Under a Grey Sky

by Achaian

Interlude: The Sphinx

Interlude

The Sphinx

“Use my tent.”

Her head cocked askance at the mare who seemed to fade more readily with the stillness, Dinky opted not to move as she sat and waited.

“Why am I using your tent?” How do I use a tent?

It was Eris’s turn to twist her head slightly, and Dinky couldn’t tell if the unusual eyes before her had narrowed or remained the same in the ethereal shadow. The ghostly night’s chill had rather the opposite effect on the child than it did on most: enthralling, Dinky felt the danger, yet she was a wide-eyed wonder-seeker and knew of little reason to fear, save the tricks the edges of her eyes played on her.

“So you have shelter,” Eris replied.

Oh… oops.

Tinged with embarrassment, though none would see it in the lightless breeze, Dinky wandered off. All in all, the sphinx did not move an inch from her position in front of Ditzy’s tent, and Dinky spent a few minutes looking around, watching the fire turn to smoldering coals again, watching the obsidian guardian desist in movement save for her eyes, which slipped about when Dinky wasn’t looking. Yet it was no idle movement; she was thinking (in an inarticulate way), wondering how she could slip around the formidable mass of few words and subtle superiority.

Why are they both like that? Maybe they’re tired or mad or something. I get tired but I’m only tired at the end of the day and we didn’t really go anywhere today so I’m not tired. But Quirk talked to me! Finally.

Dinky rolled her eyes theatrically, something she was more prone to do when her mother was absent. Leaning against the tree nearest Eris’s tent she saw a night sky that was truly a bastion of stars, clear, chill, crisp; it drew her breath for a long moment. Idly, she drew up a stick with her magic, drawing dots and lines in between the stars.

Maybe I could sneak in from the back… no. She’s too sneaky. How did she get so sneaky? I thought guards were supposed to just be big and tough. She’s strong too, but not big.

Tossing the twig off into the distance with a softly voiced “woo!” Dinky poked her head into the tent she had been unceremoniously assigned. Lacquered leather plates were stacked in a back corner, with various straps and apparel that Dinky did not recognize ordered around it. It was a warrior’s disassembly. Not much else could be elaborated on that simple armory, and Dinky soon reasoned after carefully poking around those resistant leather curves.

The moonlight slipped through the open door, illuminating half of Dinky’s face as she turned to the exit. Then as she started to move a dull gleam caught her eye: some slim length of metallic glimmer lay hidden in the front wall. Immediately she reached out to touch it, wanting to see through the tricks of the night sky, and as the set of silver blades clinked behind the camouflage she gasped and fell back. The one she had noticed swung like a miniature pendulum, rasping against the tent wall, and entranced by the dulcet rasping Dinky stared for a few moments before little tremors of fear shook her.

I… I don’t think I’m gonna stay in here.

~~~~~~~~

Eris could not figure how to puzzle through the gain and loss of the other mare’s day. The young fighter sat still for the night, the lack of sleep doing little to bother her. What transfixed her was the mare inside the tent: the gain and loss. After her catastrophe, Ditzy had had nothing, not a drop of power nor control. After she regained short-lived clarity, she had exulted, basked in the strength and the power and the leverage that she had been given and put together. Ditzy had laughed in Eris’s face, but it was a laugh full of pain, a laugh of defiance, like the prisoner before the gallows. It was a cry that thoroughly rattled Eris, for it made no sense to her, because Eris did not know what freedom is like, because Eris mastered the body and sought the mind and lacked what was needed most.

It reminded her of Tick. It reminded her of their twining. It reminded Eris of her inadequacy.

“Miss Eris can I please not sleep in your tent because it has a big knife in it and-”

With a jolt of instinctual panic Eris leaped, caught off guard for once, and hearing Dinky’s words she at once picked up the foal, spun her around to make sure nothing was cut, and also drug her away from the tent to prevent any chance of Ditzy waking. Eris thought a thousand things at once, but none of them with any clearness, and the loud muddle of voices only exacerbated her momentary insecurity.

Stupid, stupid, did I not tell her to not mess with anything?

“Um,” Dinky said, standing with an awkward face, glancing away from her temporary abductor, Eris having put her down moments ago.

“Did anything get cut?” Eris blurted out very belatedly.

“No… can I go and sleep with my mom?”

“She needs her rest.”

“But it’s better for her when I’m there!”

Eris stared at her in the dark, not quite condescendingly, yet Dinky glowered anyways.

“I asked nicely.”

Her sour face would not dissuade Eris, and after she removed the set of blades from the tent and Dinky exacted a promise that there were no more lethal instruments inside Dinky found she was quite tired and the roll Eris had brought quite warm.

~~~~~~~

I’m never going to sleep with all these damn thoughts flying around like buzzards, waiting to tear out my innards.

Quirk rolled around on the ground, only a few layers separating him from the earth. Every new minute brought a new thought, and the thoughts were more vitriolic and piercing than usual, for Quirk knew as he stared up at the close cloth ceiling that there were a damned hundred more questions he’d opened, and he was thoroughly- how could he say it- not exhausted, not angry, not fitful, but exasperated. The sick songs of the thought-vultures were apart from him: he looked at them from another perspective, with derision. The fundamental change escaped his attention. Quirk rolled over again.

Enough!

~~~~~~~~

Eris looked at the set of four blades and denied the urge to wear them. She stared at the eight edges and felt that the stars had cracked open and the firmament changed on those thousand sunderings. It was not so poetic in her mind: she was off balance. Various voices goaded, pleaded, and reasoned that it would be better for her to wear them. Wouldn’t it be better for her to practice, allowing her to cordon off her most arrogant and disturbing thoughts?

Her breath was delicate enough to waft the grass. Her mind was quiet enough to break an iron bar.

With the skill of an artist that is the warrior, Eris saw the motions of her art and knew the metal of her body: the three prime arrangements of the blades, the nine strikes that would snap them out of concealment.

Eris crept back towards her tent to get the essential pieces of armor for her exercises. Shadow-dancing within two feet of the sleeping child, the only thing Eris could not mask was her heat. Once, all the way through, then I go back to watching.

The armor clacked softly once as Eris equipped her garb, and in her absent depth of thought she let the slip pass. With four of them, things were bound to become sixteen times as complicated.

The obsidian sphinx whirled with grim succor in the moonlight.

Comments

[SIGAWESOME]

4983328
I just realized I have forgotten some key plot points in the interim between discovering Concepts on EQD and starting Grey Sky.

BRB after I re-read Equestrian Concepts to reacquaint myself with the salient details...