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// A Natural Fool Of Fortune 
// Story: In the Company of Night 
// by Mitch H 
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SBMS021

Gibblets did not rise from his crouch on the floor, and the rest of the congregation looked down at him, not judging, not condemning, but not understanding either.  I stood looking over him at the pikestaff, and the banner dangling from it, and the sigil whose meaning I now knew the provenance of, at least in some little part.  The lance looked now like a simple length of dark wood, and its eldritch nature was no longer so close to its surface.  You might almost think it a simple war-tool.  The warlock's new apprentice had been inching closer to her new master as we all stood our poleaxed grounds, and the next time I glanced, she was standing right over him, and I could not see her expression, as she faced away from me and towards the goblin-clown weeping silently beside the markless spot upon which the Spirit had resolv'd into a dew.

I turned my head, and discovered my own apprentice standing beside me, in my blind spot, her soft coat dappled beige and tan against my black and grey stripes.  She looked up from her observation of the witchy pair, her eyes wide and alert.  What did she make of this?  Off on an adventure, chasing the little devils who slayed her hated masters, and yet almost delivered into the hooves of a great and mad devil by the pony who claimed her apprenticeship in the very moment of that claiming.   Did she see another "Bastarden" into whose hooves she had fallen?

"You like your name, my fawn?  The one you came with?  We would have had you claim your name, the one you arrived with, or one you had in your heart, if the ritual had… played out the way it ought have.  Are you a Roggentochter?  Will you thrive in the Company as her, or would you be somepony else?"

"Ich bin nicht ein Pony.  Warum- Why you call, me pony?"

"I've told Gibblets here, again and again, all that speaks and makes itself known, is a pony.  That is my Company." I looked across the gathered and paralyzed audience, none of whom had left, possibly interested to see what the resolution of this was, possibly looking for explanations, or simply because they had not been dismissed – their eyes were on me.  "Whatever else the Company is for other people, or other things, these are what the Company is to us – those principles we bring to it, those ideas the Company makes real, those ideals we hold it to.  ‘No fate but that we make', ‘No slaves in the Company, a brother is a freepony', and most importantly – ‘every brother is a pony, same as every other pony in the Company'.  We are all ponies - pegasi, unicorns, earth ponies, zebra, donkeys, griffins, and yes, caribou and whatever the hell Gibblets is when he's home among family.  Whatever the Company was in its birth-throes, it is this Company today.  And we have a contract, and the duties that derive from the promises made in that contract!  Ponies, find your places, patient ponies, go find your beds and get some bed-rest, the potions don't heal you if you're on your hooves all night long!"

Octavius hooved his new apprentice towards the mess hall door, and herded the little jenny out of the hall ahead of a cavalcade of brethren and some new masters with their tiny apprentices by their sides. Finally the four of us were alone in the mess hall, the three of us watching the one staring down the knotty surface of the rough flooring in front of him.  At last the goblin-thing spoke:

Tarry, princess:
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Bide more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.

"Thou hadst too much of water in thee.  O heavens! is't possible, a young mare's wits should be more mortal than an old goblin's life?"

He made a strange gesture, waving his paw in front of his rubbery face, and got up from his crouch, creaking audibly as he did, and turned to see us watching him.

"What dost thou profess? what wouldst thou with us?"

"What would you, if a brother known for many years, suddenly threw aside his self like a blanket and stood a stranger before a Company assembly?"

"May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse? I have been many things to many people, and I have been a stranger to most, and oft stranger than most.  But I am yet still a warlock of the Company, that at least is true.  E'en if truth's a dog that must to kennel be whipped…"

I frowned, feeling somehow mocked.  If he was quoting at us, I did not recognize the text.  But somehow something in me knew my line.

"Nuncle, you have left a daughter.   Look to her welfare, and settle a name upon her, if nothing else."

"The inky zebra knows his lines, even those he never could have heard or read!  Mark you, Bad Apple, how the magic of heartsong stretches over anything with meter and dreamlike sense.   And it takes not an actual pony to sing it, but only a pony's heart.  Marvels and visitations make our days and nights!"

He stretched himself to his negligible full height, and nodded.  "And a pony in his time plays many parts.  Enough of the princess's Fool, he buried his motley beside his heart ages ago.  Can I defer this discussion until later, physician?  As you say, I have an apprentice to get settled.  And so do you," he continued, glancing aside at Roggentochter.

We left the mess hall empty and half-lit, the pikestaff abandoned in the front of the hall.  I was not touching that thing that evening.  My trust had been pulled as far as it would stretch without a tear.  Work heals all worries.  I led Roggentochter back to the infirmary, and explained that we'd start by doing laundry.  Best to start them off easy.   She rolled her eyes at me.  Well, I supposed every apprenticeship started in scutwork, and there was only so much variance in washing things, and cleaning filth.

But the Night wasn't done with me like that.  Because what we found awaiting us in the infirmary was a frantic Broken Sigil and the unconscious bulk of our griffin Captain laid out over two cots pushed together to hold his great weight.  The room was filled with worried patients and more.  The night's repercussions were not done with any of us yet.