Username: TheToyMaker
Show Name (optional): TTT Under The Oak
Name: Oak
Gender: Mare
Colour: Smokey Brown (EE/At At/nCr)
Age: 7
Height: 13.3hh
Halter Colour: Like those beautiful eyes ><
Five word personality:
Quiet-Sweet-Imaginative-Loving-Creative
One extra:
The Oak
(from Oak's pov)
When I was young, there used to be a massive oak tree in my pasture. It stood with regal posture, hundreds of years old and still standing strong, green leaves fluttering faintly in the gentle whispering spring breeze. It was my own special place, my hideaway where I could rest in the shade of its mighty branches and dream of stories and adventures I'd write down some time. No one else really knew about my oak tree- it looked like all the other ones that surrounded the outer border, but to me it had an ethereal air to it all around. Like, close your eyes for a second and wake up in a wonderland, little fairies fluttering about and a unicorn peeking at the newcomr shyly from behind some flowery bushes.
My oak tree was special to me, for it gave me many inspirations for my stories- from little dewdrops on a chilly morning to a blazing stampede. Of course, you needed an imagination too, but that one oak encouraged little budding ideas to flourish. And I loved it.
Sadly, of course, I was eventually weaned. I didn't really mind leaving my mother, though I loved her very dearly, but I needed to do something on my own. Although on a supposed "exciting" adventure away from the mare pasture with the other weanlings, I missed my oak. No longer did the little ideas sprout, and I didn't have an audience of older mares to entertain anymore. The other weanlings wanted to play, not sit and listen to my tales of fantasies.
I became more reserved, quiet, almost seeming depressed. I didn't want to play, so I always appeared unfriendly and cold. So I was forgotten. Just like the old oak, one among many others, though just not the same as them.
~A few years later~
Well, I was certainly older now. A while back the farm had relocated, due to an increased threat of lightning storms and wildfires. I had been trained to ride, and often went on adventures with a young girl who brought me tasty pears and seemed to love to brush me. I liked her.
Even better, now that all the tolters I knew were more mature (and could actually listen), many would willingly come to hear my stories, even bringing their young fillies and colts, who would listen in awe of a magical world beyond their boundaries. I very much enjoyed sharing tales with them, an eventually, most tolters at the farm knew me as "Oak the storyteller." I was quite pleased with this title, and slowly, the magical oak tree of my foalhood slipped to the back of my mind, the memory gathering dust in a corner. I suppose you could say I had forgotten the very thing that inspired me to create in the first place.
A bit later, I was taken out for a ride by my owner, the girl who I had come to know as Quill. It wasn't a normal ride though, she was taking me to inspect how much damage was done to a forest in a wildfire- it had been where the farm used to be. Where I had grown up.
Picking your way through charred bits of your foalhood can be a little saddening, especially seeing all the tall, beautiful trees burnt to a crisp and the ground layered in ash. Still, I didn't remember the oak.
Quill and I, after walking around for a bit, decided to stop for lunch by a riverbed. She sat on the pebbles and pulled a lunch sack out of my saddlebags, before trusting me enough to let me roam in pasture beside the river. That pasture was the old mare pasture.
Still, I didn't remember the oak.
After grazing for a bit, something began to... becon me. Like a strange, soft voice calling my name, urging me to come. A bit suspicious but curious, I moved in that direction. Towards the back of the pasture, where many large trees had stood.
Still, I didn't remember the oak.
I followed the call, further into the woods. Something seemed familiar, but I just couldn't put my hoof on it. Something about the ethereal, airy feeling in the breeze, how the other charred trees seemed to circle a certain spot.
Still, I didn't remember the oak.
I stepped into the circle, and found what lie at its center... the charred remains of an ancient oak, that stood so mighty throughout the storm. My oak tree.
I remembered the oak.
There, in front of the stump I fell to my knees, laying before the oak. What had guided and encouraged every thought I ever had to bloom was gone, dead. I nudged the tree, but I already knew.
It was gone.
The oak was gone.
My oak was gone.
I just sat there in shock, a pony, just laying in front of a broken tree. A strange sight, but I felt broken too. All the magic had left this special place, my hiding place.
Sighing, I lay my head down on some surviving moss at the base and closed my eyes, trying to feel that last bit of ethereal fantasy before it slipped away.
But something tickled my muzzle, softly. Opening my green eyes I saw it was a tiny sprout of green, little leaves stretching up. It was a new oak. A new tree. Suddenly I sat up, noticing all around me the little green souls of past things sprouting through the soil and the ash, beginning again. I watched it in awe as they stretched towards the afternoon sun, even through the barren, charred ground.
Standing up now, I realized that the magic was being brought back, filling the forest with happiness again. The sprouts danced towards the sun, on a journey, to become the roots the past had left behind.
I realized it wasn't about the past memories, but the new life, how even in the toughest times, a fragile little green plant can blossom.
I trotted back to Quill at the river, a bouncy, happy trot.
I was Oak the storyteller, and I had a whole new tale to share.