Cherry Pie had always been a thoughtful young filly. As of a few weeks ago, along with her twin brother, she is six years old. The dark pink earth pony had an innate love for flowers, and an even deeper love for giving away only the prettiest flowers to ponies to make them happy. More often than not she found herself going to great lengths trying to find the best flower that best suited the pony she wanted to give it to. Her twin brother, a pink maned Pegasus with a grey coat named Blackberry Pie, would often tell her to tone it down a little bit. He was always worrying about her safety, but she couldn’t understand why. Sometimes she even got him flowers just to calm him down or cheer him up because he was always sad about something, but it would never work, even though he smiled at her and tell her how much he appreciated it.

She really loved making other ponies happy with her flowers. She hoped to open up a flower shop when she got older, or even work with some other flower ponies. As long as she got to be near the flowers and make ponies happy while doing it, it didn’t matter to her.

Today was her mother’s birthday and Cherry wanted to give her a very special flower for being such a good mom. Unfortunately she had given her mother just about every type of flower that she knew about, and she really wanted this flower to be special, something that her mom could hold onto for a very long time, maybe even forever. With a lot of careful thought (as careful as a thought could be for a filly her age, anyway) Cherry Pie came up with an idea. She came to the conclusion that such a special flower could only be found if she searched through the notorious Everfree Forest.

Of course, this was met with much protest from Blackberry. As she skipped over to the forest, he had his teeth clamped down on the tip of her poofy tail,  dragging his rump on the ground and flapping his wings in an attempt to stop her. Finally, her tail snapped free and Blackberry tumbled forward, landing on his face with his wings spread far apart. He pushed himself up and quickly followed after his sister, “Cherry, come back! You can’t go into the Everfree Forest!” he called desperately, his tiny wings flapping desperately as he tried to catch up with the small Earth pony. “Cherry!”

Finally, Cherry stopped hopping and turned back, a curious look adorned on her face, “Well, what else can I do? I wanna give Mom something real special for her birthday and I’ve already given her every flower I know. I wanna give her something special!”

“We can do something that doesn’t involve putting our lives in danger!”

“Oh, you’re funny.” she said with a giggle, “I can’t do that. If I ever hope to give Mom something that makes her happy forever, I have to go look the Everfree Forest.”

“But Cherry!”

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’ll just go by myself, and I’ll still give you credit if I manage to find the perfect flower.”

“Please don’t go into the forest.”

Cherry turned and began trotting towards the forest, no longer listening to her brother’s pleads. He followed her all the way to the entrance of Everfree before begging once more that she stay in Ponyville. When she once again refused to heed his pleading, he turned around and ran off. Where to, she didn’t know. She entered the forest without hesitation and continued until she came across a vast field of strange looking flowers. They stood upon blue stems and had bright red pedals with deep purple coating the edges.

After sometime of looking these marvelously gorgeous flowers over, Cherry Pie decided that they didn’t appear special enough to be a present for her mom. Still, she thought they were very pretty, and so did the local insects that buzzed around it, so she decided she would come back later with a basket to pick some for herself and for her friends.

There were so many flowers in the forest! There were blue ones with long, pretty stems, and green ones with red stems. There was this small, lonely red flower with a purple stem that made her face itch something fierce when she tried sniffing it. She decided instantly that the flower wasn’t special at all.

Some flowers even grew on the long, gangly trees that loomed high over her head. She couldn’t reach them though, even if she tried climbing the trees. Maybe she should have at least tried to get her brother to tag along. For such a young Pegasus he could fly really well, and maybe he would have been willing to fly up and get at those pretty flowers for her. Oh well, it didn’t matter anyway. However pretty those flowers up in the trees were, they probably weren’t special enough to be a gift for her mom.

She ventured forward, mumbling softly to herself, “Mom’s a very special pony…this flower has to be super DUPER special for her. Oh, I know she’ll be happy with anything I give her, moms are like that, but I want her to be super duper UBER happy!” She itched her face again. That red flower from before definitely wasn’t anything special.

She quickened her pace, searching high and low for the special kind of flower that would make her mom just burst with happiness. Cherry’s fixation on her mother’s happiness stemmed from an event that occurred about four months ago. Before said event, everything was perfect. Cherry and Blackberry had their father, and their mom had her happiness. There were parties every other week, and super spectacular parties during their birthdays. Everything was perfect…and then Dad left. Nopony really knew why, he just left one morning without any warning, not even a note. He left early, before anypony was awake. No wait, Mom was awake, and she was really upset that Dad left.

Mom did her best to maintain her usual schedule; walk Cherry and Berry to school every morning and then walk them home each afternoon, feed them and make sure they bathed and throw the occasional party. But both Cherry and Berry, as young as they are, could tell that the heart just wasn’t in it anymore; not in the parties anyway. Everything else just seemed a bit slower than usual, and sometimes when Cherry got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water, she would catch her mother crying by herself in the kitchen. Sometimes, Cherry would go and comfort her mother with hugs and nuzzles. Mom would hug back, but would be quick to get her back to bed.

The very first time Cherry saw Mom cry, she had tried her very best to make her happy again. So far, everything had worked, and Cherry wanted to make sure that she did something today that would make Mom happy for a long time, maybe even forever. That’s the main reason why she was so willing to venture into Everfree Forest, whether she had help or not.

“C’mon…c’mon, let’s see…no, that’s way to gloomy…no, that’s got weirdo black powder stuff coming off of it…it smells funny too, better stay away…hmm…”

Finally, after what felt like an endless eternity of searching (which was actually an hour, but a filly her age has a warped sense of time due to impatience) Cherry stumbled across what seemed to be the most perfect flower she had ever laid eyes on. It was HUGE! It’s stem alone was thicker than the foreleg of that big farm pony Big Macintosh. It’s pedals were bright pink and shone brightly in the spotty sunlight that shone through the leaves of the trees. And just like that, Cherry made her decision; this would be the flower that she would take home to her mother. Exactly how she planned on doing that was still a work in process, but she would think of something…eventually.

“Can’t go ask for help, I might get in trouble for coming all the way out here. Jeez…what do I do from here? Hmf….”

Cherry circled the big flower three times, trying hard to think of a good way to get this to her mom (and another way to explain how she got the flower without mentioning the Everfree Forest). Then, she began to gnaw at the stem, having decided to just think of a plan after falling the ginormus plant.

The second that her little teeth sank into the stem, not only did it hurt her jaw, but it also prompted a very loud roar from nowhere. Startled, she look around, knowing of the dangers that lurked about in the forest. Seeing nothing and calming down a bit, she cautiously turned back around to get back to work. Before she could sink her teeth back into the stem, another loud roar rumbled the earth under her hooves and knocked her down onto her rump. This time, she noticed that the roar came from above and looked up.

The flower she wanted to give to her mom was alive! Well, she knew it was alive, she knew that all plants were alive, but this one was different. A mouth had opened up in the middle of it, reveling several rows of razor sharp teeth, and it’s pedals had dropped down as it bent over towards her. Cherry gave a little pitiful squeak of fear, which quickly turned into a high-pitched screech of agonized pain as the carnivorous flower lunged forward and chomped down onto her foreleg. It was several different kinds of pain at once. A searing hot pain as the teeth tore through her skin, and a stabbing pain as she heard a snapping sound from her foreleg. There was something else there too, but the awful pain made it too hard to think.

Her red and hot pink mane was quickly ruined and marred by the flying debris that launched into the air as the plant flung her up high, and then slammed her down hard into the dirt. She heard several cracks and felt an awful pain in her chest. The plant then threw her into the air, caught her with it’s tongue, and brought her into it’s mouth. She didn’t even have time to grunt at the pain she felt.

Being inside the mouth of a monster was with all honesty a very terrifying thing for Cherry, and before now she hadn’t even known what true fear was, or even what false fear was. So to feel this kind of fear just paralyzed her, she didn’t even try to fight her way out of the monster flower’s mouth, if she even could. She whimpered as the monster’s tongue moved her back towards it’s throat. It stank like something died in here. Cherry briefly wondered if some poor creature had.

Then she wondered for much longer than briefly if she would die too. The odds seemed pretty good that she would die, and panic struck her like an iron hoof to the face as she began to slide down the monster’s throat.

Very suddenly, she stopped moving and she heard the monster begin to gag. Before she knew it she was being vomited out onto the forest floor and Cherry could not have been happier, even though her chest and left foreleg were in excruciating pain.

Something growled next to her, and her happiness was instantly sapped. Sharp teeth sank into her right hind leg, and with more panic setting in fast, she kicked as hard as she could with her left hind leg. Her kick found its mark, and she heard a yelp as the teeth left her flesh. Just as quickly, the teeth sank in again and Cherry could feel herself being dragged away. In the distance, she could hear the monster flower yowling in what sounded like pain. Whatever was dragging her probably caused the monster such pain, and with her little filly mind she began to conjure up how many different ways that this new monster could be worse than the demon flower.

The new creature stopped dragging her for a moment and she could it crawl over to where her face was, and some purple powder was blown in her face. She coughed once, and after that she lost all consciousness.

When she woke she was in bed. It wasn’t her bed though, it felt different. She blinked in artificial light, but as she looked around she saw that everything was just huge blobs and blur. And even with the light, everything was still pretty dark. In the distance she could here soft scrapes of claws against wood, and hoofbeats. There was a loud crunch that sounded like a bone breaking, and something that sounded like the creature that dragged her away growled fiercely.

Where in Equestria was she? She tried to speak, to make sure if she still could and to see if there was somepony friendly with her, but all that came out was a hoarse squeaking noise. It did the trick though. A black and white blob came to her bedside. When it spoke, it had a weird sounding voice, but she knew it belonged to a mare. She also spoke in rhyme.

“Ah, so you awaken. You are Pinkie Pie’s foal, am I not mistaken?”

She barely registered the question. Her head was pounded. Her throat hurt too much to speak, but she managed a small nod. If the mare knew her mom, then she must be friendly, right?

“I thought it might be true…” Silence. “My daughter told me everything that’s happened to you.”

Cherry blinked. Her vision focused a little, but still too blurry to make anything out. Her voice hoarse, she asked, “What did happen?”

Silence again. Maybe the blob was thinking of how to explain things to her and make it rhyme at the same time.

A younger voice spoke up out of the blue, “You bit a carnivorous plant, that’s what happened! Jeez, I swear you ponies…” A grayish blob came into view, “I came to help as soon as it tried to bite your arm off.” As mean as the voice sounded before, it quickly softened and gave way to concern. “Are you feeling all right?”

Cherry groaned. There was a dull thudding in her chest and head, and her arm was very sore. “I…g-guess I feel okay. Better than before.”

“You’ll be here until your mother retrieves you, and will take you home so you may heal and start anew.” The black and white blob left, but the grey one remained.

“Sorry if my mom is a bit hard to understand. She comes from a place that’s different from here, so she’s gonna talk different too.” A soft chuckle followed the statement. “You realize you’re in some deep trouble right? I hear you smaller ponies aren’t allowed to be here.”

“I…I’m still in Ev…Ever…”

“Everfree Forest. Yeah, you are. I’ll leave you to rest.”

Then the grey blob left and the room was silent again. Cherry breathed slowly, trying to make the dull pain go away but it wouldn’t. Tears began to well up in her eyes and she sniffled a bit, trying to blink the tears away.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all. “Now Mom won’t be happy at all…” she mumbled to no one,  “She…she’ll be sad…’cause I’m hurt.” With her good foreleg she wiped the tears off her cheeks, “…and she’ll be mad too…b-because I went into the forest.”

She was startled when her quiet statements were answered, “Well, I guess she’ll be happy that you’re still alive, so there’s something right?” It was the same young voice as before. “Don’t worry about it too much, you might hyperventilate and hurt your ribs more.” A few moments of silence, “You should really stop talking to yourself.”

Cherry heard a door open and shut and this time she knew she was alone now. She wondered how long she had been asleep, how worried her mom and brother were, how worried everypony else was. She sniffled and stifled a sob, but it became too much, and she began to cry again.