Boredom was not an emotion that the Cutie Mark Crusaders were used to coping with.
Adventure just seemed to follow them wherever they went, even when they weren’t looking for it. When something as simple as an overturned stone or a path cut through a thick tangle of bushes could turn into an entire day’s worth of escapades for the trio, it was easy to fall into a rut of letting activities suitable to their explorative nature find them instead of actively searching for them.
This was the exact reason why, when the three fillies could find nothing of interest to occupy themselves with one blustery fall afternoon, they quickly became disheartened.
“Apple Bloom!”
And whiny.
“Yeesh, don’t get yer’ wings in a knot, Scootaloo.” The yellow earth pony tossed an irritated look at her friend, who hovered unsteadily a few inches off the ground. “Ah’m sure we’ll think of something to do soon enough."
The three fillies, their hearts filled with adventure and their minds filled with boredom, trudged lazily down a seemingly endless dirt road that stretched around town. One, an orange pegasus, faltered in flight as she attempted to respond while still staying airborne. “Yeah, we always come up with something eventually, but I want to do something now!” She shot a few inches higher as she punctuated her point. “I know—let’s go to the lake and try to get our cutie marks in diving.”
“Already tried that a month ago,” Sweetie Belle chimed in, poking her head between the warring fillies.
“O-okay, no biggie. Let’s go look for a Buffalo stampede to join in—that’ll be fun.”
“Ah thought Ah already told you, Buffalo don’t venture out around these parts.”
“Uh—ooh, I know! Let’s try and snag some clouds and zap some ponies, it’ll be hilarious!”
“You know you’re the only one with wings here, and you can’t even get a few feet off the ground, let alone a few hundred feet.” Sweetie Belle’s remark earned her a sharp stare from her somewhat-airborne companion. "Well, it's the truth..."
Before tensions could mount and turn a leisurely afternoon play date into a war,Apple Bloom hopped between the pair, walling off their mounting frustrations. "Look, Ah want to do something awesome as much as the next filly, but fighting ain't gonna do nothing but get us grabbing at each others’ throats.”
The mood softened as the filly’s wisdom sunk in. “Now,” she continued, “why don’t we just calm down and try to find something that we all can do without killin’ each other—”
“Base jumping!”
“Animating!”
“Drift racing!”
“Creative writing!”
“Something fun!”
“Something safe!”
Apple Bloom quickly found herself bowled over as her two overexcited friends reconvened their shouting match, their desire to outdo the other leaving the earth pony with a face full of dust and the sudden urge to yell both of them into the ground.
“Now—quiet, the both of you!” she sputtered angrily, swiping at the tiny pebbles lodged in her tail. “This is no way to treat your friends.” Her only reply was the continued droning of Scootaloo’s and Sweetie Belle's voices, still locked in a stalemate.
“Engineering!”
“Explosive ordinance creating!”
“Quit it, would ya—”
“Everypony be quiet and listen to me!” The three fillies, agitated past mere shouting, seethed in tandem at their respective counterparts. Their sudden, seemingly coordinated outburst sent them all reeling in confusion. For a long moment, nopony dared speak again, lest they interrupt another pony’s dialogue.
“Woah,” Sweetie Belle finally stammered, her eyes darting around to be sure neither of her companions were about to try and talk with her again. “I thought that only happened in bad stories. What are the odds—” The unicorn filly found herself silenced before she could finish her thought once more, but not by any of her friends.
A massive gust of wind, whipping through the air and edged by the faintest tinkling of glass, hit the fillies and sent their manes flying into disarray. The miniature squall bit at their faces for a long moment before retreating into the sky again, leaving the three fillies in silence once more.
“Well gee, I didn’t know it was supposed to be windy today,” Apple Bloom mumbled to herself as Scootaloo bent several feathers that had been blown loose by the breeze back into place. “Applejack said today was gonna be clear as crystal.”
Instead of the witty, satirical response Apple Bloom had expected, her friends only replied with a pathetically weak, “Yeah.”
The filly’s brow furrowed. “Oh come on, Ah know that we can’t think of anything now, but Ah’m sure if we put our head together, we can—”
“Bloom, hang on a second, would you?” The remaining two CMCs were quick to shush the farm filly, their stares turned absently into the distance. Apple Bloom moved to rebuke her friends, but picked up on their stares before any words left her mouth. Curiosity burying her frustration over her friends’ collective snub, she turned her head towards whatever had stolen the other Crusaders’ attention.
“Huh... just, huh. That’s weird.” The three squinted in tandem as something in the thicket beyond caught the sunlight and shot a beam of light into their eyes. “I didn’t know trees could sparkle like that.”
Scootaloo’s comment earned her a playful hoof in the ribs, courtesy of Sweetie Belle. “You silly filly, trees don’t sparkle.” Through a high-pitched giggle, the unicorn added, “It’s probably just litter.”
“Well in that case,” Apple Bloom asserted, “let’s go pick it up. Ah know how annoying picking up litter around the farm can be, Ah’d hate to see the pretty woods get all mucked up by litter.”
“Ooh—ooh! Maybe we’ll get our cutie marks in trash collecting!”
“Do we even want our cutie marks in trash collecting?”
“Who cares!” Wings buzzing with excitement, Scootaloo fluttered shakily into the air. “It’s our cutie marks we’re talking about here! Quit thinking about it so hard and hurry up already.” Blind hope propelling herself forward more than her wings; she lowered her head and charged towards the brush, crashing through the greenery with a mad smile.
Sweetie Belle, put off by her pal’s ambitiousness, turned to the remaining Crusader. “Should, uh—should we follow her?”
Apple Bloom sighed, equally annoyed. “Yeah, Ah suppose so. Let’s get this over with.”
“But I don’t want a trash collecting cutie mark...”
Despite their sizeable reservations about discovering a special talent for garbage disposal, the reluctant duo forced their unwilling hooves into motion. With another breeze at their backs guiding them towards the woods, they managed to reach the tree line without losing all hope in their questionable quest.
“Scoots... Scoots, slow down,” an apathetic Apple Bloom called towards the trees that hid her friend. “Ah don’t know why yer’ chompin’ at the bit to get such a weird cutie mark, but—”
“Bloom! Quiet down for a second, would you?”
The sudden shout from deeper within the brush startled the two out of their downcast mood—unfortunately for Scootaloo, though; it only succeeded in swelling their ever-mounting frustration with the pegasus.
“Scootaloo! Ah don’t like that tone you’re using! You’re the one who suggested we go after that piece o’ whatever-it-was to get our garbage-getter cutie marks in the first place, don’t be so... mean...”
The filly lost her tongue. Her hoofsteps slowed to a crawl as her jaw fell to the ground, limp and useless. Her eyes, only a moment ago filled with annoyance, now ballooned with confusion, coupled with a massive secondary dose of awestruck bewilderment thrust right into her core. Her juvenile mind fizzled and sparked, the gears catching and grinding against each other.
“What the hay...”
As Apple Bloom stood there agape, Scooaloo hovered out of the tree line to her side. "I know, right? I thought there was just one piece of litter." She chuckled, eying the glittering trees around her. "But just look at all these things! I wonder who put these all up?"
Arching her back, the pegasus hopped up into the air to get a closer look at the unusual ornaments that hung off the branches in clusters around the Crusaders. Squinting suspiciously, she gave the branch's adornment a surgical prod, half expecting it to come alive and bit her. Only after realizing that it would do nothing more than swing on the single, frayed string keeping it tethered to the tree did she lose interest and plop down in a heap next to the two earthbound ponies below.
In the orange filly's brief absence, Sweetie Belle had gravitated to Apple Bloom's side, copying the earth pony's hypnotized stare. Scootaloo couldn't help but laugh at the duo's slack, absent looks. "Geez, don't stare any harder," she teased. "You're acting like you've never seen a glass bottle before."
"Not a bottle," A still-entranced Apple Bloom murmured, "bottles." Her amber eyes danced from one piece of glass to another, her gaze never landing on the same one twice. "Who do you think put them up here? For that matter, how did they put them all up here?"
"Again, who cares?" Scootaloo floored her wings impatiently. "Let's just go recycle them and get those cutie marks!"
The anxious filly was already breaking the lower canopy when she heard the voice.
"Please, don't do that."
Scootaloo stopped dead in her tracks, her undersized wings faltering in surprise. The voice, just as thin and wispy as the wind it rode on, buffeted her back towards the ground. Skittering to a stop in a heap next to her equally-startled companions, she scanned the brush frantically for the source of the unsettling sound. "W-who's there?
The only response she got was the rustling of leaves, coupled with the tinkling of the bottles that outnumbered them. "Don't think we didn't hear you just then!" Crouching like a cornered animal, she growled menacingly at where she assumed the speaker was, though it sounded more like a scared whimper than anything else.
"You sound scared, child. I assure you, there is nothing to be afraid of."
Before Scootaloo could set the mystery speaker straight on just how not-scared she was, another breeze rippled through the trees, sending the bottles above the Crusaders’ into a fit of tremors. But this time, the wind brought forward more than just a few scattered leaves whipping past the fillies' hooves.
A parting in the thicket in front of the trio began to quake, a quiet rustle crescendoing into a miniature earthquake concentrated within its roots. Like a beam of light breaking through the clouds, the branches parted to reveal a glowing green light, outlining the faint shape of a pony. The fillies took an apprehensive step backwards, prepared to turn tail and run at any sign of danger.
"You still seem frightened." The shape behind the bush solidified, brushing back the growth with a tangible hoof rather than an unearthly light. "You won't find danger here, children; only an old mare who wishes to bask in your youthful innocence."
"Does that mean she's gonna eat us?" whimpered Apple Bloom.
"Eat you?" The shadowy pony chuckled, heralding another breeze. "I don't plan on doing anything of the sort."
For a moment, Scootaloo thought that the bush itself was stepping towards her. Soon enough, however, she realized that the moving "greenery" was just the mystery mare's mane swaying in the breeze as she finally stepped out of the concealing shadows. Thick locks of moss-like hair wove together in a seamless curtain of tangles that spilled over her shoulders and blended seamlessly into the grass at her feet. Her coat and eyes matched with a similarly spectacular shade.
“W-whoa, your mane—“ stammered Sweetie Belle, her inner fashionista shining through as she resumed her slack-jawed stare. “—it’s all, grassy, and stuff.”
For her part, the mare simply giggled. “Very astute observation, child. I am more... in touch with nature than most regular ponies.“ Quieting her chuckles, she added, “Though, in all fairness, I am not exactly a regular pony.”
“Yeah, most regular ponies don’t show up outta nowhere and scare the skin off of three little fillies.”
“Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom, farm-raised to respect adults no matter how creepy they may have been, glared daggers into her friend’s head. “Don’t be so mean to her, ya hear? Miss, Ah’m right sorry about all that—”
To everypony’s surprise, the mare brushed off Scootaloo’s spat with nothing more than a laugh and a wave of a hoof. “I apologize again if I scared you, child, but it was either that or appear behind you without any warning. I don’t think you would have liked that very much.”
“Oh great, now you can teleport?” Scootaloo, fed up with the mysterious pony’s downright creepiness (and still definitely not-scared at the way the wind seemed to back her every word), threw her hooves up in exasperation. “That’s it, I’m out. No more crazy adventures, no more crazy bottle forests, and no more crazy mares! Come on Bloom, come on Sweetie. We’re leaving Captain Nature Freak over here alone with her trees. Maybe she can take down all these bottles—”
“Take them down? Why would I take them down?”
The wind picked up.
“After all, I was the one who put them there.”
On her last word a sudden, forceful gale whipped through the trees, plastering the Crusaders’ manes against the back of their heads and sending the glass above them into an uproarious symphony of mindless noise. They chattered against each other like a massive, untuned wind chime, turning a monotonous whistle into a rattling din of a million different tones all fighting to get to the forefront.
The gust only lasted a moment, but the astonished look it left on the Cutie Mark Crusaders' faces dragged well into minutes of stunned silence.
"Shoot," a brave Apple Bloom finally stammered, her words nearly lost in the incessant whine that dominated her ears. "That was... that was plum fancy." The mare nodded with that same, uneasily calm smile on her face as the filly voiced her approval. "Y-you did all that?" Another nod. "How?"
A familiar, wispy laugh ran through the silenced bottles. "Very carefully."
Under any other set of circumstances, Apple Bloom would have rolled her eyes at the ambiguous comment. "Uh—okay then. How?"
The mare's head snapped up, her eyes cloudy in thought. All around them, the sounds of the forests seemed to falter and die as if they were nothing more than sounds playing on a broken phonograph, leaving the group smothered in an uncomfortable silence. The Crusaders took an unsteady gasp as the air in their lungs thickened into concrete.
"How... is a very good question indeed." Without skipping a beat, the mare glided to the Crusaders' sides, eyeing them critically. "Tell me children, would you like to hear a story?" The deep, curious look that nearly knocked the fillies' back compelled them to nod their heads up and down. "Good." She gestured to the grass at their feet. "Please, take a seat, relax."
Three undersized rumps hit the dirt in tandem. "Good listeners, I see. Use those skills, and listen well, for you will want to remember this tale."
"Long ago, in an Equestria too young to be remembered by history, there lived a mare, not so different from myself. She had a coat that shone with the most glorious shade of green, and a magnificent mane to match." She let out a hushed chuckle. "One could say she was the very incarnate of nature itself.
"But she didn't just look the part, oh no. Her hoof was as green as her hair, and she didn't miss a single chance to show either of them off. She relished in the look others gave her when she made their gardens spring to unimaginable heights, or when she would bring trees, dead for entire seasons, back to life with nothing more than a passing glance. It gave her purpose, it gave her fulfillment."
Her expression clouded, and she shifted her hooves underneath her as if she were standing atop a hot stove. "But her fascination didn't stop with mere plants and parlor tricks. It stretched from the tiny animals hiding away in their burrows, to the insects in the sky..." her features clouded, and she reached a hoof into thin air as if trying to catch the fleeting breath of nature. "...to the wind."
A thin laugh sliced through the tense atmosphere. "Oh, how she loved the wind. She would dance in the softest breezes, frolic at the slightest gust. All the ponies around her just heard a monotone whistle, but to her it was an unspeakably brilliant symphony, an elegy of pure beauty played by the greatest orchestra that never existed. It was the song from the Gods themselves, and she cherished every second of it.
“Others, though, they weren’t so accommodating to her unusual frame of mind. They brushed her off, called her a madpony, and even went so far as to taunt her.” The mare turned away, scowling. “But she was better than them, even if she couldn’t see it herself. Ever the generous soul, she made a promise to herself that by her own hoof’s work, everypony would learn to hear the wind as she heard it, to love it as she did—to love her as she did."
Her face brightened, sending another shiver through the trees. "And goodness, did she." Her hoof swept over the canopy of glass above the group. "All the bottles you see here? These were all her making. She spent her days hanging these up, painstakingly moving each and every one until it shimmered with the exact radiance that she pictured in her mind's eye." She giggled. "Or, mind's ear, as it was."
Pausing to recollect herself, her delight began to fade like the dying breeze. “But... her devotion soon turned to something darker. Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months, and still she refused to settle for anything less than absolute perfection. The songs of the wind in her head were always just a few more tweaks away, moving backwards and remaining just out of her grasp.
”Her passion festered and rotted, slowly becoming an obsession. Her friends, her family, her entire life—all of it was thrown away in pursuit of her one lingering goal. It consumed her, heart and soul, until she was no longer a pony—just skin and muscle and bone, moving without thought, her sole fixation the only thing keeping her together.”
The Crusaders stared on, so utterly transfixed by the tale that they couldn’t hear the mare’s voice wavering. “This was all a very long, long time ago. The mare was eventually swept up in the sands of time; not even her chilling devotion could save her from old age. She is gone now—" She paused dramatically. "—in body, at least.”
Intrigued, the fillies unconsciously leaned in closer to the storyteller. "Wh—what do you mean, 'in body, at least'?" interjected Sweetie Belle, doing her best to copy the strange pony's wispy tone.
The mare's smile returned, if not only for an instant. “Your curiosity is an endearing quality, my little pony. As for the mare, she disappeared eventually, like a storm fading over the horizon. She tried to leave a grand imprint on the world, but in the end all she left was a grave. Most ponies just assumed that she was reclaimed by nature, and were content to close the case at that."
Her stoically neutral demeanor snapped for a moment, and she all but lunged forward towards the Crusaders. Apple Bloom could have sworn she saw the mare's eyes ignite with a spark of life, though it was far too quick to tell. "But some tell a slightly different story.”
A thin smirk pulled her lips taught. “They say that if you listen very closely, you can still hear her voice trapped in the wind, calling out to anypony brave enough—or foolish enough—to listen.” Her hooves swept over the canopy above her, eliciting another shudder from the leaves.
Her voice faded off into silence, leaving a stunned trio of fillies in her wake. None of them dared speak, lest they disturb the unnaturally serene quiet that the end of the storyteller's tale had brought. For a long minute, the four just stood there, attempting to soak in all the messages that the story possessed just beyond its worldly cover.
Unfortunately, they weren't doing such a good job of comprehending it as the mare would have hoped. "Yeah, thanks for the story and all," Scootaloo butted in, a look of confused apathy on her face, "but I don't really see how all of that is anything more than just a good story. A good story," she added, noting the slightly annoyed flicker in the mare's eyes, "but still just a story."
Sighing breathily, the storyteller turned a forlorn look to the sky. "Tell me, little one; what do you wish for, more than anything else in the entire universe? If you could have one single, solitary thing in all the great cosmos, what would that one thing be?"
The pegasus answered almost immediately. "Well duh, my cutie mark!" Baring her blank flank, she continued, "Once I get this puppy, my life will be set! I'll be able to follow my dreams, and do what I'm destined to do. A cutie mark makes me unique; it lets me be a part of society while still letting me do what I want. Now, I'm just a blank slate. But when I finally get my mark... it's sorta like becoming a whole ‘nother pony." She beamed, proud of her impromptu answer.
All the while, the mare simply nodded along to the filly's ramble. "Your dedication is admirable, child. But think about this; would you go to the ends of the earth to get that little mark? Imagine that you must travel to a far-off land in order to find your special talent you want so badly. Would you set off without even thinking about the danger you may face, or the possibility of failure that might halt your journey dead in your tracks, or the ponies who you would leave alone and abandoned in your wake?" She turned a watchful eye to the filly. "Is your quest merely a wont... or an obsession?"
The mare's words hit the filly like a kick to the side, knocking the well-rehearsed answer right out of her lungs. "Well... i-it's like—it's not what you think, like—look, I'm not obsessed, okay?" she finally sputtered, though it was clear she was hardly even fooling herself.
"Ah, only now do you see my point. Do not let your desires grow into a tumor that drains the life from you under a mask of good intentions." Turning away from her audience, she took a few tentative steps towards the tree line. "Now go, and bask in the beauty of the day while it is still young. Live the life that the poor mare could not."
By the time the Cutie Mark Crusaders could will themselves out of their stupors and return to reality, the secretive storyteller was already disappearing into the undergrowth beyond the trees, her mossy mane breaking up her outline as she faded into the greenery.
"H-hey, wait a minute!" Apple Bloom the first to regain enough sense to realize that her newly-found friend was just walking away from her, took a skittering step towards the retreating mare. "You're not seriously gonna just leave us here, are you? Where are you going?"
For what would be the final time, she turned her head towards the fillies. Something vaguely resembling a smile tugged at her lips. "Wherever the wind carries me."
She didn't allow for any of the fillies time to protest, sinking back into the undergrowth and blending into the brush, disappearing from sight. Branches fell into place behind her, obscuring her path and making any impulsive attempts to follow her impossible. Following her lead, the ethereal wind followed at her back, sounding out one last salvo of rhythmic clanking glass before dying to a hushed whisper.
The three remaining fillies stood there, overwhelmed by the sudden battery of noise. Clutching at her ears, Sweetie Belle whimpered against the harsh, piercing claps just loud enough for herself to hear. By the time the wind had died, dragging the noise down with it and leaving a deathly, eerie silence in its place, the mare was gone completely, neither hide nor hoofprint left as a physical reminder of her very existence.
The Crusaders held an almost reverent silence, as if mourning for the poor pony of the mare's story at some impromptu funeral. Even Scootaloo managed to read her friends' awestruck eyes and hold herself back from speaking until the remaining two had looked up from their solemn dirges before shattering the quiet with a squeaky shout of excitement.
"Holy scapolies that was awesome!" Wings threatening to buzz right off her body and fly away of their own accord, Scootaloo all but danced around her friends as she gazed starry-eyed at the glass hanging above her. "It was all, like, 'whoosh, clakkaclakkaclak,' and then it was all like, being-tikating'!"
"We know Scoots, we were there," Sweetie Belle replied tentatively. "Apple Bloom, did you see where she went? One minute she was there, and then the next minute... she wasn't."
Ignoring her friend's hesitation, Scootaloo rushed up to the two other Crusaders and yanked at their legs. "Guys, do you know who would love to see this? Rainbow Dash! I'll bring her here—" Noting the betrayed frowns growing on her friends' faces, she corrected, "—I mean, we'll bring her here, and then she'll tell us how awesome it is! And then she'll think that I—uh, we're awesome!"
Apple Bloom was about to rebuke the pegasus for her vanity, but she was cut off by the unicorn filly beside her. "Actually, I think Scootaloo's right about this for once."
"What are you talkin' about? Vanity ain't a good thing."
"No, I mean all... this." Sweetie gestured vaguely to the trees and their glass leaves. "We've been around here how many tens of times before, and we've never seen anything like this here. If a weird magical thicket of trees with bah-jillions of bottles hanging off them just appeared out of thin air one day, wouldn't you think that we ought to tell somepony about it?"
The filly's logic was not lost on Apple Bloom, who screwed her lips shut tightly in contemplation. After a long moment of silent thought, she muttered out a curt, "Yeah, I guess."
"Good. We can tell our older sisters about this when we get back to town. Maybe they can shed some light on this." Chasing down their friend, who still had yet to calm down after witnessing the dazzling display and was hovering excitedly from place to place, they began their journey back towards town.
"Come on guys," the hyperactive filly whined, her wings beating futilely against the pull of Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. "Why do we have to leave that place? It was too awesome to just leave. Let's come back later and look at it some more, huh?"
The remaining two did their best to ignore their friend's begs as they trotted along, drowning out the pleads with mindless small talk. "So, do you think that anypony'll believe us? I mean, the thicket and all the bottles and that weird mare... it all just seems like a bit of a dream, you know?"
"Yeah, it does seem a bit weird—or a lot weird."
They both paused simultaneously, sharing a thought. Speaking in tandem, they voiced their concerns with a wavering, "You don't think they won't believe us, do you?"
"Well, I—"
"No, but if—"
Both clamped their mouths shut before they could interrupt each other again. Making absolutely sure that she wouldn't be cut off again, Apple Bloom muttered, "We actually have a point there. I know I wouldn't believe anypony who came out of the woods yammerin' about a bunch of trees with glass hangin' from them in spades and some weird storyteller talkin' about the crazy pony who put 'em there." She giggled. "Goodness, that does sound crazy."
"Ooh—ooh! I know what we can do!" Scootaloo, suspiciously eager to return to the thicket, broke free of her friends' grasps and rocketed in front of them. "We can go back and get evidence! Maybe we'll get our cutie marks in... uh, finding things!"
Undeterred by her questionable motives, the pegasus took hold of her unwilling friends and took off, aiming for the thicket they had left only a moment ago. With Scootaloo's wings beating on overdrive, the greenery in question rolled across the horizon in practically no time at all. Without even bothering to slow down, the three shot through the greenery and into the clearing.
They all tumbled to a screeching halt at the base of a tree, however, as they got their first look at the drastic makeover the clearing had gone through.
"T-the bottles—"
"They're all—"
"Gone!"
Indeed, where glass had only a moment ago outnumbered the leaves themselves, the Crusaders found the trees to be devoid of anything unnatural. The bottles simply disappeared into thin air, leaving nothing in behind in their wake but three stunned fillies, their brains fizzling in disillusioned distress as they all tried and failed to rationalize what had happened before their very eyes.
The wind blew through the empty thicket again, devoid of hollow clanking, carrying nothing but the gentle rustle of the leaves and a far-gone mare's silent laugh on its lips.
