SBMS124
The two fillies played in the snow, an early winter sun's rays casting faint rain-bows across the sprays of powdered snow as they were flung back and forth by wings grey and blue. Their tinkling laughter reached across the still-undisturbed snow-fields bearing down the grass of the lawn in front of the great house's wide veranda.
"You want me to do what again?"
"Dream-walk, my dear baker. We need an… audience. So saith the witches' coven, or at least, two of the three that cared when I asked. More importantly, we need an audience of varying allegiances, and sympathies. If it were merely one pony's friends, or the other's, or likewise their enemies or hated opponents, it would degenerate quickly into a series of accusations and defensive screaming. Nopony likes an intervention."
"And I am what, neutral?" asked Cup Cake.
"Let's say you hate the both of them equally."
"I can't believe you talked me into this, you damned cultist," groused the Equestrian spy from my dream-veranda, sitting restlessly on a rocking-chair. She was trying to find a rocking rhythm, and failing abysmally.
"How can you have so little coordination, that you can't figure out how to use a rocking-chair?" I asked, smiling.
She glared up into my one eye. "It's a dream, you striped buffoon! Even easy things come hard in dreams. Haven't you ever had that dream where your master is judging your baking, and you keep dropping egg-shells into the batter, and spilling spices, and dropping racks of pastries?"
"Can't say that I ever had. But I've never been one to suffer from anxiety-dreams. Perfect recall is my devil." The sun faded briefly, and I thought I heard a distant scream of torment.
Cherie looked up from her wrestling-match with the filly Spirit under the rose-bushes across the way. "Monsieur! No relapses! Not what we're here for!"
I waved her off, and she returned to her pursuit of the alicorn-filly, deeper into the rows. Some of which had shifted from rose-bushes to something more in a vine sort of line.
"And you want me for this why?" asked Broken Sigil, fiddling with his thick glasses.
"We need a friend of the Captain." I explained.
"I'm not her friend," he pointed out.
"You're the closest she has to a friend left alive in the Company. The world and time has not been kind to the friends of the Captain. Come on, you know her, sergeant. She's prickly even when she's in a good mood. You get along with her, better than you do with most other ponies."
"That might be true and it might be not, but you're talking magic. I don't do magic."
I looked up at his horn. "Sergeant, you're a unicorn. Your life is magic."
"Like hay it is!" he barked. "Look at my cutie mark. Is that a magic mark?"
His mark was a shattered ankh. "Looks sorta magic, in a baleful sort of way."
"It's a reflection of my soul, which is to say, I HATE MAGIC! Why do you think I'm in operations, and not with the warlocks? If I could find a world without magic, I'd be a happy equine."
"Hey, look at it this way. It's dreamland. Maybe afterwards Cherie can set you up some sort of drear magic-less wonderland to dream your nights away with?"
"Your ideas intrigue me. Tell me more."
"You lied to me, Sawbones! I can feel it in my horn, this place is full of magic!" Broken Sigil poured something brown out of a pail he had brought with him when the Spirit had walked him out of the back door of the great house. He filled up a tumbler which hadn't been there a second ago, upon a side-table which hadn't been there a second ago, either.
"Tartarusfire, sergeant, I'm just a damn zebra, what do I know from magical vibes? You ponies and your magic-this, magic-that!" I watched as he tossed back the whole tumbler in a single gulp. "Where did you get the beer?"
"I had the Princess make a stop with Heavy Bucket, and raided his tavern for something to make this more tolerable. And what do you mean, 'you ponies'? You're the one who always has to call everything that wags its jaws at you and makes sense, 'a pony'. Make up your damn mind!"
I concentrated for a second, and there was a second tumbler. I poured my own dram of beer.
It wasn't beer.
"Pfagh! Sigil, you're going to pickle yourself, drinking whiskey like this!"
"It's a dream, isn't it? I can drink like a yak, and I won't give a damn in the morning."
"I thought you said you didn't know magic!"
"I said I hated it, not that I wasn't any good at it. What are we doing here?"
"Right now? Watching the dream-fillies play hide-and-go-seek in the… vineyard?"
"Yes, doctor," said Cup Cake, breaking her silence, "It seems to be working, doesn't it? Didn't you notice the snow melting?"
"No, I was distracted by Sigil's conspiracy against my liver."
"Hain't a conspiracy, there's just the one of me, maybe two if you count Heavy Bucket's dream-tavernkeeper. Takes three for a conspiracy. This here is a plot."
"Watch your language, Mr. Sigil, there's a lady present!" objected the baker.
"This is the first time I've ever heard anypony definere una spia coma una donna," said the Captain, joining us on what was now a terrace, barely higher than the dusty yard below.
"So how is this gonna work?" asked a skeptical Captain.
"Best they've explained it to me, you're going to go to sleep in your quarters, and we'll sleep in ours, and the Spirit and Cherie will find us, and bring us together in some sort of common ground."
"A common ground that ain't no kinda ground at all, as I understand it. Damn fool nonsense."
"Well, at least there's no circles this time. Everytime I set foot in a magic circle, it seems like something blows up or burns down. I'm done with warding circles, I can tell you that much."
"Good to hear somepony's enthusiastic about this, I guess." She reached out and gave me a bit of a shove. I guess she couldn't maintain the curmudgeon routine if I was going to step on all of her lines.
"Can we get you to give it a try? We need to be pulling in the same direction. Look at what happened at the fords. The Company can do great things if we're all pointed on the same heading and keeping a cadence, Captain."
"Ammaistrare a tua nonna a sucari le ova!"
"Just so everypony remembers what's an egg and what's a stone, Captain."
"Your Equuish is slipping again, Captain," I complained.
"Vostru Equuish addannàrisi, Dutturi!" she squawked. But she stepped out into the yard, and if my eye wasn't deceiving me, she lost five years with every step into that hot summer sun-light. The vines were heavy with the grape, and here and there among the rows, you could see a little blue horn, or the tips of fluttering grey bat-wings rushing about.
"Aspittami!" squeaked the little purple earth-pony filly, as she rushed into the vineyard after the other fillies. Squeals erupted as they found each other in the distance, and the clattering noise of a chase resumed.
"You got another glass?" asked Cup Cake as she stared at Sigil's bucket of whiskey. "I think maybe we're going to be here a while."
We did, and we were. Although the bucket of whiskey had been replaced when nopony was watching. It started out as excessively young wine, no better than grape-juice, but we all concentrated hard, and the dream distilled it for us.
We sat back on the terrace and swilled dream-brandy, and watched the filly who would become the Captain, reborn for a night. The three fillies chased one another under dream-skies as day faded into twilight and the moon rose into the heavens, until we lost them in the growing darkness.
And even in the darkness, you could find them by the shouting and the laughter.