//------------------------------// // Re-Negotiation // Story: In Time, This Too Shall Pass // by Vermilion and Sage //------------------------------// Six Months Later…                  Every large flake coming down from the skies above spun gracefully, freely.  Two made a dance, and three a pattern.  It was too easy to look up and see not one or two, but hundreds and thousands, weaving themselves into a great tapestry suspended above.  It was beautiful, but that dance was fated to end at the cold ground.  Each flake tore faster toward the end of the dance, a fall in grace.  At least that was how I pictured the outside.  Beautiful, but too cold.         Shivering slightly, I hitched the worn cloak tighter over my back and turned again to my work.  North Wind and I had finished harvesting the last of the winter squash and turnips just yesterday, in time to see a long bank of gray come rolling in from the north.  That was all the prompting we’d needed to hurry up and get the last of the harvest into the cellar, pulling the carts faster and faster.  My legs were still sore and my ankles achy, but it wasn’t something I had any room to complain about.  Yesterday was still too clear.         “Well there, we did get it all done.  We’ll be eating well all this winter...and it’s going to be a cold one indeed.  Now we just need to--” North Wind finished removing the yoke from his shoulders, and fell to the ground.         “Father!”  I bolted forward, and then was yanked backwards by the weight still on my own back.  In a hurry, I bit off the releases, and ran over to where he lay.  To my relief he was still moving and coughing a little, and started to cough a lot more as I went to pick him up.         “Damnit Brook, I’m just fine, ya hear?  Just tired.”  One grayed foreleg reached over and shakingly pushed me away to make room to get to his hooves.  Slowly, he got up, and then looked over to give me a grin.  “You know boy, for all those years Broadleaf and I called you ‘son’, now you know just how long I’ve been waiting to hear you return the sentiment.”         “Well...I uh…”         “Don’t think too hard on it.  Now, we gotta get the squash pickled, and chop off all those turnip greens so they’ll keep a few more weeks.  Guess what we’re gonna be having for dinner for a while?”         “Yeah well, better than going hungry.  Lets get on home.”         Leaving both of the carts in the barn, we walked back through the fast-fading twilight, North Wind struggling against the cold of his namesake.  With each step he slowed, and halfway to the house he stopped to breathe, head hung low.         “Now don’t you even think about--” I didn’t let the old stallion finish his sentence before I crawled under him, and hoisted him up on my back.  He wasn’t exactly light, but the farmhouse wasn’t very far either, and I would be damned if I just let him stand out in the cold.  “Too…” I huffed.  “Late.”         By the time we made it to the farmhouse, I was shaking under the weight, and it was all I could do to set him down gently.  Now I was the one on my rump, head low, and breathing hard.         “Lets not tell Broadleaf about that, ok?”         “Sure...but tomorrow...you just rest...and I’ll do the pickling.”         “Hold on now!  I aint gonna let you do that!”         “It’s that, or I explain to her what just happened.  Your choice.”         “Well…” North Wind thought for a moment.  “Alright, I’ll just tell her the truth.”         “And that is?”         “That you volunteered to do all the work tomorrow.”  He grinned, then opened the door for us to go on in.  The next morning, he’d didn’t even want to get up for breakfast, and I didn’t have to try very hard to convince Broadleaf that he needed to stay in bed while I finished the last of the work.         “Do hurry Brook, it’s snowing something fierce out there.”  I’d nodded to her and hurried to don the old cloak hanging by the door.  Outside the snow was falling gently, and a thin layer had accumulated on the frosty ground.  It wasn’t bad getting there, but I had to wonder about just how much I’d have to shove through to get back at the end of the day.  Now as evening drew into night, it was just about time to find out.         The bucket of salt water in front of me was almost empty, and the firkin of old vinegar was all gone.  Pickling the squash was the best way to make it keep all the way until spring, and now hundreds upon hundreds of jars sat on the wooden shelves, vegetables floating in the mix of salt and bad wine.  Looks like plenty enough to last until the grass comes again.  Close to the stairs, two wicker baskets of turnip greens lay.  Preparing those giant roots to keep just for the next few weeks meant cutting off the greens and eating them first.  Neither pickled squash or turnip greens were very good, but I had to remind myself that at least I wouldn’t go hungry.  Not everypony was so lucky.         With a *snick* the last lid went on, and I put it up next to the others.  With the day’s work done, I drew my legs inside the cloak and sat still on the little wooden stool, looking over the cellar.  Not much to be done for the firkin, the vinegar had eaten the wood and left it almost destroyed.  The bucket would be needing to be washed out, but that could wait until it was warmer and water was more easily available.  No reason to light a fire to heat snow to wash out a bucket that wasn’t going to be used until spring.  Speaking of which, I ought to bring more firewood with me when I go back.         Split chunks of logs went in one side of the saddlebags I’d brought lunch out in, and several turnips in the other.  There wouldn’t be need for too much more, and the cellar was only a few dozen lengths away should the storm last a few days.  The wind was still howling, so I put the hood up on the cloak, and fastened the brooch.  A warm dinner and a fire was all my body was begging for, and those were back at the farmhouse.         “Glad you’re all ready to go.”         Oh please don’t let it be.  The voice echoed down the stairs, chorused against the howl of the winter storm.  “I’m not going anywhere in this!  Won’t the winter cold do your dirty work for you?  Why won’t you just leave me in peace?”         “We’re not going far.  That is to say, we’re not going anywhere you probably weren’t planning on going already.  Come along now.”         Standing up, the weight of my saddlebags cinched down over my back, causing me to gasp.  At the bottom of the stairs, I grabbed the baskets of greens by the twine holding the handles together, and slung those over my back too.  At the top of the stairs, Toll stood, as resolute as ever.  Behind him, the cellar door was open just a crack.  Each step up was agony for my tired legs, and a little colder on the body than the step before.  At the top, he moved aside for me to open the door.         “You didn’t answer me.”  I shoved the door open again the wind, and the chill ran into me like a bull.  No longer in a peaceful dance, the flakes of snow raced to get past me, shooting through the dark.  At least the wind had prevented the snow from growing deep in between the cellar and the house.  I shut the door, not quite hitting Toll in the process.         “No, and because you owe me, respectively.”  His cloak fluttered like mine in the wind, briefly revealing the white of his long, thin legs.         “Then can you at least stop being mysterious and tell me who?!” I shouted over the wind.           “Have you no patience, child?  You are but a minute away, and see how your mind ticks between the two, no, three, possibilities of what will happen.  You allow yourself to become troubled far too easily.”  He again waited for me to open the door, and we entered the candlelit living room, far warmer than the outside.  I shut the door gently and let the saddlebags fall to the floor.  As I went to hang up my cloak, Broadleaf’s voice came frantically from her bedroom.         “Brook, oh thank Celestia!  Hurry up and help me!”         Toll turned to me expectantly, and I tried to answer her, but the rising guilt in my throat pushed it away.  Coughing served to loosen it just enough that I could croak out: “I’ll be right there!”         The cloak now on the hook, I approached the bedroom.  Inside, Broadleaf sat by the bedside, a bucket of water at her hooves and a plate of hay on the bedside table.  Her brow was wrinkled in worry, and she was holding a cloth to her husband’s forehead.  North Wind himself was shaking slightly, the spasms of fever taking hold of his exhausted body.         “Hold him still, and I’ll give him a little more water.”  I went to do as she asked, praying to the moon above that it would somehow make a difference.  Broadleaf dipped another cloth into the bucket and wrang it out into North Wind’s open mouth, and was reaching to wet it again when her tail stood on end.  “Who is that?!”         “Nopony of consequence.  Now Brook, I’m waiting.”         “Waiting for what?!  Listen you, I don’t know who you are, but my husband is sick and unless you happen to be a doctor or a healer, you have no business here!”  Broadleaf got up and made to shove Toll out of the room, only to have her forelegs go right through him.  She jerked and drew them back with a shiver, backing up with new fear her eyes.  “No...you can’t be!  My husband is not about to...to die!”         “I can and he is.  Brook, you are making this worse than it needs to be.  End his suffering and her sorrow.”         Toll turned from her to look at me again, and the same ghostly force from before gripped my forelegs, and urged them to reach up to rest on the bed, easing closer to the dying stallion.  I couldn’t tell if I wanted the pillow or the headboard more.  Each would work just fine.  No!  Even as I tried to pull away, something kept me leaning forward.         “Brook, what are you doing?!”         Her shrill cry cut through the haze in my mind, and I drew back to land on the floor.  I almost did that...in front of her!  Oh stars above!  “I won’t do it!”         “What?”  Does he sound...frustrated?         “I said, I will not kill him!  He is like a father to me!  For each moment of pain I would save him, I would give to myself another lifetime of guilty conscience, and mourning for his wife here.  I know he wouldn’t want this, no matter how much he is hurting.  He is a strong stallion, and wouldn’t want to be brought low by such trickery!  He would desire to wait until his time had come.”         “We had a deal, Brook.”         “So we did!  And part of a deal is that it is clear!  You never told me how much I owed you, and have come collecting three times since!  I will do no more until you explain to me exactly when I will have to stop killing for you.”         “Do you know what I can do to you if you don’t do as you have promised?”  He seemed to float closer to me, fire burning where his eyes should been.         “Nothing worse than you have already done.  Answer me.”         Toll stopped, and sighed.  “You don’t.”         “Excuse me?”         “I said you don’t!  You had repaid me when Oakheart passed on.”  I stood there in shock, listening as he carried on, faster and faster.  “I wanted your help.  You have no idea just how hard it is to stand by and watch somepony die.”         “Yes I do!  What do you think brought me to you all those years ago to talk to my sisters again?”         “...so you do.  But I wanted help to get through it.  I took more than I should have and...I stand in your debt now, Brook.  But I can’t neglect my duty to North Wind.”         “No, you can not.  But you will wait here until it is his time, and I will not cut it short for you.  And never again will you come to visit me for such things until it is my time, do you understand?”         Toll nodded, and stood in silence.  There was little else to say, as Broadleaf tearfully embraced her dying husband.  Seconds turned into minutes, and then into an hour, before Toll moved again.  “It is now.  I am sorry.”         “No!  No…”  Broadleaf choked out.         “You will see him again.”  Reassurance aside, he reached past the old mare to draw North Wind’s soul from his body.  Together they faded from existence, leaving me standing in the dimly lit room as Broadleaf held her husband.  Outside, the storm raged on.