//------------------------------// // Off to a rocky start // Story: House of the Rising Sunflower // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Comfortably seated at the head of the table, Sundance wondered what was for supper. Nothing had been brought in yet, but he suspected that he knew what would be served. There wasn’t much variation, and while the food was hearty, it was also uninspired, simple, and of course, bland. Such was the way of things, at least for now, and there was no point in complaining. Once he could fly again, he would venture out to find delicious foodstuffs that would satisfy his cravings. Soon, there would be fresh foods again, and that would help. The potatoes were old, a bit mealy, the withered survivors of a long winter. While they weren’t appealing, they were mostly edible and were filling. Everypony longed for fresher fare—but Sundance craved something breaded, deep fried, and artery-clogging. Or tacos, or something wrapped in a tortilla and maybe fried. Anything. At least there was cheese; pale, runny, somewhat bland goat cheese that he was starting to get a taste for. When there was nothing else, they were satisfying in a strange sort of way. After a few bites, one would notice the faint pungent flavour, and each bite after was spent hoping that said flavour would bloom into something worthwhile. But ultimately, the goat cheese was something of a disappointment. Perhaps because they had no dedicated cheesemaker. Blessed were the cheesemakers. The dining hall was packed, but not everypony was here yet. For Sundance, it felt as though he was back in school, sitting in the cafeteria. Only now, he was one of the cool kids, and not a colossal dork that ate his lunch all alone in the corner. Which was a massive improvement, all things considered, a tremendous upgrade in how life treated him. For a moment, he wondered how his tormentors fared, and the faint spectre of a smile could be seen lurking on his muzzle. No more teasing, no more jeers, no more shoving in the hallways, no more swirlies—because he was a baron. The Baron. No one would feel the humiliating sting of a swirly in his demesne, mostly because there were no toilets. Not one nerdling would find themselves stuffed into a locker—because there were no lockers. While reminiscing and wincing, haunted by his memories of school, Sundance also thought about how the barony could use a few nerds, but he wasn’t sure if they’d survive the conditions. Paradox was adjusting, but she wasn’t happy. Corduroy was arguably a nerd, or maybe a geek, and while she was coping, he knew from speaking to her that the cracks were showing. But a fragile nerd, the sort of pencil-necked nerdling that did, in fact, get stuffed into a locker, they would find the living conditions downright intolerable, as there wasn’t a single comic book store for a hundred miles or more. As for movie theatres, not a one, though Sundance did try to make shadow puppets with his wings. “Amber Dawn is missing!” Sundance’s reaction was almost hawklike as his head swiveled around. Hollyhock stood in the doorway with Earwax. She had red, bleary eyes, and it looked as though she hadn’t slept in quite a while. The newborn was wrapped in a blanket and slung from her neck. Lemongrass clung to her leg and his expression of frantic concern matched his mothers. Sundance was on his hooves in an eyeblink. “I think she slipped away after the commotion with the owls,” Hollyhock said, her words slurred from exhaustion. “She’s missing and the sun is already behind that mountain where Canterlot sits.” “I have a find spell!” Paradox blurted out. “It even works… most of the time.” “Most of the time?” Sundance’s eyebrow arched in a manner reminiscent of his distant alicorn grandmother. “Well, sometimes, things take measures not to be found—” “That’s not helpful right now.” Sundance gestured at Hollyhock. “A mother doesn’t want to hear that when her foal is missing.” “Yeah, I wasn’t thinking that one through, sorry. I tend to focus on the academic. My bad!” Paradox scrambled up into a standing position, but she was slow and sluggish. Realising that Paradox was spent from a long day of labour, Sundance cringed. Corduroy rose as well, and he was relieved to know that he could count on her. When Turmeric stood up, Sundance gave him a gentle shove to make him sit back down. “Turmeric, you’re in charge while I’m gone. The sun will be setting soon, so do the rounds. Be reassuring. See to it that everypony’s needs are met. Be a calm voice of reason if panic sets in.” His steely gaze focused on Paradox, who squirmed. “Cast that find spell. Make it work.” Then he gave his final command to Corduroy. “Grab your bag and whatever supplies you might think we’ll need. Grab a torch, because it’ll be getting dark soon.” Sundance brought himself to his full height, which wasn’t much. “As for the rest of you, have supper. Try not to worry. Please trust that I’ll take care of this.” “Good luck, Milord,” somepony said. “Good hunting, Sire!” “Can a diamond dog sniff out a missing pony?” somepony asked. “I can,” replied Corduroy. “My sniffer is pretty darn good.” “Then Amber is as good as found,” Fallow Fields remarked, and he seemed to visibly relax. “What about my magic?” Paradox, miffed, tossed her head about. “You said yourself that it don’t always work—” “Oooh! I meant that in a general sense! In an academic sense, because—” “Enough!” Sundance snapped. “We need to be going. Now. Precious little daylight is left. No more talk, it’s time for doing. Now, let’s go! Corduroy, grab your gear!” Corduroy was loaded down with rucksacks, an immense coil of rope, and a small brass lantern shaped like a yawning housecat hung from her belt. She seemed prepared. As for Paradox, the young mare was fidgety, flighty, and clearly frightened. Of what, he wasn’t sure. Fear of letting him down, perhaps, or letting down Princess Celestia. Maybe fear of failure. Paradox struck him as the anxious, high strung type that didn’t take failure very well. “We barely know each other and here we are, going on an adventure, and I’m not keen on this—” “Why is that, Paradox?” “You, mostly,” she replied. “Me?” Sundance thumped the base of his neck with his hoof. “You.” She nodded. “You’re a male. That scares me. And ten-zillion terrible thoughts are racing through my mind right now, each of them worse than the last, and I—” “Look, Corduroy is with us, Paradox—” “It doesn’t matter! My anxiety doesn’t work that way! I can’t shut my brain up! There’s no off switch. You’re a male. You have authority. And I have all of my mother’s memories and trauma. We’re oil and water, Sundance. I’m terrified right now.” Rather than be angry, or annoyed, which would only make things worse, he took a deep breath and held his tongue. Anger and frustration would accomplish nothing. If anything, it would only make her more afraid of him. He stood still, his breathing slow, steady, and he tried to muster up some empathy for Paradox. “Which way do we go?” Corduroy asked. “Give me a moment,” Paradox replied. After a few seconds of turning this way and that way, she pointed eastward. “That way. Towards the orchard. Think she went to the orchard to go play?” Sundance considered this for a time, and nodded. “That seems likely. If I was her, I’d want to go explore the orchard too. Will thinking like a foal help?” In response, Corduroy shrugged. Not willing to let the subject drop, Sundance turned to look Paradox in the eye. “You have to learn how to trust me. I’ve won the trust of everypony else here. You and I, we’ll sort this out later. Right now, you need to show me that you’re worthy of being the barony’s court wizard.” Paradox’s eyes turned glassy, and her lower lip quivered. For a moment, it seemed as though she would start crying, but the flood never came. She sniffled a bit, her lip still quivered, and with a downcast expression, she replied, “I can do that. You can trust me to do that.” “Good.” Sundance pulled his commanding gaze away so Paradox could stop squirming. “Now let’s go find us a filly and get her home. Come on, both of you. I wish I could fly right now. Searching from the air would be so much easier.” The well-worn path was covered in fresh crescent moon-shaped divots. Many had walked this path recently, and Sundance hoped that his keen eyes might spot the smaller hoofprints that Amber would certainly leave behind if she came this way. The grass here was tall, inviting, and filled with wildflowers in bloom. It was just the sort of place that bees would find paradise. “We’re close, but also far,” said Paradox in a hitching, uncertain voice. “I don’t understand it.” Though annoyed, Sundance didn’t feel the need to pressure her, or make this worse somehow. The poor young mare was running around in panicked circles. Meanwhile, Corduroy was sniffing around, plucking blades of grass and holding them up to her nose. Early evening shadows had grown quite long as twilight settled in over the land. “If I walk in the direction of the orchard, my magic tells me to come back here. But she’s not here! Why isn’t my magic working? Why? I don’t want to go back to the others and look stupid. But I am stupid! Why isn’t my magic working? Stupid magic… I lack power. Why does my magic have to be so weak? It’s frustrating! Why isn’t my find spell functioning properly?” “Amber Dawn, if you are hiding somewhere, and having a good laugh at us, you’re going to be in huge trouble, young lady.” Sundance’s eyes narrowed, and his ears pivoted around in search of sound. “That’s not going to coax her out of hiding, you know.” Corduroy, who was hunkered down in the grass, gave Sundance a cool, calm stare. “Some of the clover has been nibbled on. It’s sweet. Smells like her, though I’m not sure if she’s the nibbler. But she was here, and not that long ago. Scent is still fresh.” Lifting his head, Sundance turned his keen eyes on the trees, with the hopes of spotting Amber Dawn. She was greyish in colour, and had a brown mane, so he knew that she’d be difficult to spot if she was hiding in a tree. Maybe she’d climbed up somehow, and was now stuck, unable to get down. That would be pretty embarrassing, and she might be fretful about calling for help. Just a little while ago he’d been thinking about school. “Over here,” said Corduroy, while waving. Beckoned, Sundance hurried over and halted when Corduroy raised her paw. She pointed at a vast patch of gnarled roots, a place filled with all manner of gaps and crannies, just the sort of place where a foal might want to explore. In the middle of it was a hole. It looked as though some of the dirt had been washed away by a recent storm and had perhaps revealed an animal burrow, or some such thing. With her claws, Corduroy pulled away the gnarled, lumpy roots, and in doing so, revealed a much larger opening, as well as a hard stone edge. Not one stone, but several. Stone blocks. The diamond dog made short work of the roots and dirt, and in no time at all, a rectangular opening could be seen, along with the remains of a stone foundation of some sort. Mossy, slimy stairs could be seen. Well, once they had been stairs, but the passage of time and the decaying touch of nature had turned them into something else, something not-stairs. “Don’t go shouting,” Corduroy said, speaking each word with soft grace. “We don’t know what might be down there. Look, something hit there, and there, and there, and then I can’t see any further down because it is too dark. Hopefully, Amber has the good sense to be quiet, just in case something calls this place home.” “What is this place?” asked Paradox. “Appears to be some sort of cellar. The stairs going down curve in a spiral and there’s a wide open shaft down the middle, from what little I can see. Can’t see how far, though. If she fell, she might be hurt. We need to be quiet and stealthy if we go down there. No telling what might call this place home.” “Foals are told from an early age to be quiet and hide if they’re in trouble.” Paradox peered down into the hole while she also chewed her lip. “Calling for help might get you eaten. That makes finding lost foals hard.” Sundance sniffed and there was something that was almost vinegary amongst the musty air that rose out of the ancient cellar. It made him want to sneeze, but he fought against the powerful, compelling urge. Corduroy smelled it too, because her nose was crinkled. Paradox lifted her head away from the opening and snorted in disgust. “The roots grew over this place, and over time, dirt got packed in. There was a door here, you can still see some of the rotten wood. Looks like it gave way, though, and collapsed into splinters. The old iron hinges are just rust dust now. I’m thinking that the recent storm loosened the dirt and Amber took a tumble when she came this way.” Reaching into the opening, Corduroy scraped off a bit of moss and slime with her claw, and then she examined the fresh disturbance she had made. Sundance could see that the other marks looked just as fresh. “If you look, you can see how the water flowed down the stairs. You can see the erosion. In the winter, this water froze and broke the stairs apart. Stuff grew in the cracks. I can see fungus and lichen and all kinds of stuff. I wonder how sunlight got in there?” “Corduroy, how do you know all of this?” “Well, Paradox, a dog has got to know hole-stuff.” “Oh. That makes sense. So, how are we going to get down there without breaking our necks or our legs? Those stairs don’t look safe.” “I have rope,” Corduroy said in her typical matter-of-fact way. “You… the both of you are tiny, they call you little ponies for a reason—” “Oh, let me be the first to say, I don’t like this plan,” Paradox said to Corduroy. “It involves me being lowered into a gross, dark, slimy pit. I don’t like this plan at all.” “Duly noted, friendo.” Corduroy’s triangular ears pricked. “But you have the horn, which means you have a light source, and Sundance does not. So you not liking the plan is largely irrelevant, because I am going to tie you up and lower you down. And if it is safe, with safe being a relative term, you will untie yourself, and then I’ll lower down Sundance. After he’s down there, I’ll climb down the rope. Hopefully we’ll find Amber, and she won’t be busted up too much from the fall.” A loud gulp was heard from Paradox, and a lump could been sliding down her throat. “Is something wrong?” Corduroy asked. “She doesn’t want to be down in a dark hole, alone, with me.” Sundance cast a sidelong glance at the anxious unicorn beside him. “Yes!” squeaked Paradox in an ear-piercing shrill voice. “Well, that’s just tough.” Slack-jawed, Sundance was startled by the sheer callousness of his nurse. Ears limp, Paradox looked up at the hulking diamond dog. “I beg your pardon—” “Do your job,” growled Corduroy, “and sort yourself out on your own time. Don’t be stupid. Do you really think that Sundance is going to be uncontrollably frisky down there, in the slimy dark, with a filly to find?” “But I—” “Shut up.” Corduroy held out her paw. “Just shut up. Do your job.” Paradox tried to say something, to respond, but all that came out was a squeak. She nodded, pranced in place for a bit, and then turned away when she became teary eyed. Sundance gave his nurse a hard, flinty stare, but he wasn’t sure what to say, much less how to feel about the situation. Corduroy had a side to her that was pragmatic, practical, and he wasn’t sure what to think. But all of that would have to be sorted out later.