she didn’t see an issue breaking this particular rule, as she felt that nothing she could see would ever make her want to break the first, seemingly more important rule, of ensuring that history was followed as she would see it unfold.

Alice did want to be a little cautious though, and wasn’t completely reckless with her plan to disobey Bori and Aurora’s wishes. She was going to look into her distant future, somewhere in the time frame of three years. Odds were she’d just see herself working on some presents, and that moment would be so insignificant that it would blend into everything else in her day to day life. The doe had never purposefully gone that far into anyone’s future before, but she knew it was possible.

It was difficult to put into words, but Alice knew that her powers were practically limitless when it came to her future sight. If she wished, she could see all the way to the end of a creature’s life, provided she knew who’s future she was looking for. All she had to do was focus on their image, and the entirety of their history would become an open book to her. Once done, she could pick any period of time in the future, and receive a perfect vision of what that person would be doing, and could even go backwards or forwards in the vision with ease. From her understanding, Aurora was exactly the same, except in the other direction.

“Ok…” Alice whispered softly to herself, “Just a quick peek, three years from now, no harm to the flow of history at all.”

Sitting on her bedside, the doe took a deep breath, looking forward to a time beyond the here and now. To others, it would look like she had simply closed her eyes, but to her an image of the future was forming on the back of her eyelids. The vision started out a bit hazy, as it always did, with a cloudy image of her target, that being herself in this instance, appearing first, in a vaguely detailed sphere of vision. That was one of few flaws to her powers, that what she could see was limited to the target itself, and only about five feet in diameter around them. So people and things in the area couldn’t be seen via her powers, unless they got in close to where the vision was centered.

As Alice continued focusing, the vision became clearer and clearer, until she had a perfect picture of herself in the randomly selected moment, and what she saw immediately made the deer’s face turn a light shade of pink. She had found herself, as she had intended, but not exactly ‘how’ she intended, as her slightly older self was naked, from head to hooves, save for the red ribbon she wore around her neck, and the cape given to her today as a gift.

“What did I do?” Alice asked herself a little louder than before, trying to stay quiet, but in a bit of shock from the sight of her own exposed body, “Catch myself readying a bath?”

That was the first thing that came to mind as to why she would have been naked under any circumstance, but the more she looked at her future self, the more that theory didn’t seem right. Why would she still be wearing the cape and her ribbon if she was about to take a bath? Not only that, but future Alice was in a strange pose. She was on her knees, thighs spread apart, enough that it revealed the slit that resided between them, her pussy in full view for the doe in the present. Her hands rested on those thighs, as her breasts poked out from under the part of the cape that covered her shoulders, looking a little bigger than that of her present form, but Alice barely noticed that detail. As the older version of herself sat there, seemingly waiting, her head was tilted downwards, but not so much that Alice couldn’t see that her future self was smiling.

“M-maybe I take up meditation in the future,” Alice said to herself, trying to rationalize what she was seeing, though even an explanation like that didn’t explain what she was doing naked. She really couldn’t foresee herself becoming a nudist, which was what it looked like, for more reasons than that she lived on top of a snow covered mountain, one being that she didn’t think her cabin mates would approve of such a lifestyle.

That’s when she noticed a peculiar detail in the vision, and that was that the floor she was kneeling on was made of some kind of stone. The cottage only had wood floors, so unless it was getting a remodeling, her future self was somewhere else at the moment.

“Did I go to a spa?” Alice asked herself, though this was another grasp at straws. As far as she could see, there was no reasonable explanation as to why she would be so undressed, in that pose, or in a place with stone floors while being naked in such a pose.

As she kept trying to figure out what was going on, Alice was caught by surprise when the ear on her future self twitched, reminding her that the visions were not simply a frozen image, and that they were playing out a scene. Future Alice lifted her head up slightly, and then said aloud “Of course. That is my purpose, afterall.”

At that moment, Alice realized that she, the future ‘she’, was not alone. She was speaking to someone, but since the other creature she was with was speaking outside of the bubble of the vision, its voice couldn’t be heard. Another limitation of her powers.

Voice or not, this new found information filled a now stunned Alice with questions. Who was she with? Why was she so calm being naked around them? Why did she bring up her purpose? What was going on here?! She was so confused that the only thing that she could do was let the scene play out further.

She didn’t have to wait long to get some sort of answer, one that was even more shocking than any other part of this vision, as the muscular leg entered into view. A masculine leg, who's thighs were about as thick as her head.

I’m with a guy?! Alice screamed in her head, refraining from using her voice, lest she alert the whole house to what she was doing.

Quickly she adjusted the angle of the vision so that she had a back view of herself, which fortunately was within her power. Unfortunately, with her future self in her knelt position, she couldn’t see much of this male who had only slightly breached the boundaries of her bubble, so that only his upper thighs, hips, and lower abdomen was in view. However, that was just enough to see that he too was nude, and that his large penis was standing in half erection, pointing right in the direction of her future self’s face.

“Nope! Nope! That’s enough!” Alice said aloud, ending the vision on the spot, the sight of some strange male’s junk being too much for her.

In reflex afterwards, the deer covered her eyes, but that really didn’t help since the image of that dick had been present when her eyes were closed. Alice couldn’t believe what she had just witnessed, or that it was apparently something that was going to happen. The whole thing gave her a cold sweat, especially when she took into account exactly how big the sex organ presented before her had been. It was far bigger than deer sized, that was certain, looking to be at the upper limits of what a pony could be.

These details were information Alice knew for… reasons, but those reasons didn’t matter compared to her current dilemma that one day she would be in that position, with that monster of a private part staring her down. It was mortifying to imagine, and as that embarrassment set in, she got started by a sudden knock at the door.

“Alice, are you ok in there?” asked Bori from the other side of the wooden barrier, “Aurora and I heard yelling.”

“I’m fine!” Alice replied, “Just… had a little accident, but I already cleaned it up!”

Bori was silent for a moment, but then spoke from the other side of the door again. “Ok, just try to keep it down. I know your big day must have gotten you excited, but we have more work to do in the morning.”

“Right!” Alice answered, just wanting the older doe to go away, “Going to bed now!”

Alice heard the sound of hooves stepping away, and as they went quiet she finally found the ability to release her tensed muscles. Her body relaxed slowly, fear subsiding from almost getting caught directly disobeying the rules. Though for as much as getting caught shook her, most of her tremors were coming from the image of the naked male that was lingering in her thoughts. The doe had no clue how she was going to end up in that situation three years from now, seeing that she didn’t even know any guys that looked like that currently, or had any intentions to be with someone in the near future. Certainly not someone as big and muscular as the creature she had gotten a slight glimpse of.

It’s not worth thinking about right now, Alice thought to herself, taking a few deep breaths to calm her nerves.

It took a few more minutes before she could get to a normal state, but once she did she decided it was best not to take a second look at what appeared to be her future lover, no matter how out of character she had found the behavior and selection of mate of her future self. Best to try and put it out of her mind for now, and figure it all out later. When things got closer to that time, it would all begin to make more sense, or at least that’s what she believed, since her predictions always came true.

She eased herself into bed, putting herself under the blankets as she rested her head on her pillows, still a little freaked out, to the point that she forgot to change out of her clothes and into some pajamas. At this point she just wanted to get some sleep and forget, but when she started to drift to sleep, her mind latched onto a little detail that she had missed prior.

Did Bori just spy on me? She thought, keeping her eyes closed, as it dawned on her that Bori went silent for a few seconds before telling her to get some sleep. She could have easily gotten a quick peek at her at that time by using her powers. Ugh… And she said she trusted me earlier.

Alice went to bed angry, not realizing the irony in her attitude, considering she had done something that made her untrustworthy. The doe might have been an adult, but she still had the maturity of a teen, expecting others to believe in her without understanding the responsibility that came with such respect.