//------------------------------// // 3 - Make Yourselves Comfortable // Story: Cold Wind Blowing // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// The staircase to the rooms was so narrow Mistral was actually feeling a little claustrophobic. With her wings brushing against both walls, she kept thinking it was only a matter of time before she triggered something, causing the walls to slam together and crush her. It was probably to save space, but yeesh, did it need to be this narrow? Stress made her wings ache after only a few steps. The hallway at the top was also narrow, but more than twice the width of the stairs, and Mistral immediately seized upon the opportunity to spread her wings a little. Her heart slowed as she flexed them. Even when her feathers bumped the walls, it was still better than those stairs. The hallway itself was just as spartan as everything else, something that was there simply to connect the rooms together. Five or six rooms on each side. Plenty of space for sleepers, but from how close the doors were together, there couldn’t be much space in each individual room. “Um, excuse me,” Thistledown said from the staircase. She was climbing up right behind Mistral. “Could you-?” “Sorry.” Mistral squeezed herself to one side, giving Thistledown enough space to wiggle past her. Curiosity prompted her next question. “Did you find anything about the other ponies being here?” “They just kinda-sorta wound up here, too.” Thistledown ran a hoof through her mane. “I know I’m… I’m probably being stupid, but it makes you wonder. Especially out here.” “Hmm.” Mistral still wasn’t completely convinced, but the feeling didn’t stop nagging at her. And she might as well tell Thistledown what she’d found out. “Oh, and you know the earth pony, Cassandra? She says she’s just a rambler and just happened to come this far north.” “Well, that’s, um,” said Thistledown. She looked down and tapped the floor a few times. “Oookay.” She coughed. “Well, uh, not much we can do about it. Just, keep your eyes open.” She grinned nervously and started walking down the hall. “Hey!” said Mistral. Thistledown stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Why’re you going all the way down? Why not just take this one?” “It’s…” Thistledown looked away and flicked her tail. “Inns are creepy, if you think about it. And, and I’m saying that in general, not just isolated ones like these.” “Inns. Creepy.” “And not just inns.” Thistledown kept rambling like she hadn’t heard Mistral. “Hotels, motels, rentable houses and cabins, any place you can temporarily spend the night. Heck, any place something gets reused. It’s…” She threw open a door at random and pointed inside. “That bed. How many ponies have slept on that bed before you? How many ponies have been sick in that bed? How many…” She shivered and closed the door. “You get what I’m saying, right?” Mistral cocked her head. “Kinda. I don’t agree with it, but I kinda know what you mean.” “Or, like, restaurants. You have a fork. You put it in your mouth. How many other ponies have put that fork in their mouth?” That hit Mistral a bit more. She cringed. “Yeegh.” “So here’s what I’m thinking,” said Thistledown. “Inn. Middle of nowhere. Tired travelers. They’ll go to the first empty room, right? Which means these rooms here have been used a lot, while those-” She pointed down the hall. “-haven’t been used all that much. Less ponies have slept in those beds.” “Eh. I guess.” Mistral shrugged. It didn’t make a lot of sense to her, but she wasn’t the kind of pony to get paranoid over beds in an inn. “I’m taking this room, though.” “You do that. I’m going that way.” Thistledown headed down the hall and vanished into the room at the end. Mistral rolled her eyes and entered the first room. Desmoda hadn’t moved much or said anything, which Facet was taking as an alright sign. Not having used her magic on this big a level before, she didn’t know whether or not Desmoda would react in any noticeable way once that calmness wore off. Most of the time, when she shooed somepony away with her magic, they went away and she stopped paying attention to them. She knew that the magic did wear off, but she didn’t know how long it took or what happened when it did. Maybe it’d already worn off and, absent any ponies to abuse, Desmoda was just being quiet. Facet didn’t want to try poking her to find out. She took a last drink of her cocoa (now only a few degrees above lukewarm) and swished the dregs around inside the cup. It’d probably be best to make some excuse about being tired and hide up in a room. If something bad happened, she’d be out of the worst of it and nopony would think twice about it. That was probably for the b- Movement out of the corner of her vision caught her eye. Griselda was walking towards them, although Cassandra was still stewing by the fireplace. Facet held her breath, hoping for two things. One, that Griselda wasn’t as “be my frieeeend!” as Cassandra was. Two, that she’d do… something… to get a reaction from Desmoda, one way or another. “Hey, gals,” said Griselda as she slid into a chair. She reached out for Desmoda’s cup. “How’s-” Abruptly, Desmoda slammed her hoof on top of Griselda’s ankle. Facet jumped in shock; Griselda yelped and tried to pull away, scrabbling at the table with her claws and pulling with her other foot, but Desmoda was pushing down too hard for her to get any leverage. “My drink,” Desmoda said quietly. “Don’t touch.” She released Griselda. “Alright,” said Griselda through a tight beak. “You don’t need to tell me twice.” She wiggled her foot around. From what Facet could tell, nothing was broken, especially since Griselda wasn’t holding down any screams. Facet glanced at Desmoda. She didn’t seem to have changed much; it was hard to tell whether or not her magic had worn off, and, if it had, whether or not this was a side effect of it. She suspected it had, and this wasn’t. “So, birdie,” said Desmoda, “what do you want?” She downed the last of her cocoa. Either Griselda didn’t notice the slur or she was great at ignoring it. “I’ve been thinking… you’re a batpony, you can see great in the dark, right?” “Yes.” “Uh-huh,” said Griselda, nodding. “Uh-huh. Neat. And can you echolocationate or whatever?” She clicked her tongue. “Echolocate,” said Desmoda. “And no. Some batponies can, but I can’t. High pitches bug me.” She squinted at Griselda. “Why?” “I’m a treasure hunter-” At that, Facet’s ears both turned towards Griselda. Being a historian, she had a… thing against treasure hunters, grave robbers, tomb raiders, looters, “dynamic archaeologists”, or whatever butt-covering epithet they’d come up with. She stopped reading her book and started trying to hold down her anger. Griselda didn’t notice Facet’s reaction. “-and that means ruins, and that usually means darkness. But you’re a batpony, so you’re adapted to darkness.” Griselda grinned. (Not for the first time, Facet wondered how griffons could grin.) “I know a perfect match when I see one. What if you and I-” “Hold on. You want me to be a grave robber?” “Don’t be stupid! That’s illegal! We won’t go anywhere near graves.” Griselda paused. “On purpose.” Facet tightened her jaw and just barely managed to stay silent. “Grave robbing applies to more than just graves, you know,” said Desmoda. “Does not. Grave robbing is the act of stealing a body from a grave. I only take-” Desmoda rolled her eyes. “You… You’re in denial, you know that? You’re only getting so worked up about this because that technicality is the only way you can convince yourself what you’re doing is alright.” She snorted. “Idiot.” “Maybe, maybe not. Don’t care.” Griselda shrugged. “Besides, robbing the dead is a lot easier than robbing the living.” “Yeah,” muttered Facet darkly. “Screw the dead, am I right? It’s not like you’re damaging anything of great historical significance and cheerfully trampling over vital links to the past.” She hadn’t intended for Griselda or Desmoda to hear her, but they both stared at her. She looked up. They kept staring. She tightened her jaw. “What?” “…Where did that come from?” asked Desmoda. “I’m a historian,” Facet said quietly. Deep breath in, deep breath out. “I… don’t like it…” Deep breath in, deep breath out. “…when history gets mistreated.” “Hey, I’m just taking stuff nobody’s using anymore,” said Griselda. “I’m careful when I transport it and I keep it clean and nicely-organized when I take it home. It’s better than it sitting around, buried underground. What’s so bad about that?” “What- ‘What’s so bad’?!” spluttered Facet. “Ponies- People like you, they’re…” She pointed a shaking hoof at Griselda, barely able to contain her rage. “You’re destroying the ancient world for knick-knacks! You’re ripping its greatest, most important creations out from the ground, artifacts of cultural meaning and artistic merit, all to- to plop them on a random shelf next to a dozen other things from a dozen other civilizations. There’s no context! They’re just there to wook pwetty!” Her voice was slowly growing. “And without context, what’s the sunblasted point? There’s no meaning to it, no significance! They just sit there, devoid of all worth! People like you take all the history we’ve gathered over the centuries and turn it into mere tchotchkes!” She slammed her hoof on the table hard enough to rattle it. Desmoda and Griselda stared at Facet. The latter coughed and scratched at the tabletop. “I don’t always keep them,” she said. “Some I sell to collectors. I need to ma-” “And what do you think they do with it?” snapped Facet. “They plop it on a random shelf next to you know what. They care about history just as little as you, except they can’t even be bothered to get up and defile it themselves.” Griselda blinked, then seemed to relax a little. “Call me crazy, but it seems like you don’t like me all that much, then.” “To be honest,” said Facet, “I think you’re an idiotic, rapacious, ignorant bitch.” Silence fell. Griselda looked at Facet. Facet looked at Griselda. “Ha!” squawked Griselda. “Too bad you think that, ‘cause at least you’re honest about it! The world needs more honesty and honor and all that jazz. If you didn’t think that, I might’ve liked you.” “Enough to leave me alone?” Facet said coldly. “To leave you alone. I still need an answer from-” “No,” said Desmoda. She bared her teeth a little. “I am not going to dig around in cold, dark, dank ruins just because you’re too lazy to get a torch.” “All I needed,” Griselda said with a shrug. She saluted. “Later.” And she was away. Desmoda cocked her head at Facet. “Funny. I didn’t imagine you to be the ‘explode with rage’ type.” “Usually, I’m not,” Facet said. She glared back down at her book. She swore she could feel a vein pounding in her head. “But I am a historian, and you don’t become a historian unless you take history seriously. And to see it- violated like that…” She took a few deep breaths. “I remember punishments from a millennium ago that would be seen as barbaric today. One in particular. Treasure hunters ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.” “Ah. Then I take it you don’t like Daring Do books.” “I can differentiate between fiction and reality,” Facet said. “I know that those books exist mainly to entertain ponies and to make A. K. Yearling big stacks of money. They’re actually fairly well-researched, given the genre. I do have problems with them, but they have nothing to do with the artistic license applied to archaeology. For instance, the use of the ahuizotl was creative, but then Yearling just names it ‘Ahuizotl’? Why not rename Daring to ‘Pegasus’?” She buried her nose deeper into her own book. “What else?” Oh, great. Now Desmoda was taking away her peace and quiet, too. “Not in the mood. Keep quiet or bug off.” Desmoda rolled her eyes and made a zipping motion across her mouth. At least she could listen. The thing that stood out the most to Mistral was that her room had wallpaper plastered all around it from floor to ceiling. It wasn’t the kind of wallpaper that drew her attention (it was a bland, uniform, inoffensive yellow), just the presence of it. Why would an inn like this want wallpaper? The owners would have to go out of their way to get it, and it wasn’t like the kind of travelers who voluntarily came this far out would be offended if they saw naked stone. Just… why? But whatever, Mistral said to herself as she shrugged off her saddlebags. It’s not like I’ll be looking at it much. Like the rest of the inn, the room was small (a few paces across) and, furniture-wise, as basic as you could get, wallpaper notwithstanding. Bed (straw mattress, thick blankets and sheets), closet, beside table, lantern with oil, window. The wind howled, and the snow battered against the glass, but Mistral couldn’t feel the slightest bit of a draft. Yes, this would do nicely. She half-suspected the hangers would’ve been stolen from the closet a while ago, but when she looked, there were plenty. She tried to wiggle the rod, but it was perfectly firm. Good. She hung up what few extra clothes she had, giving extra space for her cloak; it was still a touch damp from the melting snow, and the fire hadn’t dried it out completely. She detached her dirk from her leg and tossed it in the bottom of the closet. After rooting around inside her saddlebags for her toiletries, she opened the drawer to the bedside table and dropped them ins- There was a book in the drawer. A worn, leatherbound journal with a blank cover, the generic kind you bought when you needed a journal and didn’t really care what it looked like. Mistral plucked it out, frowning. A travel journal, maybe? She’d considered keeping one, once. Maybe somepony had left it behind. Not exactly a hard place to forget about it. She idly flipped it open to the first page. No name was inside the cover and the first entry was very short. Not sure how much I’ll be using this journal, but it’s something to do when I’m on the road and bored. Here’s to eating up the miles between here and Neightaly. Can’t wait to get there. Weather’s not bad. Cloudy, but no rain scheduled. Apparently some weather recruits are undergoing training. Didn’t hear how they’re training, so I don’t know how good or bad they’re doing. Kind of hard to mess up a cloudy day. Geez. Listen to me. Talking about the weather already? Celestia, I’m boring. Mistral nodded in appreciation of the destination. She’d been to Neightaly twice, and it was the most gorgeous place she’d ever been to. And, being a long-distance mailpony, she’d been to a lot of places. She flipped forwards half a dozen pages. Much gushing on Neightaly occurred, with the entries growing longer as the writer grew more used to writing. She fanned to the back. The entries stopped somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of the way to the end. At least they’d gotten a lot of use of the journal. Shame they’d lost it. She flipped several pages back. Heard pegasi can’t control weather up here. Looks like it — no self-respecting pegasus would let snow fall this irregularly. Hard to describe — light one moment hard the next stops completely the next. Tent’s working fine but I wouldn’t want to be caught in actual blizzard. Been too long since I’ve seen newly-fall- Bored by the scenery descriptions, Mistral flicked ahead, skimming the entries. Nothing major; just the writer talking about how enchanting the snow was before the writer started talking about how the enchantment had worn off. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. Then: Got lucky. Found inn all the way out here. Hope innkeep likes job. Bunch of other ponies showed up too. Got scared about space and talked to innkeep but he said we don’t need to worry. Blizzard coming down on us; can hear wind already. Can’t feel draft so should be safe. “Roomies”: griffon crystal pony unicorn earth pony. Earth has long thin package she’s annoyingly “secretive” about. Gloating about having a secret — makes it obvious she has it but tells us to not look at it touch it breathe at it etc. Looks like sword or something. Uni looks like he hates her for it but might be b/c he’s dragging big sleigh of timber. Heard innkeep warn griffon that he didn’t have much meat. Why do griffons eat meat? It’s disgusting. You need- Even though Mistral sympathized, she wasn’t in the mood to be preached at. She skipped that paragraph. Might write in here more often than just evening if weather keeps up. Not looking too promising. Should talk to crystal pony — never met one before. Mistral looked out the window at a lot of splotchy white. The weather wasn’t looking too promising now, either. “Hey, you guys up there!” Cassandra yelled from below. “Clarity’s made dinner, and it smells great! It’s being served now, and we’re not saving stuff for you!” A few seconds later, Thistledown’s frantic hoofsteps clip-clopped down the hall and stairs outside Mistral’s door. Mistral slammed the journal closed and shut it away in the drawer again. Interesting reading, maybe, if worst came to worst. But right now, she was hungry. But as she wiggled her way down the staircase, she couldn’t get her mind off the journal. There was something about it, something she’d read in it that wasn’t quite right. Already, she could tell that it was going to be one of those things that sat in her mind, taking up too much space. Dinner should get my mind off of it. I wonder what kind of food Clarity ma- It hit her. She scrambled back into the room, yanked the journal out, and began flipping through the pages. Where is it, where is it… “Ay! Missy!” screeched Griselda. “You wanna eat or not?” “I’ll be down in a sec!” Mistral howled back. “Start without me!” The entries were looking familiar now. First snowfall; Mistral slowed down her search. Entry to the inn… Aaaand- Got scared about space and talked to innkeep but he said we don’t need to worry. There it was. Mistral frowned and focused on two words in turn. innkeep he The innkeep then was a stallion. Clarity was a mare. She’d said she was the only pony working here. Mistral furrowed her brow and flipped to the next pa- “HEY!” Mistral twitched at Griselda’s scream and the journal went flying into the air. “MISTRAL!” bellowed Griselda. “ARE YOU-” “Shut up, you ass!” snapped Desmoda. Her voice was a lot quieter than Griselda’s, if only because it wasn’t directed at Mistral. “She’ll come down when she wants to come down.” “Don’t compare me to a donkey!” “You know what? Yeah. That’s an insult to asses!” As Desmoda and Griselda quarrelled, Mistral quickly scooped the journal up from the floor and slid it back into the drawer. She couldn’t think, not when she was hungry and had ponies (or a griffon) screaming at her. I’ll get to that later, she told herself as she headed downstairs.