//------------------------------// // Chapter 9- Divination and the Divine // Story: To be a Breezie // by Obsi //------------------------------// The sound of my name tore through the veil of disjointed dreams. For a second, I considered simply lying back down again, but now that I was awake, I couldn’t ignore the cold air brushing against my side anymore. I tried to stretch my legs out over the ground, until a pair of hooves pulled me up onto my legs. “The gods decide when it is day, and they won’t wait for you, Twilight.” Honeydew griped, rubbing my coat to get the dirt off. I gave him a foul glance. One day, I’ll introduce you to Celestia, and then we’ll see who starts the day. I thought, but any response I might have planned was cut short by a jaw-stretching yawn. As I groggily stretched out my limbs and wings, my eyes swept over the tiny sizzlepit. The single stalk had long fizzled out, leaving a small husk behind, no longer than my hoof, and much thinner. It still amazed me how long it could continue to give off warmth… yet it also seemed much harder to procure than simply picking up some firewood. After it had burned down, it had just been the conserved heat of our bodies pressing side to side keeping us warm… a shiver went through my body as I skipped in place, trying to get the blood-flow going. My eyes trailed away from the pit. Honeydew was climbing up a mushroom, trying to get an overview of the area and see what had changed from last night. It struck me that it was just the third day of our journey, and I was already getting familiar with his routines. He’d make sure everything was safe before we’d fly off. Then he would keep watch for anything dangerous, utterly baffling me with how he managed to not falter in his vigilance for hours on end. I’d never been this good, except maybe in magic history class! But those were at least fascinating. We only took breaks to eat and drink (yes, that meant no bathroom breaks…). The thorns Honeydew had picked up in the first night contained thin, edible strings of plant matter, which were either really sweet or horribly sour. I couldn’t tell them apart, but he insisted that both kinds were edible. We were not going to throw any food away, no matter how bad it tasted. Once we arrived, mostly at nightfall, one of us would make the sizzlepit by digging a little hole and surrounding it with pebbles. The first night, Honeydew had done it, followed by Kalypso on the second. It’d be my turn tonight. Nothing too hard… if the ground didn’t freeze, which I’d overheard Honeydew mutter worriedly about. Though I supposed that cracking my hoof on frozen dirt would be my least concern in that case. Sighing, I kicked the pebbles into the pit, burying the wilted husk of a stalk so it would have no chance of reigniting. The sound of a whimper caught my attention. Kalypso, her eyes closed, was still on the ground, her chest rising and falling with an uneven rhythm. She was slowly rolling around, hooves reaching to cover as much of her body from the cold air as she could, muttering the word “cold” over and over. Well, well, looks like the biggest sleepyhead gets to freeze. I snickered inwardly, not caring one bit about the irony that this thought was coming from me. Still, Honeydew wouldn’t be busy much longer, and once he got done, we were supposed to move out. Plus, if I didn’t get to sleep for longer… Chuckling to myself, I reached out a hoof, gently poking her between the ribs. As if struck by lightning, Kalypso shot up, mouth wide open as she let out a short, bloodcurdling squeal. Her eyes darted around, her startled expression slowly waning as she focused on me. “Twilight!” Honeydew exclaimed from above. A moment later, he landed a few feet to my right. “You should have let her sleep!” “I-I’m sorry!” I stammered, taking a step back from both. “I didn’t know.” “Do you think I wouldn’t have already woken her if-” he set on to say, but his voice broke off as Kalypso raised a hoof. “It’s fine, Twilight did the right thing. It was just a waste of time.” Honeydew’s heated look darted from her to me, before simply nodding. “Alright. The more ground we cover, the better. It’s going to rain tomorrow.” Kalypso gave a solemn nod, and they both went to gather their bearings. I followed suit a moment later. ----- “You had a vision.” I stated as soon as we’d taken to the air. Kalypso heaved a sigh, eyes shifting from my inquisitive look. I kept my eyes trained on the side of her face. I had to admit, I was more than a little intrigued. Scrying had long occupied a tenuous position in the magic sciences, declared unscientific for its inability to produce consistent results. I myself had once attempted to disprove the practise as a hoax for an exam. It got me a good grade, too (although I shouldn’t have tried to prove it when it came to Pinkie Pie). But the breezies had been quite insistent on Windchime’s, and especially Kalypso’s, abilities. If there was something to it, it would be a huge discovery, and if I made it back and wrote a book, I could probably fill a whole chapter with it! Kalypso seemed a little creeped out by the intensity of my stare. “You won’t give up, will you?” “You tell me, you can see the future.” My grin widened as she groaned in exasperation. “It… does not work like that.” Kalypso said, crossing her forehooves. “You don’t understand.” “Then help me understand. How does it feel to have a vision?” “Confusing.” She answered in a heartbeat. “It is like a strange impulse, a niggling feeling or a warning whisper in the back of your head.” “I take it you have no control over it?” I asked, subconsciously drawing my right foreleg over the other in scribbling motions. Celestia, I wanted my notebook… “No.” Kalypso said sourly. Okay, I had to raise an eyebrow at that tone. “Still, early warnings sound pretty useful. Makes me wish I had this kind of power.” If I had my own Twily sense, I could have avoided ever seeing the mantis. Heck, I wouldn’t have been blown away from the portal in the first place. Kalypso snorted. “You have no idea. All this niggling and scrying and dreaming- I envy you, Twilight.” She sighed at my confused look. “You can’t imagine…” her eyes focused on Honeydew’s back, the stallion too far away to hear our lowered voices. “None of them can.” “Try me.” I said earnestly. “I may surprise you.” Even if I still wondered what you could complain about with an early warning system... “I have these… visions… all the time. They’re never clear, Twilight.” Kalypso muttered, almost too quiet for me to understand her breezish. “When I have a bad feeling about going one way over the other, I can’t tell if it’s because one is dangerous, or if I’m just feeling lazy! Or because I thought the flowers are prettier over there!” Her voice rose at the last sentence, prompting Honeydew to throw back a confused glance. “Kalypso-” I started, but she continued, poking her hoof into my chest. “Every time I make a decision, I have to wonder, ‘what is my gut thinking about this’, have to wonder what this little voice at the back of my head is saying. But maaaybe I’m just hungry, or maaaybe that little voice wasn’t a sign of the gods, but just my own thoughts!” She threw her head back, wiping her frazzled mane out of her face. “But can I just ignore it? No! Because maybe it’s not nothing, but a warning about a spiderweb, or a hungry mantis, or a raging rat! And it’s not always just me who’ll suffer if I mistake a vision for nothing!” The yellow and red glare from her eyes forced me several feet away. “The clan relies on us. So I have to try and make sense of it. Do. Not. Tell me you’d like to have that.” She closed darkly. I raised my hoof, unsure whether to comfort her or argue her point. Still, I felt like I could understand her attitude towards her powers. While she wasn’t a leader, the clan would follow her warnings, like the ponies of Ponyville would follow my instructions for Winter Wrap-Up. I knew how heavy the responsibility for those decisions could rest on your shoulders. And unlike me, Kalypso couldn’t even base hers on logic. It would drive me crazy! And Kalypso was a young mare… On another note, this would make it really difficult to find proof for the breezies’ fortune telling abilities if-- when I’d get to write my book. A method of scrying that was heavily subjective, happening at arbitrary intervals with no control of the user was not the sort of thing to convince the Canterlot Magic Commission. But Kalypso had seen me before my arrival, there had to be something I could find out about-- I blinked, glancing at Kalypso’s sour look “That doesn’t sound at all like how you described that dream to the clan...” For some reason, my observation caused her to flinch. “There’s… two kinds of visions.” She admitted after a few seconds in which she avoided my eyes. “They show me brief glimpses of the future. It’s often hard to make out details, or remember them after it ended. And of course, you usually can’t tell them apart from regular dreams.” “But you’ve had the same dream for a while, right? Was that the one you were having this morning? The one where you saw me?” Kalypso opened her mouth, then closed it before she gave a silent nod. “Did you see anything-” I began to ask, but she cut me off “The same as every other time. Snow, cold, purple flash… and I’m still not sure what it means.” She heaved a sigh. “Do not take me wrong, I don’t hate the gifts the gods have bestowed upon me… but would it be that hard to just give me simple instructions for once instead of all the blurry metaphor stuff?” “I don’t think the immortal ones know a language other than perplexy.”  I chuckled, thinking of the book of the two sisters. Really, would it have been so hard to spend a paragraph describing how the elements worked? “Maybe if we ask them really nice~” She suggested with a giggle, before soberly adding: “Let us hope they did not hear that.” “Let’s,” I nodded, refocusing on the surrounding currents. ……. I’d long fallen into a trance of continuous, monotone flight, when Honeydew suddenly angled his  wings, drifting towards to the ground. For a moment, I soared along, dumbfounded, before I spread my wings, barely avoiding a mid-air collision. Confused, I shot a look towards the sky. If my developing sense of time was accurate, it was at most early afternoon, way too early for arrival, or a break. “Twilight.” Honeydew called from the ground, waving a hoof. Carefully landing, I scanned our surroundings. There was no tunnel in the ground, no nuts or other kinds of food, none of the things that would usually prompt Honeydew to depart to the ground. Only a bed of grass, interspersed with moldy mushrooms that looked like they’d kill us if we tried sampling them. Kalypso stood between us, her eyes fixated on a small rock peeking out of the ground. It was strangely shaped, almost like a skull, with two large, round holes for eyes above an elongated snout… the marking below even looked like teeth when I squinted at them, though they would have belonged in the mouth of a crocodile rather than a breezie’s. For some reason, two splinters of rotten wood were lodged in its eyes. Confused, I watched Honeydew and Kalypso lower their heads, speaking in fast breezish I couldn’t understand as they gently removed the wooden spikes. Kalypso’s hoof then trailed over the hole’s edges, while Honeydew looked up to me. “Pay your respects, Twilight.” he whispered. I felt rather silly as I scrubbed my hoof over the rock, giving Honeydew a nervous smile as I wondered if I was doing it right. He gave me a long look, clearly expecting something more. With a sigh, I lowered my eyes. “Uh, what is that?” Kalypso’s chant came to an abrupt end as she regarded me with wide eyes, while Honeydew sighed, rubbing his face with an irritated expression. “Twilight, you’re looking at an idol of Styrktarmadr.” “Right, right.” I nervously nodded, wracking my brain if I’d heard that name before in the last week. Maybe I had... but with a name like that, it would have only registered as gibberish. “W-we’re praying to a god.” “No, Twilight, Styrktarmadr is a spirit, not a god.” Kalypso explained and I was finally, for good, completely lost. “W-what’s the difference?” I blurted out. From the expression of both breezies while they exchanged baffled glances, I think I was really straining the bonds of believability for cluelessness. “Spirits are of the world, while the gods created the world.” Kalypso said quietly, in a tone I’d once heard a doctor use for a mental patient. I felt my right eye twitch in annoyance. “Good,” I muttered, clenching my teeth just a little. “And Styrk- Styrkta-” This time, Honeydew decided to answer, luckily in a less patronizing tone. “Styrktarmadr is the spirit of all finders. Gatherers, hunters and traders alike pray for his fortune, for good findings reward those in his favor. While those without… are more likely to be found.” Okay, I could work with that, ominous as it was. ”So, how do we show our respect?” I may not be a believer yet, but considering the things I knew lurked in the forest, I’d rather avoid the ‘being found’ part “Well, you already disrupted the ceremony-” Kalypso hissed, but Honeydew cut her off. “Then we have to hope he’ll forgive her, and us.” he took a deep breath before launching into the next explanation. “A long time ago, Styrktarmadr was clever enough to find the secret plans of Heistin in Fjermengard. As punishment, she blinded him by ramming two mighty trees into his eyes.” “Ouch!” I muttered, feeling a little ill at the mental picture… breezie myths were gruesome! “That was probably his reaction, too.” Honeydew chuckled. “But after a while, he began to relish the challenge, for now he was no longer all-seeing, and was suddenly open to discover the world in entirely new way, while he’d previously assumed he knew all. Unfortunately, the trees would rot, crawling with bugs and-” Okay, too much! I pressed my hooves onto my ears, fighting down a sudden surge of nausea. “Ehem,” Honeydew cleared his throat with a nervous smile. “Point is, we give him relief by exchanging the rotting spikes for fresh ones. Okay, that I can do… I think. It took us nearly an hour, as Kalypso insisted that we had to find perfectly fitting sticks, snapping off pieces to make it fit was utterly out of the question. “He is the spirit of finders. We‘ll have to find a fitting one, he does not favor those who give up quickly.” Honeydew only gave a helpless shrug. I didn’t dare contradict her. She probably counted my first attempt to carve a fitting splinter as an insult to her god… spirit. I’d have to bump religion to an earlier chapter, considering how much it continued to confuse me. Finally shoving a second stick into the rock’s hole, we all stood on our hindlegs, raising our hooves into the air as if we were trying to embrace the heavens, wings sticking far out to balance ourselves. Then Kalypso began to sing, followed by Honeydew. I didn’t know the song, nor the strange words she used, yet they beckoned me to murmur with them, roughly hitting similar notes as Kalypso’s feelers began to glow. Suddenly, without a warning, a light breeze tickled my coat. Yet, somehow, we did not fall, our wings did not catch the air, only our feelers danced in the sudden wind. I hadn’t even felt it coming, which was a first since I’d gotten feelers! But the other breezies seemed unconcerned, murmuring with their eyes closed, Kalypso with a soft smile on her lips as her antennae’s glow intensified in tune with the wind picking up. After a few more moments, they fell dark, just as the breeze died. Honeydew gave Kalypso a reverent nod. “I believe it is time to move on. Hopefully, with the winds backing us?” “I hope so.” Kalypso whispered, her feelers emitting a light glow, illuminating her reddened cheeks. ------- For a long time, I couldn’t keep my eyes from Kalypso. Had she summoned that wind, or was I simply not good enough at feeling it? I wanted to ask Honeydew, but he was flying too far ahead, and I knew not to exert my wings in an effort to catch up to him… he’d just scold me for wasting my strength. And so we continued flying until night set. Tonight, it was my turn to build the sizzlepit while Honeydew scouted the surrounding area and Kalypso took a nap. Was it a nap if you did it at night? I’d have to ask Rainbow Dash when I came back, she was the expert. But why were we using sizzlegrass when our goal was to get sizzlegrass? I’d asked Honeydew yesterday, and he’d simply shrugged. “What else could we use?” He’d asked. His response had left me more than a little dumbfounded. Wasn’t the answer obvious? Well, I was going to show him today, as I placed down a bunch of splinters I’d gathered from a nearby fallen branch. There’d been a lot of those on our way, it made me wonder if there’d been a storm lately. Grabbing a thin stick between my hooves, I tried to remember the trick Applejack had shown me on that disastrous camping trip last year. I hadn’t been able to repeat it last time, but the theory was there… just twist it really quickly. Sticking out my tongue, I went to work, twisting the stick until my hooves ached. Yet, far earlier than I’d expected, I saw smoke coming from the wood. Only a minute later, an ember. Had I gotten stronger? Watch out Rainbow Dash, soon there’ll be a new hoofwrestling contender in town! Grinning to myself, I breathed on the tiny ember, watching with a pride-swelled chest how it grew into a little flame, which I gently placed into the firepit. All that was left to do was wait, and occasionally blow into the growing fire. Just like I’d seen Applejack do… my grin faltered a little as I wondered how she was doing. She wouldn’t be worried about me- I’d planned to stay with Seabreeze’s clan for two months, leaving just before winter would come in full force. They wouldn’t know I’d gotten lost, not until we were utterly buried in snow, when it would be impossible to find us. If somepony came looking. And if the portal even led them here. I supposed it was a bad idea to go through means of magical transportation you didn’t fully understand… my experience with the portal to Canterlot High had made me careless. Something dropped to the ground behind me. Turning around, I saw Honeydew staring at the fire, his mouth wide open, having dropped his knife. “Twilight!” he exclaimed, dashing towards me. “Hey, Honeydew-” I began, but then he grabbed my shoulders, dragging me away from the firepit. “Hey, what are you doing?” “What were you doing?” he hissed. “That’s a fire, why were you just standing there?!” “Wha- it’s not dangerous!” “Are you mad?” he exclaimed, his voice full of disbelief. “Fire spreads, Twilight, it doesn't just stay in place-” he gasped for breath, his eyes darting over the edges of the fire, clearly defined by the ring of rocks I’d placed around it. “W-why is it in our sizzlepit?” “I made it, alright?” I grunted as I got back on my hooves, scraping the dirt out of my coat. “It’s perfectly safe.” His mouth opened and closed, once, twice before he regained his voice. “You made it?” He whispered breathlessly. “How?” Is he meaning to say that they have never discovered how to make fire? The discovery that had jumpstarted all others and allowed ponies to gather in societies in the first place? The ramifications of that… I couldn’t even imagine, but I could probably write a whole book on this premise, just theorizing how that could possibly work. Although sizzlegrass served as a decent alternative, so it wasn’t really all without fire, anyway. “It’s easy…” I muttered, trying to ignore his constant nervous looks at the fire. “You know how your hooves get warm when you rub them together? Well, if you can do something like that fast enough, you can start a fire.” This information seemed to utterly baffle him. “Just… like  that? You can make fire with your hooves?” He whispered, regarding me with wide eyes. It made me chuckle. “No, no, not with your hooves. I could show you-” “No.” I blinked, whirling around to where Kalypso was glaring at the fire with a mixture of fear and revulsion. “What do you mean, no?!” I protested, rising up in front of her.  “Kalypso, I’ve got it under control, and we don’t have to use our sizzlegrass like this!” “W-what about the spirits you’re using as fuel?” Her reply made me scrunch up my nose. It seemed just a bit too shaky to seem genuine. Even Honeydew threw her a doubtful glance. “That was dead wood.” I replied drily. “Are you seriously telling me every splinter has a spirit in it? I don’t see you making a fuss when Carveshine cuts them, or when we rip them out of living trees for him.” “Fire consumes.” She bit her lip, regarding the small flame with simply unnecessary caution. “I can control it.” I assured her. “We do it all the time where I come from.” Or at least Applejack did while I watched, or read a book in the firelight, but I thought it better not to share that detail. She and Honeydew exchanged uneasy glances, until he let out a sigh. “As long as you watch it, it is fine.” Honeydew decided. “But that means you will have first watch. Put it out when yours is over.” He threw it another glance. “Y-you know how to do that, right?” “Of course.” I smiled reassuringly. “I just need to drop in the rocks, put a bowl on it or splash it with water. Easy.” And so I was left alone to fight my tiredness while Kalypso and Honeydew snoozed next to one another. I sullenly regarded the seer, wishing I could snuggle between her and Honeydew, but the watch had to stay away, that was the rule. If the side of you pointing away from the fire was always cold, so Honeydew had reasoned, you were too busy turning on the spot to fall asleep. Sometimes I hated his logic. I wondered if there was something to Kalypso’s claim that there were spirits living in the firewood. She hadn’t been sure of it, that much was clear, but how would you go about proving something like that? It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’d seen in my life. Biting my lip, I stared upwards, through a hole in the leaf canopy, at foreign stars, feeling a lurch in my stomach. I truly was impossibly far away from home if even the night sky was different. But was it a magical realm, parallel to Equestria, or another planet? Could the breezie gods truly exist here? It wasn’t impossible, after all, we had Celestia and Luna… and me, I supposed. But the gods of the breezies seemed so far removed. From the way they spoke, they might not have even existed in their world, but rather in some... outside realm. Was that a thing? And what was up with Kalypso? Future sight? Possibly wind powers? Was that just innate magic? If only I could research her… but for that, I would need equipment, which only existed back home. With a sigh, I laid back on the cold ground, ignoring the cold air which encroached on my face. I needed to learn more. I’d abstained from asking about their religion, and what for? So I wouldn’t look stupid? The thought made me squirm, but why? It didn’t make sense, Celestia had taught me there was no shame in ignorance, only in unwillingness to correct it. And yet, I was falling right into that trap? I was being a terrible student. Sighing to myself, I tended to the shrinking fire. It was saddening to see it go, the first flame I’d lit with just my own hooves and a stick. But the fuel had been burned up, and there was no point in adding more; my shift would soon end, anyway. I watched as it slowly burned away, vowing to wake Honeydew for his shift soon after the last glimmer died. And so, I waited, and waited. Watching the flame flicker out, leaving us in darkness. I hadn’t been the only one watching. As soon as darkness took hold, I could hear a rustling of dried leaves, as if something was hurrying through them. “Honeydew!” I squeaked in panic, trying to pinpoint the noise as I shook his shoulder. He jumped up in an instant, though swaying on his hooves from the sudden motion. Kalypso, however, was still turning her head in confusion, blinking her eyes in the darkness before she lit up her feelers. And the sphere of light illuminated a large, pointy snout, possessing frontal teeth half as large as my hoof. Screeching, the beast dashed forward, faster than its large body had any right to. Kalypso’s eyes widened as the monster practically flew towards her, scrambling to her hooves. Honeydew grabbed her shoulders, attempting to pull her away. Then it was upon them, and Honeydew let out a scream as its large teeth tore into his hoof.