Child of Nightmares and Everfree
Til Death Do Us Part
Although the night was quiet, a veritable thunderstorm of emotions swept through Sunshine Symphony’s head. All he could see was his daughter, looking so skinny and terrified next to the huge Everfree bat, who she was clinging to for comfort. It was the moment he had been anticipating and dreading, but it bore no resemblance to any circumstance he had envisioned.
Physical transformation spells were difficult, and even Twilight Sparkle had hit a significant problem with the fairly minor one she had done transferring Sunshine’s attributes to Fluttershy. There was absolutely no way Spark Gap could have transformed herself into the monstrous bat, but Emerald Dreams was clinging to her just like she would her mother, nuzzling up against the monster’s thick coat and making pathetic little squeaking noises. The huge bat could have been some sort of Everfree monster able to hypnotize its prey, but the fierce look of maternal defiance from it could not be faked, or the way she huddled up against his daughter with one wing across her as if the monster were afraid of losing her.
He turned his watery gaze back on his daughter, trying to puzzle out just what had happened to result in … this. As much as he wanted to rush forward once the spider had finished clipping him out of the web, Fluttershy’s vulnerable presence held him back better than steel chains. As long as the huge bat did not attack again, he dared not either, or the inevitable bloodshed might not be limited to just themselves.
“It’s Emerald Dreams,” he whispered to Fluttershy as if to confirm he was awake, and not dreaming of his daughter as he had so many times before. “It’s her. I was starting to think she was some sort of delusion. But she’s real.” He looked around afterwards, but with a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, realized he could not see any sign of Spark Gap.
“Let her come to you,” whispered Fluttershy. “Move up to that branch and just stay as still as possible.”
It was the most difficult order he had ever obeyed. Even his knees were knocking together in fear as Fluttershy crept closer to the monstrous bat. She talked in a low and calming tone at first, then switched to a higher register in near squeaks of her own until the bat seemed to calm down fractionally.
It was a dance of fear, with slow and careful moves and three participants, four if Sunshine Symphony’s frozen posture were to count. Ever so slowly, from perching on one branch or protruding root at a time, the huge bat and the filly came closer and closer. Fluttershy encouraged them in quiet squeaking tones until the bat sat down in a lump and refused to move, fixing Sunshine with dark, furious eyes.
“Take off your armor,” whispered Fluttershy.
It went against everything he had ever been trained in as a guard. The enchanted armor was more than just protection against blows and spells, but a symbol of what he represented and how he would die to protect others. Still, one piece at a time and a little embarrassed at stripping in front of his newfound daughter, he placed his armor down on the broad tree root beside him and waited.
Emerald Dreams did not seem to want to move from the giant bat’s side, not even when prodded by one of her broad black wings, but after several pokes, she shuffled forward along the tree root’s rough surface, one small step at a time until she was close enough to touch. One small hoof, chipped and rough from her years in the forest, gently rose up and touched him on the cheek as Emerald Dreams trembled. He could feel her growing fear when he lifted up his own iron-shod hoof and touched it to hers, but she recovered quickly and unfolded one small wing to reach forward and touch against his. It was dry and rough like sandpaper as she rubbed her wing against his softer membranes, and she twitched when he brought his nose back to his own preening gland to pick up a measure of the oily substance, and twitched again when he rubbed it against her dry wing.
They sat in silence for a while until Emerald Dreams reached back and rubbed her own nose against her preening gland, then sneezed at the unexpected sensation. A second rub was more successful and the two of them worked the resulting oil into the small dry wing with hesitant glances between each other. Sunshine thought there were tears in his daughter’s big green eyes, but could not be certain. Far too many tears in his own eyes blurred his vision as the two of them just sat there on the immense tree root, father and daughter, working together on her long-delayed preening.
~^^~
Dee had never been so frightened in all of her life, even when she had been chased out of the strange city by the fierce monster who was now gently oiling her wing. He was so big compared to her, but worked with the lightest of touches as if she were a moth, able to be torn in half with the smallest accidental twitch. Her heartbeat fluttered moth-like in her chest as she mimicked his motions, repeating the strange but somehow familiar motions that spread a welcome relief to the constant itching that had always plagued her wings.
“Are you my father?” she squeaked suddenly, looking up with the oil on her nose glistening in the moonlight.
The larger monster made grunting noises, paused at Dee’s puzzled expression, then reached down with almost sloth-like speed and picked up the shell he had been wearing on his head. Once he had it over his head again, he repeated the grunting noises, but to Dee’s surprise, she understood them somehow.
“Could you repeat that?”
Dee licked the oil off her nose and wrinkled up her lips at the sour taste. “Are you my father?” she repeated in short squeaks.
“Yes.” The monster stared back at her almost as if he expected her to vanish into the night at the admission. When she simply stared back at him, he asked, “Do you know where your mother is?”
Dee’s chest seemed to split open with agony and she turned to look at Mama, who was squeaking quietly with the other strange yellow monster. She would always be Mama to Dee, even though her first monster Mama had died. Among The Folk, the loss of a mate could drive the survivor away into the forest, never to be seen again. Mama had told Dee of losing her mate to the Owls a few moons before finding Dee, although she never mated again afterwards. She was Mama, Dee was her daughter, and she did not need a mate to be loved.
Dee had never thought about a father.
From the look in his eyes, the dark monster’s mate, Dee’s monster Mama, must have been very close to him, but he had recovered from his loss, and taken another monster as mate. Still, he must have still been in pain in order to search so far away from his city to find Dee. The sight of her monster Mama turned into stone and broken into pieces had struck Dee far harder than she wanted to admit, but for this monster, the pain would still be fresh. He would not want to know what had happened to his mate, but he needed to know, much as Dee had needed to know.
And after he knew, he would take her away to his city with the rest of the monsters, where Dee could be with her own kind.
Dee floated over to Mama in a few short flaps, landing in front of her and nuzzling in close to her warm coat. She did not want to make this decision, but Mama was wise and would know what to do.
“He wants to know what happened to my mother.”
~^^~
As the cool night air passed behind the four of them, Dee thought about her Mama and how much she loved her Dee. Life had been so simple before Dee had gone to the city of monsters and found out about the little monsters so much like herself and so unlike The Folk. The darkness they were flying in was comforting, even though the Owls lurked silently out there somewhere. It would make her life so simple again if a passing Owl were to eat both of the monsters, but it would not help the questions fluttering around in her head.
Was his new mate a good Mama? Did they have any other little batlings? Would they welcome her into their Home as Mama had done? Such a short time in his presence and she already could feel the tug of belonging, the urge to spend her time with others of her kind. So few of The Folk would even speak low enough for her to understand, and they turned their backs on her whenever she tried to get closer. Only Mama had held her, fed her, and loved her.
The monster’s names even felt comfortable on her mouth. The Folk had such complicated names with sharp trills and chirps Dee could barely duplicate. Monster names were simpler, like Fluttershy and Sunshine. They filled her mouth with unaccustomed motions of her tongue in ways Mama could never duplicate, although they made conversation between the four of them while they flew… complicated.
Dee could understand Mama, and Sunshine if he had his helmet with the ‘translation spell’ on. Mama could understand Dee and Fluttershy. But Dee could not talk with Fluttershy, and Mama could not talk to Sunshine. Still, they managed to communicate. Fluttershy was soft and loving as a good Mama should be, and could pass along even a complicated idea with little more than a pointed glance, while Sunshine and Mama… glared at each other, much like two of The Folk trying to figure out which of them would get a particularly juicy powdermoth.
So they flew across the forest in relative silence, keeping an eye out for predators while Mama guided them back to the deadly redfruit tree where Dee’s first Mama had been killed. There were so many things Dee wanted to ask, but her thoughts refused to turn into questions as they flew.
When they finally reached the clearing, it felt calm, almost tranquil and inviting. It was also a trap, much like a branch-slicer offering a comfortable place for a traveling bird to rest for a few moments and a good meal for it immediately after. The white flecks of broken stones scattered across the ground appeared undisturbed in the moonlight, but Dee knew the deadly lizard was lurking somewhere down there.
For the second time in two nights, Dee settled down on the branch overlooking the lizard’s clearing, only this time there were two monsters who settled down on a different nearby branch. Dee could not look down into the clearing, but instead watched the dark form of the larger monster, her father.
It was difficult to think of them as ‘ponies’ instead of monsters. This was the first time she had ever been able to just sit and watch a ‘pony’ like herself, without the odd sideways stance Dee had always taken around Mama to look more bat-like and less different. Sunshine was whispering to Fluttershy without looking down into the clearing either, then he remained sitting on the branch and hung his head when the yellow pony flittered away into the shadows.
The quiet filling the clearing lasted a long time before Dee rose up into the air with slow beats of her wings, glided over next to the dark pony, and landed. Almost on her tail, Mama settled down on her other side and seemed to find something in Dee’s unkempt mane to be fascinating, giving her an excuse to sit quietly and pick at it.
Dee still could not think of the dark monster as ‘Sunshine,’ despite the sense of calm he projected. There was a mighty terror concealed beneath his immobility, which could only be seen in the tiny little tremors across his flank and belly and which Dee could also feel in her own body.
“Do you see her down there?” squeaked Dee.
“No,” said Sunshine in a low and rumbling voice. “I’m afraid to look.”
Dee stood higher to lift herself off the branch and looked down into the clearing, which did not seem to have changed since the last time she looked. The broken stone body of her monster Mama still was wedged into the big cleft at the bottom of the redfruit tree. The sight looked far less terrifying and sad than it had just a few nights ago, but the faded memories still drew a sharp pain across the inside of her chest. Out of instinct, she extended one of her now-softer wings and reached out to ‘Sunshine’, touching him on the back and rubbing up and down the way Mama had calmed her when she was afraid. He twitched at her touch, then ever so slowly extended his own wing and placed it on her back.
Although Mama moved almost immediately to drape her far larger wing over theirs, she took a breath, pulled back, and resumed picking through Dee’s tangled hair instead.
The dark pony took a deep breath as well and lowered his head further before speaking. “A basilisk. If she had been attacked by a cockatrice, she could have been saved. Fluttershy says a cockatrice can turn their victims back from stone, but a basilisk eats the life energy from a living creature when it breaks them. Once they’re broken, they’re dead, and nothing can bring them back.”
“What was she like?” asked Dee in a timid squeak that made a cold shudder travel across the dark monster, so different than the Sunshine he had insisted on being called.
Sunshine stood on the branch for a long time, breathing in and out in short breaths until he finally looked down into the scattered broken stones of the lizard’s hunting ground. He stood there for a long time, looking at the shattered remnants of his mate at the base of the tree before he began to breathe again.
“Difficult,” he admitted after he had taken several breaths. “We loved each other so much. I could never forget it, even when she ran away from me. Her moods could change in the blink of an eye, from dancing through the house to trying to kill me. I should have been stronger to protect you, but I was so afraid of losing her that I lost you both. I failed. My weakness led her here…”
The dark monster trailed away, and Dee turned to translate for Mama. She did not understand all of the words, but Mama nudged Dee with one wing and pushed her closer to her father.
“Tell him,” Mama squeaked. “We were here. Ate redfruit together. You were not afraid of me. Then the lizard attacked. She fought. Fought like a good Mama. Fought the lizard. Brave monster. Saved you. Saved you for me. Good Mama.” Mama ran the thin fingers of one wing along the thick and tangled mess of Dee’s neck hair. “Good Dee.”
The dark monster did not move a muscle as Dee repeated Mama’s words. The ‘translation spell’ Sunshine was using to understand her low squeaks and chirps must have been working, because he twitched whenever Dee spoke, and in the end, a thick trickle of tears ran down both cheeks.
“Her family will need to know.” Sunshine finally moved his head, scanning from one side of the shadowed clearing to the other. “I’ll need to bring something of hers back so they will believe she’s gone. Otherwise—” He stopped, with his chest moving in little trembles like whenever Dee wanted to cry and was holding herself back.
She moved up against the strange large monster and placed her head against his neck, just in front of the hard carapace he wore. He was warm and comforting, just like Mama, with the hammering beat of a large, caring heart. Dee could feel Mama moving onto the other side of him as she spread her large wings over the three of them, father, daughter and Mama.
Somehow, Dee could tell why he needed to bring something of her monster Mama back to their family. The Folk never did understand Dee’s ties to material objects, but the monsters in her mother’s family would want something to grieve over, to look at and understand she was really gone. They were different than The Folk. When there were deaths from Owls or the dangers of the forest, life had simply gone on. Only Dee would remember the little things that made one of The Folk different from another, and worry about the way the lost were just forgotten in time.
~^^~
Royal Guards did not cry. Sergeant Sunshine Symphony was not a Royal Guard at the moment, as trickles of long-suppressed tears poured down his face and his long-lost daughter clutched to his neck. The huge bat wrapped around them both could have killed him without even trying, but she remained draped over the two of them, dripping tears across his face which she then licked off with a rough tongue. It felt as if they were crushing Emerald Dreams between them, only to pull her in half when they inevitably went their separate ways.
Sunshine used the back of his unarmored hoof to wipe away a missed tear and patted his daughter on the back once he had recovered somewhat. “I’ll slip down there and bring back… part of her. You stay up here with…” He paused and looked at the giant bat looming over him, standing spraddle-legged and braced against a higher branch in order to keep from falling down, but still massively intimidating. “Yeah.”
After putting on the rest of his armor, he edged a little closer to the end of the branch and looked around the clearing, being very careful to keep his eyes nearly closed. Recovering a part of his wife’s stone body would be extremely difficult and dangerous. Basilisks were able to camouflage themselves against the forest until it was too late for an unsuspecting victim, and he would need to identify the location of the deadly lizard before formulating a plan to draw it away. Even then, he would have to act fast. The enchantments on the helmet might provide a little bit of protection against a basilisk’s stare, but what would work much better was something solid to block…
It took several blinks to recognize Fluttershy down in the clearing, who seemed as if she were stretched across a large rock. With each blink, the camouflaged body of the basilisk became more clear, from the six stumpy legs to the squat head which Fluttershy was laying across, her wings spread wide across its eyes and one hoof scratching behind its ‘ears.’ She looked back up at him and smiled with what he could have sworn was a wink, then went back to giving the hideous monster ear scritches until Sunshine could swear its tail was thumping against the ground. Without Fluttershy, he would have most likely been ambushed and killed just the same way as his late wife, and he added it to the long list of things he owed the shy pegasus, a list which had reached several mental pages.
Father, daughter, and enormous bat descended from their observation treetop and down to the base of the ancient apple tree where Spark Gap had died. It was a quiet and funeral atmosphere, as the rubble of many years of the basilisk’s feeding shifted underhoof with every step. The stone torso was unmistakably Spark Gap, as her cutie mark had been quite rare, and had survived being turned to stone and shattered nearly intact. He took a short breath and bent down to recover her head instead, picking it up and cradling it in his forelegs.
Even turned to stone with several pieces knocked off, her face still looked just as fiercely defensive as the time she had broken a table over Sunshine’s head. There was a similar defiance to the way she had wedged her body into the crack running the length of the old apple tree’s trunk, shoved up against it so tightly as to still be nearly standing even after being turned to stone and broken. Her posture in death bothered him, as the crack in the tree was not nearly wide enough for her to hide in, and she could have run around the other side of the tree if she was trying to get away. In fact, she was wedged in almost sideways as if she were determined to protect something with her body even after death.
“One last thing before you go,” he whispered. “Remember, all you see may not be so.”
After a quick precautionary glance at where Fluttershy was still scratching the basilisk’s ears, Sunshine climbed over the petrified and broken body of his wife to reach behind, deep into the cleft of the tree. It took a few moments of careful maneuvering, but he came out with a much smaller stone bat which had been protected from both the elements and the basilisk by Spark Gap’s last stand.
“She was protecting the child,” said Sunshine very quietly in respect for the basilisk just a short distance away. He looked at the huge bat, who was trying not to look back at him. “Is it yours?”
Emerald Dreams translated his question to her huge protector, who squeaked back in short, slow bursts.
“Yes,” said Emerald Dreams. “Lizard killed Mama’s little batling. Would have killed me, but Mama saved me. Took me Home instead.”
Sergeant Sunshine Symphony brushed a hoof across the surface of the little stone bat and tried not to cry.
“Tell your Mama that my wife may have saved her little batling after all.”