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// 3. Names and Voices 
// Story: Siktral's Life in the Dark 
// by Ralfil 
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“You heard me” said the older girl, “We're ponies.” To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I had been expecting something a bit more mystical. Talking horses wouldn't be too bad, but ponies?! I thought to myself. This just lost a ton of its adventurous feeling.

While I remained sitting there in surprise for a moment, the little one snuggled against the back of my neck saying, “You're nice. I like you!” Before long I could feel her forelegs relax and heard her breathing assume the pattern of sleep. I now had a snoring filly on my back. Thankfully, even though it was different, it wasn't overly uncomfortable.

“Okay...” I said, “I wasn't really expecting that, but I guess I'll have to go with it.” Having finally gotten over my shock at meeting a talking version of an animal usually just owned by children on a ranch or something, I decided to just press forward. After all, I wasn't in a reasonable form either. I reached behind myself and shifted the sleeping pony on my back a little bit so as to be more comfortable. “So then, what are your names?” I asked.

The older pony was silent for a bit before answering, “Call me Silver Rain. That's my cousin… Stardancer.” I could guess that she was probably gesturing towards the younger pony, but I still couldn't see it. I could also sense from her hesitance in telling me their names that she likely wasn't being honest with me. Fair enough, I thought, There's not a whole lot of reason to trust me yet. We've only just met. I’ll just accept it for now.

I sighed. “Alright then.” I turned my head back as if to look at Stardancer. “She seems pretty tired. How long have ya’ll been traveling?” I asked. “I kind of overheard you talking about an escape or something like that.” In my mind I was thinking, Please oh please don’t be convicts. I didn’t want to deal with being on the wrong side of the law off the bat by helping criminals. Unless of course the law turned out to be some form of corrupt government that needed a revolution. I still didn’t know where I was, but I was trying to fit it into what little knowledge I knew about Dungeons and Dragons. That had been Tray’s obsession before he found…wait a minute.

I wasn’t able to finish that train of thought due to Silver Rain answering my question. “Well,” I heard her scuffing the ground nervously again. “We’ve been running mostly for a couple of days now.” She did sound pretty tired herself. I realized I could hear some strain in her voice as well. “We’re just trying to get home. We…escaped from diamond dogs that were using us as slaves.” Oh junk. I thought, Slavery is never a pretty thing. I hate that concept. There's a reason it's illegal in civilized countries.

As she continued on, her voice was starting to crack. “We were just at a family gathering in the woods. Our moms are…were…sisters.” She started sniffling. “So, when the diamond dogs attacked us we had no idea what to do.” She was talking in a rush by that point. “They just came out of nowhere, and now our mothers are gone because they fed them to a dragon, and my father was just barely able to distract them long enough for us to get out.” She paused to take a breath. “I’m scared.” She was finished talking, but now she began crying. It was heart rending.

Well, it looks like dragons aren’t very nice creatures here. Just my luck to be one. I thought to myself remorsefully. I sighed again. It seemed that I was going to be sighing a lot around here. “Look,” I said. I hoped she was looking at me. “It’s going to be alright. You’ll get home. I promise.” I heard her sobbing die down a bit.

I said this knowing that I really had no idea if that was true. I just wanted to calm her down. I tried to reach out to her with one of my arms and missed. This whole blindness thing is really starting to get on my nerves. I guess it didn't matter since she threw herself on my arm and clung to it. “It's just so hard.” she exclaimed, “It feels like we've been running for so long...and I'm just so tired of it.” Her face rested against my shoulder, and I could feel her tears streaming down it now. “Please help us.”

I raised my unhindered arm and began stroking her hair, though I guess it would be called a mane with her. I made shushing noises and did my best to comfort her. As I did so a thought sprung to mind. I voiced it without much consideration, “Why do you trust me?” She made a questioning noise, and I elaborated. “Your captors fed your mother to a dragon. I'm a dragon too. What makes me different?”

Her response surprised me. Though, to be honest, anything that she said would have probably surprised me as an answer my question. I wasn't sure what to expect. “You're a white dragon,” Her voice was much calmer now. It was actually relaxed. I did a small success dance in my head for that. “but you have pink on the inside of your wings. It's...nice.” She sighed, and her breathing slowed down to a regular pattern. I guess she fell asleep. While she answered I didn't stop brushing my claws through her mane.

What she had said did give me a fair amount to think about. It seemed I was a white and pink dragon, but that sounded awfully strange. I tried to think about a reason for that being possible. Eventually it came to me. I could really only think of one way for that to be possible if it was an unusual thing. I'd met a person or two in the past that had very pale skin, white hair, and pink eyes at least. These people were some I had seen in passing at high school. Albinos. Huh. I'm an albino dragon. That's a new one. I don't think I've ever even heard of that in video games or anything.

I picked Silver Rain up in my arms and stood. I was getting a little more used to my new body, though blindness was a bit more tedious. I used my tail to help balance myself in a more bipedal position. I shifted my wings a bit to secure Stardancer on my back. I certainly didn't want her falling off now. I pondered for a bit about what I should do now.

Clearly I was on a different world. That much was obvious. At the time I also felt that I ought to protect these two ponies I had run into. As I cradled Silver Rain in my arms I took the liberty of finding out a bit more from her shape. I figured that as long as I didn’t do anything inappropriate it would be okay. I brushed one of my hands along her back, making a rough estimate as to her physique. She definitely felt like a horse, just slightly different proportions. I had never actually seen a pony in real life before since horses were more common where I was from. However, the description seemed to fit the bill. I patted my hand gently along the side of her head to discover that the mane wasn’t quite right. It seemed more like a human hairstyle than a simple head of horse hair. It was following that evaluation that I discovered something even more surprising.

I found that there was a sharp protrusion coming from the center of what I guessed to be her forehead. Is that…a horn? I wondered. I settled my hand on it to find that it was in fact a horn. Not only had I encountered talking ponies, but this one at least appeared to be a unicorn pony. Now that was weird. I would have been less unsettled by this if she had been more like a horse than a pony. Finding out that I was a dragon was very weird, but with that as a premise I could easily deal with meeting unicorns. I just was having trouble wrapping my mind around said unicorns being ponies. 

With Silver Rain’s evident mythicalness in mind, I reached the same had over my back and felt around Stardancer’s head. Sure enough, she also had a horn. So, I’ve got a pair of unicorns here with me. I wonder which mythology I should go with to gauge their actions. I figured that they were probably magic in some way or another, but I wasn’t sure how exactly. One thing was sure however. They were both clearly very tired. I carefully made my way towards the foliage that I figured they had been hiding in and worked my way into it. I swept my tail around, finding that we were in a very small clearing. There was barely enough room for us. It was probably more spacious for them. If they needed to rest then I would let them, but I figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to wait out in the open if there was the possibility of danger.

I settled down again and began to quietly sing one of my favorite tunes as I rocked the two of them back and forth. It was an older song, but my sister had sung a variation of it for some school event. During the weeks leading up to it she had practiced quite a bit. The tune was stuck in my head for the rest of my life. It helped that our family listened mostly to our parents' music growing up. I didn't care much for the newer stuff.

Before I knew it there was a buildup behind my eyelids, and soon tears were streaming down my face. The song had always reminded me of home, and I often would sing or hum it to help myself calm down. Now it just made me homesick. Having initially thought that I was dead had distracted me from the fact that I probably wasn't going home anytime soon. I quietly sobbed as I continued the song in my head, imagining that I could hear it like I was listening to it from a CD.

Eventually I suppressed my sorrow to a degree and listened to my surroundings some more. There wasn't much I could discern aside from the wind rustling a few leaves. As I strained, hoping to hear more, I noticed that there was a slight undercurrent of noise that seemed to be coming from the ground. I gently laid Silver Rain on the dirt to my left and put my ear to the ground. I was sure that there was something down there. I wasn't sure what it was though. It sounded like a rhythmic pounding of sorts.

Curious, I dug my hands into the soft earth. It was quite easy. The dirt was slightly moist and came up easily. As I formed a small hole I placed the excavated dirt off to my right. Continuing I found that the noise was actually diminishing. This was very odd. As it grew more and more faint I found it very difficult to stay focused on which direction to dig towards. Eventually it ended all together, but I continued just a little bit more out of annoyance. Well, this was fairly pointless. Too bad I don't have some digging skill to level up or something. That would make this less frustrating. Ugh! This is so aggravating! “Why am I even here!?” I slammed my fist into the dirt. There was no answer.

I figured that I had probably imagined the noise entirely. It felt like that had been some pointless suspense at my expense. I sighed and wondered what I was going to do next. There wasn't much I could do except wait for the two unicorn ponies I was with to wake up. I still wasn't tired, so I knew right away that I was going to get bored. I had run out of logical scenarios to run in my head. There was no point to just sitting there thinking anymore.

Knowing that I really needed something to do so I wouldn't go stir crazy I twisted around and lifted Stardancer off of my back. I placed her next to her cousin on the ground and arranged them such that she was using Silver Rain as a pillow. I figured that would be good for when they woke up. I stood up and spread my wings. I desperately needed something to do so that I wouldn't start thinking about overly stupid things. Granted that what I was about to attempt wasn't the most intelligent thing, but at least it was something.

I started by flexing my wings and getting a feel for them. They were fairly large, and I could tell that there were some pretty strong muscles in them. If I felt them it didn't quite make sense since the wings seemed far to thin to justify the evident muscle mass. Then again, I wasn't sure what the laws of nature were here. It obviously wasn't earth, but it could just be another planet in the same universe. It could even be in the same galaxy. On the other hand, it could be another dimension or reality. That would completely throw physics up in the air.

I worked my way up to flapping them to see how much it would affect the air around me. The softest flaps stirred up a nice breeze that I could feel against my body, but they didn't generate any lift. I gradually increased the speed and effort that I put into my wings. Slowly I felt my feet leaving the ground, my tail still hanging down on it. I was pretty excited about it since flying had always been a dream of mine.

As soon as I was completely off of the ground, I realized something I hadn't considered. This is what made my experiment idiotic beyond belief. I could fly, but I was still blind. Therefore, I had absolutely no idea as to how high I would be. Never before had I been frightened when in the air. Gliding and free-falling were all wonderful, but without being able to see the ground it turned out to be absolutely terrifying.

Quite unfortunately this sensation led to me panicking. If I had been thinking rationally, I would have simply stopped flapping my wings and dropped to the ground which was still very close. Instead I began to flap harder. I felt a couple of branches brush my side as I rose up in the air, which at least let me know that there were trees around here and not just a bunch of bushes. I wasn't too pleased with my situation to say the least.

After rising very high in the air (I never did figure out exactly how high) I eventually calmed down, relatively speaking, and stopped flying. The only reason for me being able to halt my increase in altitude was grabbing what felt like a spongy mass and clinging to it. I clambered on top of it as I tried to stop myself from hyperventilating. I slowly calmed my breathing and was able to relax. Then I started hearing it again.

That strange pounding was up here too! Only this time it didn't seem to be coming from underneath me. I was laying flat on the mass and tried to figure out where its new location was. I bent my head around searching for it. I finally settled on a placement for it. It seemed to actually be coming out of my chest. I checked for confirmation by pressing one of my hands there. So I just thought it was something else earlier? Apparently this was my heartbeat. If I was calm enough and there was little enough sound around me I could actually hear it without the use of a stethoscope.

I sighed. It was quite quiet up here. There actually wasn't very much noise at all besides my heartbeat. I pondered this for a bit. If I could hear my own heartbeat then that could mean a couple of things. One was that my body passed sounds through itself fairly easily while maintaining a regular hearing capacity for outside noises. The other was that I just had really good hearing. I wasn't sure which one was correct. I hadn't done anything yet that would help me determine that answer.

If I had realized that the noise was my heartbeat the first time I wouldn't have gotten bored tried flying like that. I had to facepalm when I realized that. “Great. Just great. Now, where am I?” I felt around the spongy mass to try and get a feel for where this was in correlation to my surroundings. I found that it was relatively circular and didn't seem to connect to anything. It was also just barely big enough for me to lay down on. The nice thing was that it was remarkably soft. I also found that if I tugged on the edges I could get them to separate from the whole and later rejoin them. That was pretty weird.

A thought came to mind, and I felt around underneath the mass. As I suspected, it really was just hanging in the air with nothing to support it. Definitely different physics here. I formulated a plan in my mind and did my best to implement it. Clutching the mass I began to beat against the air with my wings. This was different from before because I was using strong upbeats with weak downbeats. I was fortunate enough to find myself brushing against some branches again after a while.

Though I was surprised that they passed through whatever I was on so readily, I was far more relieved to reach the ground again. It took a long time to get there. Once my tail, which was hanging over the edge, felt the dirt mound I had made I rolled off the sponge-thing and landed with a slight “Oompf.” I was lucky that my ascent and descent had been fairly vertical. Angles would have been far more difficult to correct.

I stood up on the ground and swept my tail around to make sure things were still about the same. The clearing was all there. However, Silver Rain and Stardancer were not. I was able to feel a slight depression in the ground that led to my hole. What? Were they dragged into it? I didn't make it that deep. I poked my tail down into it. It was significantly deeper than it had been previously. “Oh that's just great.” I muttered sarcastically. If they had been dragged in then they would probably need saving somehow. Without much further thought I jumped down into the hole.