//------------------------------//
// Chapter 12 
// Story: A Bug on a Stick 
// by Orbiting Kettle 
//------------------------------//

Motes of light crawled along her carapace and left a brown fur-coat where they passed. They gathered around her rump, then went back and climbed down her legs. Holes were covered, slightly discolored spots the only sign that they had been there. Finally, her hooves were surrounded by an electric glow, and then, with a pop, in place of Chryssi stood a brown filly with a green mane, a little stub of a horn poking out from her head, and a constipated expression on her face.

Not laughing was hard. Chryssi still tried, even if it was a titanic task, as the illusion was tickling her under her chitinous plates. With a dedication usually found only in young ponies doing things that had been explicitly prohibited by adults with more wisdom and the scars to prove it, she controlled her impulses.

"Well, the result is impressive." Master Sottile stepped out from the ash circle on the wooden floor of the studio. His mane hung wet with sweat, and the shadows of bags hung under his eyes. Despite the more abundant portions Donna Copper Horn had started to serve once again, and which she made sure that the intended recipients ate, the signs of the lean winter were clearly visible. "Are you alright?"

"Awesome!" It was possible to almost hear all the effort Tia had put into not shouting. "You really look like a unicorn."

The tickling didn't cease, but Chryssi was stronger than it.

"Indeed, it is a surprisingly solid illusion. I dare to say this is one of my greatest achievements, and I think there may be other possibilities to apply the tricks we used. It could improve other spells with, well, less circumstantial application. Why, I think we–"

The treacherous sensation reached her nostrils, going for an all-out attack she didn't expect.

Chryssi sneezed.

There was a sound of shattering crystal. She felt the layer of magic flaking away from her plates like it was carried away by a breeze. Magical fireflies danced for a moment and then dissolved into the aether. Left behind there was a little, vaguely insectoid, black foal.

"–we will have to try again." Master Sottile groaned, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. "This will take some time." His horn glowed with magic, and a scroll and a quill floated towards him before the aura surrounding them flickered, dropping them onto the floor. "Even more time than I feared. It seems my magic has reached its limits for now. I will have to rest and…"

Chryssi sat down on her haunches and looked at the floor.

Master Sottile sighed. "I am terribly sorry, but we won't be able to try something else before the Spring Festival."

"No!" The anguished scream almost deafened Chryssi as Tia swung her legs around her in a crushing hug. "We will find another way! We promised!"

Her friend was warm and soft, and leaning into her helped Chryssi a bit. It was her own fault anyway. Probably. She shouldn't have sneezed.

"And we will find a solution, but we won't be able to find it before the Festival. Illusions are a very complicated magic, and we don't know much about them. We already made some great discoveries, but we are still not there. And we cannot risk poor Chryssi's well-being, can we?" He put a hoof on each filly’s shoulder. "I promised I would find a way, and I never broke a promise to you, did I?"

Tia shook her head, tears in the corner of her eyes. She sniffled and hugged Chryssi tighter. "Then– then I will stay with her. Like last year. And we will make it a good Festival. And– and I will ask Luna too and–"

The sigh that interrupted her had a faint taste of resignation. Chryssi hadn't even to flick her tongue to feel it. She did it anyway. For some weird reason, it seemed to reassure the others. Master Sottile said, "That won't be possible, little Sun. You and Luna got your Cutie Marks, which means we will have to present you in front of the Concord and we will have to talk about your education. Now, your Marks are of the kind that fall into my purview, which means you won't need to become apprentices to someone else. Yet we still have a duty to formally show you off there. You can't stay here this year."

"I…" Tia buried her muzzle in Chryssi's neck. "I won't leave her all alone. The Concord can–"

"I suggest you don't end that sentence." A female voice interrupted Tia. The fillies looked up and turned around. In the door stood Ginevra holding a scroll in her claws. She was grinning when she reached Tia and Chryssi and leaned towards them, whispering, "You don't want to get the soap treatment from Donna Copper Horn, right?"

The fillies shook their heads. They both remembered the day Luna had used the dreaded p-word to voice her concerns regarding a cheeky nut and its stubborn refusal to get cracked. The incriminating exclamation had escaped her after the third time the nut shot out from under her hoof. Donna Copper Horn hadn't even been in the room, yet she arrived like an avenging spirit, eyes burning, moving with the inexorability of an avalanche. The screams of boredom when Luna had to translate Minoian Mechanist Poetry for the week afterward still sent shudders down Chryssi's back.

Ginevra stood up straight and gave the scroll to Master Sottile. "The little bug won't be alone. This year the Flock will come here to celebrate the Wind Whispering. She'll have fun and be cared for, trust me. Master Sottile, the agreement still stands, right?"

"The situation is a bit different now. We can't risk little Chrysalis; she has to stay a secret for now." He looked up from the scroll. "I'll have to talk with Garvino. We need to be sure we can trust them completely."

"Master Sottile, no disrespect, but either you bonked your head and forgot or you're willfully being difficult. It's our Flock, and this little thing–" Ginevra reached for Chryssi, grabbed her and lifted her up, Tia still holding her tight and being pulled up alongside. The griffon pointed at the little bug with a talon. "–is basically family. Let Garvino tell that to the others, and there's no place in the Concord where she'll be safer."





Under the dust covering her hands, Copper Horn could see a net of thin scars covering her palms. She closed her fist and glanced over her shoulders. Everybody else was occupied by their own chores. Meadowsweet with her ledger was making a second count of the meager supplies they would bring to the city. Master Sottile was instructing Celestia and Luna. Fidelis was pulling another crate of partially finished story-stones.

She sighed and leaned against the cart, the wood creaking under her weight.

She had recovered. She felt so much better. It had almost been a month since the last time she had spaced out trying to catch some ephemeral thread of memory. That should have been the last trace of her unfortunate bound of sickness. And yet she couldn't remember where the scars had come from. They hadn't been there when she’d been but a calf. They were there when Master Sottile had found her. That meant they came from her bad times.

No time for it. There was stuff to do other than gazing into a foggy past that should probably stay lost.

Copper Horn walked to the pile of barley sacks and grabbed another one. Just a few remained. It wasn't much at all. She pulled it over her shoulder and turned to Meadowsweet. "Is this really everything this year?"

"It is." The mare closed the ledger with a snap. "It really is. The Festival will be a lot less filling this time around. I heard that other farms will bring even less." She groaned. "At least we didn’t have to graze, that would have truly been a low point."

"Will the first harvest be decent?" Copper Horn moved the sack to the other shoulder. "Or will we have to keep up the smaller portions until next year? Your ribs are still showing, Meadowsweet, and I would hate to leave Millet another year without something to grab."

"It will be a good harvest. Harmony willing, we should fill the granaries again." Meadowsweet looked up and snorted. "And I'll have you know that Millet appreciates my leaner figure too." She stood up and turned around. "See, it's still all there where it counts. But I won't lie to you, I'm looking forward to barley soup, fresh bread, and a scoop of butter. And once the cows put on some weight and make some cheese, I'm gonna buy a wheel of that too."

"Heh, that will be expensive. They'll have their own hooves full with orders." Copper Horn bowed down and took the second sack. Her strength was coming back at least. "Let's finish loading the cart. I would like to be on the road sooner rather than later."

Meadowsweet nodded and put the ledger in the saddlebags laying at her hooves. She put her head under a sack and threw it on her back with a grunt. "Sounds like a plan."

As they unloaded their sacks on the car Copper Horn's eyes wandered once again to her hands. There was no way around it, it bothered her; she should have been able to remember. It was something in the bad times. It was–

"Net! A net!"

Meadowsweet looked up at her. "What? What net?"

"Nothing. Just… Just a memory coming back and surprising me." She was giddy. It was a strange sensation, and maybe not really appropriate for a cow of her age, but it felt like a success. She knew where the scars came from. It wasn't a pleasant memory by any measure, but it was her past. She closed a fist. She could feel the threads cut in as she pushed against them, the pain only feeding her rage. She heard the cascade of snapping sounds, like hail on a shield, as the net tore. She could feel the metal of the grip of her mace.

It was not good to dwell on it. It had been a long time ago, and she had made peace with it. But now she remembered again what she had made peace with.

"Are you feeling well?" Somebody was poking her leg. As Copper Horn looked down she saw big, worried eyes. And under Meadowsweet's coat, she could see muscles tensing and preparing to bolt.

"Yes, yes, I'm fine. I'm fine again. I just remembered something I had forgotten." A last glance at her hands, then she turned and marched to the sacks. "Just the tail of the malady. You know, the usual. Now let's finish loading this stuff, we are burning daylight."





His paws threw another load of earth out of the pit. Heavy, clay-rich dirt clung to his fur, whispering to him a tale of rock close below and of grass having grown above season after season.

Fidelis furrowed his brow. There was also something about water under the rock. Not close by, but there. That would require some thought.

When his claws hit the rock slate, leaving three marks behind, he listened well. The stone told him about the water deep down, below the slate, embraced in the dreams of Earth. Which meant the source of the well had moved in the past year.

Fidelis grumbled under his breath. This kind of thing happened, he knew that, and there was nothing that could be done about it, but it made his work slightly more complicated and that deserved at least some complaining. The rock told something about what lay below, but like all large boulders of a certain age, it tended to be self-absorbed and not really forthcoming with details about what Fidelis wanted to know. On the other paw, he learned a lot about what it felt like to be involved in absolutely nothing interesting for millennia. The boulder went into great detail and with as much enthusiasm as a stone could muster. It was almost like listening to Willowbark going on about some kind of flower or the other.

Despite all the pointless blathering, one important point remained. The bottom of the pit had to be properly treated to avoid the waste they would dump in there filtering down to the water. It was far down, in the depths of the earth, but caution required it.

It would also require a lot of work, and, with the prospect of sizzling meat on the fire-pits, he really didn't want to waste the rest of the day preparing the coating material. It would take at least…

He stood up straight and slowly turned his head, smiling. His eyes swept over the border of the pit until he found exactly the filly he was looking for.

Chryssi sat on her haunches, dirt surrounding her like a small wall, and a heap of earth on her head. She blinked at him.

There was one thing Fidelis had wanted to ask her, but suddenly he felt compelled to investigate something else first. He had a lot of questions, he had to prioritize them somehow. "What are you doing?" That seemed a pretty good opener.

"I'm sitting." She smiled.

If he suspected she was capable of being sarcastic, he would accuse her of being a smart-ass. However, he doubted she had the typical donkey snarkiness in her, which meant that there was some logical reason which had had an accident with missed implicit undertones somewhere down the line that explained it all. "Why are you sitting?"

"You told me to."

"And the dirt?"

"You threw it on me."

That explained it. Sadly. He sighed, it was not her fault. "I told you to stay there and not move, right?"

She nodded, earth trickling down her head and tickling her nose. She sneezed, throwing away the rest of the dirt crowning her.

While she rubbed her muzzle, Fidelis put his paws on the border of the pit and lifted himself out and unto the grass. He sat down by Chryssi's side and patted her on the head. "You know that when we say things, we don't always mean it like that. If I tell you to sit down and stay there, you don't have to let dirt fall on you." She looked up at him, curious green eyes, absorbing everything she heard, taking it to heart. Damn, he hated when they truly listened to him. It meant he had to be careful. "At least, you won't have to to do it unless I tell you to not move whatever happens. If we adults say that, you have to not move at all. And if we say… This is confusing for you, right?"

She looked away and, slowly, she nodded. It was a small movement, subdued.

He put his paw on her back, earth between his fingers adding a nice texture to the smooth chitin. "You don't get confused this much the other times. What's different now?"

He had to strain his ears to hear the answer. "Tia and Lulu help me."

He wasn't good at this. Donna Copper Horn and Meadowsweet had taught him. They all had to play a role for Harmony, but that didn't mean he should be the one in charge of working out the troubles of pups. He scratched his head and glanced at the demure Chryssi sitting there. Not that he could ignore the situation. "Is it like the reading thing? Afraid of looking bad?"

A vigorously shaking head stopped mid-movement and turned to unsure nodding.

Fidelis waited for a dozen heartbeats to see if something else would follow, but there was only silence. Not the kind one could find in a cave among stately and dignified stalactites, but the uncomfortable one of a salt-mine, where the walls all sported a low-grade paranoia of being licked. He sighed. "Why are you afraid? Tell things, then we can look for a fix."

"It's nothing."

"Hmm, I remember you promised Master Sottile that you wouldn't lie anymore. Are you breaking that promise?"

Her hoof moved small mounds of dirt here and there. She took a deep breath every now and then, held it, raised her hoof, then let it out again and returned to her tiny earth-works. After the fourth time she repeated the whole charade, she finally said, "I…I'm different. You are all like each other, and I am not. And you all do this stuff like it was easy and all, and–" The heap was flattened, and small circles were drawn into it. "–you don't have things that are really different here and I don't want to go away."

It wasn't really the right moment, he was aware of that. He even tried to stop it, but it was stronger than him. Fidelis laughed. He fell back on his back and yapped at the heavens, holding his stomach and rolling from side to side. He stopped when his lungs were empty, and he had to take big breaths. As he finally opened his eyes he saw Chryssi staring at him, worry etched in her features, tears threatening to break out. He patted her as he tried to get his breathing back under control. When he felt he was able to be coherent again, he sat up and said, "Sorry, little one. But–hehehe–that fear, being sent away because–hihihi–because of being different. Have you looked at us?"

She nodded. Her voice was low, thin. "You are all like one another. I'm–I'm not."

"We are not. We… Master Sottile got us together because we need Harmony and we seek Harmony. Outside, not on the farm, things are different. There are not many packs like us." He patted Chryssi again. "Being different means not being sent away. But you have to tell us the truth. Really tell it. Then we find a way."

"But–"

Fidelis shook his head. "No, you don't see it, but it is so. And tonight, you will see. Griffins celebrate with songs, dances, and stories. Important stories. Tonight you will hear how Master Sottile met me, and how we are all different, very different." He stood up. "Now, they will bring some monster they hunted, and then we will gut it and we will have to throw away the stuff you can't eat. That's what the pit is for. But we can't let it run in this direction–" He pointed towards the farm, ten stone throws away."–so we have to make sure it doesn't. The green stuff you make, how much can you make of it?"

Chryssi tilted her head. "Uh, a lot if I chew on the right stuff. Like, wood, stone, and hay. Hay is good for making it, I think."

"Good, then we get you the hay, and then you can seal the side of the pit. And tonight, your fears shall burn on the bonfire."





The sun had passed the zenith of its path and was beginning its steady descent to the cradle below the world. Or to the journey on the other side, at least according to Master Sottile.

The whole litany had never truly made sense to Ginevra, but then she’d never had to steer the sun and the moon, so nobody asked her opinion about it. It was fine with her, to be honest. She got the whole Harmony stuff, but once it went too far away from the common sense things, it all fell apart, at least in her opinion. She once listened to a griffon, a cunning one according to those who visited him, dispense almost a day’s worth of wisdom. All the others that had visited him along with her nodded and thought a lot about what he was saying. They all seemed to get some guidance from it, some help in whatever they were facing.

As for Ginevra, well, she had found his bag with the mushrooms early on. It put the whole rambling in perspective. There may have been some wisdom and secrets there, but it wasn't worth the effort. At least it had been a cozy experience.

"Do you see them?" There was a kind of excited tension in the little bug's voice. Fidelis had raised her expectations to dangerous levels, somehow, and she sounded like Ginevra before her first hunting trip. One had to hope it would end with fewer broken limbs.

"Not yet, but it's still early. Now sit down and stay calm, alright?" Not that Ginevra had any hope telling Chryssi to do that would have any lasting effect. But that was as well. She had said it just because it was something that had to be done, not because she believed it. If she had to be honest, she was almost as excited as the little one, she just had to hide it because of "responsibility". At least she thought she had to. The whole role model thing was complicated and not really up her alley with how Truth was one of the basic columns on which Harmony stood but which had to be sometimes hidden when you took care of little ones.

It had to be said to Chryssi's credit that she sat down. The being calm part, on the other claw, required some more work. She shifted from side to side, tapped her hooves on the ground, whirred.

Ginevra blinked, then looked down. The little one was whirring and vibrating like a harp-chord. She could hear it and feel it in her skull. "Will you stop that– whatever you're doing? It won't make them come any sooner, and it makes me itchy."

She got a nod as an answer, while Chryssi never moved her eyes away from the horizon. "What will they bring? Fidelis said that they always bring a monster to eat and it is big and all that and I never ate something big. I didn't know you could. And will there be enough for everyone? And what will they bring? And–"

"Now slow down, little bug. They feed you pretty well here, and I know you get some meat every now and then. For us, it's important because… Well, you'll hear the stories, then you'll get it. But for you? There's no reason to get so excited for some food."

"It's different food. It's… I can get rats and lice and fleas and fish. But they are small. Fidelis said monsters are big and…" Her breathing accelerated, and a bit of drool fell on the ground. "Big is different. Big is… I didn't know there was big I could eat."

A shiver ran down Ginevra's back, making her fur stand straight, rolling down her spine and reaching the tip of her tail. There was an intensity there that reminded her of some of the old birds she had met a long time ago in the south. "Whoa, little bug, you're not gonna get anything if you're in that mood. Calm down, will you? I'm not gonna let the others meet one haunted by the Hunt."

Chryssi's head snapped around and she stared at Ginevra, whatever had got her before broken and lost, at least according to the giant, watery eyes that told a tale of betrayal. At least the kind of betrayal kittens knew when the worst they ever experienced was not getting promised sweets. "What? But… I want… Fidelis said… What did I do?"

A glance at the horizon showed no signs of their expected guests. Ginevra sighed. "Well, it's a bit soon, but it's a story the others already know pretty well and rarely tell, so maybe we can start early. Promise me you'll listen to what I say, and don't interrupt me, alright? I don't have the masks here right now, and I don't play with shadows, but don't interrupt a story told on Wind Whispering. Right?"

The green eyes didn't seem to see anything else than Ginevra. Chryssi's tongue flicked out. Then she nodded.

"Many, many ages ago, we griffins were the Lords of the Eastern Skies and of the mountains below. It was a very hard life. The winds were cold and savage, and they could bite the flesh off the bones of anygriff they caught alone, and the peaks below were fangs stretched up into the heavens and thirsty for blood and guts, ready to tear apart every fool flying amongst them unaware.

But we lived a good life there. Nogriff was ever alone above the clouds, and when the winds came snapping their jaws we laughed and fought them into submission. Our kittens learned to play between the sharp rocks, and only those fools who forgot the lessons of their infancy would feed the hungry stones. Monsters were culled, and the truly horrible things in the depths rarely dared to come above ground.

Those living in the plains around the mountains brought offers to the great warriors patrolling the mountains and keeping the nightmares away. They were thankful, and soon cities rose because they were safe and could build and discover instead of shivering in the dark and being afraid of things lurking in the night.

And then, one day, some Flocks decided to go out there, in the wide world made not of hard stone but of soft grass and verdant forests. They had heard that there were monsters there, in the deep woods and in the wide sea, and they wanted to hunt them too. Noble warriors, they were, each and all.

So out they went, to the world where we weren't Lords.

Those living out there didn't know us. They didn't know where we came from, but pretty soon they knew that if something was hunting them and was snatching their children away, then the sky would darken with the Flocks blotting out the sunlight. And then there would be screeching and screams, and the smell of blood. And in the end, the monsters and the things preying on the weak would be no more. It was the time of One-wing Grit, of Lame Gam, of Broken-beak Gubbio, of Ginevra the Blind. Many of our greatest heroes flew and fought right during that time."

Chryssi sat there, her mouth hanging open, completely focused on Ginevra. The griffon leaned down and her voice became lower. She stalked around the little bug, whispering.

"They were powerful hunters. Fierce, brave, loyal. When alone they were fearsome in battle. But when the Flock came, then even dragons had to flee. Ponies, zebras, yaks, even donkeys celebrated them. Each triumph was sung, stories and legends grew. It was glorious.

But with the icy winds so far away, with the teeth of the earth not snapping at them, they started to become arrogant and restless. What was carefulness in the mountains became greed on the plains. And what had been duty became hunger for challenge. The Hunt stopped being a tool and became the end. Those fierce warriors that saved cities looked for bigger challenges to sate their lust for battle and thirst for glory."

Her voice grew lower, graver. "The Hunt came. Or maybe it had always been there, no griffon knows. It whispered in their minds, it stalked their dreams, it took over their lives. They became obsessed; only one thing mattered. So they hunted, and where they went, there went the Flock, because in glory and in ruin, the Flock will keep together."

"And ruin was what they found. And yet, the Hunt had its claws deep in their souls and whipped them with the need for more. Relentless, they went on, and one after another, they fell with their loyal companions. They fell against the Kraken in the sea, they fell against the Great Wolf in the north, they fell against the thousand bites of the Swarm on far away shores."

Ginevra stood up straight. She changed intonation and rhythm again. Now it was time for The Mournful Account of Those Who Remained After the Battle. She had never been quite good at it, but she still knew the basics of the storytelling technique. "The griffons left behind, the young Flocks, the elders and the kittens, they waited a long time for their return. The elders were taken by time before their hope ran out. The young ones knew despair. And they remembered the eyes of those who left as the Hunt caught them. Since then the Hunt lurks, waiting for griffins to forget caution to catch them and ride them once again in ruin along with their Flocks. It is every griffon's duty to look out for the signs of it, and to quench it before it's too late."

She pointed a claw at Chryssi. The little bug seemed to awake from the trance she had fallen into and flinched back. "I saw the signs in your eyes before. The Hunt was there. It starts small, with little obsessions, and then it takes you when you aren't looking. You are part of the family, and that means you'll be part of the Flock."

Her eyes squinted, Ginevra leaned forward. "Do you want to drive the Flock into ruin? Hmmm?"

Chryssi shook her head so fast Ginevra thought she heard the chitin plates crack. The griffon smiled and glanced over her shoulders. "Good, then keep care and beware of the Hunt. If you know that you have to look out for it, then you can keep it at bay." She stood up again. "And look, they are arriving."

On the distant horizon, many spots had appeared. A group of them flew above something larger, towing it through the air. Ginevra squinted her eyes and raised a claw to screen against the sun. She could now see the Flock and, barely, the thick ropes holding the bounty of the prey. A grin crept on her face. "And lucky you, this year they got us a pretty tasty treat. You are gonna like Roc."