//------------------------------// // 4. Silver Lining // Story: Fallout: Equestria - To Bellenast // by Sir Mediocre //------------------------------// Chapter Four Silver Lining I lay under a blanket, warm and comfortable, but shivers wracked my body. I jerked my head up from the pillow and squinted at the weighted flap to the square pavilion tent that rose cavernously above me. My breaths came in short gasps, and my heart thumped heavily. My muscles ached, my mouth and throat were dry, and a gnawing emptiness clawed at my belly. Night Cloud wasn’t by my side. I breathed slowly through my nose and rubbed my forelegs together for several seconds. I crawled stiffly off the woven mat and winced as pebbles crunched beneath my hooves, and glanced behind me. Blitz lay on her side beneath a green blanket, her head on a plush pillow at odds with the rest of the tent. To her right, Ivy slept soundly, her gun and harness laid on the ground nearby. I crept out of the tent, kicking each leg and stretching as I walked. Across from the pavilion tent was a smaller cream-yellow canvas one; Eagle and Zephyr slept together under a grey blanket, she lying under his amber wing. The moonless sky was a mosaic of colorful stars, clear of clouds, and a brisk wind blew through the caravan campground. -Night Cloud? Can you hear me?- -I can. Good morning, sweetheart.- -Um… thanks.- I grinned and bit my lip, turning all around to look for her. -Where’d you go?- -Just outside the camp. Look west.- I turned and broke into a trot, peering all around at the tents and the gathered wagons as I crossed the road and stopped at the edge of the level ground. The crest of the next hill was over a hundred meters away. -Stop. You’re looking almost straight at me. A few degrees to your left.- I peered out at the dark slope of the opposite hill rising away from the road. -Night Cloud, your coat is dark blue, your mane is black, and it’s a new moon.- -Not exactly a fair game of hide-and-seek, I know… and I confess, I’m cheating. A little spell one of Blitz’s friends taught me.- A spot on the hill wavered and rippled. I gasped as Night Cloud appeared from the darkness on the distant hill, dressed in a ghostly white caparison and gleaming steel beneath. She leapt off the hillside with her wings spread wide, flapped twice, and glided the rest of the way toward me, landing at a canter a few meters away. The crinet on her neck and throat and fine helmet on her head shone bright as polished silver under the starlight. She wrapped me with cerulean light and floated me straight up, trotted directly under me, and gently set me on her back; instead of mere cloth separating us, I rested on hard surfaces under the caparison. She broke into a smooth, gliding trot along the hillside, heading down and away from the campground. Her armor rattled faintly with each step. I clung to her shoulders and sighed. “I have legs, you know.” “And mine are a bit longer, sweetheart.” “A bit.” I rolled my eyes and felt along her shoulders with my forehooves, and her concealed flanchards with my hind legs. Rails protruded slightly from the otherwise smooth suit; if I were to pull the caparison up, I expected I’d see the same gun mounts as those on the guards’ barding. “So, um… what’s with the armor?” “Well, Blitz commissioned it for me not too long ago, but I haven’t had much reason to wear it. I thought I’d… oh, what’s the phrase…” “Break it in?” “Yes! That. Forgive me; Celestian isn’t my first language. And, um… it’s a little chilly, and the gambeson is decently insulated, so…” I smirked and said, “Now who wishes she had a fluffy winter coat?” She giggled. “So, what are you doing out here, and where are we going?” Night Cloud deftly hopped across the trickling stream at the bottom of the hill, and began to climb the shallow opposite incline. Her breaths came out in visible puffs. “I am going for a morning run. Nowhere specific. You’re welcome to come along, if you want to.” I lightly squeezed her armored neck, pressing my head against the overlapping plates; I immediately recoiled from the cold metal. -It’s dark. And we’re surrounded by rocks, and spiky plants.- -I can see quite well, and those plants are cacti.- -I know what they’re called, and I’m saying they’re friggin’ spiky!- I thumped my hooves on her remarkably quiet coat of steel. -And I’m not wearing my armor.- -I’m grateful for that; I happen to know it’s quite heavy. Relax, sweetheart, I won’t drop you on a cactus.- She laughed and spread her wings, flapping and hopping her way up the hill. The sudden rush of air deafened me and blasted my mane back. -Now let me show you how a Palomino mare can move.- I clung fiercely to Night Cloud’s neck and back with all four legs as she galloped flat-out and leapt across a dip in the earth that looked far larger to me than it probably was. I jolted against her as she landed and galloped on in the dark, juking between scraggly shrubs and smooth boulders. Then she jumped atop one of the rocks and on to the next one several meters farther along the hill, hooves clacking on the sandstone. Each landing jarred me on her back. She spread her wings mid-jump and flew up to perch on a truly immense boulder that split a dry creek bed, forming a vertical island; it had been worn somewhat narrower around the base by millennia of intermittently flowing water. She pranced in place for a moment on the rock, then stood still, her breaths coming quick and deep. Every one puffed a cloud into the chill air. I briefly looked out at the hills and desert in the dark, and the ground nearly ten meters below on every side, and Night Cloud stretched her wings out and up. I squeezed her again as she leapt—but she merely glided instead of powering upward. She flew low to the ground, flapping lazily, held aloft by magic I understood only in principle. She continued above the riverbed for several hundred meters, dodging around the infrequent tree or boulder in the way, but never rising higher. Then, she banked to the left and rose over a ridge. She stretched her legs forward in preparation and landed at a canter, then slowed to a trot as she passed between two grey boulders little more than a meter apart. I released my death-grip on her and sighed, trembling on her back. She lit her horn and the surrounding rocks with cerulean blue and grinned back at me. “Having fun?” I swallowed, and my voice came out reedy and tremulous. “Night Cloud… I’m afraid of heights, I don’t like flying, I don’t really know where we are… and…” I hugged her armored neck and muttered, “And I’m thirsty, and kinda hungry… don’t you think we should, um… go back to camp soon?” Night Cloud stopped in the middle of the cluster of boulders. Her ears flicked back, and she pulled one of her canteens off her saddlebag harness. “Here. I… I have some oat bars in my bags. You’re welcome to have some.” I grabbed the canteen larger than my head, lighting her white caparison and polished crinet and helmet with emerald. She spun about and walked back through the gap, and as she cleared the rocks, I drank from the canteen and peered back at the white saddlebags bobbing on her hips. “Left side, front pocket. In the green jar.” I unlatched the outer flap and the lid of the jar, and pulled out a brick of condensed, sweet-smelling oats and other grains. “Thanks. Is this that same, um… abeni bokan stuff?” I took an eager bite and mumbled, “Tastes like it.” She chuckled and raised her head high as she trotted smoothly through the low bushes and around one of the sporadic evergreens. “You’re welcome… and yes, it is. You have a good memory… I baked them at Cliffside. I wanted to have them for the road. The bars are easier to eat on the move than the cereal.” “Cool.” She briefly slowed from her trot to smile back at me, then sped up again. “Crystal, I’m sorry… I… I thought you would enjoy a little stroll.” “That’s what you call a stroll? You barely need wings to fly… I’ve never moved so fast in my life. Not on the ground, anyway… I just, um… I kind of thought you were going to stay on the ground, when you said you’re going for a run.” She laughed again. “Yes, well… I didn’t mean to, um… cause you discomfort. I’ll stick to the ground for now.” I snatched a reddish stone up from the dirt and tossed it at one of the nearby grey boulders, producing a sharp crack. “How’d all these rocks wind up here, anyway? They’re all grey. Not like all the smaller ones, and the dirt.” “Oh. Um… glacial deposition, I think.” “Glacial…” I frowned and finished chewing the delectably sweet chunk of oat bar. “But this is a desert. Aren’t glaciers, um… big ice things, in the mountains? Way, way north?” “Ice sheets moving over land,” said Night Cloud. “And today, yes, they’re only far to the north, and south, across the sea, as far as I know… but tens of thousands of years ago, they covered much more of the world.” She touched her wingtip to one of the rocks as she passed it, and said, “These ones almost certainly came from the Bloomfang Mountains. Bellenast is right at the base of them.” “Huh.” I occupied myself with the dense oat bar. -Hey, so, um… if Blitz is actually the princess of Bellenast… and you’re her adopted daughter, does that make you a princess, too? You look the part. Warrior princess. You have the fancy armor and everything. Your helmet even looks kind of like Blitz’s crown.- Night Cloud chortled. -I see why you would assume that, but no, I am not… I don’t remember the exact law, but I’m not of her blood, so… no fancy title for me. I’m just a tribal mare, sweetheart… and my helmet looks like her crown because that is part of her old suit of ceremonial barding. Her actual crown is in Bellenast- -Her old suit? Does she have a new one?- Night Cloud sighed and began to climb diagonally up the nearest hill. -Not yet; the new one is being made to measure. Her old one doesn’t fit her anymore. She suffered a, ah… unexpected growth spurt recently. Excessive balefire radiation can do that to us… particularly if one deliberately seeks out sources of it.- I took a long drink from the canteen, then capped it and stuck it back in its slot on her harness. “Did she do that?” She glanced back at me, swiveling one ear to listen. “Unfortunately, yes.” “Okay… but why?” “Well, her gambeson and barding have to be remade from scratch, for one, and she’s still not completely used to being so large… imagine if you grew to a third again your own size in the span of a week.” “Um… okay, that’s—Night Cloud, what I meant was, why did she irradiate herself if she knew it would make her grow?” “Oh!” Her ears flicked back again. “Sorry. I thought—my mistake. Um… she was… stressed. She… wanted to do something to, ah, blow off steam.” “Blow off steam…” Night Cloud nodded. “I, um… it’s a personal matter, sweetheart. It’s—” “Not your place to talk about it,” I muttered, sighing. “I get it.” “Um… yes.” She stopped near the ravine we had crossed before. “That is, yes that it is not my place.” “Night Cloud, it’s fine. You don’t have to explain it. Royal stuff, complicated stuff, whatever. Stuff nobody wants to tell a little filly.” “No, it’s not… Crystal, it isn’t that I don’t want to tell you, or that I can’t, or because you’re young—it’s because it’s personal. I promised Blitz that I would keep a secret, and I will not break that promise.” “Okay, okay…” I patted my hooves on her armored collar. “I get it. Don’t need to bite my head off.” “I’m not—” She shook her head and stomped a hoof, then trotted onward. “Sorry… I didn’t mean to sound so testy.” The sky had begun to brighten ever-so-slightly. She hopped over another small rock in her path and looked around at me again. “And I don’t think you’re a little filly.” “Um… thanks.” She yelped as she pitched forward abruptly—“Daah!”—and I slid forward into her neck and fell off her, crashing onto my shoulder. I lay on my side in the dirt for a second, groaning, then jolted and pushed myself onto my haunches, my heart suddenly racing. “Crystal, are you all right?” I stared up at Night Cloud and lit our surroundings with bright green light. “Am I—are you all right?” She nodded and shifted her outstretched left foreleg, supporting herself in an awkward sort of bow; her right leg had plunged into a collapsed burrow mid-stride. “I think I pulled a muscle—maybe a sprain, that’s all. Crystal… how much weight can you manage? Levitating, I mean.” “Um…” I swallowed, looking between her sunken leg and the rest of her body. “Mass isn’t a problem, but you—you’re really big, Night Cloud.” She chuckled, trying to shift more of her weight onto her left foreleg. “Well… it’s—very hard to hold myself up on this leg—could you try to push me up a bit?” I wrapped my emerald field around her experimentally. “Just enough so I can shift—” She shrieked and yanked her right leg violently free of the hole in the ground, collapsing to her right. I stumbled and fell backward as nearly five times my weight of alicorn wrapped in ineffectual green slammed down and shoved me bodily into the dirt, crushing the breath out of my lungs. I wheezed and tried to tug my hind legs out from beneath her armored torso, hitting my free foreleg frantically on her back. “Crystal!” Night Cloud rolled quickly away from me and lit the area with cerulean. Dust billowed up from her wings. “Crystal?! Are you hurt?” I coughed and took a wheezing breath; my chest and hind legs ached, at least down to my stifle on the left one. “Yeah…” Coughing and trembling, I rolled onto my belly. “I think… ow… you’re bleeding. Your leg.” She glanced fleetingly at the dirt and small, bloody mark below her knee. She stomped and levitated me into the air, turning the whole world cerulean in my eyes. “I’m fine. Does anything feel broken?” I coughed again and mumbled, “I don’t know. Maybe…” I kicked my legs out. “Put me down.” She gently lowered me and set me on my hooves, holding most of my weight off the ground. I shifted my weight on each leg; they all wobbled, but my left stifle hurt most. “Do your legs feel weak? Limp, shaky, hard to move, any of that?” “Yeah.” I took a deep breath and coughed again, gritting my teeth as an invisible spike drove through my side. “And—hurts to breathe.” I looked down at the slight marking we had made in the soil. “You sort of—pushed me sideways, not right under you.” I lifted each leg one at a time, shaking as I did so; even my thumping heart sent twinges down my legs. “Okay, now it—friggin’ hurts…” Tears began to blur my sight as my right hind leg threatened to give out under me, and then cerulean light wrapped around and lifted me again. Night Cloud nuzzled my cheek where I floated in the air in her grasp. “Crystal, I’m sorry, but I have to fly you for a little bit.” “Woah, woah!” I sailed along through the air in front of her as she leapt skyward and beat her broad wings. “Night Cloud!” My voice vanished on the wind. -At least put me on your back! Please!- She floated me around and above her briskly flapping wings and set me carefully behind her withers, and I clutched onto her barding. Every panicked breath stabbed at my side, and I stared straight ahead as we approached the orange lights of campfires. The same distance Night Cloud had crossed in twenty minutes of galloping and jumping and gliding through the hills, she flew over in barely two, beating and slicing through the air with her broad, powerful wings. When at last she neared the fires, she flared her wings out to brake in the roaring air and sent a whirling cloud of dust up from the road. She lifted me off her back mid-air, landed at a canter, her horn flared brightly, and she pushed aside the dust with a bubble of cerulean and trotted through the many tents, straight for the white one at the edge of the campground. She slowed down, keeping her steps as light as possible, and nodded to the armored guards at each corner of the tent. I glanced at Eagle and Zephyr’s tent, and then Night Cloud slinked through the opening and the white flap closed behind us. A bright yellow-white light filled the tent as Night Cloud set me on her woven bedding mat and lay down beside me. -Just sit still for a moment, sweetheart. This won’t take long.- “No problem,” I mumbled, breathing as shallowly as I could and trying not to sob. Something metal and heavy landed on the dirt on Night Cloud’s other side, and I glimpsed a pair of transparent tubes filled with purple and white fluid coming from the tops of two cylinders. Next came the whirr of an electric motor spinning up. I stretched my neck forward to peer around her, and Ivy looked back at me from the opposite side of the tent, her lips drawn tight. “What happened?” I yelped as a stabbing pain came from my hind leg, near my hip, and Night Cloud held me still with her magic. The sharp pinch was the final push that made me quietly whimper and cry. “Intramuscular contusion of the left superficial gluteal, biceps femoris, and tensor facia lata, possible contusion of the femur and ilium, fractured rib.” I winced as her magic spread over my side, putting slight pressure on my coat. Her voice hitched. “Two… three fractured ribs. Crystal, is it any harder to breathe now?” “No, just—hurts.” She ducked her head and held her ear over my ribs. “Is the pain any worse? Does your chest feel tight, especially on this side?” “No, it—no. No.” She held her head still while I breathed for a few seconds. An intense, bone-deep tingling had spread up my leg from my stifle. “What—what are you…” -Quiet, filly. She’s listening for wheezing.- Ivy stood up and stepped across to us, looking over Night Cloud from head to tail. I gritted my teeth and bit back a whine as Night Cloud pulled her ear away and stuck the large syringe needle into my side at a sharp angle. The same tingling started around my rib. “You fell on her.” Ivy wrapped her golden magic around Night Cloud’s right foreleg, lifting it up at an awkward angle. She splashed the dirty, bloody spot below Night Cloud’s knee with water and began to scrub it clean with a white brush and foaming soap. “Yes,” muttered Night Cloud. “And disturbed a napping snake, looks like.” “Yes, Ivy,” she said, gritting her teeth. “I stepped in a burrow, a snake bit me, and I fell on her.” “Does the bite hurt?” “Very much,” said Night Cloud, moving the injector to my shoulder; I flinched as the needle stabbed into my hide, deep into my muscle. “It was only an adder. I’ll be fine.” “And I’d like to know for certain, Nubiála,” said Ivy, tying a bandage around the bite. “Show me where it happened.” Night Cloud closed her eyes for a moment, and Ivy wordlessly stood and left the tent. I sighed and laid my head on the mat as the weakness in my legs and the stabbing from my ribs began to fade, but a deep ache remained under the partial numbness. Night Cloud withdrew the stinging syringe from my shoulder; the thick needle remained coated with blood. She floated it out of sight on her left, and there was a sound of swishing water, followed by a click and metallic rattling. Then, she prepared another dose out of sight. The motorized mixer whirred for ten seconds again, and she floated the injector down to her leg with a fresh needle and clear ampule a quarter-full of milky purple potion. She pushed the hypodermic into her leg near her elbow and winced as she slowly depressed the plunger. “That’s a friggin’ huge needle,” I mumbled, sniffling. She nodded, meeting my gaze with a tight grin. “But I, um… I don’t hurt so bad now…” “Good,” whispered Night Cloud. She pulled the blanket over me and ducked her head down to nuzzle my cheek, then pulled the syringe free, dispensed the needle, and finally stowed the empty injector at the top of the canister basket. “The injection dulls the pain right away, but it takes longer to repair tissue damage completely, so please lie still, okay? I’ll be right back, sweetheart.” She tugged off her white caparison and tossed it in the tent corner behind me, revealing her gleaming suit of armor and the padded, pearlescent garment under it, then limped outside on three legs. I peered at her saddlebags and pack harness at the back of the tent, at the wire-frame carrier basket that held the two cylindrical, brushed steel canisters of healing potion, as well as several small storage boxes built into the basket. Bright yellow and red warning labels ran the lengths of each canister; one had a circular purple cap and nozzle, the other a white square cap, and a clear plastic tube ran from each nozzle into a protective box on the storage basket. I groaned and laid my head on the pillow, and I waited. Within ten minutes, Night Cloud walked back through the flap, favoring her bandaged leg and having stripped off her barding. She levitated me off the mat and lay down, then tucked me in against her side, under her wing, and pulled the blanket over us both. “I’m sorry I hurt you… I should have paid more attention.” “Not your fault there was a hole in the ground,” I mumbled. “Well, it was my responsibility to take care of you.” She nuzzled the side of my neck, and I stiffened. “Are you comfortable?” “Yeah—ummmm…” I nodded. “Yeah. Comfy. Warm. Sore, but—” “It might be a few hours before that goes away.” “Right. Um… it’s, um… it’s not so bad, while I’m just lying here.” I breathed deeply, and tentatively nuzzled her shoulder. “Did Ivy, um… find out what kind of snake it was?” “A common adder, as I thought… their bites are painful, but hardly dangerous for a pony. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me, sweetheart. Go back to sleep. It’s nearly another hour until sunrise.” “Right,” I mumbled. I swallowed and nestled my head by her foreleg once again. My hind leg, ribs, and shoulder continued to tingle. I wiped my eyes with the blanket and whispered, “Do you, um… are you going to tell Eagle and Zephyr about this?” Night Cloud lifted her head to stare down at me. “Sweetheart, they’re your guardians. Of course I’m going to—” I grabbed onto her foreleg tightly. “Don’t!” I whispered, “Please don’t. Please! If you tell Zephyr, she’ll freak out, and she’ll blame you, and—and…” I scrambled out from under her wing and stood up to hug her around the neck. “Just don’t. It’s not your fault! It’s not! Please don’t tell them. You—you healed me already, so I’m fine! You don’t need to tell them. Please, please don’t… it’s not your fault…” “Shhhh, sweetheart, shhhh…” She lowered her head across my shoulder and murmured, “Crystal, it doesn’t matter who is to blame, or whether there is anyone to blame at all… I can’t lie about this.” She rubbed my back and murmured, “Please, don’t ask me to do that… I don’t like lying. Not even for my friends.” I stomped my hind leg—and the jarring pain that shot through my stifle caused me to collapse and sit on my haunches. “Be careful… you’re not healed yet, you’re healing. There’s a difference.” She sighed, shaking her head. “My leg hurts. You will barely be able to walk for the next six hours… never mind what I would tell them—you can’t hide that. It would be silly to try.” I grunted and stood up again on trembling legs, glaring at her through tears. “Zephyr’s right,” I muttered, “You are oblivious.” I stepped forward to kiss her cheek, nuzzled her neck, then shuffled around and lay down as close to her as I could. “Thanks for healing me.” Night Cloud clutched me with her wonderfully warm wing. I glanced up to find that she had frozen, staring into space as if I still stood in front of her. She abruptly looked down at me, mouth hanging slightly open. I squeezed my eyes shut and set my hoof on her leg once again. Nearly a minute later, a brush tugged between my ears and ran down my neck, then again, and again. Night Cloud sighed beside me, and the weight of her head and neck settled on the pillow. “I… I am sorry, Crystal.” A blur of cerulean light wiped my tears away, and I blinked at the blood bay and cobalt snout and the two electric blue eyes looking back at me. “I suppose that I don’t… notice some things… as well as other ponies do…” I scowled and mumbled, “That’s what you say?” Her ears flicked back, and she whispered, “What do you want me to say?” “I don’t friggin’ know…” “Well…” Smiling, she brushed her nose along my snout and murmured, “I don’t know what to say, either, sweetheart…” I sniffed and leaned into her nuzzling. “I kind of thought that, um… I thought you might…” Sighing, I muttered, “I don’t know what I thought.” “And I can’t read your mind, Crystal… a telepathic coupling doesn’t let me do that. I can hear what you say to me, not what you don’t. And… the same thing applies to—to everything about you. I can… infer things, but… I’m really not any good at that. I never have been.” For a moment, she looked down and grasped my hoof with a gentle field of cerulean blue. “I… I am confident now that I understand what you… haven’t been saying to me, but I only met you the day before yesterday. I’m sorry if I’m a little slow to solve a puzzle.” I rolled my eyes and muttered, “Fine. Don’t like puzzles, anyway.” I raised my head and telekinetically nudged her snout down, then kissed her on the lips. She gasped and dropped her brush on my back, and after lingering for a few seconds, I leaned away from her. “Night Cloud,” I said softly, voice wavering, “You’re friggin’ smart, and nice, and you’ve been really awesome and generous to me, and… and you’re beautiful, and amazing, and I—I like you. I really, really like you. I mean it, and—and I don’t know how I can make that any more obvious.” Night Cloud giggled, took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. Then she grinned and giggled again. “Crystal… um… sweetheart, forgive me, please, if I have failed to notice the obvious… I don’t mean to, I promise you. And… please, keep in mind that what is obvious to you…” She retrieved her brush from where it had bounced to the dirt, shook it off, and resumed tugging it through my mane. “Well, it may not always be as obvious to another pony. So, thank you for saying it plainly. And… before I say anything else, I really must clarify something.” “What?” “Whether it was an accident or not… I injured you. And even if you will be perfectly healthy by this time tomorrow, I still have a duty to tell Eagle and Zephyr. I cannot hide this from them. That is against my obligation as a healer, as a protector.” I nodded. “Okay… and?” She tugged her brush through my mane a final time and set it down. “And… and, sweetheart, I realize now why you don’t want me to tell them. You’re afraid that they would… separate you from me, forbid you from being around me…” She swallowed and said, “Because they might believe that I’m a danger to you. Does that sound right?” I bumped my shoulder into hers. “What do you think? Yes. Yes. Exactly that… I don’t want them to blame you… you—you’re older than I am, so you’re the more responsible one, and… they’ll blame you.” “Well…” She nodded. “That may be true… but if I am the more responsible pony in this scenario, then ask yourself this, Crystal: Which do you think is the worse option? Being honest, admitting that I hurt you, and that I treated your injuries immediately, to the best of my ability… or pretending that nothing happened, lying by omission, and waiting for Ivy to tell them, instead? One of those is taking responsibility; the other is avoiding it.” Night Cloud gently squeezed her wing around me and said in my ear, “I guarantee you, if Ivy tells them, we’ll both look like irresponsible foals.” “Okay, fine… I’ll tell Zephyr, and Eagle… when they wake up.” I laid my head on her shoulder and stared at her eyes, and her attentive ears and long black mane. She stared back at me, smiling. “You, um… you’re not mad, are you? About me, um… kissing you?” “What?” She shook her head, frowning, and rubbed my back with her wing. “No, no, no, sweetheart… I’m… well, I’m a little surprised, but… I’m—I’m not angry, no.” The frown slowly became a calm smile again, and she stretched her neck out and shook her head. She laid back on the pillow again, glancing at me with one eye from a more comfortable posture. “I think, um… I need some time to think about it, Crystal, but… it was nice. It was… it was very nice, and… sincere, and… and I’m flattered.” “Well…” I nuzzled her shoulder. On one side of my face was the cold desert air, and on the other was warm fur and a hint of lilac. “I’m glad.” Zephyr stared at me across her breakfast of roasted carrots and radishes, on the verge of either screaming or crying. She nodded once and wiped her eyes with her good wing. “Okay.” Night Cloud squeezed my side, and I swallowed. “Um… ‘okay’? That’s… that’s it?” “Crystal,” said Zephyr, “I’d like to think I’m not stupid, at the very least, so I hope I’m right in thinking that tearing you away from her right now—or trying—would be pointlessly cruel… not to mention really fucking stupid.” She pointed her wingtip from me to Night Cloud. “She chose to look for you. She chose to fly off to that deathtrap in the desert and search for you when we thought you were dead… she chose to believe that you were still alive. She gave you a chance. We don’t have many friends out here, but she’s probably the best one you could possibly have.” She nodded again. “So… yeah. Okay. That’s it. I’m pissed that you were hurt, not pissed at you—or you, Night Cloud. Thanks for coming clean about it, thanks for taking care of her… and please don’t run off alone with her again, for any reason—if you do, then I’ll be pissed at you.” Night Cloud bowed her head toward them. “I understand.” “Good. Great.” Zephyr bit off half of a roasted carrot, and Eagle crossed his neck over hers. “Um…” I glanced up at Night Cloud. “Eagle?” “What?” He winked at me. “You really think I could say it any better?” Zephyr snorted, pointing at Night Cloud. “Show me a pony more qualified to pull you out of a tight spot,” she said around a mouthful of carrot, “Right now, do it. Anyone? That’s right, you can’t. She’s a paramedic.” Night Cloud tapped her hoof on the ground next to me, saying, “I’m not certified for emergency responder duty, but—” “But big fucking deal. Semantics. You carry around a pack full of actual, working healing potions and you clearly know what to do with them, certified or not.” “She makes me so proud!” An enormous purple wing draped over both of us, and Blitz nuzzled Night Cloud. “I had absolutely nothing to do with her talent or training or dedication or everything else that makes me proud, bu-u-u-ut I’m still proud of her.” Night Cloud sighed and muttered, “I’m not a certified paramedic, Blitz. It’s an important distinction.” “Cloudy, honey, it was an emergency and you were the most qualified pony around.” Blitz nuzzled her between the ears, then ducked her head to do the same to me. “You stayed calm,” she murmured, “You did your duty, and now you’re both on bed rest until lunchtime. It could have been a lot worse.” “I can walk, you know.” “But you shouldn’t.” Night Cloud carried me in a cerulean haze to the mostly empty wagon at the end of the caravan and set me inside on a padded canvas mat. The other wagons had begun to roll and rumble along the road. “Not for at least four hours, sweetheart—six would be better.” I rolled my eyes as she stepped back from the wagon. The sunrise lit the hilltop to my left, but Night Cloud stood in shadow, favoring her foreleg. “Well, then you’re not jumping.” I wrapped her with emerald and slowly, tenuously levitated her; she gasped and laughed at me as I brought her gliding into the wagon. The nimbus of green hugging her form wavered and spiked around the edges. My field collapsed, and Night Cloud landed on her good legs, rocking the wagon on its suspension springs. She carefully spun around, taking care not to catch her horn on the canvas roof—or come too close to me. “I didn’t realize you were quite that strong,” she murmured, lying down gingerly. I took a shaky breath and lay next to her, and she glanced down at me. “Um… you might not want to be so close once the sun is high.” “Well, it’s cold right now, so until it’s warmer, I’m staying right here.” She giggled and pulled a thick, broad book out of her saddlebags. “All right, then.” She opened to a page about a three-quarters into the book and kept her horn lit with blue. “Night Cloud? Crystal?” Blitz walked around the back of the wagon, ears flicking. Two rose eyes found us. “Oh. Well, I was going to help you up. Never mind.” She whistled sharply and raised her wing off to the side, and the wagon lurched forward. “Crystal gave me a lift,” said Night Cloud. “Uh-huh… she did, did she?” “I am just as surprised as you are,” said Night Cloud, patting my back. “She’s much stronger than I would have guessed.” “I told you,” I muttered, “Mass isn’t a problem. You’re just really big. Makes it way harder to focus my magic.” Blitz smirked and muttered, “Seems like it’d be hard for you to focus even if she weren’t.” “To the contrary,” said Night Cloud, “If she has a steep volume curve, that would mean she has greater control and strength as her field envelope shrinks, but it would rapidly fall off as the envelope expands. Exhaustion would exacerbate that difficulty; she nearly burned out, evening before last.” Blitz snickered. I glared at her. “Indeed. Well, I need to talk to Ivy.” She winked at me and trotted ahead of the rolling wagon. “Don’t have too much fun with your books, Cloudy.” I sighed and laid my head on Night Cloud’s shoulder. “What she meant,” I muttered, “Is that I would be distracted either way, because you’re so pretty.” Night Cloud looked up from the densely-packed page, lips pursed. “Oh.” Rolling my eyes, I grinned and mumbled, “I mean, you are, um… distracting.” “Be that as it may…” Once again looking down at her book, she murmured, “I don’t appreciate her teasing you for what you feel about me.” “Mmm…” I set my hoof on her leg and scooted forward to peer at the text and the greyscale images printed on the glossy paper. I shivered and took a deep breath as I read the title and subheading. “You picked that on purpose.” “Well—yes, of course I did. I thought you might want to, um… well, I suppose this might be rather advanced for you, if you haven’t had any basic biology lessons, but I thought you’d like to understand what’s going on in your own body now, and… learn how things work during a pregnancy.” She rubbed her wing on my withers and murmured, “I’d rather you know what to expect, than be afraid of the unknown.” “Um… okay.” I pointed at the first paragraph. “But I don’t know a bunch of these words… I, um—machines, electrothaumics, those are more my thing.” “Well, sweetheart, I’d be happy to teach you—and besides, you hardly need to know everything at this level to gain a general understanding. The pictures should help.” She turned the page and indicated a grainy image of something round and soft-looking. “That’s a blastocyst. It’s the first stage of embryonic development after fertilization. It’s a tiny capsule of cells that attaches itself to the uterine lining—that is, the inside of the womb. It’s only a fraction of a millimeter across; and that little blob on the inside is called an embryoblast… which turns into this next one, a developing embryo. At this stage, you can see the basic structure of a body: The head, limbs, some organs… it even has a beating heart.” I shivered again as Night Cloud’s feathers tickled the side of my belly. I swallowed and said, “Well, um… I—it’s been, um… about two and a half months. What stage is that?” “Well, this one here is an ultrasonography image taken at ninety days… so yours would be close to that. Very small.” “Ultrasonography… sound. High frequency sound… imaging?” “Mmm-hmm.” “How does that work?” “You’d have to ask someone else about that one… I know what it does, but I haven’t the slightest idea how you get an image out of it…” I glanced up from my drawing on the back of one of diary pages as a white pegasus flew low over the canvas roof, then landed between Eagle and Blitz, five meters behind the wagon. Her bright green and white mane shone in the morning sun, and her nostrils flared with her breaths. She wore a tinted visor on her helmet and a tan, cloth mask over her snout and ears. “Who is that?” I murmured. “I saw her talking to Blitz last night…” “Hmm?” Night Cloud looked up, blinking. “Oh, that’s Ivory Point. She’s Blitz’s personal courier—well, courier, errand-runner, attendant… technically one of her guards.” Ivory Point opened the small pack on her breast, and Blitz levitated a sheaf of papers out from it. The petite white mare pushed her tinted visor up, revealing familiar, bright blue eyes. “I’ve never seen a pony that bright white before… or, um, pink. Even her hooves are sort of pink…” “That’s because of a rather rare dominant allele that results in a lack of pigment in the skin. Sadly, it makes one more prone to sunburn, especially on the nose and lips, and around the eyes. She wears that mask when it’s sunny, since she spends so much time flying.” Ivory Point looked briefly at us instead of at Blitz, and I lifted my hoof in a wave. “She’s pretty hot.” Night Cloud inclined her head toward the white mare, chortling. Ivory Point raised her wing halfway. “She is rather striking, yes… and she’s one of the fastest fliers in the kingdom.” “With wings like that?” I giggled and bit my tongue. “Yeah, I bet.” “Oh.” She murmured in my ear, “So you have a thing for wings, do you?” “I’ve wanted wings all my life, Night Cloud,” I said, looking up at her. “What do you think?” I nudged her ribs and whispered, “Yours are way better.” Night Cloud patted my back and said in my ear, “She can read lips, by the way.” I laughed and muttered through my teeth, “Wait, really?” “Mmm-hmm. It’s a useful skill for a messenger, sweetheart.” Ivory Point winked at me and pulled her visor down again, then trotted ahead of Blitz and Eagle to spread her wings and leap skyward in a streak of snowy white and green. “Well,” said Night Cloud, stretching her neck, “I think I’m ready to try walking. You’re definitely not, but if you’d rather I carry you than you stay in here…” “Um…” I closed my diary on the scale sketch of a suit of barding next to a slightly smaller drawing I’d made of Eagle’s power armor nearly a year before. “Sure.” She carefully stood up, and rather than jump out, she floated out in a haze of violet. Blitz set her down off to her left, where Ivy stepped aside to make room. Night Cloud tentatively put weight on her right foreleg, then matched pace with Blitz. She carried me through the air and set me on her bare back. “Comfortable?” I hugged her neck from behind. “You’re way comfier without armor in the way.” Blitz prodded my side with her wing while she read a mouth-written note clipped onto a map, and she muttered, “You two… are disgustingly sweet. You know that, right? Cavity-inducing.” “Well, then perhaps you should see a dentist.” Night Cloud leaned her head over to peer at the map; Blitz lowered it slightly in her violet field. “What’s going on at the fringe?” “Reports of a few attacks in the Leota from last week. Large group of ponies, forty or fifty—supposedly—moving northeast through the forest. Hasn’t been any concrete evidence so far, just word-of-mouth, but a couple individuals have corroborated the same things…” Blitz sighed and muttered, “Sounds like a new gang strutting around town, to me… make a show of power, knock the others down a peg and seize control…” She tucked the map behind the other papers and said, “Who knows? Maybe the Lapizani will have a new chief next week. Can’t exactly send the Guard in to investigate; they seem to take offense at my so much as looking at them, never mind trying to butt in on their affairs… damned touchy bunch.” “Your great-grandfather was content to leave them be,” said Ivy, “As should be his descendants.” “I just wish they would tell me why they hate my guts.” “They’re anarchists, Blizziera. They don’t hate you, merely that terrible thing which you represent.” Nickering, Blitz said, “Oh, yes, so terrible am I, so terrible is a speck of law and civility…” Eagle said from the enormous purple mare’s other side, “Let me guess: They don’t like someone else running the show?” “Put simply.” Blitz tossed her head to the sky and groaned. “Oh yes, taxes are a terrible thing. Public roads are a terrible thing. Electricity is a terrible thing.” She sighed and brushed her violet magic along my snout, then between my ears and down my neck. I giggled at the tickling sensation on my withers, and the slight pressure halted. I twisted around to peer at the glow of violet over the small black plate behind my withers. Blitz stroked between my ears again and said, “Hospitals and emergency services and vaccines are such egregious trespasses… but those beyond our borders have the right to stay beyond them, as they wish. Never mind their reasons.” She sighed and muttered, “And Tartarus take me should I be the one to trespass against them.” “Is that a, ah, common sentiment?” said Eagle. “What, anarchism?” said Blitz, looking to her right. “Depends on whom you ask… the Lapizani used to be twenty or so different clans. Now they’re maybe a dozen, so presumably they agree with each other more these days. They still don’t want to join an actual treaty with us—but hey, they’ve never picked a fight, so as long as they mind their business, we mind ours. Mutual respect, border stays nice and quiet. Goods and ponies flow regardless. It worked for great-great-great-grandpa, it works for little brother, and it works for me.” “Corio had the distinction,” said Ivy, “Of being diplomatic. If the Leota tribes are less adversarial today than they were then, it is only because those eldest among them who would carry any grievances are long dead. Corio spent much of his reign building bridges… whereas his predecessor preferred to burn them.” “Sounds like a pleasant pony,” muttered Zephyr. “She did what she believed was right,” said Blitz, “To protect the ponies she loved… but diplomacy only works when both sides come to the table, and back then, all those tribes blamed Equestria for what happened.” “What,” said Zephyr, “Not the Zebras? They blew up Cloudsdale first. Why blame Equestria?” “They blamed Equestria,” said Ivy, “Because Equestria and the Zebra Empire were equally culpable for a war that none outside their borders wanted to fight.” Ivy closed her eyes for a moment while she strode alongside Night Cloud and me, and she said, “Whatever your Enclave may have taught you of our history, know this: It doesn’t matter who struck the first blow, or the last. Neither pony nor zebra had courage enough to admit fault, raise a flag of peace, and strike a compromise… the rest of the world suffered for it.” “The Enclave paints the picture they want you to see,” said Eagle. “And they don’t have a ton of history books to spare. They’ve been writing their own version of things for so long, some of them have forgotten what really happened. Anything to maintain the status quo, keep control… would you believe they call Rainbow Dash a traitor, for what she did?” “Eagle Plume,” said Ivy, “If it meant anything in the slightest to anyone else alive, I would call Celestia a traitor to all of ponykind for her cowardice, and Luna for her arrogance. I count it a blessing that they both died in Canterlot.” “Okay,” said Zephyr, “Touchy subject. Sorry we brought it up.” A great purple wing stretched over me and touched Ivy on the withers. “Easy, Ivy,” murmured Blitz. Ivy closed her eyes again, walking on in silence. I gently squeezed Night Cloud’s neck and nuzzled her. -She really is from way back then… isn’t she?- Night Cloud stroked her magic behind my ears, and glanced at Blitz as the larger mare pulled her wing back to her side. -Yes, she really is… she isn’t usually this, um… incensed. She doesn’t usually talk much at all, particularly not about anything from back then.- “As I always understood it,” said Eagle, drawing the attention of Ivy’s flicking ear, “Princess Celestia abdicated after the Littlehorn Massacre. Then Luna created the Ministries… and the zebras refused to negotiate with her because they believed she and Nightmare Moon were one and the same.” “More or less,” said Ivy. Scowling, she ruffled her wings again and said, “Luna’s Ministries were a machine of war… any tool can be misused, but the Ministries were built from the outset for the sole purpose of victory. That was Luna’s greatest failing: She would accept nothing else.” “Almost anyone else would have had a better chance to negotiate an armistice—even one of the heads of the Ministries would have been a saner choice. Luna was too proud… too obsessed with proving that she could win, proving that she could stand on equal ground with Celestia, lead Equestria as well as the mare who had a thousand years of experience more than her.” “Well, she led Equestria, all right—straight to Tartarus. The zebras believed a demon from the stars wore the crown, and Luna proved them right…” She looked aside at us. “Did you know that we didn’t even need coal by the end of the war? Even in Appleloosa, we had other power sources. Wind engines and solar converters—” “Heliostats!” I said, “We had tons of those at Cloud Loft, and they’re all over Neighvarro!” “All developed after the war had begun, because our supply of fuel from the zebras had become tenuous. The thermoaetheric converters in those heliostats came from the Ministry of Arcane Science.” “And just like that…” Ivy raised her wing toward the sun, throwing her head into shadow. “We hardly needed coal anymore. All the infrastructure didn’t appear overnight, and it certainly wasn’t perfect…” She lowered her wing and murmured, “The very squabble that started it all, wholly obviated by scientific progress—merely a byproduct of our mutual march toward oblivion… and then, overnight, it was all erased. Wiped off the map.” I shuddered and laid my cheek on Night Cloud’s neck, staring at the mare to my left. “What was it like?” Ivy’s ear flicked toward me, and she closed her eyes. “I was about thirty kilometers south of town, on a hill, when the missile hit the solar farm… there was a flash of light behind me, many times brighter than the sun… even looking away, my eyes stung. It burned my skin for a moment, like the heat you feel on your belly when you jump over a fire… so I hid behind the hilltop, in the shadows. Then the light turned green, dimmed.” “When I looked, there was a pillar of fire where the solar array used to be, green fire… and a roiling ball of smoke on top, bigger than all of Appleloosa… every building facing the farm was on fire, even six kilometers away. It was strange to see, really: The blast plume was green, but it was the initial infrared emission that set the buildings on fire, so for a moment, there was this giant green twister in the desert, and all the red spots around it… then the shockwave flattened the entire town. It reached me about a minute and a half later, just a huge bang…” She looked at me again and touched my back with her wingtip. “Then I put my son on my back, just like this… and I ran for the mountains.” 14 Spring’s Waking 1741 I met some really cool ponies this week on the way to Bellenast. Carbide. I still don’t know exactly what you are, but you’re awesome. Thanks again for saving my life. Princess Blizziera, aka Blitz. She seems nice, and pretty cool. Gorgeous wings and legs that could kick you to the moon. Her mane floats and glows a little, and she’s ten times my size, easy. Biggest pony I’ve ever seen. She carried me for a while today to give Night Cloud a break. It’s like sitting on a big warm cushion. Even though her mane looks like purple plasma, I can still brush it. Lady Ivaline, aka Ivy, Blitz’s advisor. Probably the oldest pony alive (however the alicorn immortality thing works), and definitely the oldest pony I’ve ever met. She doesn’t look old at all, but the way she talks about old history stuff, I can believe it. Night Cloud (Ivy calls her Nubiála sometimes?). She’s a doctor-in-training. She fell on me this morning and broke some of my ribs, and that really sucked, but she gave me healing potions straight away. She made a big deal about telling Eagle and Zephyr, even though I wanted to hide it. Being honest is really important to her. Reminds me of Coil Blur. I kissed her and she didn’t freak out! Or maybe she did freak out, but it was just quiet. I can’t tell. We spent most of the morning together waiting for the healing potions to finish. I’m still sore, but I can walk again. She tried to teach me how pregnancy works with a textbook. That was super awkward at first, but she says she wants me to understand it, not be scared of it. I think she really means that. She’s way better at explaining things than Professor, but she’s still so much smarter than me she has to dumb everything down. She must be used to doing that. She’s kind of oblivious about some things in a really weird way I can’t explain. She is also the most beautiful mare in the world. I think I’m in love.