Embracing Frostbite
Written by Septia.
Winter had come early to the Foreverwood, as per the forest’s behest; for the mile of overgrowth listened not to the wishes and whims of the weather mares. It would interrupt clear days with rain, untame the winds that passed through its mane of flora, and wipe a storm off its schedule, were it to the woods liking. This season, the Foreverwood had elected to be cold and selfish beneath a blanket of snow.
-Kcrrffss- A hoof sank into the dunes of chilled fluff, compacting the snow, each step creaking with the hinges of winter. ‘Twas a mare, merely a mare. Yet, by her stature, some would still call her a filly. That is, if they could recognize the figure of the pony, cloaked in a shamble of felt and branches woven with leaves; a wandering tent, dressed to stave off the cold. Yet still, splinters of ice printed upon her, whenever the bare hoof met with and sank through the path. -Thfssschfffs-. She would avert her gaze, spying for a glimpse of the sky. Were she to abide by the directions of the stars, she would one day soon escape these woods. This belief held true in the mare's heart. Alas, what patches of shimmering above she could gleam held the very moon she had borne witness too, that which had followed her throughout their journey. The mare shunned the sight, forcing another step through the cold. -Chhnncsss- This time, her hoof only sank so far… the most recent snowfall, and compacted under her step.
The mare clenched her teeth. For had become well versed in the ways of the Foreverwood. Trampled snow meant activity, which in turn meant… she was not alone. Her teeth clattered as she shuffled forwards, taking care as each step sowed and glid into the packed carpet of crystals with nary a creak. With that, the sounds of the forest overtook her. A faint whisper of the wind, the shift of icicles, marred with the explained pops and creaks her ears would barely comprehend. A hostile silence.
The path beneath her steps remained packed. For such a long stretch, it could not have been one single creature, unless… The mare wished not to dwell on the size of the creature that would pave such a path… -Awoooooo-. It was far, yet the sound consumed her mind. The mare leapt off of the path, scuttling forward and down to cower against the ground, crashing to the sprawling roots of a grand tree. Her tail whipped behind her in conjunction with a drag of the cloak to erase her hoof prints, then clutching the hood over her head, nestling herself between the barbs of bark, holding over her muzzle as to mute the clattering of her teeth at the sound, at the thought of what had roused the forest with its call.
Timber wolves. A pack of them. The stewards of the forest's freedom, the guardians of this ground. Without the luxury of ascending the trees, she was forced to cower, wait, and endure the silence as the howls roamed closer. Her cloak was befouled and rugged, placed with rugged repairs of the woods, enough to act as camouflage, yet this would be a role forsaken to closer scrutiny, and if any of the timber wolves were to graze her… -Ckgnk- -Ckngkt- -Kcnngtjs- -Krrrsnsgkt- -Awwwoooo-. The creaks and groans of animate branches and howls of ulven geists neared as the mare felt her hooves steel under the frigid cold, circulation growing numbed as she laid pinned within her burrow. If they were only to pass… -Ckknkgkg- -Ckknrrkrngk- -Kkrrnskgths- the creak and bend tumbled through the path, the scramble of the flock approaching her. The realization they were going to pass by her within the whip of a tail gave the mare away through her rugged quivers…
-Ckgkthhgn- -Ckgktsb- -Gnnryrk- -Gwghrrs-.
“Whew, them axels ain't sounding so fine no more.”
Befuddlement struck our mare. This was not the growls of a beast nor the rake of splintered claws, it was…a voice. Or was it? It had been so long, perhaps the timber wolves' howls up close had the inflection of a workpony? She remained in place, as the soft creaks of wood passed her. Only after, when the silence began to set again, would she creep out, and peek under the cloth. Further ahead was a stallion, dragging a wagon that teetered through the snow, creaking and craning as the broad wheels sloughed into the powder, and the hinges squealed every now and again -Annhhhgggh-.
Relief, however, would not have time to settle. For a mare wandering alone for nearly a moon, this sight was not only a relief of the threat of timberwovles, but a promise, of a settlement.
~ 1 ~
And so it was, that after the mushroom harvester ventured into the village, our mare followed a stone's toss behind. She witnessed the ground's white carpet lessen, slimmed to barely leave prints in one's wake, the weather once again tamed as a scattering of paths between houses stretched out in a clear field. There were ponies here. Ones, lie her, enough. Those who carried supplies smiled between one another, and carried conversation of all matters beneath the sky.
Her steps regained a rhythm, trotting along to take in the sights of hay roofs over rock or wooden built homes, of families embracing one another, and of stands with apples, flowers, even little bundles of puffed wheat, all exchanging away their goods.
“Here it must be.” She finally thought, a place where she could find warmth and rest. She had never seen so many buildings, you see, so one must be for her, she thought.
“I-I want to thank you so much leading me out of the forest.” She said, approaching the stallion as he stopped by a stand. She laid her hoof to his shoulder in thanks.
“Shohsha, whahs-.” He cried out, dropping the keg to the ground, the keg's cork popping out of its depth as a torrent of bubbling, fermented nectar doused her, soaking into her cloak and spattering against her chest.
“You creeping up without a word? Look what ye did, gotten no respect for other ponies hard work?”
She shuddered back, the warmth of the cider, and harsh accusations jabbing into her.
“I-I wanted-.”
“’Ave you considered other folk's wants? Urgh, saved the most of the cider, lucky, I'd wanna give ye mother a stern talking to, were the embarrassment not ‘nough.” The stallion posed, and a hauled the keg into his wagon.
The ragged mare stared into the distance, then peered back towards the standing pony, whose eyes darted from her to this customer.
“I'm, it wasn't.”
“I dun want nothing to do wiff it...” they cursed, and continued to pack down their stand. The mare lowered her muzzle. She shook off some of the cider, and ventured further into the village.
She approached another stand, but was declined her request for food. A third asked briskly of payment, and without a moment to when she failed to formulate a response, there was a polite suggestion to look elsewhere. The further down the road she went, the more ponies would cast her glares, wherein she saw a reflection of herself – the ragged tent of patchwork cloth and branches – reflected in the eyes those who walked the street. Until… she began to avoid them. Stalking the edges of the paths, peeking between buildings, the families began to take in another air of character. It was tinted with a malice that had lain hidden beneath a facade. The families that huddled together, showing all the more distance to everypony but themselves, roaming the streets with packages and parcels… the further down she went, the less lone ponies she saw. Most alone met up with others, and joined their treks between the buildings. Moving, but in packs. She peered back towards a stallion holding a colt as bundled up as she was. His eyes burrowed pikes of ice into the visage of the lone, filthy pony invading their home…
She averted her gaze. It was better, were she just to focus on, how she could-.
“Who are you?”
The shouted sentiment sliced traced into her back, deeper than a knife. She brought her cloak close and set off in a gallop.
“Stop her.”
There were clattering steps behind her, voices loud and biting at her tail, but she was faster in the end, that's why she had made it so far…
Once inside the forest, they dared not follow, yet despite the hoofsteps fading, she kept running. For five, long breaths she ran, until she could wait and feel the silence enclosure her. The buzz of the village melded into an indistinct chatter and popping, and soon a haze of hostile silence.
She took a deep breath, breathing out a plume of chilled vapour into the air, after which her throat became like ice in the cold. She huffed for breath, peering behind her, to the faint light of the settlement. Calm, she could settle. A bewildered calm of returning, to be at the whims of the elements. She had not experienced the warm. The village of what she had dreamed, was nought but another timberwolf den.
~ 2 ~
Droplets of cider clung to frozen flails in the mare's coat, a shining iridescence of reflected twilight. Her hooves were growing stale as she clambered up the branches… A wind seeped under her cloak, lifting it off her body, and exposing her to the elements. She clung to it, even as her flanks grew frigid and stale… It became a challenge to climb any higher than the first clutches of branches. She tucked up the cloak, her ears and mane fluttering in the gales, pelting her with snowflakes that stabbed her coat with needle pricks of ice. She brought the fabric tighter, yet in doing so she felt the chilled cider branch onto her chest. -Kchchhrkts- The cloak cracked where the liquid froze, fracturing into a spiderweb of facets, each in which she saw her own eyes staring back at her.
She sniffled and coughed as the she'd inhale crystals of frozen phlegm, each forced breath spiking ice through her throat. The mare buried herself in the enveloping cloak, coughing and smothered into the felt to filter in any heat to dull the ache in her lungs… it helped. The tapping rattled through her body. Her teeth clacked together. It was creaking even as she tried to bite into her blue lip. She had fought the cold on so many nights, but now… it wasn't something she could shut out with the cloak… The mare's chest, was freezing.
The moon rose, painting the land over which it loomed into a cobalt-onyx shadow in its likeness. It was a bright moon tonight. Windigos galloped through sky and trees alike. The snow shimmered azure and the shadows a blackened unending grey, and in this shimmering snowfall, in the valleys of crystals scattered across branches and bark, laid a darkened, matte, hood, shuttering between in its tree. She swallowed, but her throat laid dry and cold, after which she felt the clattering reverberate through he once more. She bit down, hard… but it continued… For it was not the mare's teeth that were quivering in the winter night, but something far deeper. She gasped for breath. Her coat was chilly. She brought the cloak closer, yet the biting freeze laid not in her coat, but had penetrated her cloak. The mare had grown so cold that she could no longer sleep.
That is when she got angry. Angry that she had spent so long reaching for something new, only to arrive to nothing behaving changed. Anger for the cold that her body had feuded with each night, and angry at the settlement ponies, and their stupid cider. The anger roused her senses, poking her heart with pikes of coal: it warmed the mare. Yet, even anger tempers, when you feel there is no pony else to blame. It hurt, to just be mad. So, she stopped. Conserving her heat, the tips of her ears calcified numb in the serpentine breeze of frigid air, bundling up over the chill emanating from her barrel.
Then a sensation broke the monotony. Rather, a lack of sensation: it had stopped getting colder. As if, hers matched with the forest, completing the puzzle. Her eyes glossed over, peering into the fold of trunks and foliage, seeing a faint, orange spar in the distance. The settlement. There must be uncountable candles to make such a glow. Were they cold? Did this hungry night sink their teeth through their houses? Of course they weren't. Why would they be? She wanted to understand. She wanted to remember, what it felt like.
The mare, now in a haze, would be unaware that the spark she had witnessed, now grew closer.
The glow drove the gales as the windigos shone like a star, and blossomed up in luminance, bright as the campfire. Veils of starlight traced its path as the light swelled and shed petals of itself, merging in the sculpt of an equine. A tangerine haze of a coat flowed out into a mane and tail of soothing cerulean, their flowing mane and tail rising, and melding in the moon cloaked landscape.
The mare began to see them: a glow, growing near. A glow with a face, and a smile.
“Wh-. who…”
But the mare could not form her question, for the equine neared, it grasped the cloak, locking eyes with the mare, and tore it off. First one end, then the other, unfolding the shaking mare scrunched up beneath.
“Y-you c-cantttkt…” She needed it. She had to stay… warm? Warm. She was… warm. It was a little chilly for the mare, yet, out in the open, there was comfort. Only her back, still resting on the cloak, laid stiff and polar. It… suddenly made sense. She didn't need it. The cloak is what kept her cold. She wished that the spirit would grant her one more kindness, and lift her off of the horrid clothing that throughout this joy, had only betrayed her.
The spirit merely smiled, a segment of its body twinkling and rustling in luminance. Then… the strings of a harp sounded with her emotional motions, as the spirit's cerulean tail swelled and sprawled… The mare followed it, catching the light slithering up the tree trunk, through the bark, over their cloak, and then… the strands crept into her hooves.
A spark crackled aglow within the mare, as heat burrowed through her legs, thawing her hooves with soothing flames.
The mare understood and mustered a wheezing coo, to be relieved from the cold.
The tendrils of the tail clasped over her folded legs, winding round her flank, more and more strands joining in, sloughing over her coat, and weaving together into a warm, full body sock, then gradually creeping its rim up over her huddled shape. Past the precipice of the woven light was pure comfort. The warmth simmered and soothed her body as the heat torched her nerves. The sensation of her legs and hind was bathing in a cascade of warmth, it gave her context to the horror that her journey had pressured her under, but that was in the past, it was over, and she could rest…
The tail knitted strands together into one whole, warping over the outlines of the mare as it and swathed her frame in the manner of a homemade sweater. It was the warm hug and care of a grandparent, creeping up her torso, and enveloping her in a warmth away from the winter. It rescued her, smothering her in an insulating clutch of warmth. She was melting… She went from being numbed by cold, to numbed by the endless, crawling warmth. She was melting. She could no longer feel her hooves, resting at the bottom of the weaving satchel of luminance, but she knew it wasn't freezing, and this was enough. She was melting.
From a patchwork of felt and moss, to a woven warmth of the spirit's tail, a luxury none other would delight in: Who in the settlement could say they felt this, sweltering heat… What did it matter, if she were melting? As the moist light dropped in soothing juices, her mind grew dizzy at the sight of the pure cerulean gleam swathing over her frame, melding in with the yellow and orange smile of starlight looming above her. It did not speak. It wore a smile. Yet it had not parted any lips.
The mare smiled back, sinking back into the tail, the sensation that of sinking back into a late summer's stream, and simply… letting the tides guides her. Her back laid no longer cold; if she could understand what her back, or what had become of it, even was anymore. She expressed thanks as well as she could, and the tail weaved around her, devoured by frostbite...
~ 3 ~
-Crrnrnngks- A creak of wood – spiking through her spine like the snap of a timberwolf’s jaw – brought the mare to consciousness. Wide eyes stared down the stallion above her. For a sparse few moments, neither could say a word.
Then, the stallion placed something down, on a nightstand beside her. He gestured to it. “For when ya get hungry.”
The mare kept her eyes honed on him, then shifted.
“Oh, don't you go getting up now, you were an icicle out there, best let yer limbs limber up 'gal.”
“W-… -what?”
The stallion smiled.
“Sorry, should be getting some sleep still shouldn't ya? All's fine, got nothing te worry 'bout.” he said, patting the blanket before turning.
“Oh, one thin, family'd like ta know what yer called. Instead a just saying 'tha mare' and 'that mare' ova an ova.”
“… Vel.”
“Well, Vel, much appreciated, keep comfy.” he said, and left the room.
Val peered into the bowl of soup beside her. Steaming, hot so the air warped above. Carrot, beets, and potato making her salivate. Then she rested her back on the pillow, admiring the roof above her head. Closing her eyes… as the warmth thawed her chest.