//------------------------------// // Chapter the Thirteenth // Story: Redemption // by PourMeADrink //------------------------------// There was nothing, not even darkness.  No light, no sound, no sensation, no feeling of the passage of time.  Just…nothing at all. Slowly, infinitesimally, there came about a presence, the nascent beginnings of awareness, and that awareness, in its glacially ponderous course, noticed, just barely, that there was nothing, that there was void, nonexistence, that there was a complete lack.   It was all very odd. In a span of time that was both instantaneous and an eternity, the awareness observed the nothingness, pondering over it, and eventually formed a conclusion; there shouldn’t be a lack.  There should be something, anything.  The fact that there wasn’t was very confusing.  And in that moment, the awareness unknowingly created something, a feeling, which exploded outward and rapidly began to fill out the void at what was both the speed of light, and the speed of lack.  Touching off other feelings, setting chains of memories and their associated emotions ablaze, coalescing into something larger. And suddenly there was a lot. * * * Luna blinks her eyes slowly open, her muzzle damp and chilled beneath her teal orbs.  Her vision gradually clears, and she sits very still, feeling incredibly heavy and strangely… off.  Her eyes are dry, grainy and full of grit, her mind slowly turning over, trying to gain traction and failing.  After long minutes, the gears mesh and slowly, slowly begin to turn, and she starts receiving the telemetry that her senses have been sending her. The first thing she notices are the sounds, and as they wash over her she picks out a number of them, her ears twitching and flicking slowly.  Most of them sound like water; drips and drops and splashes, and as she brings her growing focus to bear, she can just make out what sounds faintly like a decent sized stream, quietly echoing somewhere. This begins to match up with the information she’s been getting from her nose; the mineral scent of wet rocks, the heavy smell of damp earth, the mossy, moist smell of green things growing, and the clean scent of water.  The air is humid, with a chill to it. She blinks again, and her eyes finally begin to focus. Directly across from her is a vertical surface, all irregular protrusions and oddly patterned striations. Mostly rock, with some lichens thrown in.   It gleams wetly in spots, the dampness throwing back shimmering pinpricks from a brilliant shaft of sunlight that falls from the ceiling a short distance to her left.  The ground is soft, almost spongy, and a slow glance down reveals that the floor of the space is covered with patches of moss in varying shades of brown and green, growing out of the dark loam.  They have a sweet, wet-scratchy smell that tickles her nostrils. She turns her head incrementally, her neck cracking and creaking with alarming loudness.  Her sister rests beside her, head down and eyes screwed tightly closed. Luna gazes at her, brow beginning to furrow.  Her sister looks wrong, somehow. The back half of her has a dull, unfinished look, and after frowning vaguely for several heartbeats, she realizes that her sister is still stone from about the wings back.  Alarm begins to grow in Luna’s befuddled mind, but before she can become too concerned, she sees that the grey, polished looking stone is receding, fading backwards like a time lapse of melting frost. It marches slowly yet steadily towards Tia’s tail at a stately pace.  She looks on in muddled fascination, watching as individual hairs spring up in a slow moving wave across her sister’s alabaster back and up along the curve of her rump. The process takes only a minute or two, the smooth, marble-like coloration retreating until it reaches the tip of Celestia’s pink tail, and simply fades away.  Her sister breathes deeply, holds it for a long, long moment, and then exhales loudly. Her ears twitch, but she does not stir. Sleeping, most likely. “That just happened to me...” She thinks sluggishly, realizing that the odd, heavy feeling she woke up with has left her at some point. Luna blinks slowly, watching her sister sleep.  She’s aware that something isn’t right, that something’s missing, but it’s so difficult to think.  Everything is foggy and disconnected, just a series of impressions and vague feelings with no meaning.  There’s no context for why the sound of water is out of place, or how the look and smell and feel of this... wherever they are, the feel of time passing and great age, seems wrong.   The vague notion that there’s something missing is worrying, but she doesn’t know why.  She blinks, then blinks again, more slowly. Each time her eyes take longer to open. Distantly, deep down inside, she knows that something bad has happened.  Something so unimaginably big and awful that she can’t even see the shape of it, can’t even begin to process it. If she could just get her brain to start working right… She blinks a third time, then a fourth, and this time her eyes do not open again.  Her breathing deepens, and her head slowly sinks down until her chin rests against her breast.  Her sister snorts from beside her, and Luna answers back with a low, nasally snore. * * * “Daddy!” Celestia awakens with a start, eyes wide and uncomprehending.   Where the hell was she? From her left her sister surges to her hooves, wings starting to flare, teal eyes wide with panic.  “Dad!”  She yells, her voice echoing strangely from their surroundings, her gaze sweeping back and forth erratically.  “Dad where are you?” “Luna…what’s going on?”  Celestia tries for a calming tone, but her voice comes out cracked and harsh and barely audible.  Her mouth is dry, her throat feels like it’s been lined with dirty stones. Next to her Luna spins this way and that, hooves throwing up little clods of wet earth, her expression frantic, and Celestia knows that she’s just moments away from complete panic, from bolting.   Giving her head a firm shake, trying her hardest to dispel the cobwebs, she stands shakily, her joints popping and cracking.  She tries taking a step forward, gritting her teeth at how stiff she feels. “…Luna…” “I can’t find Dad!”  Her sister shouts, trotting this way and that with short, quick steps, eyes darting.  “Daddy!” She yells, nostrils flaring and breathe hitching. Celestia takes another step forward, trying vainly to work some moisture back into her mouth.  She has to calm her sister. She’s not sure where they are, and if one or both of them lose it and gallop off blindly there’s no telling what may happen.  She works her tongue back and forth, grimacing at the stale taste. “Luna, stop.” She manages, her voice husky. She clears her throat and tries again. “Luna, stop, calm down...”   “I can’t find…we need to find…” Luna begins swaying, dizzy and hyperventilating, and Celestia takes advantage of her momentary lapse to push her sister’s rump down with a quick flash of magic, leaving her in a sitting position. “Just…just calm down, OK?”  Celestia walks shakily over, sitting down against Luna with a relieved sigh.  Her gaze travels around the cave, looking for anything familiar. They need to figure out where they are, and what they’re doing here.  Her memory is a foggy blur, all grey indistinct shapes merging and separating into meaningless patterns. Beside her, Luna’s breathing finally begins to slow, her hitching, frantic breathing sputtering into a series of weak coughs, before changing to a more controlled, if still distressed pacing.  She looks over at Celestia, her expression frightened. “Tia, I can’t remember where we are.” Celestia nods, her face mirroring her sisters.  “Neither can I. I… remember that there’s a reason we’re here, where ever ‘here’ is.”  She pauses, muzzle scrunching in a frown.  “At least I think there is, I just don’t remember why.”  Luna nods in turn, her gaze traveling over their surroundings.   The cave was familiar, yet alien.  That was the most disturbing part. They both felt like they should recognize this cavern, should know it, but they didn’t.  It was almost like waking up in the morning, only to find that someone else had completely remodeled your house while you were sleeping.  You might recognize the overall size and shape, you might even see pieces of your old home peeking through, but it would be fundamentally different than the house you had fallen asleep in. Feeling uneasy, Celestia focuses on her sister, taking a decent look now that things have calmed down a bit.  “Why were you freaking out like that?” Luna turns to look at her sister.  “I…I don’t really know…” She admits, cheeks heating.  “I just woke up with this…” she shuffles her wings, eyes moving to study the floor.  “…this feeling, like something horrible had happened to…” She looks up, her eyes widening.  “Tia…where’s Dad?” Muzzle wrinkling again, Celestia returns a slightly perplexed look.  “What do you mean? Dad’s back… home…” and with sudden, brutal clarity, the fuzzy grey outlines shrouding her thoughts vanish from existence, flooding her mind with images. The news broadcast, the warning tones from the television.  The frantic packing, the madcap flight from the house to the shelter.  smoke and people on the road, and a flash, oh God, oh lord, a flash so bright, even from so far away, even with her eyes screwed closed as tight as she could make them.  Her and her sister tumbling around in the camper, Dad shouting, crying out as the truck swerved… She looks to her sister with a horrified, hopeless expression, and can see the same thoughts settling into place in Luna’s head, can chart their course by the way her expression falls, by the glint of tears that appear in her eyes.   Luna meets her hollow look, tears beginning to fall.  “No. No, it didn’t happen, no, don’t…” She looks just like Celestia feels, like the bottom just dropped out of her world, and nothing would ever be safe, or secure again, forever.  She feels empty and cold, all the vast, frigid nothingness of deep space compressed within her rib cage. Luna trembles, then doubles and becomes blurry, and Celestia blinks away tears she hasn’t noticed are streaming down her own face, dripping and wetting her muzzle. Luna looks to her for confirmation,  and when Celestia slowly nods her whole body sags brokenly, as if she were held together by a series of bolts that had all been loosened a half turn.  She doesn’t scream, she doesn’t cry out, she doesn’t weep loudly, she just lays down awkwardly, and tucks her head between her forelegs. “No.  No. No no no no…”  Her sister mumbles in a strained tone, voice cracking.  “Nope, it’s not true, it’s not true, no no no...” With a hitching half-sob, half-gasp, Celestia collapses in slow motion next to her sister, laying stiffly down beside her on the sweetly scented loam and taking her into an embrace.  After a time Luna shifts, returning it, and the two sisters lay in the dimness of that dank smelling cave, shivering and breathing raggedly as a pain and loss so large and so great it doesn’t seem real, doesn’t seem as if it can be real, rolls over them. Time passes, and their world contracts down into a small bundle of sensations; the warmth of each other, the rustle of feathers as one of them shifts, the intake and expulsion of breath, the occasional ragged sob, and above all, a feeling of being adrift, anchorless and rudderless and completely alone.  Eventually they both fall asleep in an intertwined pile of wings and legs and necks. * * * This time, Celestia awakens first.  Blinking her eyes open, she moves her head painfully, her neck stiff and sore.  Her and Luna are still laying together, but had mostly tucked themselves away, their wings the only parts still draped one across the other.  Moving slowly, due both to overall stiffness and a desire not to disturb her sister, Celestia carefully makes it to her feet, taking a moment to stretch each leg and wing, and finally twisting her neck until the gross cracking stops.  Giving her head a little shake to clear the strands of her mane that have fallen across her eyes, she looks around. She gazes at the cavern walls, then up across the ceiling.  It’s hard to believe that this is the same cavern cum shelter that they had gone to sleep in.  The change is remarkable. The smooth expanses of concrete are gone, subsumed by an irregular, craggy surface that she guesses is made up of dirt, dust and mineral buildup.  The sound and smell of water is everywhere, which would explain part of it. She wonders if this place gets a lot of runoff, or possibly floods during stormy weather. Her eyes linger on the crooked opening in the ceiling above and in front of her.  Wan sunlight streams through, casting an almost orange hued illumination. She assumes she’s looking at the remnants of one of the metal sheathed ventilation shafts. She studies the light falling through it. It could be morning or evening right now. Morning she thinks, and doesn’t question her surety.   The overall shape of the stall is still there, the doorway that once was an empty rectangle in the concrete now a fuzzy but mostly still recognizable hole leading out into the cavern proper.  She glances back, and her eyes pick over the strange shape of the ground mosses. They grow in erratic, uneven mats and lumps, except for two spots near the back. There, the growth curves in regular lines around empty ground.  In some areas, it grows up into smooth backed humps that start out on the ground and seem to weirdly stop a few inches in midair, like they were growing against the glass side of an aquarium.  She studies it for a moment before she realizes that those are the two spots she and her sister occupied, and the shapes that she’s seeing are where the moss grew around, and in some cases, started to grow up over the top of, their sleeping forms.  She imagines a stone statue of herself slowly consumed by creeping growths until just one eye remains uncovered, and shivers involuntarily. Glancing down, she sees her sister is still sleeping peacefully, her chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm.  Dad always said that Luna cold sleep like the dead when she wanted to, and he liked to joke that…no, no not yet.  Her mind shies away from the memory, her entire body tensing up.  She’s not ready to face the loss of her father and her home, not right now.   Feeling suddenly exhausted, she sighs tiredly, giving her head a shake and turning towards the mostly still rectangular opening in the wall.  She steps out into the main chamber of the cavern. Three more shafts of early morning light stream down from the ceiling to splash across the cavern floor.  Their spacing is regular, and they form a straight line. Together they’re enough to bring the cave from pitch black to a hazy sort of grey illumination.  The sound of the stream is louder out here, and the floor beneath her hooves is rocky and uneven, a mixture of what looks like sand, gravel and dirt.  She picks at it with a hoof and finds little bits and chunks of concrete that crumble at her touch. To her right a crooked spur runs off for maybe three feet, ending in a jumble of fallen rock.  To her left the main chamber opens up into a roughly elongated space, short, stubby stalagmites and stalactites grow in little, random bunches.  Glancing behind her, the stall area blends in almost seamlessly with the natural rock it’s carved out of. Next to it is a rounded opening, what she remembers was supposed to lead back to the living quarters.  The sound of rushing water echo’s out from the darkness within it. The other half of the main chamber is gone, blocked by a slanted, jagged mound of broken rock and dirt.  It must have caved in long ago. The entryway looks clear enough, and she wanders down it, around the little dogleg in the tunnel and finally to its end.  It’s much dimmer here, and she focuses on the tip of her horn, squinting when harsh white light suddenly erupts from above her head. She frowns up at it for a moment, eyes going a little crossed.  It’s not normally that bright when she does this spell. The outline of the main door is still visible, although it looks like the surrounding rock has started to grow over it.  The metal looks brown and dirty, little streaks of rust marking meandering lines and irregular patches down its pitted surface.  It takes her a moment of looking, but she finally makes out a sagging, brown-red bulge that must be the remains of the crank wheel.  Gingerly, she places a hoof against the door and presses. Flakes of brown fall away, revealing more brown and rust beneath. Pulling back she knocks on it, the sound dull, not the clear ring of struck metal.   She focuses again, eyes narrowing as she takes in the overall shape of the door, tracing its features and variations with her eyes.  Experimentally she flexes with her mind, and imagines pushing, budging, shoving the thick steel portal.  With her mind’s eye she can almost see little flows and eddies of amber hued energy coursing over the thing, running like little rivers along the cracks and folds, pooling in the dents and pits, pulsing with her will. To her immense surprise, the door begins to shiver, raining down dirt and small rocks and brown flakes and clouds of choking dust, sagging outward, hanging for a moment, and then falling with a loud crack and a thump she can feel in her hooves, cracks spider webbing across its surface.  Sunlight floods the opening, momentarily blinding her and causing the golden nimbus enveloping her horn to wink out. Coughing, she blinks her eyes open slowly, vision gradually adjusting.  It hadn’t seemed that dark in the cave, but the bright, new light falling through the opening makes it seem comparatively Stygian.  Ruffling her wings, she takes a cautious step forward, still blinking owlishly. Outside is quite literally another world. Gone is the desert and sage and scrub brush, gone also is the frame of the new house, and the mounds of construction supplies covered in flapping, tattered plastic.  No sign remains of the former work site, or the road that led to it. A green, lush looking meadow spreads before her, sloping ever so slightly downwards as it runs headlong into a line of encircling woods.  The trees look like a lot of pine, white ash, and maybe some sort of oak, but there seem to be others that don’t look like anything she’s seen before. She glances back, towards the meandering little draw that runs backwards past the entrance to the shelter and up into the rugged hills.  Reddish mayberry and what sort of looks like mountain laurel fill out the space, and off to her left a small stream winds languidly past, burbling and splashing on its way along a sandy bed, to  empty out into the meadow before her. She can hear birds singing and chattering, and from above her, the clatter of something small scurrying along the rock face. Overriding all of this, almost blocking out her five senses completely, is something else.  The magic, the presence of energy. Before, it had felt like the sun was beaming down on her, just out of sight over her shoulder.  That’s how it had always felt. Now though… Now it felt like she was in the sun, and she halfway wonders that she isn’t burnt to a crisp yet.  The magic was absolutely everywhere, coursing around and through her.  She could feel it flowing into and out of every inch of the ground, every blade of grass and fluttering leaf.  She could feel it moving through the air in currents, ebbing and flowing and swirling with the breeze. It was in the small insects flittering nearby, intertwined with the bird song lilting from the trees, it was in every single breath that entered and left her body.  It permeated her every follicle, fiber and cell. She stands rigidly, stunned and in something akin to shock, breath quickening, sides beginning to heave.  It’s too much too much too much.  She can’t take it all in.  She retreats backwards into the cave on shaky legs, stomach doing slow, nauseating loops, until she backs up around the jog in the tunnel.   She breathes deeply, trying to slow her heartbeat, which feels like it’s about to hammer a hole straight through her rib cage.  Gradually, she begins to calm, her stomach deciding, finally, to pick a location in her guts and stay there. She can still see the light from the entrance, brightening and reflecting off the rock wall, but it's better back here, she feels safer, more…grounded.   Outside, with the light and the greenery and the magic flooding her senses, she had felt fluttery, panicky, like she might dissolve into a mist of particles and pink hair and blow away in the breeze.  Back here, in the dim steadiness of the cave, she feels better, more solid. She can still feel the pulse of energy, the overwhelming, throbbing presence of magic, but it feels lessened, attenuated almost, as if the rock and soil enclosing her block it out a bit. With a final, shuddery sigh, she turns her back on the entrance and begins picking her way carefully across the rock and debris strewn main chamber, exhaustion dropping over her like a weight. * * * “How long, do you think?” The fire crackles, flames dancing and writhing, sending flickering, mercurial shadows scampering and chasing each other along the rock walls of the stall.  Celestia watches it, her eyes dull and a little haunted. She’d chanced another trip to the entrance, snagging deadwood and loose tinder with her magic, dragging it back into the welcoming, safe interior of the shelter. Poking at the fire with a branch, Luna stirs the coals around the bottom for a moment, before tossing the stick to the hungry flames.  She glances over at her older sister, taking in her expression, and then nudges her with a wing. “Huh?  What?” Celestia startles, finally looking over at Luna. “How long do you think it’s been?”  She repeats, levitating a package of dried fruit over from the pair of open saddlebags next to her.  The bags had remained largely ignored for the first day or two, but driven by thirst and hunger they finally had begun to go through them.  So far there seemed to be enough general supplies to last them for at least a week, maybe longer if they stretch it. Although in all honesty they had really only opened up one bin of Luna’s camping pannier, which had been packed full of dried fruit.  Neither one of them had searched further yet, or even begun thinking of doing an actual inventory. Neither had they ventured outside of the ruins of the shelter since Celestia’s foray that first, awful day.  They hadn’t so much as ventured outside of their little sheltering stall since then either, aside from bathroom considerations, and a single trip twenty feet down the other passageway to get water from what turned out to be a pretty respectable and fast moving underground stream, cold and clean. Celestia frowns, mind working over what she’d seen, both inside and out.  “I don’t know.” She says, voice both uncertain and expectant, meeting Luna’s eyes once more.  Seeing Luna’s expression, she snorts. “You haven’t been outside yet, Luna. Things have changed more than you can imagine.” Luna continues to eye her skeptically, absently chewing on a mouth full of dehydrated raisins and apples.  “So it’s a little greener outside. So what?” She pauses to swallow, then continues. “Maybe we just had a really good, wet winter.” Celestia rolls her eyes, snorting again in frustration.  This had become Luna’s tactic over the last two days, after her initial freak out; absolute denial.  “Luna, it hasn’t just been one winter.” Luna huffs in derision, and Celestia locks eyes with her sister.  “It. Is. Not. The. Same.” She enunciates each word, trying to drive them through her sister’s stubbornness.  “It hasn’t been one winter, or two, or six, or sixty.” Luna looks away, sighing in exasperation. Celestia leans over, capturing Luna’s eyes with her own again and holding them.  “I’m pretty sure that it hasn’t even been a century or two.” She watches hot denial spring to her sisters lips, can tell she wants to look away again, to focus on something other than the facts before her, but the intensity in Celestia’s gaze holds her quiet.  “The way things have changed, the way everything is different…Luna, it’s been hundreds of years. Hundreds.”  Luna’s face begins to fall, her eyes taking on a wet shine.  Finally Celestia breaks eye contact, looking off into the shadowed corners of the stall.  “Maybe even longer.” Luna’s jaw begins to tremble, before firming.  Blinking away her tears, she studies the reflected firelight as it dances along the mostly rough walls of their little shelter.  “No.” she states, voice rough and more than a little uneven. “You’re wrong, sister.” Her tone is overly forceful, full of flat rejection. Blowing a frustrated breath out through her nostrils, Celestia resumes her study of the fire.  There were a few reasons neither one of them had made any effort to peek outside, but there was really only one for her sister.  Celestia knew about the stages of grief, in the way you know about things that you hear mentioned on television, but never really look into yourself.  She knows there’s at least five of them, and that the first and last are denial and acceptance, respectively. She’s pretty sure anger and depression are in-between somewhere, too.   She herself feels like she runs the gamut, seemingly experiencing all of the stages at once.  The last few days have left her feeling depressed, angry, guilty, pretty much everything shy of acceptance.  Her sister though…Luna seemed to be stuck firmly in denial, seemed to be clinging to it with a desperation that was beginning to worry Celestia.  She knows that these things take time, that you need days or weeks or longer to ‘process’, as her father put it…had put it.  They were working on their fifth day, camping out in the little cavern, shut away from everything, and Luna’s derisive comments, her absolute rejection and refusal to entertain the reality they now found themselves in, was beginning to chaff. If she had kept to herself, Celestia is pretty sure she could have dealt with it, but Luna kept asking questions she didn’t really want the answers to.  Kept making Celestia go over it again and again, seizing on the smallest detail or triviality, trying with a sort of hopeless determination to invalidate Celestia’s accounting.  And when she couldn’t do that? Flat out, complete rejection, total dismissal, such as right now. She looks over at her younger sister, eyes studying the set of her wings, the way the firelight plays along the arch of her neck, reading the denial, the fear, the standoffishness bordering on hostility displayed by her body language. She wonders which stage of grief involves wanting to strangle your kid sister.  Was that still stage two, or did it represent a completely different stage?  She muses on it almost idly, mind beginning to dream up a scenario in which her hoof smacks that look of smug, disdainful disbelief right off of her sisters face, replacing it with an almost delicious expression of shocked surprise, forcing her to face this thing.   She can perfectly see the change as it comes over Luna’s expression, occurring in slow motion. Can imagine pinning her younger sister against the cavern wall and yelling at her, forcing her words into Luna’s brain, making her understand, making her move along in her grief and accept this horrible, awful world they now inhabited.  As she fantasizes, it occurs to her that moving along through the different stages also represented growing stages of acceptance, of letting go.  She wonders, again, which stage she herself is at. Nearer the end of the spectrum? Is she almost done with her grief? A strangled sob escapes her at the thought, causing the darker colored sister in question to drop her facade of skeptical disinterest for a more genuine look of concern.  Celestia's head lowers, her wings tightening around her barrel.  She’s not ready to accept it, not ready to let him go.  Right now letting go feels too much like forgetting him, and she can’t bring herself to do that.   Taking in a shaky breath, she curls in on herself, loss and pain and pure misery washing over her, threatening to drown her beneath heavy waves of icy water.  She sobs brokenly, all vestiges of self-control gone. Curled in on herself, she cries, not as an adult, not as an individual completely in control of her own destiny for the first time in her life, but as a child; frightened, cold, and alone in the dark. Gently, almost tentatively, she feels her sister lay beside her, pulling her out of the tight little ball she’s in and embracing her, wrapping her up in wings and legs.  Luna holds her older sister, squeezing her as tight as she can. She stays silent, laying her neck across Celestia’s shoulders, holding tight while she shivers. Celestia shuffles her wings a bit, moaning horribly, and Luna wraps her own around her.  Celestia exhales, and Luna inhales, concern growing in her breast at this sudden change. Their entire lives Celestia has been the stalwart one, the strong older sister.  She’d been the one to comfort, to sooth, to reassure, unconsciously emulating the example set by their father.   Now however, she’s wounded in a way Luna never thought she could be, broken, and her careful attempts at composure, maintained Luna now realizes for both of their benefit, have shattered.  Luna holds her sister as she releases her pain and loss completely. Sobbing, howling, Celestia finally returns the embrace with an almost panicked fastness, as if she’s afraid that Luna will disappear, too, leaving her all alone in this frightening, empty new world. Luna tries to be soothing, in her own way emulating the example set by her older sister, but Celestia’s breakdown unnerves her.  For days she has clung, first firmly, then desperately, to the notion that things hadn’t changed, could not have changed.   How could they have?  In her mind’s eye they had all been together, happy and warm and familiar, just a few days ago.  Hell, they hadn’t even finished catching up on the new season of Circle of Fire yet. And she hadn’t had a chance to try that new fire sub from Mike and Miguel’s, and she had some sheets in the washer that really needed to come out already, and dad...  Things couldn’t have changed, it was too unreal to be real. She needs things to be the way that they were, and always have been.   Only, holding her sister, feeling the grief and loss and pure emotion coming off of her in almost physical waves, she knows that Celestia is right.  Things have changed, forever, and no matter how she denies it, or how far into the sand she shoves her head, her life will remain as it is now.  There is no going back to what was. She’s always known, deep down in the secret places we all hold to, where we keep the truths we don’t know how to face.  From that moment she first awoke in a panic. Had the shelter not changed one hair she still would have known. She could feel it, could taste the difference in the air, feel the pulse and ebb of magic in a way that she never has before, even muted as it was in here.  Hundreds of years, at the very least. She just hadn’t been willing to face it. It was like going to sleep in your warm, comforting and familiar bed, and waking up suddenly on a mountain top in the dark, caught up in a frigid wind, uncertain of your footing or what lies below you in the blackness.  The loss of home, family, the loss of love and light and warmth. Of security and certainty, of familiarity. It wasn’t just jarring, or unsettling, or alarming. It was unbelievably terrifying, completely unnerving in a way she’d never known before.  She hadn’t been ready to face that, hadn’t been willing to.   Tia shutters again, her weeping carrying such an awful note to it that Luna begins to worry in earnest about her older sibling.  She adjusts herself, tightening her wings around her sister as best she can, gazing down at her hitching, alabaster back. Tia was normally the one who did the soothing, and if she didn’t or couldn’t she at least tried to maintain a steadiness.  Even crying she still exuded a kind of calm in-control-ness that always reminded Luna of their father. Seeing her like this, broken and vulnerable and so lost sounding, makes it more real than any description of the outside world can, more real than her own feelings and perceptions.  Luna’s mind tries to keep it together, tries to hold onto the fiction that nothing has really changed for them. It’s her hind brains last ditch effort to stave off what she knows to be true, what her heart is telling her is true. Luna sobs once, wretchedly, the wall of denial she’d been building crumbling, and suddenly she’s returning Celestia’s frantic, panicked clutching, tucking her head partially beneath one gleaming white wing.  Celestia shifts, wrapping her wings around her younger sibling, heart hurting at Luna’s pain, heart hurting with her own. Luna shudders against her side, and Celestia tightens her grip. For the second time in five days, the two sisters hold each other, crying and sobbing, a final acceptance of what has happened, of what they have lost settling over them.  Long into the night they lay, intertwined, both offering and accepting the comfort of each other, until the fire has reduced itself to glowing coals. It won’t be the last time they lay this way.  Over the coming weeks and months this scene will repeat itself over and over again; in this cavern, in different caverns, in sun dappled forests and around campfires on endless plains of grass, beneath alien yet beautiful star strewn nights.  Loss is like that, you find yourself stumbling over it unexpectedly, like something you forgot to put away before you turn off the lights and head to bed. Unlike that first cold night, however, this grieving carries with it an acceptance of what they must face.  The loss, while fresh and painful, is understood. The hurt will never fade away, not completely, but every embrace, every offer of comfort and acceptance of same, will blunt its edge, will dull it.  They had finally, as their father would put it, began to process. * * * The morning of the sixth day dawned with a lot of stretching – they had slept together, all in a pile – followed by breakfast and a full and complete inventory of their bags.  These weren’t just the saddlebags their father had bought for them for everyday use, with side pouches and another pocket over the rump. There were also the large canvas panniers they used for camping.  This was fortunate, as they were designed for maximum storage space. It was a further bit of good fortune that they had mostly been packed already, after their previous camping trip had been abruptly ended by inclement weather.  Aside from the packages of dried fruits and nuts, there were an assortment of snacks, and one whole pannier full of the new MSL’s - Meal, Survival Long-term. It was a spiritual successor to the MRE, and boasted twice the calories per meal at half the weight and size.  At least according to the commercials. They had planned to try out the new rations on their last trip. The second pannier, so far, appeared to have a lot of the hardware they’d need; first aid stuff, matches and lighters, flint and steel, rope, various pocket knives and folding saws.  Compass, a sealed plastic package containing two extra rain ponchos, tarps, collapsible canteens, as well as two full sets of winter clothes each. They hadn’t finished unloading everything in the second set yet, but they were working on it.  After that they still had their individual saddle bags. Carrying everything was going to present something of a challenge, but Luna had said she had a few ideas that might work.    And that was the thing.  They were working together, and working towards something more than just making it through another day.  They hadn’t come to terms with the events that had happened, hadn't begun to work their way through it all, but they had taken their first shaky steps on a path that would lead them there, eventually.  Going through the saddle bags helped. They also planned on taking a little trek outside, to range around the meadow and see what there was to see. By mutual agreement, tonight was going to be their last night in the enclosed stall area.  They had discussed it, and decided that it was time to move out into the cavern proper. It gave them more room, and the ventilation had to be better to boot.   The hole in the ceiling where they were now tried, but just couldn’t provide enough airflow, and as a result the smoke from their pretty much constant fire tended to linger, usually settling lower to the ground as it cooled.  They had both awoken coughing and sputtering, with the taste of ashes on their tongues. They had further tentatively decided that, going forward, they would stay only another week in the defunct shelter.  They would use the time to scout a bit, and to get themselves and their supplies ready. It was, all told, a productive day.   As the evening rolled around, Luna busied herself with the fire, humming quietly as she levitated two metal cups of water over the flames, trying to heat them.  She had found an old zip lock of tea bags mixed in with the salt and pepper and other condiments, and had decided they could both benefit from a nice cup. Celestia reclined off to the side, counting and organizing their food items.  A small, battered notepad and pen floated beside her, encased in amber colored light.  Once used to keep score for Scrabble and the like, she now used it to keep a detailed inventory. “How’s it looking, sister?”  Luna asks, eyes focused on the rims of the two cups, waiting for the first telltale wisps of steam to rise lazily from the stubborn things.  She hated boiling water this way, it took forever.  She supposed she could try a spell to do the job, maybe divert some of the heat energy from the fire into the metal of the camping cups, but it could be dangerous, and she’s tired.   Besides, a cramped room was not the place to experiment with that sort of magic.  That’s what Dad would have said, anyhow. The cups begin to sink slowly, and she shakes her head with a sigh, working through the complex welter of emotions in her breast.  After a few seconds, the cups rise again to bob gently just above the lick of the flames, Luna losing sight of them as she swipes at her eyes with a foreleg. “Hmm?  Oh, it’s looking good, Luna.”  Celestia answers absently, touching her pen to each package as she counts them.  With a final check, she writes the total down next to the word ‘Assorted Nuts’, and sets both pen and notepad down.  Stretching her neck out, she yawns, jaws cracking unpleasantly. “We should have enough to keep us for about six weeks.  Longer, if those MSL’s work as advertised. We should also be able to forage something out there to extend our supplies.” Her gaze wanders towards the fire, and the pair of cups floating above it, stopping with amusement as she takes in the building impatience on her sister’s face.  She’s never been a patient one, her sister. With a little smile her eyes move on, looking over the enclosing walls of their little shelter. It was hard to believe that this had all been reinforced concrete not even two weeks ago.  Two weeks for her, anyway. God alone knew how long it had actually been. Eventually, her gaze settles on the two, oddly shaped bare patches on the other side of the fire.  The two curved swatches from when they had...slept. Mosses and lichens grow right up to where they had been laying, in some cases humping up, as if pressing against an invisible surface.  She shivers involuntarily. She knows, in her mind at least, that the plants couldn’t have actually grown into them, not like they did with the regular rock.  The thought still makes her uneasy though. Slowly creeping mats of greenery, steadily overgrowing their forms.  Like being eaten alive while you slept. Theoretically she knew they would have been fine had that actually happened.  While they were turned they weren’t indestructible, not by any means, but they were a hell of a lot more resilient.  It doesn’t keep away vivid images of one rose colored eye opening in a blanket of green though, nor the nauseating feeling that accompanies it. Shuddering, eyeing one of the humped growths of brown and green, her muzzle twisted up in distaste, she notices something.  The swell of growth rises from the ground, likely where it had started to grow over a knee or other joint. When they had awoken, the body part the moss had been growing over had been removed, but the rounded shape still partially remained.  It left an odd form, like a mossy pocket that was starting to collapse. It’s this pocket-like opening that she’s studying, in all honesty trying to decide if it was formed by a knee, a sweep of tail, of possibly something else. But within the recesses of the mottled brown and green blanket, just faintly, she can see a shape, the firelight mutely highlighting…something. Walking over, two extremely hot, soot blackened cups trailing the fragrant smell of steeping tea, Luna settles carefully beside her, floating one cup over to rest on the sandy earth.  She looks from the cup to her sister, before following her Celestia’s line of sight over towards the far side of the room. “What are you looking at?” “…Not sure.”  Celestia gets creakily to her feet, stretching her legs a moment before making her way around the fire.  Approaching the twin spots of bare ground, she leans over, eyes searching curiously. “Luna?” She calls over her shoulder. “What?” “Did you ever notice this before?” There is a shuffling sound of movement, and then Luna steps next to her, tea still floating casually next to her horn.  “Notice what?” With a small flare of her own horn, a softball sized ball of blue-white light springs into existence in from of Celestia, causing her sister to hiss and squint her eyes.  Before Luna can do more than sputter, however, the ball has drifted down, illuminating the object beneath the lichen mat, causing Luna to gasp. Her own eyes widen, and she glances up, meeting Luna’s surprised expression.  Without a word, she reaches in gingerly with her magic, peeling back the fragile mat of plant growth and carefully extracts the thing. It’s a lump, flat on the bottom, roughly oblong in an odd, square-ish way on the top.  It looks like it’s layered in a powdery, flaking grey. Bits of a crinkled silver grey, tarnished and dull, peek out from beneath in places.  The white lines embedded in the powdered grey make her think of duct tape, and the crinkled bits look like aluminum foil. She glances again to her sister, who returns only a wide eyed look in answer. Slowly they both walk back to their spots by the fire, settling again.  Celestia places the weird thing in front of them, where Luna promptly prods it with a hoof.  The grey powdery stuff falls away, and jagged looking tears appear in the crinkly parts. Celestia swats her with a wing. “Be careful.” She chastises at Luna’s sour expression.  “Use your magic, Luna.” Face heating a bit, Luna nods, and her horn begins to glow with azure light.  Slowly, carefully, she begins to peel what they can now see is a number of outer layers away from the object.  The duct tape is long gone, and the foil comes apart in brittle pieces. Eventually they’re left with a yellowed, squishy looking lump.   Studying it for several moments, Luna spies a familiar looking bulge at one of the rounded corners.  “Tia!” She exclaims, leaning closer to the thing. “I think it’s a vac-bag!” Looking it over, Celestia nods in agreement.  Gently, she prods at what used to be the little valve on the bottom corner that was supposed to allow you to remove all air within, watching without surprise when it tears and crumbles away in a shower of degraded polymers.  With surgical precision she opens the bag, and then the bag within it, and again the one inside that. Each bag had been wrapped in foil, then duct tape, and then placed inside the next. Each layer is in slightly better shape than the one that came before it, and by the end of the operation they are left with a modest pile of shredded, worn out plastic, stained and crumbling tinfoil, a scattered mound of powdered duct tape, and finally, a yellowed piece of paper, folded into thirds. Gently, ever so gently even with the ethereal grasp of her magic, Luna lifts the paper, unfolding it with great care.  Sweat beads and rolls from her brow, and with a glance she can see a similar sheen of effort upon her sister’s face. Celestia materializes another sphere of light, bringing it close, and the two lean forward to read the faded writing. Dear G Celestia Marie and Luna Maybelle Celestia, Luna, Girls, By the time you read this, well, you’ll know what has happened.  And if things go to plan, it should have all happened a long time ago.  I don’t know what you’ll wake up to, or what sort of world it’ll be. All I know is that you’ll have a chance, and that’s the most important part. The only important part. I’m so sorry that I had to leave you.  I’m sorry that it had to be this way. You two are the best part of me, and the best thing to ever happen to me.  When I found the two of you that morning in the canyon, I was broken, looking for a way out. And the two of you gave me one, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.  You took a wretch and made him a man again. You found the empty places inside me, the ones I thought could never be filled, and then you went ahead and filled them up anyway, you made me whole.   Celestia, Luna, you girls are my everything, and always will be.  Never forget that, no matter what happens, no matter what you see or do or have to go through.   I want you two to watch out for each other.  Remember to love each other, and cherish each other.  You’re family, and even when family doesn’t agree or get along, you will always be family.  Be careful in this new world, very very careful.  Be wary of who you put your trust in, but make sure that you do trust, and remember, family isn’t just the people you’re related to. And always remember, I love you both, now and forever. -Dad -P.S. I almost didn’t pack this, but check in Luna’s camp bags.  Outer pocket, left hand side, buried in with all the dried fruit.  It was your grandfather’s favorite, and it’s the very last that will ever exist, so make sure you enjoy it for all of us. Eye’s shining wetly, the two sister’s gaze at the message for a long time, neither speaking.  Eventually Luna rises, turning to where her pannier leans against the near wall, and begins to dig.  After a few moments, she laughs loudly, startling her sister and breaking her away from the letter. “What is it?” Chuckling, Luna settles back down next to Celestia, something bobbing in her indigo grasp.  “I can’t believe we both missed this.” “What is it Luna?” With a smile that is both mischievous and sad at the same time, Lune brings the object fully into the light of the fire.  Celestia looks from it to the letter and back again, surprise painting her features, and then she too breaks into a sad grin.  Floating there is a small silver flask, battered and tarnished, its front stamped with the intertwined letters WR, the old brand of the Williams Ranch.  It was their fathers, a family heirloom passed down to him by his father, who had received it from his father. Unscrewing the lid, they both sniff appreciably of the rich, woody aroma of what could only have come from their father’s prize bottle of GlenFiddich.  The 50 year old single malt scotch was almost an heirloom itself, passing through the same hands as the flask. It was normally stored in a special cupboard, and only brought out on very rare occasions.  Celestia can actually count the number of times she’s seen her father uncork the bottle and carefully pour out exactly two fingers worth of the dark amber liquid. Dad had of course shared it with them, once or twice.  Neither one of them was exactly sure how they felt about scotch, preferring instead a glass of wine or a light beer, but neither had either one of them hated the stuff when they’d had occasion to sample it.   Tears begin to collect along the bottoms of Luna’s eyelids as she hoists the flask up in a small toast.  “Thanks daddy.” Her lips tremble, and then she takes a discreet drink, the warm liquid burning a line down her throat and causing her to cough at the unfamiliar heat. Taking the flask from her sister, Celestia raises her own toast.  “Thanks daddy.” She echo’s quietly, blinking away tears as she takes a sip, face still as she tries not to grimace at the burn as it travels down.  Replacing the cap, she returns the flask to her sister, who floats it over into a pouch on her saddlebags. The two settle down next to the fire, the letter still floating between them. They spend the time in silence, each lost in thought, wading through their emotions as they re-read the message again and again.  Eventually, by unspoken agreement, Celestia carefully folds the letter back up, sealing it in one of the spare zip lock bags included in their camping supplies and tucking it safely away in her bags.  She’s exhausted, both mentally and physically, and a quick glance shows her that Luna is in the same state. With a yawn and a stretch, she returns to the fire, settling in and leaning against her younger sister, who leans back against her in return. “Hey sis?” Luna asks quietly, eyes lost to the flickering of the fire. Celestia stifles another yawn, gaze following the shadows cast against the far wall.  “Hmm?” “Do you think…we’re going to be OK?” Celestia looks over at her darker sibling, reading her uncertainty and vulnerability at a glance.  She drapes a comforting alabaster wing across the dark indigo of Luna’s back. “Yeah, actually,” she gives Luna a squeeze.  “I really think we will be.” * * * The time passed, and as it did the two sisters moved from the closed off, and frankly increasingly claustrophobic stall section out into the main cavern.  In all, they spent five nights there, using it as a sort of base camp for their increasingly long-ranging forays into the outside world. The cavern was nice, open and better ventilated, but eventually even it became a little oppressive, and the two eventually decamped out into the meadow that fronted the shelter. Their first night had been...somewhat alarming.  As the sun set and the stars began to peer through, it became apparent that some things were not right.  Luna had been the first to remark upon it, asking her sister if she happened to recognize the constellations next to the Big Dipper.  When Celestia answered, in a cautious voice, that she did not, they began scanning the sky, trying to make sense of it. This was completely derailed, however, when the moon, half full, began to rise from over the mountains.   They watched it silently, fire crackling unnoticed behind them,until it had cleared the mountains and hoisted itself a goodly ways into the night sky.  Gone was the white and grey coin they’d grown up with, with its familiar blemishes and markings. Now the moon was larger, closer, its surface mostly free of dark shadows.   It was a jarring sight, to be sure, and they kept unconsciously throwing untrusting glances towards it as they had tried to puzzle out what was going on.  They discussed, long into the night, how the stars were different now, with some constellations missing, and others seemingly merged together, and the moon’s radical alteration. This in turn led to a discussion of the apparently ambient magic that even then was washing over them in continuous waves of warm energy. At one point they broke out the heirloom scotch and each took a healthy slug.  As the night wore on, they grew quiet, contemplative, each trying to make sense of how the world could have changed in the ways that it apparently had. Luna began to speak of parallel worlds, overlaying each other.  She described, with a halting, unsure voice, a book with an infinite number of pages.  The front of one page may describe one thing, while the back of that page may describe something different.  If liquid is spilled on the page however, the two sides may begin to bleed into each other, merging in a fashion. Celestia spoke about the increase in magic, and how its presence had changed so dramatically.  She wondered aloud about its seeming lack, before they discovered they could use it, and how they were almost designed to use it.  In her mind she imagined a huge balloon, or an enormous water bed.  If you were to poke a hole in the bed, water would leak, and you’d have water where previously you had none.  She spoke to Luna about what might happen if the water bed were not only full of water, but under pressure, how the hole would grow larger, tearing open wider as more water forced its way through, and how the room might change if you let it continue to leak for years. It had been an introspective night for both of them, and had led to little sleep.  The next night, however, had been better, and the night after that more manageable still.  They kept busy, they had more than enough to do after all, and decided to stay a bit longer because of it.  The nights had passed into days, leading them to this morning, their fourteenth and final day in the meadow. * * * The morning sun streams brilliantly over the clearing, flooding the air with light and banishing the stark shadows of the surrounding trees.  Birds flit and sing from the boughs and branches, their songs sharp in the crisp, clean morning air. The remains of their fire smolders, thin streamers of grey smoke lifting almost vertically into the cool stillness. Luna dumps wet coffee grounds onto the fire, their very last, where they sputter and steam fragrantly on the sullenly glowing coals.  She pours a little bit of water from her canteen into the pot, swirling it around before dumping it, too, into the stone lined circle.  Behind her Celestia finishes the last of her own coffee, stopping a moment to savor it, before stowing the small, metal mug in a pannier. The two sisters spend a few moments tidying up their camp site, finishing the job of packing and readying that they had mostly completed the night before.  Today is the day, and they both work with determined, purposeful motions, colored by faint traces of trepidation. They have been both anticipating and dreading today in equal measure, but they remain resolved.   With a burst of amber light, Celestia levitates a large scoop of damp earth, settling it into the stone ring of the fire pit, filling the rough circle and smothering the steaming remnants.  She glances to her sister, who finishes snapping pouches and pockets closed on her set of bags, and then stands up straight. They share a look, and with a mutual nod they walk back towards the entrance to the shelter. They had debated for some time on where to build the cairn, torn between wanting to protect it from the elements on the one hand, and what their father would prefer on the other.  In the end they had compromised, choosing a spot in the main chamber of the cavern that was beneath the largest opening in the ceiling, the remains of the original ventilation system.  Now, their father could still be under the night sky, while the stones would be mostly protected from the weather. It was all symbolic, of course, their father’s body being so much dust by now.  However building it had felt right to them, had felt necessary. They both realized that the act was as much for their benefit as it was a memorial to him.   They had kept it simple, out of respect for what he would have wanted.  Built on an area of the cavern floor that had been cleared and mostly leveled, the arrangement of stones was simple and unadorned.  An unassuming rectangular mound formed the base, with an upright portion of larger stones, fit carefully together, that thrust out and up from the middle.  The whole thing was around three feet by five, and only four or so feet tall. They had worked on it for the last three days, almost from dawn to dusk.  It had been taxing, trying, exhausting work, but neither had complained. It was also needed work, and symbolic of more than just their departed father.  They hadn’t just been building a monument to him, they had also been physically expressing their willingness to close out this chapter of their lives, and start another.  It was closure, another step down the path. Now, finally, they were ready to move on. They had just needed to leave something behind, for him. With another shared look, Luna lifts a small, mostly rectangular stone from her pannier.  It’s smooth sided, flecked with mica and startling dark green striations. Celestia had found it submerged in a nearby creek that runs through the trees a little south of the clearing, and  Luna had spent hours carefully shaping and polishing it with her magic. They’d both taken turns engraving it, slowly and with great care each night by the crackling fire, heart sore and physically exhausted from the day. When it was all said and done, they’d ended up with a roughly five pound stone, smoothed and polished into a mostly rectangular shape, sort of like a large bar of soap.  In the center, on the broadest face and surrounded by simple, crude scroll work, was inscribed the following; RYAN S. WILLIAMS 1985 - 2036 BELOVED FATHER, HUSBAND We Miss You Daddy They share another look, the final stone bobbing absently in the cerulean glow of Luna’s magic, and with a sigh she places it into the niche near the top, left open specifically for this purpose.  It slides into place with a gritty rubbing sound. They study their work for a time, and then Celestia floats a bundle of wild flowers out of her bags, placing them on the foot of the cairn. The two sisters sidle next to each other, and Celestia drapes a wing over her younger sisters back, and  they spend a while in somber silence. Eventually, Luna leans over and kisses her sister on the cheek, smiling sadly.  Celestia returns her smile, her eyes wet, and they both look one last time at the representation of their father. “Goodbye, Dad.”  Luna says quietly, a hitch in her voice. “Bye, daddy.”  Celestia echo’s after a few moments, sniffling. The two stand for a moment longer, before embracing tightly, tears streaming from eyes tightly squeezed closed.  They share some words, quietly and privately, and eventually with a final squeeze, they pull apart. They make their way back across the clearing, stopping at the remains of last night’s fire.  Checking around once more, making sure that they haven’t missed anything, they turn, eyeballing the forest ahead of them. Celestia glances at her sister.  “Are you sure this is the direction you want to go?” “Yeah.” Luna nods absently, eyes dancing about the shadowed trunks and canopies.  “It’s as good as any other.” The bird song is beautiful this morning, in a way neither of them can really put their hoof on.  The air is crisp, and clean, carrying with it the woody scents of the trees, and the fleeting, sweet smell of wild flowers.  With a shared smile and a deep breath, the two take their first steps into this strange, new world.