• Published 2nd Dec 2012
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Xenophilia: Further tales. - TheQuietMan

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76: When The West Wind Moves - by SpinelStride

When The West Wind Moves. (Words, lyrics and poetry by SpinelStride. Original scenario, meddling and interference by The Quiet Man.)
Chapter published 26th Jan 2014

***************

Spring 1226AC


Plow Puller had always been what the city ponies called ‘traditional.’ When they weren’t using words like ‘backward,’ ‘oppressed,’ or ‘archaic.’ He’d grown up that way. His parents had been in a ‘traditional’ herd themselves, and their parents before them, as far back as anypony could remember. As far as Plow Puller knew, anyhow. One stallion to tend the fields, do the heavy work, and every so often plow three other fields when that time came along. Three mares to do everything else.

City ponies didn’t like that sort of thing. That’s what Plow Puller’s mares told him. He wouldn’t know. He’d never been more than a few miles off the farm at most. It wasn’t much, but it was home, and there was always plenty of work to do to keep the place running. Barley didn’t grow on its own. And his cutie mark was a plow, and pulling a plow was what he was good at. He didn’t mind if city ponies thought he should do something else with his time. They’d probably never pulled a plow and felt the honest pleasure of feeling the soil splitting from nothing more than their own solid effort.

It wasn’t going so well today, though. The plow’d gone off. He spent long hours hitched to that big metal instrument, and he knew when it had something wrong just like a musician might know when her fiddle was about to lose its tune. He finished the row, then stopped and unhitched himself. Sure enough, there was the problem. Some pegasus had lost a feather, and the thing had got itself stuck on the leading edge of his plow. He untangled it and gave it a look.

Pegasi were always mighty proud of their feathers, but this one had got a mite rumpled. He smoothed it out. The thing was a deep, dark black, and even smudged with dirt it was still glossy enough to shine some. He’d talked a bit with some of the weather pegasi in the area, and thought he knew all of them at least by sight. There weren’t any black-winged pegasi around that he could recollect, though. He scratched the back of his head, then shrugged and tucked the feather into the collar of his yoke. He’d give it to the mares, let them take it on into town. Maybe some pegasus’d be glad to have it back.

Plow Puller hitched himself back up and got back to work with a smile. To his surprise, he felt a touch of music come his way. He’d only felt that a time or two before, but everypony knew that when Harmony called, you sang along. So he sang as he pulled, and felt the music pulling with him.

Will you remember me when I’m long gone by,
and the fields are filled with clover?
When the sun looks down, and she calls to me,
and there’s nothing but a memory?

For a plow may rust, and a farm may fail,
and fields can fill with clover,
but love will last, long beyond the days,
when we’re nothing but a memory.

So we’ll live our days and our peaceful nights
and let one field to clover,
and we’ll thank the ones who came before
who are nothing but a memory.

The years will pass, and we’ll lie at last
beneath a field of clover,
but the foals will laugh, and they’ll play and run,
when we’re nothing but a memory,
and the sun will smile, and remember us,
when we’re nothing but a memory,
and the moon will sing us a final song,
when we’re nothing but a memory.

***********************

Propriety stepped into Town Hall and nodded to Mayor Neighs. The ol’ stick-in-the-mud had always been suspicious of change even among their little rural community, but she knew how to uphold traditions like anypony, and that was enough to win elections. So she ought to know what to do with a stray pegasus feather, too.

Sure enough, Mayor Neighs knew the protocol for that just fine. She took the feather over to the local office for the Weather Service. Their little town didn’t rate a full-time Weather Coordinator; they didn’t even rate full-time weather coverage, just a stop-by every week or so by a roving team to make sure they were getting about what they needed. So the feather sat there for six days until Thin Haze stopped by to check for special requests.

Thin Haze didn’t recognize the feather either. Nice shiny black one like that, she’d have spotted a pegasus with that sort of coat in the area. Stallion feather too, unless it was some real overbuilt mare. And a stallion pegasus in these parts was going to be a hot commodity, even if he was just passing through. So she took it with her back to the Weather Coordinator’s office in Hayanne.

Doc Roan ended up with the feather in Hayanne, in the general hope she might have some sort of medical records that could match a feather like that. As it so happened, she recognized some telltale signs that said she definitely didn’t have any records for the feather’s owner, not unless her files had suddenly extended back a few centuries. The basic structure of feathers hadn’t changed in a long time, and her textbooks had used Princess Celestia’s own feathers to demonstrate that they were just about indistinguishable from modern feathers, but she knew it had been a long, long time since pegasi trimmed their feathers like this one. Cutting a feather took work, after all. Nowadays, even the Royal Guard didn’t trim their feathers to fit their armor better. But whoever had grown this feather, they’d thought a perfect armor fit was worth the effort. She sent it along to Canterlot University.

***********************

Princess Luna sat at her sister’s side in the early morning light. They were taking a modest picnic together in the garden- or as modest as the palace staff would allow. The two alicorns had been very insistent on not being waited on while they ate, but couldn’t dissuade their faithful ponies from having everything laid out for them when they arrived, and the cake was far too much either for Luna’s dessert or Celestia’s breakfast. They managed to make it a private time for themselves, at least, sitting there in the shadow of the statue of the Unknown Soldier, a noble pegasus warrior in millennium-old armor.

“You chose your servants well, my sister” Luna commented, resting against Celestia’s flank. Had anypony else been there to see, she would have kept a regal distance, but when it was just the two of them… well, sometimes it was nice to have Tia’s large, warm body to relax against, when she’d stayed up late into the morning and was tired and full.

Celestia smiled and sipped from her teacup. “You approve of their performance?”

Luna raised a small, impish smile to her. “Of course. They do not let you near the kitchen. Thus they serve Equestria well.”

Celestia laughed and waggled the teacup at Luna. “I make a point of cooking my own dinner once a century. The lesson tends to stick.”

Luna laughed back, then smiled up at the statue over them. “Did you spend the time to master the skill, I do not doubt you could be a passable chef. I would not have credited anypony who told me you could learn to sculpt, once.” Her horn glowed a deep blue as she lifted away a stray grass trimming that had ended up on the statue’s foot. “You captured him well.”

Celestia looked up into the unblinking gaze of the larger-than-life pegasus. “It took more than two centuries and a score of attempts before I could do him justice,” she admitted. “Which… actually brings me to our purpose here today. Beyond a moment to ourselves.”

Luna tilted her head. “Our times alone are rare enough without added purpose,” she said cautiously. “Is there aught amiss? Matters of state so sensitive you would not let your own guards attend the telling of them?”

Celestia shook her head, her mane swaying in the early morning light. “No, Luna, nothing amiss. There is a tradition - old as our little ponies would call it, and one I thought had run its course, begun and ended in your absence.” She bowed her head, touching her horn gently to Luna’s. “Try to rest tomorrow night. I will awaken early and join you. We will fly together and bring about the morning far from here.”

Luna looked curiously at her. “Then until the evening, sister mine.”

Celestia smiled. “And the morning beyond.”

**********************

The pre-dawn air was crisp through Luna’s feathers as she flew beside her sister. A long, long time ago she had been in the habit of literally flying rings around Celestia as they flew; for all that Celestia had worn her wings far longer than any living pegasus, she had never shown the joy of flight that little Moonshine had known from birth. But that had been long ago and far away, and Luna flew smoothly at her side instead.

The landscape was unfamiliar to her eye, though something kept dancing at the edge of recognition. Celestia had ordered the guards to remain in Canterlot, so it was just the two of them. It had been a long time since Luna had seen Celestia carrying her own bags. Luna had not been above letting her guards (or, from time to time, an appealing stallion) be her porters, but she had found it convenient to bear her own burdens sometimes as well. As long as she knew there were ponies who would help her when she needed them.

Celestia began to circle down, stately and smooth in her flight as ever. Luna followed easily, and looked down at the field that was evidently their target. It looked like an old farm of sorts, mostly flat, gone to clover, with some colorful plants dotting the area.

Their hooves alit on the soft ground and Celestia looked around. “It has been a long time since I came here,” she said, her voice a whisper in the stillness. “Do you know where we are, Luna?”

Luna looked around. The field did not seem so memorable a place. It was no ruin of an ancient city that only the two alicorns would remember, no temple or locus of magical power. It was just some long-ago farmer’s work let run to nature. “I confess, Tia, I do not.”

Celestia brushed the dark alicorn’s side with a wingtip. “Walk with me,” she asked.

Luna did.

“They called me the Tyrant Sun for a time, and they may have had the right of it,” Celestia said, and gestured. “We were both in the grip of madness, and I am not so sure I had truly escaped my own even when we faced each other in that final battle.”

Luna looked down curiously as they neared one of the colorful plants. Not vegetable matter at all, it seemed. It was a worn stone block the height of a pony’s leg with a single pegasus feather set in it, a golden feather, armor-cut. Luna sighed softly as recognition came. “This is that site, then. Where we made our destinies.” Her hoof reached out to touch that feather. “And where fought and died so many others as well.”

“Yes,” said Celestia, and closed her eyes. “When the battle was over, the bodies were… a terrible thing to behold. I could not leave them laid out there for the elements to assault.”

“Aye,” said Luna softly. “And because you are you, you sent them on their way with fire.”

“I did,” the Princess of the Sun agreed. “The survivors gathered all the bodies and I set the flame myself.”

Luna stroked the golden feather in its stone block. There was a mark on one side, but the weather had left it unrecognizable. “Fire destroys even pegasus feathers, though.”

“Fire cleanses, too,” Celestia said. “And Equestria was much in need of cleansing. But feathers from that battle were scattered in the air. For years thereafter, ponies found them and knew where they came from. They sent them to me.” She looked at the golden feather next to them. “Morning Glory. She brought us tea when we met to do our duty together, for a time.”

Luna stood still, remembering her. Gold with streaks of red along her flanks, who had been so proud to share those moments with her Princesses. Joyful, laughing. A mother of three. The mark on the stone, then, had been hers, a proud purple flower with a purple-and-white star at its heart. “For whom did she fight?” she asked hesitantly.

“For her family,” Celestia answered.

Luna frowned. “That is not what I meant.”

“It is the only truth that matters,” Celestia said quietly. “Every pony who fought and died for us was doing her best to make Equestria safe from a mad ruler. If they disagreed on which one that was, they were no less our brave and noble little ponies, all of them. Even stone forgets, but we do not.”

Luna had no response to that. They stood and looked at the long-fallen pegasus’ feather, and then at the same moment looked up. They didn’t say a word as their horns lit, Celestia guiding the sun to rise, Luna drawing the moon to its rest. They let the orbs share the horizon this time, both in view at once for a moment, instead of pulling one down and then lifting the other.

Celestia looked up at the sun for several seconds. Then she moved on. Luna followed.

Celestia passed by several other pedestals, pausing at each to say a name. “Deep Seas. Rising Star. Thunderstroke. Boneset. Full Belly.” A sea of waving feathers around them went unnamed, though as Luna looked she knew many of them. Not enough of them. They stopped in front of a another simple pedestal, this one with no feather in it. Golden light surrounded Celestia’s horn as she opened her bag and drew out a simple wooden box. She laid it in front of Luna.

“There was one exception,” she said.

Luna blinked, and then her eyes went wide as she realized who Celestia meant. Her deep, deep indigo hoof shook as she reached out to lift the lid.

The glossy black feather lay nestled atop a padding of cloud, laid into the box with pegasus magic. The breath caught in Luna’s throat. She reached out, with her hoof, not her magic, and lifted the soft pinion to her face. She inhaled, then began to weep.

“I remember, Tia, I remember him, I feel him, I smell him...”

Then the dark alicorn set the feather reverently down into the box and returned her gaze to the Princess of the Sun, eyes wide in incomprehension.

“Sister, hast thou kept this these thousand years? What event hath compelled thee to now return to me this token?” Her speech reverted in her shock.

Celestia shook her head and stretched a wing across Luna’s back. “It lay hidden in the earth all this time. The mages who scryed it for me say it followed the wind for centuries before it landed and was buried. A farmer unearthed it with his plow. It came to Canterlot University, where I have orders for any such discoveries to be sent to me.” She smiled gently. “If I had found it sooner, I think I would have kept it for you in any case. He would have wanted you to hold him last.”

Tears ran down Luna’s cheeks as she clutched the box to her chest.

“Sable…”

Celestia sat there, holding her sister while she wept.

"It is a lonely memorial," Luna finally said, not to her sister but to the wind. Her eyes moved from one feather to the next. Some few of them she remembered, still remembered. Others stirred vague recollections. Most were simply feathers. "They died with honor and with glory. The shame of our battles is ours alone. Our subjects should know this place and give the fallen their due."

"You may be right, sister," Celestia somberly conceded. "It was my thought that for their short days of strife on our behalf, they have bought all the peace I can bring them."

Luna brushed Sable’s feather and bowed her head, then said, "One day we shall ask them."

Celestia shook her head. "One day we shall hear their answer."

Luna nodded softly and lowered her head to smell the black feather again. “One day. But until then, sister, I would see them have their due.”

Celestia bowed her head. “Then so be it.”

Luna nuzzled the feather again, then set it atop the waiting pedestal. She lowered her horn, and the stone flowed like clay, wrapping about the base of the feather’s shaft. The outline of a white-crosshatched shield formed against the side of the stone. She touched it one last time, then stepped back.

*******************

“Auntie?” the gleaming white unicorn asked cautiously, looking around. “Why exactly are we here?” The chariots had been left behind at the edge of the field; the invited guests had followed the subdued alicorns to the center, where a single black feather stood in a stone pedestal, like the sea of others around but with sharp, fresh, unworn corners. “Is this some sort of… artistic installation?”

“No, Prince of the Unicorns, it is not,” said Celestia, not turning to him. “This place is a memorial.”

Prince Blueblood swallowed, and took a step back away from the stone pillar, looking at the ground. “I say, it’s… erm… impressive? But I don’t understand what it’s a memorial for.”

“The ponies who fought and died for their Princess a thousand years gone,” Celestia responded. “And for reminding today’s ponies never to let such a thing happen again.”

She turned, raising herself to her full height, looking down at Blueblood, and at Spitfire next to him, and to Minister Ballot Box beside them both. “The three of you are the presumptive Triumvirate. Yours is the power to declare the end of the Diarchy and restore the Unification Pact as the supreme law of the land with yourselves as the leaders of your tribes, Prince of the Unicorns, Commander of the Pegasi, and Chancellor of the Earth Ponies. And if ever my sister and I go to war again, I expect you to do so. No ponies will die for us. Never again.”

The three leaders of the tribes took another step back.

“And that’s why you wanted us to come,” said Twilight Sparkle. She watched Princess Celestia, not the feathers.

Rainbow Dash watched the feathers. They were waving at her in the breeze. This place… it didn’t scare her. She was a Wonderbolt. Wonderbolts didn’t get scared. Therefore she wasn’t scared. She’d been herding with Twilight long enough to pick up on formal logic like that. No, this was… discomfort. As far as her sharp eyes could see, there were feathers. She didn’t even consider flying, not even just a few feet. This was a place for walking. If she didn’t like to be in a place of the dead, it was still important to respect them. They’d died doing what they thought was right. Trying to stay loyal to a country turned against itself.

“Yes, Twilight,” Princess Celestia said. “If we go to war again, the Triumvirate must keep our little ponies from becoming involved. But you and your friends will be the ones who have to stop us.”

Fluttershy swallowed, and took a step back, edging her rear behind Big Mac as though to hide. Cheerilee nudged her side encouragingly. “It’s not going to happen, ‘Shy,” the teacher told her herdmate. “But we all have faith in you if it did.” Fluttershy swallowed, but gave Cheerilee a tremulous smile.

Spitfire took off her cap and held it against her chest, looking around, then bowed her head without a word. The Earth Pony politician next to her did the same. Belatedly, Blueblood joined them. Rarity did the same with her beret. Pinkie put a hoof over her chest.

“I have asked Master Michaelides to speak,” Princess Luna said. Her voice rang out across the stillness, where the others spoke in a hush. “His sire knew war. His people knew war. He knows the ways of mourning as no pony alive knows them. Even my sister and I have never mourned as other ponies do, for we expect to live beyond our beloved subjects. So, Master Lero, please. Begin.”

Lero cleared his throat. He’d worn a simple dark suit, with a poppy pinned to the left lapel. “I was never a soldier,” he said, looking at the newest monument. “My father was. He fought, he came home, he loved his family. Those we remember here today would have done the same if they could. So would every soldier who has ever borne arms. But it is the nature of war that many do not.

“About a century before I left that world, there was a war involving many of the most powerful nations of the day. They called it the Great War, the War To End All Wars. It was not. We later called it World War One. Millions of humans died in that war. Many on the battlefields, many more because soldiers cannot plant fields while they fight, cannot be carpenters and doctors and everything else a society needs to support its citizens.

“There is a field there where some are buried, and where poppies grow. I traveled when I was younger, and I visited that field, Flanders Field. There is a poem to remember them. I memorized the poem, In Flanders Fields, that day, and I have not forgotten it. I do not pretend that I could write something of such beauty myself, but I have adapted it as best I can for the brave ponies who died here so long ago.

In Feathered Field the lilies grow

between the columns, row on row

that mark our falling from the sky

where kin, still bravely singing, fly

and raise our newly-orphaned foals.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Feathered Field.

Give up our quarrel and our foe;

'tis better now, we too late know,

to let be the quarrels of the high.

If ye ever loved us who died

let us be the last to go

in Feathered Field.

Applejack listened to Lero. She’d never quite warmed up to him the way some part of her said she ought to. He’d helped around the farm, he was Big Mac’s friend, he’d caught Rainbow Dash and Twilight by the heartstrings, she’d never heard him lie in her life. And yet. He read his poem with passion, with care, and she was sure he meant every last word… but something about him she just couldn’t read, couldn’t bring herself to truly trust. But she could see that other ponies accepted him more. Dash had her eyes closed and her head lifted as though listening to hear the feathers calling to her. Fluttershy had her face pressed to Big Mac’s neck. And Princess Luna…

Applejack felt a tremor go through her. Princess Luna was standing there, still and strong, with tears pouring down her cheeks. Applejack had carried Luna’s guilt for just a few weeks, way back when, but she knew how it felt. Hearing a plea voiced from ponies who died for her… The apple farmer had tried to get herself killed just because she didn’t think she was running the farm well enough. This… She couldn’t leave Luna alone.

She didn’t know whether Harmony came to her or if she somehow demanded it herself, but Applejack sang. The others, all but Lero, Luna and Celestia, joined in.

Long ago, this field knew war,
and here did red rivers run,
for the love we have for you,
do you know what you’ve done?

Luna and Celestia’s voices rose to respond, their heads still looking at Sable’s monument.

Of course we do, how could we not,

we loved them just the same,

and we failed them in the end,

our pride reduced to shame.

Long ago, you went to war,
and your passion ponies burned,
for the love they had for you,
do you know what you’ve learned?

Of course we do, how could we not,

the horrors we have known,

never more shall sun nor moon

seek to rule alone.

Long ago, you went to war,
and Equestria was riven,
for the love we have for you,
do you know you’re forgiven?

Of course we do, how could we not,

our ponies teach us every day,

that their hearts surpass our own,

in each and every way.

Long ago, you went to war,
and lately have discovered,
all the love your sister has,
do you forgive each other?

Of course we do, how could we not,

no more shall we contend,

but be a family as we ought,

until the very end.

Long ago, you went to war,
and since then nobly you’ve lived,
by the love we give to you,
do you yourself forgive?

We wish we could, how could we not,

but our crimes weigh heavy yet,

the guilt we bear will carry on,

that we never forget.

Long ago, you went to war,
and it darkens still your days,
by the love they had for you,
would they want you to mourn always?

The ponies turned as one. Rainbow Dash and Lyra nudged Lero to come with them. He and Twilight Sparkle were the only ones to look back.

When they stood alone in the field, Celestia asked her sister, “Is a thousand years long enough?”

Luna bowed her head. “If you say it is, Tia, then I will believe you. Perhaps in a thousand sane years, I will know myself.”

Celestia pressed her flank to her sister’s and spread her wing over her back, blanketing her with the warmth of the sun. She did not so much push as guide her sister to step forward. Luna acquiesced, and touched her forehead to Sable’s feather. Tears ran down her face again.

Luna opened her mouth. Celestia spoke first.

Long ago, we went to war,
and he died by his own free will
by the love he had for you,
would he demand that you mourn still?

Luna shuddered on her hooves, eyes pressed shut.

I remember you, who are long gone by,
in this field now filled with clover.
A thousand years, you have waited here,
so much more than a memory,

But you loved me once, and I loved you back,
in fields soft and rich with clover,
and if our love was true, as I know it was,
I must let you be a memory...

“All right, Celestia,” Luna said thickly. “I shall do my best. We should… let the dead lie.”

“I’ll be with you,” Celestia promised.

They left, walking back to the chariots, where their living friends awaited them.

Thousands of feathers waved them goodbye.

Author's Note:

SpinelStride: TQM sent a message one day asking if I’d be willing to write a story and laying out the idea for me. All day after that, I kept thinking back to “In Flanders Fields” and had to accept. First song inspired by “Fields of Gold”, second song more loosely by “Where Have All The Flowers Gone.” Many thanks to TQM for the invitation, for his trust, and for XFT in general.

TQM: I had the bones of this chapter banging around in my head and on scraps of paper for months. Every time I came back to it I found my brain kept pushing me away from it and finding 101 other things to do. Eventually, after what felt like forever, I just had to throw my hands in the air and do something I’m really not all that good at... I had to ask for help. One SOS later and Spinel graciously agreed to take my disjointed ramblings and carry this chapter to where it was supposed to be. For that I am truly grateful.

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