//------------------------------//
// Interlude Part 6: Requiem and Respect 
// Story: Innocent 
// by Puzzle Piece 
//------------------------------//

While the vanguard was relocating their camp, Private Caramel came across a stash of berries tucked away in one of the abandoned Troll tents. After an inspection by Twilight to be sure they weren’t toxic, they were passed out with the evening’s meal. The one inch diameter berries looked shriveled, their pale purple bodies curled in on themselves like a crescent moon. But they were surprisingly filling for their size and extremely sweet. They made for a welcome addition to their remaining rations of granola and water.
The bodies of Quick Fix and Posthaste had also been moved out to the edge of the forest, where they were buried. Rough stone markers were left atop the freshly turned earth with their names etched in the stone by Jason’s blade. Nopony lingered. They pitched their tents, lit their fires and retired. As darkness crept in, only a few ponies were still awake besides the watch. The sentries stood outside the firelight, nothing more than dark wraiths against the surrounding blackness. The only sound that Lyra heard as she lay in her tent was the crackling of the fire pit across from her.
After resting for a full day, she was beginning to feel whole again. At least physically. She could still feel the weight of Quick Fix draped across her back as she carried the dying Unicorn away from the fighting. She knew she shouldn’t blame herself for his death. In fact, she was grateful to him, recognizing that his tenacity and courage were the reason she had survived. But still the memory haunted her, knowing how it ended. His presence, so close to her at the end, would not let her go. Finally, accepting she wouldn’t sleep any time soon, she rose from her bedroll, taking the satchel that contained a select few personal items with her. She walked back to the forest’s edge to where the graves lay and contemplated them silently, hoping she could find some way to shake off the ghosts they conjured.
She set her satchel down and drew forth a small, golden lyre. She sat down and held it in her hooves for a time. It identically matched her Cutie Mark in every way but one. A pair of tiny ribbons was tied to one end; one navy blue and the other pink. A tear threatened as she looked at those ribbons. She brushed it away with a frown of annoyance. She was tired of feeling sorry for herself and the way things were. She was sick of being unhappy and uncomfortable. She wanted to feel something else, anything else but the crushing hopelessness and abject helplessness that pervaded the entire war. She wanted to be glad for what could still be, no matter how brief the feeling was or how far those dreams were from reality.
She stroked the ribbons with a hoof and smiled. All of the terrible things she’d felt and seen and done these past weeks; they were worth it if she could prevent even more terrible things from tearing all that she held dear in her life away from her.
Bon Bon.
Lyra closed her eyes and kissed the ribbons, imagining they were the soft, curly mane that they mimicked, instead of silken lace.
I’ll come back to you.
She held that feeling firmly in her mind as she began to play, her eyes still closed and her head bobbing in time. At first it was only three notes; low, high, low again, repeating continually. The sound was hollow at first as the hesitant plucking pierced the silence. But as Lyra put a touch of conviction into her strokes, the air resonated with the delicate, yet fervent, energy. She carried those three notes for several bars before a sprinkling of higher notes found their way in amongst the steady tune. But each time they punctuated the relative stillness, they faded again as quickly as they had come, as if they might never have been, only the three repeated notes remaining.
Quite suddenly, the even tempo vanished in a flurry of rising notes that spiraled away into the night. Lyra’s muzzle scrunched up and her head bowed lower with the passion she was pouring into the music. Her horn lit up more brightly with the telekinetic effort to strike each note in such a rapid succession. Each note came and went in a blur of sound, building on each other, higher and faster. With a flourishing stroke, Lyra struck a note above all that had come before it and let it ring alone, hanging in the air, pure and clean.
Then there was silence; sudden and complete. Lyra stopped moving all together, sitting rigid with her eyes clenched tightly shut. As seconds slipped away, she visibly relaxed and the three notes from the beginning of her song returned. But after a few bars, they slowed down, spaced out by twice as many rests as before. Then, on the high note, she simply stopped playing, leaving the tune to fade away, unanswered and incomplete.
“You certainly are a dedicated musician,” a bass voice rumbled.
Lyra started in surprise, not realizing she had an audience.
“Why do you say that,” she asked as she spotted Zacon’s bulky figure standing leisurely to one side.
He stepped closer to contemplate the graves before speaking again.
“You must be dedicated to your craft to bring your instrument with you to war,” he said. “Either that, or you are infinitely more foolishly optimistic than I’d thought. Whatever the case, you are exceptionally skilled.”
“Oh,” she said simply, her retort cut off by the unexpected praise.
“What composition was that?” Zacon asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“It’s one of my own,” Lyra said with a hint of embarrassment. “It’s titled Dreams of Flying. I intended it to represent the things we’re hoping for, the ones that seem out of reach. These days, those things are even farther away than they used to be. I guess it felt right to play it now since music can help us come to terms with what we’re feeling.”
“Yes,” Zacon said, half to himself. “Music can stir our emotions in many unique ways.”
He went back to staring at the graves. He closed his eyes and bowed his head contemplatively. As Lyra watched, his scowl turned from his usual disdain to outright agony. He trembled slightly as he hunched his shoulders against whatever he was thinking. Lyra couldn’t imagine what could be affecting him like this. The graves of two ponies seemed too insignificant to chip the stony exterior of a warrior who had laughed and taunted his enemies as ponies fought and died around him at the river. Unless something had changed him, which she doubted, he shouldn’t even care.
Lyra was surprised, then, when she heard him begin to hum. It was a simple tune, starting low and rising for a time before falling back again. He hummed the tune twice through before he opened his eyes and sang. Lyra couldn’t understand the words, though she recognized the guttural enunciations from the fragments of his language he’d spoken in her presence. Her trained ear picked out the pattern of a chorus being repeated, distinct from the rest as Zacon emphasized certain words. His bass voice rolled through the verses in a solemn march, instilling in Lyra a desire to march along with it. But she sat still, absorbing the song instead. She could feel the restrained energy in the big warrior and she didn’t want to interrupt what might be the only instance of its release. The huskiness of emotion cut into his voice as he raised his head high and nearly shouted the last few words.
As the song died away into silence, Lyra could have sworn she heard a thick swallow from Zacon as he managed to put his stone mask back in place and resume looking simultaneously disinterested and angry at the world. No tears had fallen, but Lyra had witnessed enough emotional performances to read the signs. This warrior had been fighting to keep them back. Still, she remained dumbfounded as to what had brought him to this drastic change in disposition. As moments passed, he glanced over at her, almost self-consciously.
“That was…” she struggled to find the right words.
“A song of my people,” Zacon answered. “You weren’t meant to understand the language.”
“I was going to say it was interesting,” she replied slyly. “I’ve never seen you that expressive.”
Zacon went rigid. “The song is meant to mourn the loss of a friend in battle.”
“These two?” Lyra asked, gesturing at the graves. “You’re mourning them as friends?”
“I was the officer they entrusted their lives to,” he rumbled as he relaxed his stance defeatedly. “They fought with courage and devotion to both their orders and their allies. They gave their lives with honor. But it was my faults and failures that led to their deaths. I failed them as a leader when I put them in the path of overwhelming odds. I failed them as a warrior by letting pride in my own strength blind me to their danger.”
He took a deep breath and turned to face her directly.
“And yes, I failed them as a friend also, because those who stand at my side in battle are more than mere soldiers under the same banner. They are my brothers and sisters, bonded by blood and oath.”
He turned to the graves once more.
“It was a beautiful song,” Lyra said when the silence between them became uncomfortable.
Zacon glanced at her inquisitively.
“I couldn’t understand a single word,” she went on with a smirk. “But music isn’t just about words. It’s a feeling that we’re trying to express, but our five senses never seem to be enough to fully convey it. Sometimes music is as close as we can get to helping others know what we mean. And for this, I don’t think I need to recognize the words to know what they meant.”
“Would you like to understand the words anyway?” Zacon asked.
“You mean, like a translation?”
“I felt that it needed to be sung in its original tongue first, but I don’t see why I can’t give honor to these soldiers in yours as well. Besides, what’s the point of knowing a song if one never shares it?”
“In that case,” Lyra said, readying her instrument. “Mind if I accompany you?”
He made a tiny bow of acceptance. He began with the humming again, allowing Lyra ease into it with a soft and low strumming. When they were both steadily in time with each other, Zacon took a deep breath and began.

“Before songs tell of glories won
Or heralds call our victory.
I walk the fields in evening sun
To find a friend who served with me.
The multitudes of foes we faced,
Now fallen here around our feet.
In battle, through their ranks we raced.
Our fighting hearts, a steady beat.”

Lyra kept up with him, hearing the passion in his voice now with the full meaning of each word. She couldn’t help but relate her own feelings to these words, reflecting on Quick Fix’s final moments fighting at her side. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her notes as Zacon began the chorus, his voice rising to lift the words even as he strung each of them out slowly and purposefully.

“In honor stand
and glory rest!
I walked with you
through fire’s test.
Our company
finds journey’s end.
My brother true!
My fallen friend!”

Lyra opened her eyes in time to see Zacon’s muzzle tighten in pain before he began the next verse. Obviously, once through the song in his language hadn’t been enough to fully release his grief. She knew hers would be long in fading as well.

But now I see this face alone
Lying here amongst the dead.
It’s one that I have always known
And one for whom my blood’s been shed.
For he and I did share one path
And never dream that we would part.
But hence from this field’s aftermath
He’ll be with me just in my heart!

He held these notes longer than the first verse, especially toward the end, and Lyra did her best to keep in time with him. If he thought she was making mistakes, he didn’t let it show. When he began the chorus again, there was new power in his voice. Gone was the pain and regret from the previous verses, replaced with pride and vigor.

“In honor stand
and glory rest!
I walked with you
through fire’s test.
Our company
finds journey’s end.
My brother true!
My fallen friend!”

The trees echoed briefly with the last line before the world faded back to the silence of the night. Zacon looked up toward the sky, though it was too shrouded by the haze to see. Lyra watched him for a time, fidgeting with the ribbons on her instrument.
“Does this mean we’re not ‘pathetic creatures’ anymore?” Lyra asked, hesitantly breaking the silence.
Zacon looked startled by the question and he considered it guiltily before replying. 
“I did say that about your people, didn’t I? When you hadn’t been given enough of a chance to prove the contrary, that is what I believed you were. I’d seen your civilian culture and little else. Perhaps I put too much stock in battle-hardness when I judge cultures other than my own.”
He considered the question again, longer this time. Lyra didn’t press him, but waited patiently.
“No,” Zacon said at last. “You are not, and never really were, pathetic creatures. It was I who was in error in judging you that way. You place value on different traits and skills than my people. I apologize for my hasty and offensive words. Less important is your physical strength and more important is the strength of your commitment to each other and your land. The sacrifices you are willing to make prove that you fight Es Ja-Seph Tek Kundriga.”
He spoke the foreign words solemnly and looked her in the eye while doing so. After she stared back at him blankly for a moment, he cleared his throat.
“That phrase means ‘with the heart and soul of strength’, though the translation is a bit rough.”
She smiled at him once she understood what he meant. “So, we’re strong enough to be warriors. That means a lot coming from you. Though I’m not so sure we really are all that strong.”
“Strength is not found in physical stamina or brute power alone,” he said with a wave of his hoof. “Strength of spirit is what you have. Even if you do not compare in raw strength to that of, say, a dragon, you have the most important form of strength; the will to face the challenge.”
“When we have something worth fighting for,” she amended, touching the ribbons again.
His gaze shifted to the instrument and its adornments.
“I also said before that any creature can fight for its own survival, from the meekest to the greatest. To fight for something greater than one’s self is the sign of a true warrior. Not all of your people show the same courage as you and our companions here. So for now, you and those beside us in battle are the ones I will respect. The rest will have to earn that respect.”
He got up to leave, fading back into the gloom of the night as silently as he’d come. Lyra stayed at the graves for a long time, but when she finally returned to her tent, she felt she might have begun to heal.