A Million Miles from Home

by TooShyShy

Part 13: Love

Anomaly 63-C wasn't mentioned in the notebook.

Lyra checked and double-checked. She reread the whole notebook, dragging her gaze from letter to letter. But it was a wasted effort. If the notebook's author had ever encountered such a thing, they chose to leave it unstated.

Lyra raised her head from the notebook. She rubbed her bloodshot eyes and squinted. How long had she been awake? A day? It felt like thirty. Lyra turned her head to look at Marble.

Marble was curled up next to Lyra. She was fast asleep, her head resting on her saddlebag.

Glorious sleep, Lyra thought longingly.

She looked out the carriage window. The sun had risen an inch or so above the tree line. They'd been traveling all night and Lyra had spent most of that reading.

Lyra longed for mastery of the elusive teleportation spell. Perhaps some day she'd be powerful enough—and care about magic enough—to do it. For now she had to settle for what she called “workarounds”. In this case, Lyra had cast a basic mobility spell on the carriage. The carriage was moving on its own with very little interaction from her, her magic subtly guiding it.

The carriage itself had come from the hotel. Lyra had bought it from one of the bored hotel carriage-pullers. The legality of such an exchange—the carriages did belong to the hotel—was questionable, but it was an escape and a break for Lyra and Marble's poor hooves. Having stripped it off all identifying decorations, Lyra was confident nopony would find them on the seldom-traveled back roads of Equestria.

Marble turned over onto her back. She had begun mumbling in her sleep. Most of it was unintelligible, but there were some coherent snippets.

“Lyra,” Marble was mumbling.

Pretending to have gone deaf, Lyra levitated the spellbook out of her bag. She opened it up and lit up her horn, casting a light over the first page. Lyra had already read some of it, but she wanted to look at the illustrations again.

The spellbook was written entirely in some ancient language Lyra didn't understand. It was a strange cross between ancient moon runes—Lyra was familiar with those—and some incoherent hybrid of various lost languages. Occasionally symbols would be grouped together in ways that suggested an incantation, but Lyra couldn't make anything of it.

The illustrations were of more help. They were mostly depictions of ponies in various states of graphic distress. One illustration was of a pony standing in a circle, their eyes blank. There was a symbol on the pony's forehead. It was the same one from the book's cover, except it was upside-down.

Possession? Lyra wondered.

She shuddered, the book suddenly feeling heavier in her hooves.

Possession was serious dark magic. The princesses had outlawed the teaching and practice of such malevolent spells centuries ago. The majority of books that discussed the topic even in passing had been banned. Opening one's body as a vessel for creatures from the depths of Tartarus was considered the ultimate act of dark magic.

Lyra closed the book. She was uncomfortable. One of the first lessons unicorn foals learn is to stay away from dark magic. Delving into the forbidden arts was the classic mark of a truly twisted and malicious unicorn.

But what if it's also my only road to the truth? Lyra wondered.

She reopened the spellbook. Perhaps it was worth the risk.

---

Marble awoke with a cheerful sigh. She remembered having had a good dream, but she couldn't recall it in detail. However, it had left Marble feeling refreshed and determined. She was ready to take on Equestria in the name of truth.

She peeked out the window. It was around midday and the carriage was still moving.

“Lyra?” said Marble.

She gently nudged Lyra, expecting her to be asleep. Marble uttered a startled squeak when Lyra snapped her head around to look at her. There was little light in the carriage, but Marble could instantly tell that Lyra hadn't slept. Having pulled the occasional all-nighter on the rock farm, Marble knew that look all too well.

“Lyra?” Marble repeated.

She smiled uncertainly.

Lyra grunted, dragging a hoof across her face. The spellbook was open before her. There were scraps of parchment all around her. A few stray bits of parchment were stuck in Lyra's mane.

“Yeah?” Lyra said.

Marble wanted to implore Lyra to get some sleep. But she decided that wasn't the best line to take.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Lyra groaned and rubbed her forehead. She could feel the threat of a headache pulsing at the back of her skull. She was holding it at bay with sheer willpower.

“Decoding,” Lyra said.

The pieces of parchment were filled with symbols from the book. Lyra was attempting to compose some makeshift key for the mysterious language. So far she'd figured out where sentences began and ended. That was a start, but an actual translation would have been better.

Marble analyzed the situation. They'd been traveling for hours, Lyra's mind split between translating and controlling the carriage. They hadn't hit a town or a city yet. Marble wasn't even certain where they were going. She'd left it all up to Lyra.

“I'm stepping outside for a while,” said Marble.

Lyra nodded idly, her eyes dropping to the spellbook.

Marble clambered out of the carriage and up onto the roof. She stared at the vast stretch of land before them. Did Lyra even know where they were going? Was she relying on the fact that they would eventually hit a town if they kept going forward?

Marble curled up on the roof of the carriage. She had just woken up, but the vibrations were making her sleepy all over again. Her eyes were beginning to close. Marble tried to keep herself awake. She stared off into the distance, trying to find an object to focus on.

Marble's eyes abruptly snapped open. She squinted disbelievingly. Was that a house? An actual house in the middle of nowhere? Granted, it looked like a box in the distance, but Marble was sure she saw windows.

She scrambled back through the carriage window.

“Lyra!” she said.

Lyra's head was drooping over the spellbook. At the sound of her name, her head shot up.

“Wha?” she mumbled.

Marble grabbed Lyra and shook her. She pointed desperately at the window as if it held something important.

“A house,” she said. “I saw a house.”

Lyra immediately closed the spellbook. Her sleepiness fell to the wayside. Lyra quickly got to her hooves. She stuck her head out the carriage window and stared in the direction of the supposed house.

They were approaching slowly, but Lyra could see that it was indeed a house. More of a shack than an actual living space, but regardless what one would call a house. Lyra could make out a pair of windows and a door.

“We're stopping,” said Lyra.

She spoke as if she expected protest, but Marble didn't say a word.

Lyra brought the carriage to a halt a few feet away from the shack. Perhaps stopping at a shack in the middle of nowhere wasn't the best idea. Lyra was not even sure where such a notion came from. But Lyra's brain was running on borrowed energy. Her thoughts were firing at an incredibly low speed.

Lyra jumped out of the carriage. She trotted up to the door. The shack looked abandoned, as if nopony had lived in it for ages. However, Lyra peeked into one of the windows. She saw a few dark shapes that could have been furniture. Nothing was moving inside.

“Should we knock?” said Marble.

Lyra jumped and screamed. She hadn't heard Marble come up beside her.

“Sorry,” said Marble, blushing.

Lyra shoved a hoof against her forehead. She pressed it deep into her fur, as if trying to hold the headache at bay. It was no use. Lyra could feel it clawing its way to the forefront.

Marble gave the door a series of polite taps.

“Hello?” she whispered.

She knocked again, then squeaked as the door swung inward. Marble watched in surprise as the door detached from the frame and collapsed into the room. The thud of the door hitting the ground went off like a cannon blast in the utterly silent shack. Marble pressed both hooves to her mouth, a look of mortification on her face.

“I'm sorry!” she said.

Lyra entered the shack, stepping around the fallen door. She could smell dusty books and old clothes.

“I don't think anypony's lived here for a while,” she said.

Nevertheless, Marble still looked ashamed. She tried to put the door back into its frame, but to no avail.

Lyra lit up her horn. From what she could see, the shack was pretty straightforward. There were two chairs, a table, a chest in one corner of the room, and a bed. There were books piled on the bed. Lyra felt a pang of sadness at the sight. It reminded her of Moondancer's cottage back in Canterlot. She missed that place.

Marble trotted to the chest and opened it. She thought it might contain a hammer or something else she could use to reattach the door. Unfortunately, the chest was filled with filthy clothes. She wrinkled her nose at both the smell and the sight.

Lyra went over to the bed. She picked up one of the books. Lyra expected something mundane, but she wanted to get an idea of who had lived in the shack.

The book's pages were falling apart, but wiping the dust from the cover revealed the title: The Great Friendship Conspiracy.

Lyra was startled. She knew that book. She owned that book. Lyra had read it cover-to-cover at least four times less than three years ago. Puzzled, she picked up another book from the bed.

One Hundred Mysterious Creatures and Where To Find Them. Lyra knew that one all too well. She'd done her fair share of “monster-hunting” in her youth. She'd kept that particular book around for nostalgia purposes and research.

The Chains of Truth: The Story of Grim Fact. Another one of Lyra's favorites from her early days as a self-proclaimed truth-seeker. She'd always been enamored with the story of Grim Fact. Grim Fact had dedicated their life to solving the hidden mysteries of Equestria. Lyra had looked up to them.

The Princess Conspiracy: Equestria's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries. Lyra had never gotten around to reading that one, but she'd meant to read the whole thing in one sitting. Unfortunately, that particular copy was falling apart and scarcely in readable condition.

Lyra's heartbeat was increasing. The remaining books on the bed were all the same. They were all books she either had read or had been planning to read. Every single one was about conspiracies or notable truth-seekers. Lyra felt as if she'd walked into her own brain.

Who lived here? she wondered. Was it me?

She wanted the idea to sound far-fetched, but it wasn't. After all Lyra had discovered, every possibility was worth just consideration. How had they even stumbled across the place? It felt like luck, but Lyra wasn't sure anymore. Things that could have been coincidences were starting to feel more like somepony else was pulling strings.

Am I a puppet? Lyra wondered.

If she was, everything about her adventure were preordained. The outcome was planned from the start and Lyra was merely following the path. If she was a puppet, everything she did was meaningless. If this was all planned, there was no truth and no Bon-Bon waiting for her.

Lyra sank to the floor. Could she keep going? Could she keep going while doubting herself every second? Could Lyra keep going knowing that she might never see Bon-Bon's smiling face?

“I'm so sorry, Bon-Bon,” said Lyra.

She thought she'd whispered it, but Marble heard her.

Marble closed the chest. She trotted over to Lyra, a concerned and confused look on her face.

“Are you alright?” she said. “Who's Bon-Bon?”

Lyra shook her head. How could she explain? It might make sense in her mind, but it would sound like paranoid garbage. Lyra could feel doubts pounding somewhere in her skull, pounding harder than the incoming headache.

“Somepony I might have known,” said Lyra.

The story poured out of her. She told Marble the full truth about the memories, the dreams, and her real reason for going on her journey. It had been a while since Lyra unloaded herself. She felt better, the headache ebbing away with each word.

Marble listened, her face blank.

Lyra stopped to take a deep breath. Somehow she'd been speaking for about ten minutes, pausing occasionally to suck in some air. Lyra hadn't realized she could talk so long about Bon-Bon. If Marble hadn't cut in, Lyra could have gone on for hours. Lyra would have talked until she devolved into meaningless sentimentality.

“Oh,” said Marble simply.

She hung her head. She didn't cry or make any sounds indicating distress, but there was torment in that single word. Marble's world wasn't crumbling. But cracks were appearing at the edges of her reality.

The guilt wound itself around Lyra's neck. Marble had said Lyra's name in her sleep. She'd looked at Lyra with adoration that went beyond the awe of discovering another world. But Lyra had ignored all that because it wasn't relevant. She had cast it aside because she didn't think it was important in the long run. It seemed Lyra was half-right in a sense.

Then Marble did something that astonished them both. Marble wasn't one to give herself to impulse. It went against how she'd been raised. But then again, everything Marble had done so far went against how she'd been raised. Life on the rock farm had been restrictive. Life with Lyra Heartstrings was not.

It was in the heat of this newly realized liberation that Marble acted. She leaned forward and kissed Lyra.

It was not a passionate kiss, nor was it an experienced kiss. It was the kiss of somepony who had the basic idea of what a kiss should feel like, but was hampered by inexperience.

Marble felt tears stinging the corners of her eyes. There was a subtle hunger at the back of her kiss, a muffled want that would lay forever unfulfilled. A miserable kind of acceptance had settled into Marble's chest. There were things she could have. She could have change, she could have freedom, and she could have adventures. But there was one thing that lay miles from where Marble's hooves could reach.

The kiss only lasted a few seconds. Then Marble withdrew, the tears flowing down her cheeks.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

Marble didn't have it in her to be embarrassed.

---

Marble took the bed that night, while Lyra slept on the floor. Granted, they both knew Lyra wasn't going to sleep. But Marble didn't say anything and Lyra didn't bring it up. They seemed to have a mutual understanding on that front.

Lyra pored over the spellbook. If only she had somepony to translate it for her. There had to be somepony who understood the language.

Lyra glanced at Marble's sleeping form. She would have preferred it if Marble had simply run away. Then Lyra wouldn't have to feel so guilty while at the same time understanding that guilt was pointless.

She squinted at the page in front of her. The illustration told Lyra absolutely nothing. It indicated some kind of ritual, but Lyra didn't know what said ritual was for or what it entailed. The illustrations surrounding it were so vague she wondered why they even existed.

Am I even meant to translate this? Lyra wondered.

Perhaps it was written in some lost language no modern pony could understand.

She ran her hoof over the page, resting it on each illustration in turn. Lyra glanced at Marble again. Marble was as clueless as she was, but Lyra would have liked to bounce some ideas off her. They could have speculated together.

Lyra's hoof began to circle one illustration in particular. Where had she seen that before? It was important, wasn't it? It was something she'd come across recently.

“Oh please,” Lyra muttered to herself. “When was the last time I saw a mu--?”

She almost slammed her head into the page. Of course. How could she have been so forgetful? Then again, Lyra was running on zero hours of sleep. She should have expected herself to forget things.

“The music box!” she burst out.

Marble sprang up.

“Whazzat?” she mumbled. “Ly-Lyra?”

But Lyra was going through her saddlebags. She pulled out the music box, scarcely daring to hope she was right. But one comparison with the illustration told her everything she needed. It was the right music box. The design was exactly the same, right down to the crescent moon on the bottom.

The music box was apparently used for some kind of ritual. But even if Lyra knew that, she still had no idea what it was actually for. She also didn't know why Fleur had the book in the first place.

“The moon,” said Lyra to herself. “It has to do with the moon.”

She galloped over to one of the shack's windows. Lyra gazed up into the sky. The moon was full that night. She expected to see something there—a shape or perhaps a sign—but there was nothing. Yet no matter how Lyra looked at it, she was sure the moon had something to do with everything.

Lyra pushed open the door of the shack. She stepped out into the cold night, her eyes on the moon in the sky. She began to trot towards it. Lyra didn't know where she was going or why, but she couldn't stop herself.

“Lyra!” Marble called.

But Lyra didn't hear her. She was following the moon.

Comments

[Bahamuttone]

“Whose Bon-Bon?”

Who's

and the her real

remove one of the two

[TooShyShy]

8557196
Fixed!

[Emperor]

I see Lyra's beginning to descend into some form of nihilism. Since it truly does look like she's beginning to be hoof-walked all around Equestria into every little thing she does, it must be rather discouraging. She's not really discovering the truth for herself. Instead, Lyra is being fed little crumbs at a time before she approaches some sort of endgame.

Hopefully Marble's sudden confession will break her out of her funk enough to at least take her own steps forward. Or not, as she continues to heed Zecora's advice.