Two Birds on a Wire

by Roadie

Chapter 2: "Go on—the stars are watching."

"The Scripture of the Holistic Maiden"

Once, there was a maiden ...

... who stared at her closet in fear in the middle of the night.

But there was nothing there to be afraid of, and the closet was empty.

Her lover comforted her and never asked her why she was afraid.

But a storm leveled their home, and they had to rebuild all of it.

Now she had no fear for the closet, and she wept.

Her lover asked her why she wept, now the fear was gone.

"You can't fear a thing without loving it," said she.

She has a green star at her heart, and a thousand eyes carved of crystal and brass circle her in the darkness. All of them are watching me. "You don't belong," she says, leaning down from her obsidian throne. She is a thing like an ape, almost, spindly and tall and with long claw-like fingers. "Do you, dear?" she asks, and those fingers touch my cheek, trailing through the soft feathers there. She's wearing strange black leather from head to toe, but her fingers are bare.

I can't talk—I can't breathe—because there is something gripping me, compressing like a fist, even though I can't see anything but her. She doesn't really want answers. She just wants to talk. "All dressed up on feathers and fur. I thought you didn't like that kind of thing?" There's something in the back of my head, pressing into me like creeping tendrils. It burns like frost where it touches, and parts of me are starting to go numb.

I pray, softly, inside myself, and imagine desert roads and scorching days, when the sun drives everything out and makes the tongue dry enough to feel like it's cracking. Anything to drive out the cold. There's something in her face that gives me hope, because she's not completely sure, not by the way that the edge of her eyes crinkle, that I am what she wants me to be. She can't crush me, even though she could in a moment, until she knows.

But the moon is rising behind her, even though there's no horizon. The light of it shines through her, like stained glass, and she scowls. "Another time," she says, and flings me away.

There is pain.

I wake.

The moon is shining through the windows of the hollowed-out tree, and its light comforts me in a way that the light of the moon hasn't before. I run my claws through my fur and push the blanket aside. I can move softly, even on a hard floor, and I pad from my makeshift bed on the library floor up to the stairs and into the building's little kitchen. It's still dark, but for the moon, but I can see well enough.

"You can't sleep either, huh?" the purple pony asks, because she's already there, staring at the counter. It takes me a moment to remember her name. Twilight—Sparkle. Strange name. Too bright and gentle. I'd shrieked at them when they'd wanted to go into the forest immediately, and now one of them treating me so nicely... it doesn't feel right. "It died down after you conked out," she says. Finally she moves towards one of the cabinets. "The Princess wants us to go in after sunup, with a wing of the Wonderbolts if we have to run. Tea?"

"Green, if you've got it," I say, and I lean against the counter. "The way that thing moved had part of a Southeastern mantis stance in it," I add. Twilight turns to look at me, staring. "Fast steps, strong close-range strikes, grappling. Good balance, you never make large kicks. It's not a streetfighting style, but it's close." I let my eyes drift shut, thinking about what I saw.

"But how can you even tell that?" she asks. "It was only there for about five seconds." The tea is forgotten, and I have to point at the kettle silently until I hear the click of her hooves on the floor as she moves. They've got some clever thing to the stoves here, where the fire is kept going at all hours and some trick of the construction keeps them held in abeyance whenever not reawakened; I can hear the flames pick up in a soft crackle as she adjusts the controls and sets the kettle.

"The way it moved," I say. It's interesting, to know people where so few can fight. "The arms were close in. It kept its leg motions precise, just by reflex, even though there wasn't anything to defend against. The way it kept its weight down the center line, where it could have anchored its weight and thrown any attackers sideways. The hands—that kind of shape to the fingers, that comes from a mantis style, ready to grab or punch at the same time." I open my eyes. She's watching me, hanging off my words.

"But it doesn't really matter," I say, and her expression droops. "Not in the important ways. A warrior like that won't have any secret weakness." I tilt my head back and forth and then rear up, settling into a simple parody of a unarmed striker's pose. "I have discov'red the secret weakness of your style, Master Glacier," I declare, in a stilted, operatic tone... though still at a normal volume, with the other one sleeping in the house in mind. "You are defenseless against me." I slide back down to all fours. "Yeah. It doesn't work like that."

Twilight eyes the teapot. She's let the fire wake up completely, and the light from it leaks around the edges of portholes and grilles, casting long, warm shadows against the cold moonlight we'd been navigating the room by. "You know a lot about this kind of thing," she says. She's curious, not suspicious, I can tell, by the way her tone stays pressing around the edges but gentle at the core.

"I'm—I was a performer. Exhibitions, juggling, that kind've thing. You've got to know it up, down, backwards and sideways to get that stuff to sit up and dance." I scratch my claws through my feathers. "I mean, it's... the differences are there, but they go away quick in a real fight. If you want it seen, seen by anybody who's not a real fighter themselves, you've got to play it up."

"But, you could tell," Twilight says, "with that... thing." Her eyes tighten. She doesn't like hearing me contradict myself, not for something so important.

"That doesn't mean I could use it to do anything," I say, and I shake my head. "At the top ranks, every fighter picks up multiple styles. They find ways to cover up their weaknesses. Even the ones who say they don't do—they just so it without realizing it. It's a—"

I hold up a talon, claws splayed in a 'stop' gesture. Twilight looks at me strangely.

Then a little purple reptile walks in between us, pulls open one of the cabinets, grabs a gem from within, and walks out. He's still asleep, as far as I can tell.

One-two-three-four, he'll be around the hallway and...

"—way to tell," I continue, "where's someone's come from, who they've learned from, but it's not going to tell you any secrets in the middle of combat."

"How did you—?" she asks, almost whispering, glancing between me and the doorway.

"You've got the big ears," I say. Her head twists, like she's trying to look at said ears. I smile a little. "Watch," I say, and I walk into the other room, letting my claws click softly against the floor as I move. And then, out of sight, I change my stance, and glide to the niche around the side of the hallway.

Time passes. I can hear the kettle bubbling, and then whistling, and then it's taken off the stove. "...Telka?" Twilight finally asks. She steps out of the kitchen. I wait until there's just enough room and pad in behind her, following the shadows of the room, because the moonlight draws the eye to the other side of the hall. "The tea's almost readurrk," she says as she turns around and sees me sitting in the doorway.

"Boo," I say, and I step back into the kitchen to watch the tea steeping. "You took that well." She follows, with her head a little bowed in embarrassment. I click my claws against the floor. "You can hear everything in here, if you're paying attention... if it's somebody who doesn't know how to hide from that."

"I guess I never thought about it like that," Twilight says, and she finishes preparing the tea. "My friends don't really sneak around much. Except Pinkie, I guess, but she's... Pinkie. She always shows up in weird places. Where'd you learn that?"

I yawn and cover my beak with a claw politely. "Villain work," I say. My voice is a little thin and reedy. I'm a good liar, but I don't want to lie. "Tiptoeing all around the stage like a ghost until the final act. You learn to walk quiet on hardwood damn quick. Then it's all very—dramatic fight scene," I say, in the stage voice, waving a claw, "the hero is almost defeated, sudden reveal, the villain dies, the end. I was always picked for that crap. They liked my death scenes too much." My voice is smoother, now that it's the truth.

She pours the cups. They've got strange fluted edges around the rim—to be grasped with the teeth, I realize, for those ponies not lucky enough to have horns. My claws do well enough when I pick up mine, with the pressure put at the sides and the sharper tips drifting so that I don't leave scratch-marks on the ceramic. It would have to be one of the horned ponies who made them, I think. How would they even do work that fine, with hooves? If there's not something more I'm not seeing, the plainer folk must predetermined for grunt work from birth by their lack of fine manipulators.

The tea's good, fresh enough to be new stock, with a strange spicy-sweet overtone that makes me think of Southern candies. I let it roll around my mouth after a few sips and try to pick out the ingredients by the feel-taste-smell of it. It's harder than I'd thought to drink neatly with the pony's cup, with the way it's not properly made for a beak. Twilight's got a funny look, and I realize late that my eyes are half-closed, and the moonlight's caught the side of my face, making the fringe of my feathers shimmer.

"My family's... was... big in the tea trade," I say, for something to break the silence. It's true enough. "Fingers in a lot of pies," and something about the expression makes my neck almost itch, "but, a whole lot of tea." I pause and watch the window and sip again. "Gramps got us a whole chest one time. Six stone of tea, me and mother, it was coming out our ears. Oh, honey," I squeak, in a pitch-wobbling old lady's voice, "have a tea sandwich 'fore you go, mmmm?"

Twilight has a face caught somewhere halfway between laughter and incredulity. "Good times," I say, and I sip at the tea again, and then I catch an edge of the cup against my beak and it pivots around the axis of force to present the blunt end into my eye. As my grip goes loose it flicks past, splashing my feathers with the tea before crashing into a few pieces on the floor. She lets out a single laugh and then stoppers herself, her face bent up in guilt, while I rub my eye with my wrist. It's cold, even with the stove, and there's something almost nice about the hot tea in my feathers, at least with the way I have enough that it's dripping down them instead of burning me.

"Well," she says, and the glow of her horn pulls the fragments of the cup—and the spilled tea itself, somehow—from the floor, dumping the mess into the metal can under the cabinet. She takes a little towel from the side of one cabinet and dabs it against me, soaking up the most actively-dripping tea.

"Let's never speak of that again," I reply, with my good eye squinted shut to keep any of the tea from getting into it. "...washroom?" I add, and I slink towards the hallway. The throbbing side of my face is no great distraction, not with my chest and shoulders, and I can see out of the corner of my eye the way Twilight hesitates when she understands how coolly I'm taking the pain.

"Down to the left," she says. "Second door." She lingers in the dim moonlight of the kitchen when I step out, and I let my claws click softly against the wood this time.

Washing the tea out of my feathers and fur calms the flicker-flare of temper I'd been suppressing on the way down the hallway. They've got marvelous plumbing, these ponies, with hot and cold water on demand, and I find myself playing with the knobs, back and forth. There could be pipes underneath all the houses, I think, with some slow-burning sorcery heating it all. It's marvelous work for a people who are two-thirds dead weight for anything that needs a fine touch. Finally I shut off the things and lean my head and shoulders into the bath as the clean water drips from fur and feathers.

Twilight's coming. I can hear her hooves, even out of sight, and there's an odd syncopation to them, as though she's noticed the noise herself for the first time. I suppose she might have, like discovering that your tongue exists and not being quite sure how to react to its presence. "Telka?" she calls softly from outside, even though I've still got the door open a little, and I don't answer. "Thank you," she adds.

"For what?" I ask. But I'm quiet, too, as I grab a thick towel from a rack and wrap it around myself so I don't trail across the floor. I stick my head out of the room into the hall. Twilight stares at my head veiled in white, just eyes and beak showing. "I can probably keep up the buffoon act," I say, "if you can get me some pies." She was expecting sarcasm, I think, not the gentleness of my tone, and the funny wide-eyed look she has shows it. I like her, though that might just be the tea getting to me. Just a little pain isn't enough to properly upset me.

"If it wasn't for you," she says, "we'd have gone into the Forest when... that... happened." That. She knows I know full well what she means. These ponies, it seems, don't know what to do with a thing that shines with false fire and moves like an avalanche. The thing fell out of the sky and they'd have gone after it. "Fluttershy said that all the animals were running from the Forest for hours, even the cockatrices and manticores. Celestia only knows what would have happened if... somebody could have gotten hurt." She doesn't want to meet my eyes.

She's lying—not completely. But she doesn't really understand. She thinks that the group of them, not soldiers, not even trained, could have handled it. Caution held her back, and a need to confer with their Princess, who I know now didn't answer her until well after my own strength had given out. Sleep, after screeching at the group of them like a madhen, had come easily enough.

"You shouldn't go," I say, and I retreat back into the washroom. I step past a moonbeam and vanish—to her eyes, at least. She doesn't have the night vision that I do. I squeeze the water out of my feathers and run my claws through the twisted alignments of a few of them. "But you'll be going anyway, because of your Princess." I lean over the tub again as I scrub at my fur. Does she know, the grand Celestia, what her chosen will be dealing with? She's a fool if she does and if she doesn't. "So I'll be going with you," I add.

With my feathers dry—dry enough, at least, that the dampness has subsided to a soft, dull itch at the roots—I stalk out of the washroom and glide past Twilight. "You can't," she says, and she shakes her head at me. "You're not in any shape for it." I can feel the thump around my right eye from the cup starting to turn into a bruise, though the light feathers hide it well enough. She's entirely right. Cracked ribs aren't the kind of thing to take into a fight.

Go with them.

"I've been hurt worse and gotten up again," I say, and I turn down the hall, heading for the little stairs towards the main room. It's strange to be in a library with a live-in caretaker, though any books of magic would give some justification. Why do they have those outside of a proper specialized collection, though? "You said it yourself. There'll be the... Wonder-things... for extractions."

"Wonderbolts," she corrects. I have no idea what they are. I almost could see the name used for fast auxiliaries with big heads, but it still doesn't fit properly for a military unit. Not even in this place.

"Right," I say, and I pause at the stairs. She's followed, a few steps behind. "If I can't keep up they can pull me out. But not a minute before. I don't want to see all of you die because you tried to stop one of the Anathema the wrong way and it cut you in half." My tone is still calm.

She shivers. I can't quite tell if it's because of what I said, or because of the way I said it. "Anathema," she says, rolling the word over her tongue. "You used that word before, but you weren't making much sense." I guess I wasn't, not in the wake of the gold-plated giant's aura caressing me. "What... is it?" she asks. By the way her words lilt, she very much wants the answer. It's something beyond her, even in her little fortress of knowledge.

Each has stolen the face of a star.

"Demons," I say. The word doesn't shake her. "Very ancient. Each has stolen the face of a star, and wears its light like a cloak." Her eyes go cold. She's thinking of the dueling phantom-giants of the forest, I think, glowing like little suns. "They can't be commanded or bound. They... enter into a creature, and from that moment there's nothing but the demon, wearing that face. To touch one or let it speak to you is to invite it to consume you, as well."

She doesn't say anything, but the way the set of her shoulders tenses and her tail droops says enough. "That sounds almost like Night Mare Moon," she says. "And the Elements of Harmony were able to—"

"No," I interrupt. The word's got a cutting edge of authority, just enough to keep her quiet for a few more moments. "The Anthema cannot be... purified. Not without death. If that's not something that you can consider, then I'd as well just go alone into those woods." I turn and pad down the steps. She stays above. She's too kind, like all of them are.

There's a cabinet somewhere creaking, barely. "Your pet's in the pantry again," I say, and I head for my rough bedding.

"Spike's not my—oh, Spike, if you keep sleep-eating like this," Twilight mumbles to herself as she turns towards the little kitchen.

With Twilight distracted, I can slide back onto the blanket I was sleeping on and curl my head against the pillow. I stretch my wings forward, tucked around my head to block out the light. Sleep comes as easily as it did before.

There aren't any strange dreams, now. There are no dreams at all.

I wake with the dawn. There's none of the noise of others awake. I tidy away my bedroll and ready my harness for the day. I inventory everything, out of some vague paranoia of the ponies, and it's all in place properly, even the lump under the shoulders. By now all the muscles around my chest and shoulders and hips have gone stiff and knotty, and I can almost hear myself creak as I slide the straps into place and tie them off.

The way the familiar weight digs into my back helps distract me from the pain, but something still feels wrong about it. I sigh and trudge to the window to watch the rising sun. It's nice enough, but there's a certain lack of something about it. I can't figure out what it is. I turn away from the window, step over to the door, and step outside. They seem not to lock their doors here, and that just seems ridiculous, but I close the strange double-sectioned door behind me.

The streets are empty at this time of day. Those ponies from the farm might be awake, I think, but the rest of them won't rise for at least a little while.

Learn.

Good. I start walking. The river, now that I'm not being blind to the lay of the land, makes the lay of the town obvious, and I wander down the avenues around the periphery. The houses don't make any sense. They're built with a pushed-out upper story, but not crowded enough to need it. The builders, whoever they were, wasted a huge amount of effort in making the town that way.

I imagine the place on a stage, painted out in noughts and crosses for the entertainment of a group of clutchlings. The idea feels strange and dizzy and fitting, and I force it away and stare at a strange building done up in a style that flows like icing. From it hangs a sign painted with a thing like a strange cake. All at once I feel hungry. One day without getting proper food down's not enough to bother me—not after my time in the North, with melted snow for dinner often enough on slow hunts—but it's still a promising thought.

But not this sort of food. I turn away and keep walking. The town's small enough I'll find something even just by wandering. They've started to wake by now, the ponies, and a wandering griffon's not enough to interrupt them. I've moved my bags enough to hide the heads of my axes. The hilts are plain enough, but it should prevent any casual panic. An open square, familiar—yes. The shattered house is in sight down a side street.

There's a bench, wood-slatted with cast-iron feet. I lean back onto it, half-sitting, letting the wood take the weight of my gear. The position's comfortable and uncomfortable all at once in a strange way, with the weight-tension pulling my meridians into a compressed-relaxation alignment. I watch the square. There are a few ponies here and there, I think setting up for the day. One, horned and furred in a bright cyan, stares at me from the other side of the square.

I stare back at her. She looks away, finally, caught somewhere between awkwardness and embarrassment. I find myself wondering why I got her attention. The rest are looking at me, of course, while they get their things ready or sidle by, but they're not staring. They're getting little glances, trying to guess at my axes, trying to guess my connection to the events of yesterday. They've not yet panicked. Events have gone so far past what the mass of them know how to handle that they've all gone past panic, I think, into something like cold shock. I've seen it before, when war rolls over a city large enough.

But, there. That has my attention. A winged pony in white with a blue mane has got a row of pies she's laying out on a booth, still hot. No meat, I'm sure, but anything hot enough should do. I slide back to my feet, letting the weight of my gear settle against me again, and I make my way across the square. The ponies edge away from me as I make my way through, and that gives me room to wobble on three limbs as I fish one of the wagon-wheel coins out of a bag.

"Whatever much this'll get me," I say, and set the coin in front of her. She eyes it and me.

"Two pies," she says, "and you've gotta eat them somewhere else." I don't know how exactly the currency exchange here goes, but she's still got to be overcharging me by a league. I could get a good pouch of qat for that. And the pies are small.

I pick the coin back up. "Two now, six more whenever I want, and I'll eat them where I damn well please." She squints, trying to look firm. I turn away.

"Fine," she says, too quickly. She wouldn't be a good haggler, even if I didn't have her on edge. I set the coin down again and take two of the pies. One I balance on one of my bags as I amble away. I was never going to stay, anyway, but I needed to make the point. The other pie is soft and flaky and has a filling with onions and tomatoes and—I can't quite tell the rest of it, but it's savory and spicy enough to satisfy the faint desire at the back of my mind for meat. There's something else there, a little aching, because it's not at all as good as fresh blood, but I quash that line of thought.

It's been long enough, and the air's cleared the faint fuzz from my head. I start down the lane that goes to the strange tree-house, and start on the second pie. The food's calmed the unease that I hadn't quite realized was there before, and things start to come into better focus. The words at the edge of hearing, the movements of the crowd and where attackers might be hiding, awareness of the roofs and where the cobbles in the road could give way to spikes.

I step aside before I've really processed the faint, motion-shifted noise. "—there you are," gasps the projectile as it half-skids to a stop in the place I'd been standing a moment before. Not a projectile—a pony, winged, blue, with a riot of colors to her mane and tail. "I've been looking all over for you!" For all that she nearly had a crash landing, the pony's got enough energy to be back to her feet a moment later.

I know her face, I think. She was there, when I was still reeling from the Anathema's echoes, and she called me by some other name. I can't remember it now. The fine details have washed into blurs under that golden glare. I'd screamed at her, like the others, until they decided not to follow the demon and my strength gave out. The group of them came together then so fast I'd have almost thought the others were hiding on a side street.

"Hello again," I say. "ah," and I trail off, because I don't remember her name. She must be looking for me in lieu of the others, as the flyer aggressively quick enough to almost ram her quarry. "I had to get some air," I say, and for some reason that makes her smile broadly.

"Everybody's getting ready, c'mon," she says, and she takes off again, and it takes her a few moments, when she's already past the buildings, to realize she's left me behind. She returns, better-aimed this time, and squints at me.

"Yes?" I say, and I keep trudging. My steps are small and steady, as they've ever been when not performing. It takes me longer in a blank stare than it did for her to leave and return, to understand her strange look. "...no flying," I say, and my wings shift uneasily. "Not with what your friend did to my ribs." There's no malice in my voice. It was punishment enough for being stupid.

Reassure her.

She keeps pace with me with in a slow hover with her little wings until she drops to her hooves beside me. "I'll be back in the clouds in no time," I say, "but until then it's only walking for me." She's looking at my harness and gear, and the hatchet-hilts. It's a lot of equipment. "I spend most of my time walking, anyway," I say, like an apology. "Too much of... this." I gesture with a wing.

"What's with all the stuff?" the blue pony asks. She's—too friendly, somehow. Is that what distinguishes that little group? Maybe she's thinking of me like the other griffon. "You look like you're ready to visit the Zebra Plains, not Ponyville."

"It's the work I do," I say. "A sort of... merchant scouting. I travel—plenty of travel, that's most of the job—and find connections, places where things could come together just right if you could just get things from there to here." I shrug my shoulders and wince as the weight of the harness shifts against my back. "I've got everything I need with me. It's not work that lets you visit home much."

"Oh, that's... kinda cool," she says, and she grins. "You must see all kinds of amazing stuff." She glances away from me and I can almost feel her eyes tightening. "Do a lot of griffons do that?" she asks, almost coy, almost accusing. She must have known the other griffon, though I don't know how well.

I laugh. "Most griffons don't travel unless there's some competition to beat or something new to hunt." I see her almost wince, out of the corner of my eye, at the word hunt. "Not out of the Homereach. I'm not a lot of griffons, and I haven't been for a long time." We're there: I can see the others of that little group of ponies, clustered together outside of the tree-library, as we walk up, and above them three winged ponies in blue suits hover.