I don't really know what happened over the three or four months that came after Fealty's death. Everything was just a dull, gray blur of lethargy and apathy that I thought would never end. Antic's death removed something from my life that had been there since I hatched. A brother who I sometimes didn't agree with completely, but who I really did love despite the hurtful things I said and did to him. Those were things I would never be able to atone for.
Fealty's death was altogether different. I missed him terribly too, but I had only known him for a couple of years. Even so, in that time I came to know and love him to a depth that I could never hope to repeat with another, if I even wanted to. We shared aspects of our lives with no others. Our fears, hopes, dreams and little secrets, nothing was hidden between us. I felt like I belonged with him, and when we were together I felt safe in ways I never did elsewhere. The griffons had shown me how foolish that notion had been.
After that, I never felt safe again. I spent a lot of time in the back chamber with my eggs, but any time I was alone I felt almost unbearably anxious. For a while I asked Zeal or Revelry to stay with me, but I knew that had to be getting old fast, especially when they had other things to do. At least Zeal didn't make me perform watch duty for a while. I probably couldn't have. If I was alone up on the surface I'd probably have lost my mind from fear of a griffon swooping down on me at any moment.
That lasted for two weeks or so, but finally, eventually, I buried my fears under a thick layer of forced indifference. The way I saw it, Zeal and Revelry were all I had left, and if I annoyed them into kicking me out, I'd truly be alone. I had suffered loss, but so had they, and ultimately our situation hadn't changed. We were still living in a world where creatures that hated us lived around us on all sides, and where food and other basic supplies were hard to come by. If I just moped around forever, I would do nothing but drive myself further into a sea of despair while weighting my remaining family down even more.
So, I just gave up. I gave up on everything, and did whatever I had to. I just didn't really care what happened to me anymore. I spent most of my time sleeping or trying to sleep rather than dwell on things. Weeks went by that I remember barely a thing of because I slept them away.
What little time I spent doing something constructive was thrown away reading through Fealty's spell books. I'd brought his new book with me when I returned, which held a number of spells for dealing with mental illnesses. To be honest, I was afraid I would need it. There was one day in particular that I really thought long and hard about taking my own life. I had magic at my disposal that would do the job quickly and quietly, and if I did it right, almost painlessly. I could have wandered off into the woods somewhere and killed myself, just like that. Zeal and Revelry wouldn't have to know or deal with it, and the ponies and griffons would have one less draconequus they'd have to slay. Win-win, right?
Well, I almost did. In response to that I pulled out Fealty's spell book and read the spell that would let me get through the worst of it while I came to terms with everything. It was surprisingly easy for me to understand, maybe because I already knew what it did. Yet, I never even cast it. It wasn't some magic infiltrating my mind and making me forget how sad I was supposed to be. It was the five eggs in my nest that grew closer to hatching every day, and my brother Zeal and sister Revelry.
It was one late night that really cemented in my mind that killing myself would have been the worst mistake I ever made in my life. I was curled up with my eggs just like every other night, with the strange pony spell book before me and opened to the new life spell. It was the same routine that I had repeated for weeks. I'd woken up from a shallow and fitful sleep to do nothing but roll over and stare at the ceiling to watch little drops of water run down the walls. I'd done that for maybe an hour while I thought about everything and nothing, and when that finally got boring enough I pulled out the spell book to reread the spell again. I wasn't sure why I was bothering. In my state, trying to cast it would have been an enormous waste of time, even if I had deciphered almost the entire thing by that point. Not really what it did. Not yet. But I thought I understood how to cast it anyway.
I was halfway done running through the spell's motions when Revelry shuffled past, distracting me enough to destroy the swirls of green magic floating around my hands. She glanced briefly at me with lifeless eyes before shuffling up to the water basin and scooping some out. I didn't realize she was carrying another bottle of wine until both she and it slumped against the wall with a clank of glass. Fealty's death hit her harder than I expected. Learning that he died trying to help her probably made it much worse than it might have otherwise been.
We didn't say anything to each other, as was also becoming routine. She sat there, holding her head and whining to herself quietly, while I laid where I was and tried to look like I wasn't bothered by it. It wasn't awkward or tense anymore. It's just what we did now. Two draconequuses that had given up.
It wasn't long before Zeal plodded in and found an empty spot across from us to sink to the floor. He leaned back against the cave wall and rubbed his face before yawning widely. The bags under his eyes were growing worse every day, and almost as soon as he finished one yawn he was starting another. I didn't know how he was even still going. He took a few deep breaths and wiped his face again before asking, “Revelry... it's your turn to watch, isn't it?”
She whimpered and nodded.
A pained frown worked onto his face. “You don't feel like it, do you?”
She whimpered and shook her head.
“Alright...” He sighed and locked eyes with me for a moment. There was the unspoken question we both understood. Would I be a good sister and do it for them, since neither were really able? I hadn't since Fealty died, and at that point I was still terrified of the idea. We stared at each other, and my unspoken answer settled. No. No, sorry, I was still too messed up. He sighed again and laid his head back against the wall. “...alright. I... I just need a second to wake up.”
Wracked with guilt, I buried my face back in the spell book. How could I have done that? He was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, and I let him take the responsibility anyway.
It was at that moment, that I decided that I couldn't just kill myself.
Why? It was because in Zeal, I saw that even through everything that had happened, he hadn't given up. He was still willing to slowly work himself to death to do his part in keeping us all 'safe' and fed. Even if I'd given up, he hadn't. Revelry... I wasn't so sure about her, but maybe she hadn't either. If they were still willing to forge ahead and try to survive, I had to as well. If something happened to me... that would probably finish them off too. I couldn't do that to them.
A sigh passed my lips as I set back to reading the book. The next day I was going to take over for Zeal, no matter how scared or sad I was.
Considering the mindset I was in at the time, I can't remember for sure how long it was before the big day finally came. About four months after Fealty's death, I think. Four long, dreary, boring months of me lying around a nest of permanently damp leaves holding five speckled eggs was finally rewarded in the early hours one morning.
It started when one of the eggs moved. I don't know how long it took to jostle me awake, but when I cracked my eyes and felt it shift next to me again, my first instinct was to panic. Something was after my eggs! I leaped up and spun to face the nest to be gifted with the sight of two more wobbling gently in the pile. It took a few moments for reality to set in, but when it did, joy surged within me. Finally! Finally, after months and months of waiting and losing a clutch, it was happening! I was going to be a mother!
For some reason, my first thought was to rush and grab Zeal and Revelry, but I quickly dismissed the idea. Zeal was busy on watch, and Revelry was probably sleeping off another hangover. It wasn't like they could really help anyway.
Another egg jerked, and I lowered myself to the floor next to the nest to watch. What was I supposed to do? Just look on? Could I help them break out of the shells? ...would that hurt them somehow? I had no clue. For the hundred thousandth time that week, I wished mom was there. She'd been through this and would know exactly what to do. The four of us hatched after all.
I reached out and laid a hand on the closest, and within I could definitely feel something moving. My heart fluttered and the knot in my stomach tightened. I really felt like I should be doing something... which I did by jerking my hand away when something struck the shell from within. The nerves in the pit of my gut clenched, but I backed off. This was natural. Everything was going like it was supposed to. This was how birds hatched, right? And griffons? The chicks did all the work, I thought. They'd get out on their own..
With extreme apprehension I nestled down on the floor, peering over folded arms at the process unfolding before me. At least I wasn't a pony. I couldn't imagine what it would feel like to give birth to a baby whole...
It took a while, and as frightened and nervous as I was I couldn't really keep track of time, but after at least an hour or so of eggs quaking and jerking, the first signs of progress showed. A little piece of shell cracked and bulged out. Then another, and another. Finally, the first egg grew a split the length of my finger, which grew and widened with each push. A large chunk fell away, dripping thin, clear liquid into the nest as it fell. I could see the whelp inside! It rested a bit, then chipped away at the shell again with the end of its snout. The egg gave more, and it reached up to try pulling itself free.
Not quite enough room yet, but I could wait no longer! I peeled back part of the shell, which split completely and came loose, trailing a few strings of slimy egg goo. The whelp chipped away at the remaining half of the shell, despite half the egg being missing already, then pulled up again to leave the wet prison that it had occupied for so long.
The very first thing I wanted to do was to scoop my child up and hold it, but it was so small and delicate. I didn't want to hurt it! So, I pulled myself closer and gave it a thorough appraisal. A boy. It was a boy, my first son. I had a son! His scales were a pale bronze, much like his father, but his hair was black as night like mine. I couldn't contain a grin as I watched him roll over and blink the goo out of his eyes. I had a son!
A son who was licking at some slime and trying to wriggle free of it, so with a single finger I gently helped wipe it away. He stared up at me with his purple eyes, unblinking. “Hey there...” I cooed. He kept staring, obviously not quite sure what to make of this big thing looking at him and making funny noises. Words can't really convey what it felt like to just... look at him. My son. Relief, elation, worry... so many emotions mixing in ways I didn't think was possible. Indescribable. We must have stared at each other for several minutes before he did the next thing that came naturally to him, which involved curling up where he was and drifting off to sleep. I could only imagine how tiring it must have been for the little thing to work his way out of the shell.
The entire affair must have taken two full hours. After him came my first daughter, who looked almost exactly like me aside from the green eyes. After her was another girl with aquamarine scales and white hair. The next didn't hatch for almost an hour after her, but out came my second son, with light gray scales and dark hair. I was beginning to wonder if the fifth egg was a dud, but it was just waiting its turn. Well after I had four whelps sleeping soundly in my nest, my third daughter cracked her shell and pulled herself out.
Five. All five hatched! That was a little unusual, since as far as I knew lots of birds and reptiles had at least one or two eggs per clutch that didn't hatch, but all of mine did. Joy filled every part of my body as I watched them sleep in a little bunch at the center of the pulverized egg shells. All healthy, and so beautiful.
Next came the hard part. What was I going to name them? A few names had trickled through my head in the weeks leading up to that day, and I had perhaps discussed it in passing with Fealty, but I couldn't really settle on anything at first. The moment I saw the little bronze whelp and his brother, I knew what to name them. Fealty and Antic. It might sound a little strange and maybe even disrespectful of their memories to name my sons after them, but they looked so much like them, and it would give me something to remember them by forever. They would understand, right?
The girls were a little harder, but in time I figured it out. The blue-green one had hatched all on her own, pulling herself out of the little hole she made with surprising skill. Finesse. That's what I named her. Then came the one who looked like me, sitting in the middle of the pile of sleeping whelps. I named her Harmony, since it looked like the others were brought together by her. The last was a little trickier, but the name came to me in a moment of inspiration. It had taken her longer to hatch than any of the others, but she never gave up, and in the end she did it all on her own. Tenacity. Fitting, I thought.
It's a little silly to claim I was tired after just watching my whelps hatch, but I was mentally exhausted. Now that they were all out of their eggs and curled up in the nest, I just wanted to join them and get back to sleep. I brushed the egg debris aside and wound my body around them, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to actually sleep. Not now. I laid there and watched them fidget and maybe even dream, happy to just see the small breaths they took and the content but tired looks on their faces.
Five little whelps, hatched today and without a care in the world.
A tear ran down my cheek and I failed to contain a few sniffles. I knew that the next couple of days would be busy and tiring beyond anything I could guess, but right then I didn't care. I was too happy to care about that.
Finally... I was a mother.
Yet, somehow, I did manage to fall asleep. I wasn't even aware that I was drifting off before I was roused by something crawling on my face. As usual, my first instinct was to panic. A spider or something else small, crawly and poisonous was on me! I bolted up, losing the offending thing on my head in the process, and whipped my head around to find the culprit. Two small golden eyes stared up at me.
“Antic?”
The little whelp cocked his head and resumed his quest to ascend to the highest part of my body that he could find, but before he could get past my arm I took him in my hands and sat up properly. He wiggled and twisted in my grasp, fluttering his wings and twisting his tail. “Careful now, I wouldn't want you to fall off and get hurt.” I set him back in the mound of sleeping whelps, but he just rolled off and stared up at me again, kicking his hooves.
“Antic? Nice name.”
I almost leaped out of my scales at Zeal's voice, but managed to avoid scrabbling out of the nest. “Wh-huh?” He was propped against the cavern wall to our side, with folded arms and the permanently tired expression I was growing accustomed to as his new norm. “How long have you been there?”
He yawned and shrugged. “Long enough. They hatched last night, huh? All of them?”
“Yeah. Yeah, all five of them. No trouble at all.” I nestled back down, noting with relief that Antic was settling down himself.
Zeal nodded and hefted himself up. “So, Antic? What are the others named?”
I ran a claw across the pile, naming them off as I went. “Fealty, Finesse, Harmony, Tenacity and, well, Antic.”
He nodded again. “Fealty and Antic. Nice names, all of them.”
“Thanks.” I was worried he or Revelry would think I was weird for naming my sons that, but so far, so good. “Antic seems to be the liveliest of the bunch so far. Guess I got that one right.”
“You look pretty tired. Can I get you something?” he said, crouching at the nest.
“I'm fine, thanks. And, well, I guess waking up in the middle of the night to watch them hatch will do that. I just need a little more sleep.”
He took a deep breath. “I understand, believe me. Go on back to sleep if you need to, Revelry's on watch right now.”
I yawned and wiped my eyes. Getting back to sleep would probably be tough, and I was already awake, so there was a temptation to just get up and deal with it. “Not sure I can now.”
“I understand that too.” He went from crouching to sitting and extended a single finger for Antic to stare at. “A lot to think about?”
“Yeah.” That was a gigantic understatement. The conversation I had with Revelry months before about the responsibility of being a mother replayed in my mind. Keeping the eggs warm was the easy part. Now they needed to eat, and soon enough they'd be moving around and getting into trouble. I must have been crazy. “I... I don't really know what to do right now.” I looked away and whispered, “Wish mom was here...”
“Me too,” he said weakly. Antic reached up and wrapped his hand around the talon on Zeal's index finger, prompting a small smile from my brother. I hadn't seen one of those since... I couldn't remember when.
I ran a finger through his hair to put it back in line and said, “Like, for starters, I don't know when to feed them. Or... even what to feed them. They, uh, don't seem hungry.” That was something I had mixed feelings on about ponies. On one hand, producing milk sure took the guess work out of that. On the other, I really didn't like the imagery of nursing a baby with teeth. That could punch through shells.
Antic released Zeal and yawned before curling up again. Zeal kept his eyes on the whelp as he said, “I guess they'll let you know when they're hungry. As for what... the same as the rest of us?”
I nodded. That made sense. I mean, that's how animals did it, right? Mammals just nursed the babies, but birds and reptiles did it that way. “We've got plenty, don't we?”
“I think so. They can't possibly eat that much. Probably four or five days' worth of food right now.”
“That's good. Great.” I frowned a little. “I'm, uh, not sure when I'll be able to really help scavenge again. I... I'll figure something out about keeping watch.” It wasn't like I'd been participating a lot in either, but I had been helping with the watch rotation at least.
He yawned again and nodded. “Yeah. We'll figure it out. Don't worry.”
A silence fell as Antic nodded off again, joining his brother and sisters in carefree slumber. Oh, how I envied them for that. I couldn't remember what it really felt like to not have to worry about something, but for the foreseeable future, I was going to have to be the one that saw to it that my children were safe and sound. Yeah, that did wonders for making me feel better... so I fished for anything to get my mind off of it. “Hey, you think Revelry would like to meet them? Does she know yet?”
Zeal smirked. “Not yet, I don't think, but I think she'd like to. I'll go get her.”
He disappeared, and after what I imagined was a muffled conversation above that was really too far away to hear at all, he returned. Revelry trailed after him, stepping a bit lighter than the night before and with wide eyes. Her hooves clopped crisply one last time as she stopped in front of the nest.
“Say hello to your nieces and nephews,” I said with a half smile, waving a hand over them.
Her mouth hung open a hair as she crouched and looked at each little whelp resting in the nest. She settled on Antic, who was awake again and looking about. They locked eyes, and Revelry extended a finger to him. “Hey there little fella...”
He made a small chirping noise and met her halfway.
“I think Antic likes you,” Zeal said.
“Huh?” She looked between him and me. “Antic?”
“That's right,” I said. “I, uh, named him after Antic.” Of course, after that I had to go through and name them all for.
A mixture of emotions washed over her as I pointed out Fealty, and again, Antic, but in the end she made a sad smile and kept a finger out for Antic to reach up at. Maybe naming him that wasn't such a great idea?
Or maybe it would help her come to terms with our brother's death?
Either way, it was done. Another little chapter in my life where I made a decision and had to live with it, for better or worse.
As I watched him, I couldn't help but think it was for the better.
That day came and went faster than I could have believed, but without much of interest. To my mild surprise and relief, my whelps didn't do much other than sleep for almost the entire day. I just passed that off as part of the normal process, since they were surely still tired from all of that effort. I did keep worrying about them eating or drinking something, but so far they were content to just cuddle together against me or squirm about on occasion. Zeal was probably right, and they'd let me know when they got hungry.
That did leave me in a somewhat uncomfortable position that night though. I was pretty wound up worrying over every little noise and movement they made, and hadn't left the nest for more than a minute or two since they hatched. The two combined was stressing me out a lot, so I turned to my tried and true pastime, and paged through the pony spell book yet again.
I'd been considering it for days by that point, but something inside me almost compelled me to go through with actually casting the more life on myself, just to see what it would do. I'd spent days analyzing the wording and even the magical symbols themselves, in an attempt to discern exactly what it did, but as before that didn't really help too much. I was almost certain that it wasn't dangerous, and that it was supposed to do something like... give more life. How could something like that be bad?
Working with unknowns in magic is a dangerous thing, but my curiosity only grew stronger the more I put it off. It couldn't be dangerous. It was beneficial. I had no reason to worry.
And yet, I did. I looked down at my sleeping babies and wondered what would happen to them if this killed me somehow, or otherwise incapacitated me. Would Zeal and Revelry be able to take care of them? Would they even be willing to? Probably... but how could I do something like that to them and my children? Losing our mom when we were so young was almost too much to bear. Losing me when they were but a day old probably would be too much. Or would they not even remember me?
I sighed and paged through the book to the symbols of the spell. No, they were too young to remember me if something happened to me, but really, that was why I was even considering the spell in the first place. By my best figuring, it was supposed to somehow protect against death. I didn't really understand how, or even what that meant, but if it could prevent me from dying and leaving them to a horrid world that wanted to kill them too, wasn't that worth trying?
I... wasn't sure. I also didn't want to ask Zeal or Revelry, since I knew what they'd say. No way they'd want me to cast an unknown spell from a pony spell book. I was crazy to even be considering it. Even I knew that.
Somehow, that didn't stop me as I raised my hand and started going through the motions. It was an enormously complicated spell, thrice again more than the greatest I'd ever cast before. Maybe I didn't think I could even do it. I'd just give it my best shot and when the magic fizzled out, I could let it go and forget about it.
The green swirling magic collected around my hand. That was the first step, and I started the second part.
Maybe I thought Zeal or Revelry would come by and see what I was doing and stop me before I finished it. They'd ask what I was doing, and when I had to explain it I'd see how crazy I was, and stop.
A purple glow enshrouded the green, then flowed over the rest of my body. That was the second step. Just one more to go, but it was brutally complex.
Maybe I thought by the time I got to this part, I'd see how hard it was and give up. If a more life spell really existed and worked, I'd have heard about it, right? Some crazy pony, who liked big words too much, probably wrote all of this down without expecting it to work. Maybe it was even a decoy spell? Something to throw off a thief and make them waste their time trying to figure it out?
The purple haze shifted, and the entire world grew brighter. My vision wavered and twisted in illogical ways as the magic flowed through me. All of my senses felt heavy and distant. The room felt icy cold in an instant. The air smelled dead and lifeless. I heard murmuring and other strange sounds I couldn't identify, and my vision went black. I couldn't feel my heart beat anymore... I couldn't breathe! Terror gripped me and I struggled against paralyzed limbs to stand up and move away from this... deadness!
Shrill screams like things being tortured filled my ears. I leaped up and slammed into the floor, well clear of the nest. My heart was pounding in my chest. I could feel it! The damp, mildewy scent of the cave returned to my nostrils as I took a deep breath. I felt my body, running my hand down my side to feel each little ripple of a scale. I was alive! I was alright!
All five of my whelps were staring at me.
It took me a full minute to regain my composure and confirm that yes, I was really alright. Everything felt okay, aside from the jittery knot in my stomach, but it had a good reason to be there. I felt intensely nauseated at first, but even that began to subside soon. On shaky limbs I crawled back over and nestled down with them. “It-it's alright. Sorry for scaring you like that.” I tried to level my breathing and nudged them all back together. I don't know how much I really scared them, but I certainly scared myself half to death, and learned my lesson. I wasn't even proud at apparently successfully pulling the spell off.
I wasn't going to be casting anymore unknown spells. Ever.