When Pepper and Snow Melts

New Experiences Quest | Making Friends Quest | Family Matters Quest

The Seventeen Reasons to Cry (305 words, New Experiences)^Top | Next >>

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Sprinkles of fragile flakes scattered across an empty white landscape. The homes of Peppermelt were buried under a blanket of snow that blocked all doors and windows, reaching all the way up to the chimney stacks. Just a few seconds ago, this town was a beautiful collection of gorgeous floral gardens providing food at unusual times of year to all other villages around Snowhurst. This place that was an abounding food source was no more in an instant since an unlikely avalanche snatched the buildings up into its icy claws. All the citizens were indoors except one bloom that was rushing down a slippery slope three miles away from his hometown.

"Oh shoot, oh shoot, OH SHOOT!!!!" this lightning bolt of a baby pouflon screamed as he zoomed across fields of ice. His hooves lost grip of the ground, and he went soaring over the edge of a cliff. "MY SEVENTEEN! MY SEVENTEEN!!!!" this child roared amidst him rocketing out into the unknown forest below. The child spun out of control as he landed, kicking the trunk of a pine tree and ricocheting into a snow bank. It was a bad crash, and yet powerful baby hooves buckled out from the depths of the forest to continue their trek to wherever that bloom was headed.

"You're not gonna take my SEVENTEEN!!" the child shouted again. He had finally reached a towering pole that was his landmark for home being near. Across bounds and bounds of snow, he ran, then stopped when he thought he just passed by a chimney. Was this child actually flying without the need for wings?! Frozen in place, he started taking in the stretching landscape of chimneys and wind vanes all sticking out of the snow.

He was home, but his house was not a place of comfort to enter anymore.

Guardians of the Forest (778 words, Making Friends) ^Top | Next >>

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Right under a yellow floral-printed blanket, a frail bloom shuddered when the brittle winds of the west paid no mind to his cover. Twelve reflections of a sad child danced around the icicles above until each drop of water holding these reflections fell from them. The bloom lifted his head to look up into the clear sky, and his own drops of water fell from his eyes.

He had lost his whole birthplace to a collection of snow that shouldn't have been there. Despite living right by the mountain side, there was never enough snow to dust the reddish brick roads, much less enough to bury an entire house. Yet somehow an avalanche had set its course there. It didn't make any sense.

To think that he might never have his "seventeen" again, that is to say, the seventeenth soup recipe his mommy learned that year using random ingredients she found at the Miscellaneous Food Stall. As his mommy was not the greatest at naming, she just numbered the soup recipes, hence why it was called "seventeen soup" or "seventeen" as this child called it. This soup, his mommy, his home was all gone now!

These thoughts weighed the bloom's spirits down, but the appearance of front hooves that had taken color from the clouds lifted them back up. There right above him was a friend of true care for him, the one that gave this bloom the comforting cover keeping this bloom warm! Sitting down in front of the bloom, this helper continued his stories about various creatures the baby never heard of. All of these tales gave the child a way out of his sorrows.

This pouflon was not that much closer to adulthood, but his maturity was well established enough to care for this bloom despite being quite lost himself. Once he finished his story, this pouflon, named Dusk, gave the chilly child a warm bowl of berry soup.

"Don't worry, I'll bring you with me to my village once I figure out my way back. Then you can live with me and Mom, and I'll let you have half of my room," Dusk said. Rising up, Dusk started to turn to seek out the paths again.

"Please, don't leave me! I won't make it if I have to face this cold alone!" cried the child.

Dusk looked back at the child and replied, "I promise you, you can hold on. There is a future for you I know very well, there's no way you will be alone anymore if you can just wait." The child nodded at Dusk, though not with any sureness, and this was a signal for Dusk to rush out the cave to find permanent shelter for the both of them.

Watching his friend leave the cave, the sadden blue bloom curled up. Once that shadow of his friend's was gone, loneliness settled back in, and not too long after, the baby started crying again.

Out from further within that cave, a different stretching shadow covered the back of this bloom. The child felt a strange chill flowing from the inside of the tunnel, and turning his head he saw what he thought was a giant vespire! However this creature did not sport the same long jagged snout many pictures depicted of vespires from the child's storybooks, and a rounded nose was on the tip of the snout. Nevertheless, the child whimpered, "V-vespire!"

"Child, has no one taught you about the true guardians of the forest?" this "vespire" replied.

"Guardians...?"

"It's a shame pouflons have fallen so much into fear of what isn't truly threatening them, they neglect to teach their children about other people that roam these lands."

Just in that moment, a flash of words lit up in the child's mind. "Sulk! You're a sulk!"

The colossal creature lowered his head a bit with a hint of astonished offense. "A 'sulk'?"

"Why yes, you must be a sulk! A sulking!"

"Child, do you not know how to pronounce the word correctly?"

"I'm sure it was sulk, at least that was what my friend told me."

"Ursuki," the ursuki bluntly stated.

"Yes, exactly what I said!"

Streams of steam huffed out of that round nose on the end of a wrinkled snout. The glittering skies within the glare of this creature swirled about, and unveiling rows of jagged teeth, the ursuki growled, "You're missing about two syllables in your mispronunciation, and I can assure you, I am not impressed with your speech. Let me show you what an 'UR-suki' can do, and surely you'll find it in your heart to not confuse what I am with an expression of sadness."

The Sky Did Fall (754 words, Family Matters)^Top | Next >>

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"Save me!! Save me from this fall of the kingdom!!!!" a helpless bloom cried. The world around his heels was shifting from the yellows of daffodils, to the cyan of blocks of ice, to the obsidian of volcanoes in the depths of the sea. The floor was morphing, from season, to landscape the baby's eyes had never witnessed outside of paintings. Above him, the icy walls of the cave he once stood in shattered and the sky violently changed its colors and proximity to him. At one point the clouds were touching his ankles, the next the sunlight was so far away, darkness was stretching over his head, and before he knew it, his hooves were buried in the middle of a storm system.

All these rapidly changing scenes threw this child into a state of hysteria. Before him was the only person that held the child's sense of reality, and because of this, the child clung to this ursuki with desperation for all of this to stop. His face was full of shimmering fur, this fluffiness being his one comfort in a place so confusing.

"Child, I need you to get your teeth out of my fur," the ursuki grunted.

"Anyone! Someone! The fall, the terrible crumbling of infrastructure and hierarchy!!!" the child cried again. "Someone, save this pouflon that I am, this 'Rhys' that I am called. Save this pouflon!!"

Rhys's piercing pleas put a rift in the illusion, a rift that spewed stars of the sky that splashed about like waves of the arctic ocean. The ursuki was fuming these same star waves from his razor teeth, and eventually, the whole illusion collapsed like shards of glass plummeting to the pavement of icy streets. The streams of stars seeped between the cracks of the ice cave, and once more, Rhys was in a place that made sense.

"Why has our kingdom betrayed us all? Why have they brought forth this chaos that unveils their lack of incompetence...?" the child wept.

"How much fear has your people planted in that heart? For you to cry these words that only a deaf pouflon could comprehend, this displeases me greatly. Your precious Peppermelt is in one piece, that is to say if the army headed towards it hasn't already 'brought forth the lack of competence' of your kingdom."

"I saw with my own eyes that snow had--"

"Use your mind for a moment and consider the fact that an avalanche is impossible on your side of the mountain. Take a moment to realize the power that flows within my own claws, then put these two puzzle pieces together. Does that imagination of yours operate properly, or is it like your speech? Show me your deductive reasoning."

Looking up into the ursuki's intense gaze, Rhys uttered, "Did... did you do all this? With the stars, the swirling, the chaos?"

The ursuki straightened his stance, as if to take proud ownership over his actions. Calmly, the ursuki said, "It is I that have shown your very eyes what devastation could look like. It is a preview to what will be brought by your own kind looking to make an example out of your village."

"Why... so my home isn't buried in snow?"

"No, child, but it may be taken over by actual fire at any point now."

"An army you said-- if this army is headed for my home, why haven't you alarmed people who could do more than I ever could?!"

Lowering his eyelids, the ursuki said, "Quite frankly it is out of my control, simply because I have no compassion for older pouflon kind."

This statement struck Rhys, and to these cold heartless words, Rhys shouted, "You don't care what happens to MY PARENTS?!"

"Do you want to save your family?"

"GIVE ME MY PEOPLE!" this child demanded.

"Your 'people' is what you'll be 'given' then-- On one condition: you leave your schooling experience in my paws."

"I don't care, I'll do whatever it takes!"

"Well then, it is settled. That army won't be setting a single hoof in your village."

With this agreement, although it was not immediate, this child would face a whole new type of guardian. This guardian was like no caring family Rhys had all safe and bundled in warm blankets in their flower covered homes. What a ursuki truly was, Rhys did not know, but could it be he would form a distant cold opinion about these people after facing the trials ahead with this glacier of a caretaker?