Love Songs and Tooth Picks

Sometime before the crack of dawn, I slid my head out from under a familiar blanket, only to see an unfamiliar sight. There was no lights turned on, the curtains were still drawn, the room was completely dark. I could still see. I looked up to my horn, there was no light shining from it. Why is everything green then?

I began turning my head side to side, scanning for a light source. It wasn’t until I looked down on the other end of my bed that I stopped. There, Gate was still sleeping. She was enveloped in calm, flowing blue. Must be seeing auras again. But why? And why did it wake me up?  I got out of bed, as quietly as I can. Thankfully, my hooves agreed with my preferred direction of motion and let me stand without falling. I couldn’t tell what time it was, but I could sure as hell tell it was late.

I started to raise a hoof to take a step, but thought better of it. It would just make too much noise. Instead, I decided to get some socks out of my bag. I slid them on without a thought and hoped it would dampen the noise. It did. Well, they are definitely useful in that sense.-

I quietly crept over to the guest room door, pressing my ear against it to listen. Once I was satisfied that there was nothing waiting for me to open the door, I let my magic reach the door knob and slowly opened it up. Despite my best efforts, the door let out a long and echoing screech from its age old hinges. Shut up door! I’m trying to be sneaky here! I looked back over to the bed and saw that Gate hadn’t even twitched in her sleep. Good thing she’s not a light sleeper.  I carefully stepped into the hall way.

Maybe some noise over in Snow’s room woke me up? The door to his room was just across the hall, so I didn’t have to risk my clumsiness making too much noise. I pressed one ear against the door to his bedroom, and heard both Snow and Twinkle inside snoring lightly. Did they just do what I think they did?

I cracked their door open and peeked inside. Under the bedroom blanket were two auras, one smaller pink one, and one larger white one. I looked a little closer, and saw a very faint speck of a third silvery aura inside of Twinkle. Snow had gotten her pregnant.

Do they even know?

Should I tell them?

Do I have any right to be the one to tell them?

Maybe they’re just fucking with me?

But how would they-

My thoughts were interrupted by a sound from outside a window. I immediately closed my eyes and focused on the source, flicking my ears side to side until I heard it once more. There it is. A light shuffling, just outside the window in this room. I opened my eyes and breathed deeply. I could faintly see the outline of someone’s aura through the wall. I let myself open my eyes a bit wider to an almost painful point. There wasn't just one person outside, there was dozens. And they were armed.

I quietly crept over to the sleeping pair, and whispered “Hey, Snow, Twinkle, wake up. There is a lot of people outside, they are trying not let us know they are there. Come on, we need to be alert for whatever this is.” Neither of them moved a muscle. Ugh, Snow had better not kill me for this.

I let my magic wrap around the mattress, and slowly started tipping it. The sleeping ponies on it started to slide off, when Snow woke up. He started to shout, but I stuck a hoof in his mouth. “Shhhh… People outside, I think we might be in for some trouble soon. I’m going to go wake up Gate.” He nodded, and I crept back into the other room.

I didn’t bother trying to whisper anything to Gate, she had always slept through anything she wanted to. Instead, I just pushed her off of the side of the bed. She hit the floor with an echoing thump, before opening her eyes. “Good morning, Floor.”

“Oi, that’s my line wanker. Wake up, something is about to-” my sentence was cut off by the sound of shattering glass from the small window overlooking the bed. A small silver canister flew through the air, with smoke flying from it. I panicked. Grabbing it in my magic, I just threw it back outside through a different window pane.

Gate was getting up, slowly. “The hell are you breaking windows for? I’m up I’m up!”

“Not up enough, we’ve got trouble!”

I heard the stomping of heavy boots on wooden floors coming from the other end of the house. I looked through the open bedroom doors to Snow and Twinkle, who was now wide awake. For the briefest moment, they were calm, until their own window shattered. Apparently, it was large enough for one of the intruders to come directly in.  Twinkle’s horn flashed pink and he flew back through the window, knocking down a few of his friends in the process. “Heart! Gate! What’s going on?!”

“I’m starting to think that drawing attention was a bad idea!” More boots were approaching, rapidly.

I found my lyre hanging from my bag on the door, and took it out. I stepped into the hallway and looked towards the stomping noise. I started to play another lullaby, but nothing happened. They all pointed guns at me. Big, shiny, deadly looking guns.

Gate used telekinesis to drag me back out of the hall and into my room. “ They probably have got earplugs!”

“You are just now telling me this why?!”

Twinkle walked calmly towards the door. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of her blazing eyes. It was a pale pink flame, trailing outwards around her head. She walked into the hall, and turned and faced the intruders. Her voice seemed to be the collective echo of a thousand whispers, coming from inside of my mind. Her lips never moved. “You are not welcome here. Leave, or suffer.” I heard the clicking of guns being armed. “If you wish to die, then so be it. Fire away, gentlemen.”

Snow’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?!”

Twinkle just smiled, as the guns started firing.

There was a rather impressive but deafening flash of pink light for a moment, the sight of which made me clench my eyes shut.   By time I managed to open them again, there was fire. There was a lot of fire, the same color as the flames coming from Twinkle’s eyes. There was no heat from the flames, and they were not burning anything. But the flames wrapped themselves around everything. Every bit of exposed wall, every piece of furniture, everything that wasn't alive was engulfed in the torrent of the pink fires. Judging by the far brighter glow coming from the hall, the intruders were probably lit up like the fourth of July.

“I warned you. No one is going to harm my friends. You have three seconds to run.” The three of us just stared at her. She was floating about two feet off of the ground, eyes burning almost as bright as her horn. Her mane and tail looked like flames of their own, as opposed to their normal curls. A gun was fired, but the bullet was crushed against an invisible wall several inches from Twinkle’s, eye. "Pathetic.”

She blinked, and all of the pink flames were extinguished as the house fell back into darkness. After a moment, everything was bathed in a cacophony of screams. It sounded not too unlike a chorus of singers, suddenly terrified by the song they were singing. A smaller pink light flowed in from the hallway, as did the stench of burning flesh. It made me want to vomit, but I couldn't make myself take my eyes off of Twinkle. It was several minutes before the suffering ended. Did she just burn all of those people?

Twinkle fell to the ground, panting. Snow rushed to her side to help her up. His jaw dropped when he looked down the hall way, and he stopped moving. Curiosity got the better of me, and I poked my head out and into the hallway.

There were at least a dozen men dressed in bullet proof vests, helmets, and other standard combat gear. None of them were burned, but all of them had a faint pink glow around their heads. Each one was unconscious, by their twitching I assume it was nightmares about Twinkle. I looked over at Twinkle. “How did you-“

“Magic.”

We had all agreed to simply wander into the forest and keep moving; It was the logical thing to do when being hunted. We were all covered hoof-to-mane in thick globs of mud, to hide our scent. Gate, Twinkle and I were taking shifts covering our tracks as we walked; we had discovered it to be a rather simple task. Just gently return anything we disturbed to its previous position, and no one will ever know you were there.

We were travelling light. I had my hoodie pulled tightly about my fore-hooves-chest-area-thing, along with my raggedy old messenger bag. It was a bit awkward to carry it normally, so I just sort of put the strap around my neck and let it sit on my back The lyre was in side of it, and my violin was floating near by.

Gate had brought what seemed to be a large blue fanny pack, hanging from her neck. I didn't need to ask to know the Lyra Plushie was in there. My only question, was where she got such an atrocious object. Who the buck even owns those any more?! The other two were carrying nothing, except each other. They both seemed incredibly tired, leaning on one another as we walked our way through the foliage.

We kept at this for several hours and were well into the forest, (About 23 miles past the tree line, according to Twinkle.)  when suddenly, Snow fell to the ground from exhaustion, Gate just nudged him with a hoof. “Get up, we can’t afford to stop moving.”

“I can’t, I can barely keep my eyes open as is.”

“I thought you were the big strong one?”

“I didn't get much sleep last night, too tired to strong.”

“Why didn't you get much sleep last night?”

Snow’s eyes closed and his head just rolled over, asleep .Twinkle blushed, her cheeks a brighter red than Snow’s eyes. “He... we… no reason.”

“No reason, eh? Why were you two in the same bed then?”

“I, We, He, uhh..”

“Out with it girl!” Gate was getting annoyed it seemed.

I decided to interject. “They were busy getting Twinkle pregnant.”

Twinkle’s shame was nearly palpable. “Wait what? I'm - You know about that? We thought you were both out of it entirely!”

“We were, when I went in there I saw a two auras, yours and his. I looked a little closer and saw a small, third one.”

Twinkle fainted.

Gate managed to scrape her jaw off the floor long enough to form a sentence. “What do you mean auras?”

I set my things down with a sigh. “Since it seems we are stopping for a break no matter what, I guess I can explain. You see, every now and then, when I’m frightened or alarmed, my eyes glow. You know that bit.  Well, when my eyes start glowing, my vision doesn't change at all, beyond the tinge of green that everything gets. What it does, is it lets me see the flow of magic around every living thing, the aura if you will. The stronger or more familiar the aura, the easier it is to see through obstructions like thin walls. It isn't exactly x-ray vision, but it does help me see things coming. That’s how I knew that we were about to be under attack, sort of.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘sort of’?”

“Well, I was unaware of anything out of the normal when I first woke up. All I knew was that my eyes were glowing. I went to check on Snow and Twinkle, that’s when I saw the foal starting to form in her, I looked a little closer to double check, only to spot a flare of a red aura outside. Then I woke you all up, and you know the rest.”

"Well... dang. That sure does put a bit of a hamper on things."

"That it does." I scratched my chin with the tip of my fore hoof. "Say, isn't there supposed to be bears and stuff in these woods?"

Almost as if on cue, we heard a twig snap.

"Heart, we should get the beauty and the beast over there back into the world of living. This is a terrible spot to rest."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah, but they are so out of it. I don't think we have the time to find a clearing, got any ideas?"

Gate's previously neutral facial expression quickly started to evolve into thinky face once more. Someone press B! Quick! Her mouth cocked slightly upwards on the left. Her nostrils flared slightly. Her pupils dilated down to pinpricks. Her eyes widened to impossible amounts, even for freaky big pony eyes. For the fainted of moments, There was an inkling of a blue glow coming from her eyes. "Heart. I just had an idea." Really? I would have never guessed. "Help me get these two into a tree."

And so we all sat in a rather large oak tree. Gate and I had our hooves wrapped around some thick branches, desperately trying not to fall; while Snow and Twinkle were tied together with vines, and were safely against the firm tree trunk. Gate had asked me to keep my eyes closed and my ears open, since she was so sure that something wanted to kill and eat us in these woods. "Don't you worry your pretty little blue head. I've got a lot of shit I need to do before I let anything even try to kill me." I had said.

She just rolled her eyes and scoffed. "It isn't you I'm worried about." I knew that it shouldn't of, but that had hurt. My gaze fell away from her and my ears fell to my head.

She seemed to notice this, and started to speak. "Heart, that isn't what I-"

I cut her off, a hiss in my voice. "Shut up." It was barely louder than a whisper. "Something is coming."

There were two forms approaching the our position.