Part 2 Epilogue: The Pack That Prey's Together

What makes a family? I once would wonder on the notion that family was nothing more than a collection of ponies who, through random chance, had been born into a cohesive group. Held together with nothing more than mystical blood ties and forcible relationships fostered by time and proximity. As time worn on my mind, I found that there was much more to it than just happenstance. No, it was that feeling you had when you had known somepony for a long time, that rare, fleeting feeling of safely in a unsafe world. I've come so far since those innocent days where everything was just so mathematical in how I understood them.

But even now I can not help but wonder if my perception has further changed. What is family? It's not anything I thought I would be. Even when I think back to something a simple as blood relation, even that too falls short of my expectations. I have seen with my own eyes that blood, though it may be strong, means nothing. No, it's something more. Just that... Something more. Family, to me, are ponies who I would die for, kill for even. Corny though it may be, the feeling is all the same.

When you look at them, you just know. You hurt when they hurt, you smile when they smile and you love them for everything they are. Somepony said to me once, we are attracted to ponies for their attributes, but love them for their defects. It's their quirky habits, their short comings and their lack of something else that makes me love the ponies I have come to know over the course of my life. Things that would otherwise drive me crazy, drive me even more to be near them now. Oddly enough, it actually drives me to be as close to them as possible. Sure it can get annoying, but when the night is cold and you're all alone, you pine to hear them grit their teeth in their sleep or take too long to answer a question they know nothing about.

So what is family? Well that's easy. Family are the ponies you love unconditionally. The ones that you would lay your life down for without a blink of the eye or a single care to do so. They are the ones that you can look at and know, even when the times are dire, you know without doubt that they would do the same thing for you without question. Those ponies, those are your family. We may have a blood connection to some, but our hearts are only joined through a strange bond of trust, love, admiration and a genuine want for them to have been better off by being a part of our lives.

Family to me is the small group of ponies who trot with me through this wreck that I call life and never question it. They are the ones who pick me up when I fall, carry me when I can't trot or fly and push me forward when I feel like I have lost all drive, for no other reason then to see me happy. That's why I call them family, that's why I am willing to die for them. They give me the strength I need to push forward. For so long as I can, I will do the same for them.

Unwavering, we will face the storm together, hoof in hoof, heart in heart with nothing more than a sly grin and shear determination. Even in the darkest of nights, or the hottest of days, we will stay together and move forward. We are not just a family though, we are a pack. Try and hurt one of us, then you will see what it's truly like to be cornered by a pack of wild coyotes. We will come for you with reckless abandoned and mercy forgotten, and nothing will stop us. This much I feel I have proven to myself.

You don't mess family less you be torn apart by wild dogs.