He woke to a gentle hum and a soothing chill resonating from his cheek. Sediment opened his eyes to see a beautiful sunrise peeking through the trees above him. His head lay on the ground, soft and warm under his mane.
The sunrise moved as Sediment looked into the fiery golden eyes.
He startled and crawled away from the figure. His hoof fell on a branch as he saw their wings twist and their body followed his movement.
In the next moment, he found his back hooves beneath him as he thrust the branch towards their chest. Sediment met the gaze of the Pegasus. The beautiful sunrise. The gentle hum. The youthful face of a mare, no older than he was.
His grip waivered.
Her hoof knocked the branch away as a wing met his shoulder and her hind leg swept behind his own. Her fetlock twisted behind his back to catch him as he felt her weight meld into his, throwing off his balance and setting him on the ground. She arched over him, a hoof laid squarely on his chest as a wing pressed under his chin.
A chuckle escaped her as she spoke “Heavens, your form is terrible.” Her hoof lifted as her wing remained, resting on the soft of his neck. “Careful now,” she chastised through a laugh, “You'll open your wound.”
The scent of fresh lavender reached his nostrils as Sediment released the tension from his shoulders. The mare’s wing inched back, hesitantly, before retracting fully as she sat next to him.
“Uh, sorry?” he mumbled.
Her wings fluttered, matching her hooves as she gesticulated along with a response. “Don’t worry about it, I felt really bad about hitting you so hard. It's sort of my first time and I couldn’t tell how fast I was going-”
Sediment looked up to the gap in the brush and the divet in the dirt along its base, resting under the rays of sunlight that poked through. She tackled them into the dry creek bed and then made a poultice as he was unconscious. Facing her again, he could hear her still talking.
“Of course I didn’t really want to come in the first place, but they said I had to come along at least once, so-”
“Why are you here?” he asked, cutting off the rambling pegasus.
“The commander said I had to.”
“No, why are you here. The pegasi.” He clarified.
“Oh, we're looking for food.”
“Let us know if you find any.”
She looked to the ground. Her wings drooped. Sediment wasn’t used to reading wings as part of body language. At least as anything other than threats of violence. She'd caught him after he'd attacked her. She didn’t have to do that.
“What’s,” his voice was tentative, unsure. He stuttered and started once more, “What's your name?”
“Cirrus Glow!” she chirped, extending a wing. He couldn't tell if she noticed his flinch. “What's yours?”
“Sedimen-” he tried to say before the sound of her balking laugh cut him off. It had a merry ring to it, and her mane flowed weightlessly as she shook her head.
After a stifled snort, she asked, “What, like dirt?”
“Yeah…” he reached out a hoof, placing it in the crook of her wing. His contact was light, but she squeezed it and gave it a brief shake.
“Pleasure to meet you, Sediment.” She chuckled before pulling her wing back and raising a hoof. She waved it in the air as if to brush a thought aside while another fit of laughter started. “That just won't do, Dirt. Have you got a nickname?”
He paused for a second, mulling over his options. Cirrus Glow didn’t seem hostile, and if she wanted to hurt him she always could have earlier, both when he was knocked out and when she countered his attack. He spoke a few moments later “The others started calling me Dim.”
A frown split her cheeks. “That sounds cruel.” The words carried the same tone as when she had chastised his risking her first aid.
“It's supposed to be endearing, I think?”
“How about Mint?” Her voice returned to its normal sing-song quality.
His heart gave a mighty beat as the stress over the thought of her dissatisfaction left him. Sediment had been unaware he'd held it until it was gone. In the momentary surprise, all he could manage to sputter out was a “Huh?”
“As a name, silly.”
“Oh.” He watched as Cirrus shook her head and closed her eyes. He looked at her with a perplexed visage. “Why are you being so…”
“So what?” she asked, straightening her posture.
“So, cheery. Friendly,” he paused as the image of the mare in the field came to mind, the glint in her hooves, “Warm. I tried to hit you. You're here to steal from us.”
Her eyes drifted past him, up to the gap in the treeline. He could still hear faint sounds of the brawl above. From the way she pursed her lips, he assumed she could hear them as well. “I'm not here to fight. They said I had to come, since I’m the age of a warrior now, but-”
“So why’d you dive at me?” An unconscious command brought a hoof to rest on his aching side. He saw one of her wings give a momentary shake as he spoke. This drew his attention enough to notice how it drooped slightly lower than the other. It had been this whole time. His question shifted, “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she spat, her wings withdrawing behind her, “it's fine.” A wince of pain following the movement.
“Let me see.” Sediment ordered, offering his hoof. He tried to muster up the authority his supervisor always seemed to have at hoof.
She sat, motionless, head turned to the ground. The wing was behind her on the side opposite his view. A furtive glance met his eyes before it retreated once more.
"Cirrus..." Sediment pleaded. Before the name finished rolling off his tongue, the Pegasus had extended her wing towards him. Her head twisted down and away, as if she could ignore the situation if it was outside of her peripheral vision. "I'm not going to hurt yo-"
"You already tried to."
His body spurred the action to say Only after you did so first, but he supressed the words before they came out. The urge was brought on by an old animosity trained into him by his time on the mainland. It would accomplish nothing here.
She didn't seem like the pegasi up on the ridge. She didn't seem like the soldiers in his old home, far away from this island.
"And that was a mistake," the words came out stiffer than those he'd wanted to react with, "you were helping me and I shouldn't have done that." He gulped down a measure of pride.
It rose back changed, greater somehow as her withers softened and the profile of her face came into his view. Her eyes were closed, but the uncertainty she displayed had slipped away in part.
"We're not supposed to show weakness," she spoke, her eyes still closed, "'better one injury than two' as the commander puts it."
Sediment rested on his haunches and raised his hooves to hover inches from her outstretched wing. "I'm going to see if you've strained or broken anything," he said, gingerly placing his hooves on her feathers, "okay?"
She nodded.
He didn't fail to notice her flinch.