Agatha tread lightly behind Lightning, bright eyed and excited by the new world around her. Fresh snow had fallen not minutes ago, and a pocket of bright blue sky opened over them, casting warm bars of sunshine through the trees over their heads. A cardinal sang nearby.
 
She was hungry. They were hungry. They had progressed into their third day of travel and their granola and trail mix had run out. What they were searching for, Agatha didn’t know. That didn’t matter to her. The little filly was just happy to be walking outside. She was at the age where all the world is wonder. The foal stared about her, marveling at the sparkling white snow that blanketed the earth and black trees, the cold air, and the homey smell of smoke from some unknown source. They came to a ridge at the edge of the conifer woodland that opened into a meadow. The light was so bright that Agatha was forced to squint.
 
It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust. Suddenly, Agatha spotted a brown quadruped creature, with two ivory branches sticking out of its head. She gasped, and crouched behind the ridge to watch it curiously. To her surprise, her mother did the same. The crossbow that had hung at her side for the past few days was now drawn and loaded, aimed at the creature. Agatha paused, “Mother…is it dangerous?”  
Lightning Dust didn’t respond, but with an inhale without exhale, she pulled the trigger and released the arrow from her crossbow. Agatha watched as the creature fell to its knees, letting out a pained cry. The arrow stuck from its shoulder. It attempted to run.
 
The elder pony cursed under her breath, and adeptly drew another arrow and once more pulled the trigger. This time, the arrow hit its mark, and the deer fell. Agatha stared with wide eyes, mouth agape. Red stained the fresh snow.
 
“HaHA! Yes!” Agatha jumped as Lightning Dust suddenly burst. She had never heard such excitement, let alone a SMILE, from Lightning Dust. The middle-aged pegasus trotted out to the deer. She knelt down, and tugged both of the arrows out.  
Agatha glided over softly, confused.
 
“Why…why did you kill him? He looks like a pony.” She asked softly, her wide red eyes fixed on the bloodied pelt of the deer.
 
“We need to survive. His body will provide us with the food and funds we need to do so. Besides…deer are dumb as doorknobs.” Lightning Dust pulled out a curved blade and rope.
 
“You mean…eat him?” Agatha stepped back, horrified.
 
“You’re overthinking things. You have to eat, and this will feed you.” She formed a lasso with the rope and looped it over the deer’s neck, pulling it taut so it fit snugly under his jawline. “That’s all that matters.”
 
Agatha felt her stomach rise in her throat, and nausea swept over her. “I can’t…he was alive.”
 
Lightning Dust began tearing at the deer’s antlers with the blade until they were cut away, one at a time. “Well now he’s dead, and serves no other purpose than to keep us alive. You are hungry, aren’t you?”
 
Hunger did crawl at her belly, but surely there was something else to eat. Even the blackened dead roots of frozen shrubs which cut through the snow seemed appetizing compared to the flesh of another. Tears welled up, and Agatha stamped her hooves. “Mother…I…I can’t do that!”
 
Lightning Dust stopped working, and turned her piercing golden gaze to Agatha. The foal’s mane crawled. “It is high time you learn something, and learn fast. Out here, survival is all one big competition, and you have to do whatever it takes to win. You must realize this. Or die.”
 
Lightning Dust lunged at her daughter, wielding the blade. Agatha yelped, and reared up to dodge the attack. Lightning Dust struck her daughter’s cheek with enough force to push her to the ground. She pinned down her daughter, one hoof pressed to her chest. “If you want to survive…you have to toughen up. Understand? Out here, you can’t trust anything. Not even me…” Her voice lowered. “This is my kill. I don’t have to share.”
 
Agatha stared up at her mother, terror keeping her frozen to the ground. It hit her that if she didn’t do something, Lightning Dust was going to kill her. Death loomed over her, filtered through her mother’s eyes. And if she didn’t take that deer from her, she would starve. If she didn’t fight, she would meet the same fate as the deer. Hunger and fear was what drove her. Quickly, she twisted and kicked her back legs up into Lightning’s belly. Lightning groaned in pain, and loosened her grip on her daughter. The foal slipped out of her grasp, kicked her mother’s muzzle and ran to the deer corpse. As Lightning Dust stood up straight again, blood dripping from her nose, she found her daughter aiming the loaded crossbow at her. Lightning Dust regarded her, and dropped the blade. She gazed at Agatha with a prideful grin.
 
“Congratulations, Agatha…I’ve decided to give you a new name…your real name.” Lightning beamed, fanning out her single wing. “Thunder Bird. ‘Bird Which Strikes Like Lighting.’ Good girl.” Lightning stepped to her daughter, and ran an unusually motherly hoof through her mane. “You know I only wish to protect you…out here, there is no mercy. I need you to be ready to fight…to be safe…” Her wing slowly wrapped around her.
 
Agatha softened, and lowered the crossbow, almost bewitched by the kindness. Her body shook undeniably, but the gentle touch comforted her. Lightning took the crossbow from her daughter, and hung it back onto her side. She gave the detached antlers to the foal, “You get to carry these. You’ve earned them.”
 
Lightning tied the deer to her harness, its now bare head snagged by the rope, and started pulling. “Now…let’s go home…I hope you’ve learned something today, Thunder Bird.”
 
“Yes…mother…”
 
The snow began to fall again. A cardinal sang in the distance. The hunters walked through the snow, a patchy trail of red left in their wake.
 
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————  
(Rewritten from a previous post on Thunder Bird, who used to be named Deseronto)
 
Thunder Bird’s original name was Agatha, given to her by her birth parents who gave her up for adoption when she was a baby.
 
This was only a few months after Lightning Dust adopted Thunder Bird. Up until this point, she had enough stores of canned vegetables and grains to feed both herself and her new daughter, but once Spring started rolling in, the food ran out and they had to go hunting. Thunder would soon acclimate to the idea of eating meat, but she would never forgive herself for eating it. At times, she would rather starve herself if meat was the only thing available, often resulting in her fainting on the Baltimore mountainside or Lightning Dust screaming at her or both. At least most of the meat they hunted down was sold to the griffins, or dragons, or the rare centaur.
 
As such Thunder has sort of a complicated relationship with food in her adulthood. Although she eats normally for the most part, some foods simply cause her to inexplicably become very frightened or anxious. Luckily, Larkspur is always there to help her with the various manifestations of her trauma.