A vast multitude of owls bore witness to the grieving pegasus that sat near a small, glowing crystalline tree. While others worked—no doubt experiencing grief in their own way—the pegasus kept a sorrowful vigil over a grave topped with fresh-turned black earth. At his side sat a unicorn colt, who appeared to be quite grief stricken. While the pegasus stared at the tree, the unicorn colt was fixated on the grave.
The silence was broken when the colt asked, “Why?”
Sundance had no answer. He wanted to know why as well. His emotions had traversed a full range of feeling and he had reached a point of emptiness. Cucumber was gone and the barony didn’t feel quite the same. The ponies—his ponies—were all on edge. Fires were watched with far greater care. All the little tasks that Cucumber did were left undone. As for Lemongrass, the colt was beside himself and Sundance wished that he could make the colt feel better.
Slowly, bit by bit, the emptiness was filled with anger, because Sundance had no answer.
“He never got mad, ‘cause of how I am,” Lemongrass said while sniffling.
“How you are?” Sundance allowed himself to be distracted. He welcomed it. Needed it. Anger felt too raw right now, it was too much to bear and he longed to be anything but angry.
“I take my time.” There was a long pause as the colt took his time to choose his next words; each passing second was drawn out, stretched considerably. “Cucumber never got mad and hollered at me ‘cause I’m slow. He was nice. Told me to take all the time I needed.”
“Yeah, Cucumber was a patient sort.” Sundance felt a powerful wave of grief wash over him, the first advance of a great flood. “I mean, he had to be. He was a pony of good temperment.”
“What’s that?” the colt asked.
“Temperament?”
“Yeah.”
Pursing his lips, Sundance thought about how best to answer before he said something stupid. “Temperament is… behaviour. Nature. How a pony is. I have a reckless temperament. You, you have a slow, cautious temperament. Cucumber… he was patient, I suppose. Steadfast. Loyal. He had himself a good disposition.”
“What’s that?”
“Disposition?”
The colt nodded this time.
“It’s like temperament. Characteristics. All of a pony’s traits as a whole.”
“Why do we have so many words that all say the same thing?” Lemongrass, at long last, turned away from the mound of black earth and looked up at Sundance. “There’s too many words. We don’t need them.”
“Different words help us say what we want to say though. Words with similar meanings can say completely different things.” Sundance too, turned away from the tree, and looked down at the colt looking up at him.
“That sounds dumb. It don’t make no sense.”
“It doesn’t?”
In response, the colt shook his head from side to side and his ears splayed out sideways. Sundance tried to consider the colt’s point of view, but his words seemed sensible enough. Though, he did come to realise that he couldn’t possibly explain it in a better way, so perhaps there was something faulty with what he had said. Or not—he couldn’t tell.
“I like to think about things before I do them,” the colt said, jarring Sundance from his thoughts. “Before I do something, I like to think about why I’m doing it. Mom gets mad though and she tells me to hurry up. Cucumber was fine with me thinking.”
“Hey”—reaching out his foreleg, Sundance gingerly laid it over the colt’s withers, while wincing from the sudden electric pain in his back—“what the world needs is more ponies who think before they do something or say something, so you just keep thinking. That doesn’t make you slow, that makes you wise.”
Something about the colt’s expression was both hopeful and doubtful.
Hearing a sound, Lemongrass’ ears swiveled off to the left, followed by his head. Then, he said to Sundance, “Here comes Nurse Corduroy.”
Wincing, Sundance knew that his nurse had come for him.
The bandages being peeled away made an awful sound; it was moist. Sundance hissed when it was painful and kept his teeth bared during the whole process, just because. Corduroy had to look because there was spotting and this concerned her. He squirmed on the table but went still when his nurse growled at him. She growled at him! For a time, he considered turning his head around to have a look at himself, but he just couldn’t work up the courage.
“Mmm, that didn’t hold,” Corduroy murmured and Sundance’s ears pivoted around to face almost backwards. “I don’t think it’s going to hold, either. Going to have to leave that spot open.”
“Is it bad?” he asked, his sense of worry overcoming the feeling of fussiness that he had.
“Not too bad.” Corduroy’s touch was gentle as she peeled away more spotted bandages. “Honestly, I am surprised that everything is holding together as well as it is. There’s just one spot, just ahead of your wing joints and just behind your withers that concerns me. It’s deep and the tearing was pretty bad. It left grooves in your ribs. You’re a lucky pony.”
“How’s Hollyhock?” Unable to think about himself any longer, Sundance sought distraction.
“She’s stitched up too.” Unseen, standing out of Sundance’s field of view, Corduroy frowned. “Pegasus ponies have the most difficult births. It’s the wings. Maternal mortality rates are the highest with mares who birth pegasus foals. Hollyhock will be fine, though. She’s an earth pony.”
“Stitches?” Sundance cringed. “Did you cut her belly open, or something?”
“No.” Corduroy peeled away more bandages and there was a moist slurping sound. “Perineotomy. I had to open her up so I could reach inside and pull the foal out.”
“I don’t… I don’t know what that is, and to be honest, I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Here’s what you need to know.” Corduroy’s voice was all business, stern, commanding, and not at all kind. “You need more of Mister Teapot’s Body Spackle. It has to go inside. Now, I’m not in the mood to be kicked in the eye again, and I don’t want to almost overdose you on ether. So here’s your options, Sundance. You’re going to lie here and take it. It is going to burn… ferociously. After the spackle is applied, I am going to have to stuff the area that fell open with gauze and that’s going to be mighty uncomfortable. What I need from you is for you to hold still. If you don’t, I have rope.”
“Rope?” Immediately after saying the word, Sundance gulped.
“Packing a wound is unpleasant, but necessary. Would you like something to bite down on?” Corduroy tossed scarlet-stained bandages into the fire and an unpleasant smoke wafted into the dining hall.
“Just… get it done.” Grimacing, he braced himself for what was sure to be an unpleasant experience.
Owlister explored the grass, his head bobbing and turning about. Sundance watched his companion owl in a sort of half-daze. Boredom had settled in and with boredom, grief. Unable to fly, grounded, Sundance was forced to face his loss. He desperately wanted to talk to somepony, but who? Cucumber was gone. The others did not seem keen on talking. His peasants had buried themselves into their work and his attempts to strike up a conversation had all failed miserably. Corduroy was now busy looking after Hollyhock, but Sundance wasn’t so sure he wanted to have a long talk with Corduroy. In speaking to her, he felt rather… dumb.
A bit stupid.
Nowhere to go. No way to leave. He wanted comfort food, but didn’t want to ravage the barony’s precious supplies, what few delectable treats they had. Some means of distraction was necessary, but there was none to be found. No escape. So Sundance was stuck staring at his owl while his mind sank deeper and deeper into a mire of grief.
Even worse, he foalishly wanted his mother, and maybe his father too. Talking to his father was difficult, because his father was a quiet sort that just didn’t say much. Getting him to respond to anything was difficult on the best of days, and downright impossible on the worst. Quiet though he was, his dad was a good listener—Sundance just wished that his father said a bit more.
A pegasus who could not fly was trapped.
Potato dashed over and skidded to a halt beside Sundance. She had her head held high, her ears were pricked, and she had grass stains on her legs. With the peculiar mare this close, Sundance couldn’t help but notice that she smelled like the goats—but this wasn’t a bad thing. She kept the livestock safe, along with everypony else.
“Invaders,” she said in her typical cryptic manner. “Beware of falling anchors.”
Sundance’s right eyebrow rose as slowly and majestically as his grandmother’s sun. “Invaders? Anchors? Tell me, Potato, do we have visitors coming?”
“We do,” she replied, her head bobbing up and down hard enough to make her curly mane bounce. “Gotta go. I have a sad goat. Sad goat needs Potato.”
“Hey, I need Potato too.” Startled by his own outburst, Sundance felt hot embarrassment creeping along his already burning back. “Just somepony to talk with.”
“Aw…” Potato paused as a kindly smile spread across her muzzle. Reaching out, she patted Sundance on the cheek. “Try talking to the goats. They’re great listeners, the goats.”
Then, before Sundance could say anything else, the enigmatic mare pronked off.
A familiar airship could be seen off to the west. Squinting, Sundance watched as it grew larger, and with each minute that passed, his impatience grew. Unable to fly, he was forced to wait on the ground, which was agonising. He paced along the runway and nursed his growing hatred of owlbears whilst he kept his eyes skyward.
This was taking too long.
Entire minutes had passed and the airship seemed no closer.
Was this what it was like to be an earth pony?
The thought struck him so hard that he went still. Having to wait and be patient. To hold still, to stay in one place and wait for things to happen around them. No flying off at a moment’s notice to have your way or to get something done. The earth ponies that left this place, they’d have to travel over a hundred miles in any direction to get somewhere, and in most directions, they’d still be in the middle of nowhere.
Meanwhile, he could fly to Canterlot in about an hour or two, depending on the conditions and if he was pulling a load. A pegasus could go anywhere, at any time, at the drop of a feather. It was something he had taken for granted, and now, in his grounded state, he truly appreciated his freedom—the freedom that he had been born with as a pegasus.
With nothing left to do, Sundance practiced his snorting, a skill he felt everypony should have. One had to have a good snort, or face ridicule. It had to be dramatic, expressive. One had to build up enough pressure to have a great snort (preferably booger-free) and do so without a sudden explosive release of pressure out of the wrong end—a tricky task for a pegasus. Standing on the runway, Sundance snorted away his frustrations while waiting for the airship to arrive.
The anchor hit the soft earth with a thud. Sundance eyeballed it, wary, thinking of what Potato had said a while ago, back when the airship was a speck of sand lost in a sea of sky. Magic made the anchor glow and then, in ways that were entirely unlike a gopher, the anchor sank beneath the ground and burrowed into the stony earth.
Magic was weird.
“Ahoy, Baron!” Turmeric called down. “We heard about what happened. All of Canterlot is talking about it. You’ve made the bottommost position on the leaderboard—”
“I did what?” Sundance stood agape from the unexpected news.
“Your name is on the leaderboard,” said Rustic as the airship descended. “The Observers announced that your efforts should be recognised, as to inspire others. So where’s this crystal tree I keep hearing about? Is it tacky?”
“You came—”
“Lewd!” Turmeric made a dismissive wave with his hoof. “We’ve done no such thing, not yet anyhow. Maybe after we eat.”
“Eat?” Sundance, overwhelmed, baffled, and in pain, just could not keep up with everything taking place.
“We brought food.” Rustic’s head tilted to one side and his eyes glinted fabulously in the sun. “Isn’t that what you do when somepony dies? You show up with food? I’m not good with social rituals, but this seems to be the thing that decent ponies do.”
“Food…” Sundance’s second monosyllabic utterance caused both of his guests to look at him with worried expressions.
“You don’t need to worry about a thing, Sundance.” Suddenly, Turmeric was on the ground, walking in a circle around the baffled pegasus with a somewhat snotty nose. “We’ve brought food, we’re going to serve it, and Rustic and I, we’re going to look after things today so you can rest.” Then, shaking his head from side to side, he began to cluck his tongue while his eyes lingered on Sundance’s bandages.
Turmeric moved in for a hug, but paused, doing nothing to hide his naked, unabashed concern. When it seemed as though there was nothing he could do, he fell back on the old standby of yammering away. “I brought you some stuff to read while you heal up. There’s a really fantastic graphic novel—”
“A comic book,” Rustic said, loud enough to be heard from where he still stood on the airship.
“No, a graphic novel.” Turmeric let out an annoyed hiss and cast his companion, Rustic, a scathing glance. “Really, it’s not a comic book. Much higher quality. Better paper stock. It tells quite a story. It’s called, The Pred-Dater and it is about a sub-pony’s forays into the seedy underworld of pred-culture and then he, well, he meets with—um, nope. I shouldn’t spoil it for you. Are you okay, Sundance? You seem especially vacant. Is it the pain? Did you hit your head? Did you need somepony to cuddle with you and feed you soft, creamy custard?”
From up on deck, Rustic snorted, a truly magnificent, snot-free effort.
“Where’s Hennessy?” Sundance somehow managed to ask, overcoming his overwhelmedness.
“The Sewer-Chewer is away on business. Top-secret stuff. He couldn’t tell us where he was going, but he’s not in Canterlot at the moment.” Turmeric made a worried sound in the back of his throat and crept just a little bit closer to Sundance. “I do suspect that both he and Flicker work with a number of secret agencies—I’m just not sure which ones. Sometimes, I wonder if he and Flicker are hiding the fact that aliens exist—”
“Oh, here we go,” Rustic muttered as the airship touched down.
“They exist, I tell you!”
“In movies,” was Rustic’s calm, reasonable reply.
“What about Princess Twilight Sparkle’s adventures through the looking glass?”
Rustic paused and went duck-lipped for a moment. His tailed flicked, his eyes rolled, and then he offered up a vigorous shake of his head. “I don’t believe that. A fantastical tale of unseen, unknowable, unprovable things just beyond a mirror. A society of… what is it? Simian-based lifeforms? That’s disgusting. Do you know what monkeys do? They fling feces, that’s what they do. There’s no way in Tartarus they could be a reasonable, intelligent society. Why, the very idea of cultured monkeys, reading and drinking tea… preposterous!”
“Well,” Turmeric began, “when you put it that way, it does seem a little far fetched.”