The Education of Tumbling Leaf

by Slipshod Extension

The roiling of thunderheads in the throat of the sky

Leaf and Gloaming traveled by hoof, for he had no wings to bear him. It pained the colt to see the young mare flit above his head, and to know how much faster she might travel without him. When they rested, he searched her eyes for some hidden judgment; but if it was there, she hid it well. Gloaming spoke only of sunlight and wind, and of the weather on the horizon, and often she stopped and exhorted her companion to examine a scrap of cloud or to feel the humidity of a breeze. The wind was the breath of the world, she said, the water its blood, the sun its driving heart, and Leaf was swept along here as in Cloudsdale in Gloaming’s wonder at the majesty of the firmament. For himself, he spoke the names of plants as they passed, saying which were good to eat, and which might ease a headache or be mashed into a poultice. Gloaming mouthed their names—arrowroot, willow, mustard, the names Leaf had learned of his parents transfigured by the music of her voice. The earth pony shook his head, blushing, and asked her to find their way from the air.

Leaf was grateful for Gloaming’s companionship, not only because he was smitten, but because in his wrath he had stormed from Cloudsdale without clear direction. But Gloaming had heard her grandmother speak of the proud dragon Felsite, who roosted west in the Smoky Mountains. Ponies said those peaks’ name came from the low, dark clouds that ever crowned them, and that these streamed from the great, billowing exhalations of the dragon. So the pair bore west over the rolling hills beneath Cloudsdale, bound for the dark smudge that grew slowly larger on the horizon.

The grasses turned to scrub-brush, and thence to trees, and Leaf’s muscles ached from climbing as the land tilted ever upward. They saw few ponies on their way, only the rare contrails of pegasi. Even these stopped a day’s walk or more from the inky stain that marked the Smoky Mountains. The great aurochs of the plains had paid the ponies little heed, only occasionally lifting their heads to offer basso lows of greeting. But in the forest of the foothills Leaf often imagined wide deer’s eyes, luminous beneath mighty antlers, watching himself and Gloaming from the shadows between the oaks. Once he startled a doe and her fawns from a clearing, and they were away sudden and quiet before he could voice a greeting. He often found the prints of cloven hooves underfoot, but only that once did he see those who left them.

“These deer are shy,” he said to Gloaming, near the end of their second day beneath the trees. “Few could catch them in their wood. But why do they hide from us? Surely they can see that we offer no harm.”

“Perhaps they only have the habit of hiding,” she replied. “Wouldn’t you, living in the shadow of the dragon?”

On their third day in the woods, the elms and birches turned to pines and they came finally beneath the clouds. As the shadows began to lengthen, a bellowing moan shattered the woods’ peace, echoing from atop a rise ahead. Gloaming dropped to the ground beside Leaf, and they pressed trembling together beneath the fir branches. But the sound continued, and came no closer, so they crawled hoof over hoof toward its source, staying in the shadows of the stunted pines near the edge of the mountains proper. As they came around the ridge, they saw in a clearing of broken stumps one of the great plains aurochs, trussed on his back with sturdy ropes about his hooves. He bellowed again in fear and anger, his heaving chest thrice the width of Leaf’s.

“We should help,” said Gloaming; but Leaf shook his head, afraid.

“He’s mad with pain,” he said. “What do you think he’ll do if we let him free? And what about those who left him here—it must be the deer of the forest, who else? They must be watching even now. You think they’ll just let us free him?”

“I don’t know,” said Gloaming, “but I know that he needs help.” They argued back and forth, whispers cutting like darts through the air, until suddenly she stopped mid-point with her tufted ears pricked and swiveling.

“Something’s wrong,” she said. “There’s a lot of wind here, but wind shouldn’t be…rhythmic. It’s like a cyclone walking.”

And now Leaf could feel it too, a great pulsing rush of air that swept the trees and bushes only to pause and then return once again. He could hear it as well, a thunderous whooshing, crumpling beat, as if the heavens themselves were breathing. It came from the mountains. It came from above. And by the time his conscious mind, sluggish with terror, brought the name to his lips, the ancient instincts of ponykind had already pressed him back and down against the earth, beneath the meanest ground cover.

Dragon.

With a downdraft that flattened trees and an impact that uprooted them, the creature slammed into the center of the clearing. Leaf could scarcely comprehend that anything so large could move—that it had not been here forever, older than the trees, a spur thrust up from the bones of the earth. It rose coil upon sinuous coil before his eyes to the crested head above the tallest treetops, armored in gleaming crimson scales and armed with claws like the sturdiest lances. Smoke roiled between teeth the size of his forelegs, pierced by the ancient predator’s venomous green gaze. The dragon folded its wings with a brassy thunder and bent over the bound aurochs, examining a beast greater than any pony as a foal might study a mouse.

Mouth foaming, eyes rolling, the aurochs snapped a hempen bond and staggered toward the clearing’s edge; but the dragon struck like a viper. The proud head snapped down to take half the bovine’s body at a bite, as Leaf peered in horror between his hooves. He watched as the monster gulped the steaming meat, scorched a pine with a belch of green flame, and flared its wings in seeming satisfaction.

“An adequate gift,” proclaimed the beast, in a voice like a rolling earthquake. It waved a magnanimous foreclaw toward the treeline. “In gratitude to my dear friends, I shall leave this wood unburnt another season. Come autumn, however, I shall expect a plumper delicacy.” The dragon closed its eyes with a click of armored scales, and drew a slow breath through flaring nostrils. “But I smell not only deer, and the sweet aroma of my snack. There is a scent here I have not tasted in a long age. I smell…ponies.”

If Leaf had been terrified before, now he was near panic. His heart beat a frantic tattoo in his breast, and it seemed every muscle screamed at him to bolt. But he knew that the dragon must see him if he moved. He felt Gloaming’s feathers flex against his side, and believed she must feel the same. His dread curdled to a terrible guilt, a churning venom beneath his breastbone. He had brought her here. He had asked her to leave her home, her family, simply to sate his heart’s desire. He should not have asked. He should never have come.

The dragon raked the treeline with eyes like blazing lanterns. “What brings you here, little ones? Surely not a visit to your cousins the deer. Has your princess sent you to spy on me? Have we not an accord?” The wyrm roared in anger, shaking the earth with the whipping of its tail. “These peaks are mine! These forests, mine! The little rats that scurry in the shadows, mine, mine, mine!” Tongues of flame licked from between the gaping jaws. “She fells her lunar sister, then thinks to come for me?” The head darted wildly from trunk to trunk, seeking, hunting. “She cannot defeat me! None can deny me! Not the shepherd of the sun—” and the armored snout, sweeping, halted a bare ten hooflengths from Leaf and Gloaming—“and not a pair of rodents quivering in the underbrush.” The scaly nostrils flared again, the exhaust a furnace-blast tinged with the scent of charred meat. “Well? Come out, little mice. Answer me or burn.”

Leaf’s veins were ice. His hooves quivered helplessly. But he would not allow Gloaming to die here. “When you see a chance,” he whispered, not daring to look at her, “fly.” And he stood.

“Good,” said the dragon, gaze fixed on the little green colt. Its coils writhed sinuously, but the head stayed stock-still, and Leaf remembered that darting bite. “Now the other.”

“I had not heard that dragons ate meat,” said Gloaming, her voice shrill but marvelously steady. “It is said among ponies that only mineral gems may feed your fires and form your bright scales. For are you not the mighty dragon Felsite?” Leaf could not tear his eyes from the dragon’s gaze, but he felt the mare step up beside him. Why had Gloaming spoken? Why had she drawn the wyrm’s gaze? He tried to sidle to the side, hoping that the terrible snout could not track both of them at once. The dragon snorted, loosing a blast of heat and a puff of smoke from his nostrils.

“Hah—a scholar! Your sages speak true. But gems I have from my friends in the mountains, and the poor deer find none in my forest. They must have some way to buy my friendship, little mice, and I find that I savor the delicacy.” The terrible tongue, nearly as long as Leaf himself, slithered across the scaly lips. “But let’s have no dodging or games, little ones. I asked first, and am lord here besides. Where is your Princess? Why has she sent you?”

Leaf knew only that he must reclaim the drake’s attention. He gave voice to all that he could think to say: “We come not at the princess’s will, but my own. For I would ask a question of you, O Dragon. I have left my home to seek the true meaning of harmony, and have yet found no answer to sate me. I would beg of you yours, for I think harmony must lie in freedom; and I have heard you are of all creatures the most free.” So spoke the colt, for he had seen the wyrm was proud, and hoped he might buy their lives by flattery.

Indeed the dragon reared and preened as Leaf stepped ever farther from Gloaming. “You speak well, little mouse, and I perceive your courtesy is more than words. You understand that the free give naught for free. This morsel you have brought shall be fine payment indeed.” Leaf’s hope curdled as the burning gaze fell again on Gloaming. His head pounded in time with his heart, and he leapt toward the beast; he heard the telltale swish of Gloaming’s wings as she leapt into the air; but the dragon’s great wing flared and pounded, and the wind of it smote him like a hammer. When he rose, he found himself and Gloaming roofed by scaled wing and ringed by spiked tail, and he beat his hooves in vain against Felsite’s armor. The earth shivered with the dragon’s chuckle.

“Now now, little pony, I take naught unfreely given. See! More of my friends come, and they bring coin for barter.” And, peering twixt canopy wing and imprisoning tail, Leaf saw indeed. Cresting a ridge upmountain came a pack of strange creatures, stout, furred, with spiked collars and bracelets and long, tearing teeth. They approached steadily, not running or loping but doggedly trudging, tongues lolling from mouths with exertion as they hauled great sledges on chains behind them. Now one wrapped the chain around her barrel chest, digging blunt-tipped claws into the ground as she heaved her burden forward. Now another collapsed mid-pull, and his comrades turned to lift him atop the sledge he had pulled. But the burden! Each sledge bore what seemed one of Cloudsdale’s rainbows come to earth, flashing and glimmering in every shade and hue. Heaped at the top, spilling from the sides, gems such as Leaf had never imagined—and he forgot his fear and stared open-jawed as he felt Gloaming rise beside him.

“These must be Diamond Dogs,” she whispered. “Remember when Grandmother told us of them? They live beneath the earth and dig for gems—but why bring them to the dragon?” For it was clear that the dogs were coming to the clearing where Felsite’s head towered higher than any tree. The dogs took up a howling halloo of greeting. The wyrm’s tail coiled in seeming anticipation, so that the ponies trapped within feared to be crushed. Suddenly the dragon’s head plummeted near the earth, as when he had struck the aurochs, and one lurid green eye peered beneath his wing at his prisoners. Smoke hissed from the sides of his jaws, choking the ponies and watering their eyes.

“You wish to know the meaning of harmony, little mouse? Here you have it. Observe.” And as the dragon returned to his full height, the first Diamond Dog entered the clearing.

Broad she was and mighty, her paws and shoulders crossed with silvery scars from digging. A spiked collar shining with running sweat encircled her neck. Muscles strained beneath her short coat as she gave her sledge a final heave. Her eyes seemed to glow from within, and the glare of the setting sun glanced and refracted through her crystalline cargo, bringing her dun fur alight with prismatic fire. She threw her head back in another howl of triumph, the other Dogs joining her as they lugged their own sledges to rest. The lead Dog stepped forward and spoke in a gruff alto.

“Hail, mighty Felsite. I am Janine, greatest digger of the Ironclaw Pack! With this year’s labor we have wrested these gems from the earth, and we bring them now to you for our reward.”

“Aye!” barked a smaller dog, his fur a burnt yellow and his left ear torn. “I am Buddy of the Quartzeyes! Make me as you are, oh Felsite! Make me a dragon, that I may claim my own mountain and mines!” And with coughing cries and proud introductions the other Dogs came forward, repeating Buddy’s demand. Leaf turned to see Gloaming staring at him.

“Can it be?” he asked. “Can the drake make these dogs into dragons as well?” Gloaming shook her head even as he spoke.

“I cannot imagine it. Not even Princess Celestia could perform such a feat. Something is wrong here.”

But all seemed to be right as the dogs beat their chests and the dragon’s head snaked out toward the sledges full of gems. The tongue flickered, snakelike, and with a slavering crunch one of the sledges vanished into the dragon’s maw. He reared back, and the ponies coiled in his tail felt him shiver in what must be pleasure.

“You have done well, my friends,” came the rumbling rasp, like the slithering stones that gather into the rockslide. “And you shall have your reward. Stand forward.” It was full dark now, and the dogs’ eyes stood out sharp from their silhouettes as they assembled before the dragon. The canopied wing withdrew. Leaf scrabbled to flee, but the tail tightened about him so he thought he must suffocate. Above him, silhouetted against the roiling clouds billowing from the east, the dragon’s head hovered stock-still as it had before he struck the aurochs. The cavernous chest expanded as he took a mighty breath.

“Well?” cried a gruff voice. “Make us as you are!”

For a moment Felsite gave no answer. Then Leaf was blinded by a sheet of flame, green, roaring, raging like floodwater from the dragon’s maw down upon the supplicating Diamond Dogs. Leaf crushed his eyes to his hooves and screamed to smell the burning of fur and flesh, and to hear the howls of the dogs in the torrent. Leaf did not know now long the dragon breathed, the heat licking at his coat, the afterimage of the fire pulsing behind his closed lids. But finally it seemed over, and he whimpering opened his eyes and gazed upon the clearing.

The earth was blasted black, though the piles of gems were unharmed. They glinted merrily in the light of a dozen brushfires. Leaf could scarcely look at the lumps of seeming charcoal arrayed in rows before the dragon, or the glint here or there of an ornamental silver spike. He felt Gloaming’s feathers bristle against him.

“You monster!” she screamed, hoof pounding on the coiled tail that trapped them both. Her voice was ragged and mad, and Leaf’s horror made room again for shame at having brought them both to this place. “What madness is this? What evil is this?”

The dragon lowered his head to the ground and lazily snapped up one of the burned lumps. He again turned an eye, now crinkled with satisfaction, upon the ponies trapped within his encircling coils. “This is our exchange. They bring my gems, and I leave their clans to mine another year.”

Leaf found his voice, though it was but a croak. “They—it sounded like they thought that they would become dragons.” The eye glinted with mirth.

“And so they shall, little pony. Have you never heard the expression, ‘you are what you eat’?”

This was too horrid to contemplate. Leaf cast about for a pettier atrocity, one which could fit within his mind. “These gems—how are these your gems? The Diamond Dogs mined them, brought them here—this is no bargain, it is extortion—”

“Ah, but the mountains are mine, little pony! Mine for I came here first, and none can take them from me. I found these little dogs beneath my hills generations ago, and I told them they could stay if they brought me the fruits of my land. If they mislike our bargain, they can always renege—or they may simply flee. But it is a fine life. They have meaningful work, and the greatest miner of each pack finds the end of all suffering each year. They are grateful, as they should be.” A roll of thunder overhead punctuated Felsite’s words, and here and there came the pattering hiss of raindrops striking the dragon’s fires.

Leaf felt tears dripping to his hooves. “I—you said you would show me harmony. How can this be—what is—”

“This is harmony,” came the dragon’s rasp. “That the weak should feed the strong, and tremble at their coming. That each should prosper according to his measure. Your Princess knows this. See how she cast down her only rival, to rule you whimpering ponies alone. Even now she raises a castle in the sky, built and fed by you worms who crawl in the mud. For the mighty to bow before the weak is an affront to the greatness of their nature. That is your lesson, little mouse—take what you will, as far as your will can take you. And now I will take my pay.”

Leaf felt Gloaming pressed against him within the dragon’s coils, her heart thrumming in time with his. The dragon’s head snaked toward them, low, raindrops steaming off the furnace-hot muzzle. Gloaming’s voice was choked with grief and twisted into barbs. “You may eat us, dragon, but one day the Princess will come for you as you say she did her sister.”

The clearing rolled again with the thunder of the dragon’s laugh. “Let her try! I was before her, before even the little sages who first raised your sun. I swam the endless night before the first dawn and in darkness gulped the lights of ancient gems. But as for ‘us,’ little filly, you misunderstand. Your colt had in his heart already some inkling of the lesson I would teach him.” A great eye winked at Leaf. “For is that not why he brought you? To buy from me his life and lesson? He had to know that I would demand payment.”

Leaf broke in, desperate, voice cracking. “No! I—you’re wrong. I made a mistake in coming here. If one of us must die, it should be me. Let Gloaming go!”

A blast of heat billowed from Felsite’s flaring nostrils. “What? Little fool, heard you nothing that I told you?”

Leaf continued. “Yes, I heard, and you are wrong. You know nothing of duty, nothing of love—”

The wyrm snorted once more. “Duty? Only the word of the weak for the wishes of the strong. And love? But a net with which the sly beguile the mighty. Find the Last Crystal Pony, and see where love left her and her people. Yea, ask her of harmony and after see if my answer is not yours also.”

Leaf saw his death rise before him, and it quieted his throbbing heart and mind. The rain came now in earnest, soaking his fur, dousing the dragon’s brushfires. He felt Gloaming flex her wings. He stared into the venomous eyes of the dragon and watched the flames flicker in the mighty nostrils. “You’re wrong,” he said, his voice quiet. “I cannot explain why, for I am only a young colt and rather stupid. But you are wrong, and it is only your fires and armor that have shielded you from your wrongness. Maybe this Crystal Pony you speak of could explain it, but I will never have the chance to ask her. I love Gloaming, and I will die that she may live. Let her go.”

The dragon gave a rumble of contempt, and he bared his saber-like teeth in what could only be a sneer. “Another weakling, then. Begone, pegasus.” The coils loosened, and Gloaming leapt and vanished into the driving rain. “Young fool,” came the dragon’s rumble, his eyes now the only light in the rain. “You have wasted my time, ruined my meal, and refused my wisdom and generosity. You shall not die with honor, like these dogs. Your suffering shall be long.”

Leaf felt the hair of his mane and coat stand on end. The coppery taste of blood welled in his nostrils. He raised his gaze to meet the dragon’s. He felt suddenly very brave. “Waste more of your time, then.” The dragon reared for a third time, up, up, that head like a long and cruel blade. Leaf dropped from the coils of the tail and dove for the treeline, knowing that the strike must come in only a moment.

The world went white. There was a crack as though the bones of the earth had broken, and Leaf felt himself hurtle through the air and smash through tearing branches. He lay, stunned, vision a throbbing sheet of color, ears ringing, nose filled with the scent of blood. A dark blur dropped into his line of sight, and he felt strong hooves wrap around his barrel. And then the ground dropped away as it had in Cloudsdale, and he felt the pine needles of the canopy tickle his cheeks as he fell into the churning sky.

Comments

[Bicyclette]

“This is harmony,” came the dragon’s rasp. “That the weak should feed the strong, and tremble at their coming. That each should prosper according to his measure. Your Princess knows this. See how she cast down her only rival, to rule you whimpering ponies alone. Even now she raises a castle in the sky, built and fed by you worms who crawl in the mud. For the mighty to bow before the weak is an affront to the greatness of their nature. That is your lesson, little mouse—take what you will, as far as your will can take you. And now I will take my pay.”

and oof! love these different, self-serving interpretations of the same event. really makes you think. the cruelty of Felsite’s domination over these three species is horrifying, and the deer show how cruelty flows downward in turn.

“Ah, but the mountains are mine, little pony! Mine for I came here first, and none can take them from me. I found these little dogs beneath my hills generations ago, and I told them they could stay if they brought me the fruits of my land. If they mislike our bargain, they can always renege—or they may simply flee. But it is a fine life. They have meaningful work, and the greatest miner of each pack finds the end of all suffering each year. They are grateful, as they should be.”

and yet even he must find ways to justify what he is doing, even with his stated philosophy