With Cucumber in the ground, Sundance felt a powerful need to look after the living. He allowed Silver Lining to guide him as he stumbled along so that he could see what was up with Hollyhock. Terror, or maybe the after-effects of the ether chilled his blood and made him shiver. Sumac had said he was needed. These words haunted Sundance’s ears, and he feared this day would grow blacker, swallowing the last vestiges of the light.
Hollyhock was foaling out-of-doors, which seemed odd, but what did he know about foaling? As he approached, he could see that Corduroy’s arm’s were stained with blood, buckets of blood, far too much blood. The very sight of it caused his stomach to rise up and go flopping around in the back of his throat. As for Hollyhock, she was laying in the grass, partially covered with a blanket—but she was moving.
Almost falling onto his face, Sundance feared the worst.
Silver Lining set him straight, shoving him back upright just as Sumac turned around to face them. The pale alicorn was also spattered in blood, but he was smiling, which confused Sundance to no end. Unable to bear the tension a moment longer, he came to an abrupt, sudden halt that almost made him pitch forward.
“On this day, trouble was born,” Corduroy said to Sundance, her voice weary and dry. “The little blighter was shy and didn’t want to come out. She unfurled her wings in utero and caused us all kinds of grief. I had to reach in there and pull her out. And then she came out backward and scared all of us. I’d keep an eye on this filly, if I were you.”
“But… but you said you were needed and I—”
“Oh!” Sumac, embarrassed, held out a wing, his primaries extended. “You thought…”
Sundance nodded.
“I do that to everypony at some point. Pebble hates me when I do. I’m sorry.”
While rolling her eyes at her husband, Silver Lining approached Hollyhock, who lay in the grass. The portly griffoness drew close, sat down, and adopted what could only be described as a defensive, protective posture, something shared by both griffons and pegasus ponies. Wings out, chest forward, eyes narrowed, and every muscle ready for action.
“Foal?” By chance, Sundance’s eyes collided with Amber Dawn’s, and he was perplexed by the way she was looking at him. “I wanna see. I need to see. I need to know if everything is okay.”
“Let him look,” Hollyhock replied.
Hunkering down, Corduroy lifted up the corner of the blanket, and there was a faint squeak as it was pulled away. Sundance, fretful, leaned forwards, looked down, and saw something the colour of sunshine. Something as yellow as butter. It wiggled in the grass—she wiggled in the grass—and hope, like a falling anvil, struck Sundance. His hindlegs buckled suddenly and he sat down hard enough to make his butt-bones ache. The little filly was suckling while also trying to wiggle closer to her mother, no doubt because of the sudden chill caused by the blanket being lifted.
“You… you have a very important birthday,” he said to the filly. Some of the feeling had returned to his lips now and his words were somewhat clearer. “Ponies might be sad on your birthday. When you’re older, I’ll tell you why. But for now, happy birthday. Welcome to Rotten Egglünd.”
Corduroy put the blanket back, patted Hollyhock once, and then turned her full attention on Sundance. “I think I did a pretty good job of patching you up. Mister Teapot’s Body Spackle filled in the holes nicely. That stuff burns real bad, but it encourages rapid cell growth. You’ll be fatigued for the next few days as your body goes through a month’s worth of healing in a week.”
“Without Mister Teapot’s Body Spackle, I’d be a mess on the ground,” Sumac remarked while he looked skyward. “It stings something awful though when it’s being slathered into the wound. It’ll even help regrow bones at a rapid rate—that is if you can stand having body spackle applied directly to the bone.”
“The owlbear left grooves in your ribs.” Corduroy stood up, flexed her legs, and with her left paw, she rubbed her right elbow. “It was worse than I thought. But the spackle should fix everything right up.”
“Good. Everything is good here.” Sundance didn’t want to talk about or think about the owlbear scraping his ribs. Shivering, he bit his lip until the rush of pain evicted the cobwebs from his brain. “With everything good, I gotta go talk to Grandmother before she goes. There is still work to be done. Good. Everything is good. Would somepony please help me stand up? My front half isn’t talking to my back half at the moment. Thanks.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Grandson, why are you sorry?”
Celestia faced the east, where the gathering darkness shrouded the jagged peaks of the mountains that stretched as far as the eye could see. She had a faint glow about her, a soft, almost imperceptible light that kept the darkness at bay. Sundance, whose head had cleared considerably in the past half-an-hour or so, looked up at her and tried to read her face.
“Today was your day with your son. It was spoiled. I’m sorry.”
“None of this was your fault.” Celestia inhaled, held it for a time, and then said, “I dare say that Nuance had just the sort of day he needed. Today, he got to feel important. He got to feel in charge. Today, he was productive and exposed to life beyond the protective walls of the castle. These days are always the best for him.”
This gave Sundance pause, but did not change his mind; he remained sorry and apologetic. Surely Celestia did not get many days with her foals and this was Nuance’s chance to have his mother all to himself—something that this day had taken from him. Turning away from Celestia, Sundance looked up and saw stars twinkling into existence overhead.
“I need a retainer,” Sundance blurted out, and he cringed at how insensitive he sounded. Shying away from his grandmother, his gaze fell groundward as he tried again, this time with more tact. “Cucumber did… well, everything. He had magic. Corduroy could do a lot of what he did, but if she was busy retaining, she wouldn’t be nursing, and that’s a problem. Help me.”
“I’m proud of you—”
“Proud of me?” Sundance didn’t mean to interrupt, and feeling guilty for doing so, his ears drooped. “What for?”
“For being practical. For picking up the pieces. For causing a little crystal tree to sprout. For surpassing my expectations. For giving me a bit of much-needed faith in my own bloodline, which has turned against me far too many times for me to count.” Closing her eyes, the big mare let heave a sigh that caused a noticeable gale and the grass before her rippled. Then, she opened her eyes, shook her head, and sighed a second time.
“You’re flying into Canterlot while the smoke blows sideways again,” she continued. “This has been a terrible day for you and your barony. Yet, here you are, apologising to me while seeking my counsel and trying to forge ahead even with things as bleak as they are. It makes me feel better about things… about everything, really. The war is not going well. Things are not going well. Equestria sits in a precarious position, a precipice from which it could slip at any time. But watching you—and others—as you persevere through your struggles gives me the hope I need to continue. Without you—and others like you—I honestly don’t know how I would keep going. These are dark times, Grandson.”
“I… I… I…”—he stammered, struggling to express his thoughts and feelings, but words failed him. He had not even considered that his own struggles gave Celestia the strength to face her own. When he closed his mouth, his teeth clicked together. He felt like a foal again, but not in a bad way, not in a demeaning, demoralising way. Staring down at the grass, he stepped closer to Celestia, overcome with a strange need to be near her.
“There is a student in my school by the name of Paradox Sunflower.” She paused, thoughtful, or perhaps choosing her words with great care. “She has history with this land… a troubled history at that. Her parents are earth ponies that fled from this place and made it to Ponyville. Well… actually…” The big mare sighed and deflated, with everything about her drooping. “One of her parents might have remained here, in this place. There is a good chance that the previous lord was her father. It is a very delicate subject, Grandson.”
Sundance listened in silence.
“I asked Paradox to take ownership over the barony, and she refused. It’s understandable, really. She knows.” Celestia gulped a deep breath and shuddered. “She knows. Her parents have told her stories about this place. They told her why they fled just before she was born. She knows why her mother made such a dangerous journey, which ended with Paradox being born in Ponyville Hospital.”
As the darkness gathered, Celestia’s inner illumination intensified.
“Paradox knows what you’ve been up to. She’s hopeful. I am certain that if I ask her to come here, she will now. Maybe not as your retainer… she might need a better title to entice her, but I am positive that she can be enticed.”
“Do you know?” Sundance asked, suspecting that Celestia knew.
“Do I know what?” Celestia replied.
Wondering how he got himself into these messes, Sundance tried to think of what to say.
Angling his gaze upwards, he tried to read his grandmother’s face and found that he could not. She had to know. She had to know. To assume otherwise would be to insult her intelligence. How could she not know? It was her business to know. This was too relevant to her own interests, too close to her heart. This was a family matter—and so she had to know.
“The faces you make,” she remarked while she looked down at the smaller pony standing beside her. “There is much I know. Perhaps too much. What I know paralyses me and fills me with indecision. I know for certain that your predecessor offered financial support to Mister Mariner. In fact, much of his so-called gambling debts were in fact, part of a rather big gamble. I know this, and didn’t do much about this, because after all of the unpleasantness that happened, I decided to leave the scabs alone so the wounds upon this nation could heal.”
Sundance knew all about Mister Mariner and the unpleasantness, as it was a topic that his mother frequently ranted about. His mother was a devout Royalist and the very idea of somepony turning against the Sisters offended her to her very core.
“I know that your predecessor was entirely within his rights to terminate the barony’s trust and sell the land. You have that right as well. You have the power to bring this legacy to an end, just as the one before you did. I know that my sister hounded him with terrible dreams, plagued him with nightmares, and did everything within her power to coax a confession out of him for his many, many misdeeds—and I know that he remained relentless. His heart grew bitter and more rotten with each passing day.”
She shook her head, sorrowful. “I know I had misguided hopes that we could settle this in private, as family, and sort everything out, away from the public eye. I know I wanted the chance to forgive him… but alas, he would not give me that chance.” Her words turned sad and she gazed upwards at the stars.
He wondered if she was thinking about her sister.
“So, what is it specifically that you are asking me if I know?”
She was looking down at him now, and he up at her. Nothing about her face was readable, though her voice was sorrowful, sad. Mouth dry, he swallowed, and he found himself thinking about how much smaller he was compared to her. She was enormous—larger than life—and he was an insignificant speck that had the gall to ask her if she knew.
“Paradox is a pony in need of healing, and I am trusting you with her well-being, Grandson. She’s inherited the grievous wounds of her parents… of a deep and abiding love poisoned by one who did so simply to show that he could. As a manner of ownership. Paradox is a young mare who was swept away by the flood of her mother’s tears as a filly. You’ve done right by these ponies so far, and I am counting on you to do right by her.”
He nodded, eager to please.
“And if you don’t… I’ll know.”
Again, Sundance gulped, but the sudden lump in his throat would not go down.
“You’ll do the right thing, Sundance. Of that, I am confident. You could have flown away from trouble today, but you stuck around. It would have been easy to carry yourself away to safety. Your ponies told me what you did, and they did so in great detail. They might have even embellished the story just a bit… but I did find a splitting maul stuck into the back of the owlbear’s skull, which supports their outrageous tall-tales. It was jammed in there tight as can be. Tell me, Grandson, did you waylay the owlbear from behind? Are the stories true?”
Silence was his ally, so he nodded.
“The skull is probably the most well-defended place on an owlbear. Magically hard. Luna… she once headbutted one and gave herself quite a concussion. It was not a mistake that she made twice—at least, that I am aware of. Luna is slow to learn, though.” Celestia unfurled her wings, gave them a good stretch, and then began stretching out her legs one by one.
“As the trust between us grows,” the big mare said while stretching, “I will reward you with more and more responsibility. Such is the way of things. If you raise your head, expect to be noticed. If you do well, expect to be tested. If you succeed, expect to be tried. The only reward you will ever know is tribulation. Understand this, Grandson, all of this rests on you. If you feel overwhelmed, keep your head down. Avoid drawing attention to yourself. Do what is necessary, but do nothing exceptional. I only ever test those who seek my approval.”
Again, Sundance nodded.
“We met when you raised your head and showed competence. That got you the barony. So far, you have done well. You have faced these tests and exceeded all expectations. What comes next is a trial, Grandson. Your mettle is my mettle, and I will burn away your dross if you dare to expose yourself to my light. Make friends, Grandson, there is no way that you can face what is coming alone.”
With that, Celestia strode away, and Sundance did not follow.