Unshaken

by The 24th Pegasus


Chapter 56

Spend some time with Silver: 7 votes

After taking some time to eat her dinner, made from what little provisions the Gang had left from their last supply run in Rock Ridge, Kestrel filled a tin bowl with stew and carried it in a wing toward Trixie’s wagon, where Silver Wings had yet to emerge. Hesitating at the back door, Kestrel knocked lightly on the door and put her ear up to the wood. “You awake, Silvie?”

“Yeah,” came a hoarse voice from inside. “That you, Kestrel?”

Kestrel popped open the door with her other wing and peered inside. Silver remained wrapped in a blanket on Trixie’s hammock, bleary eyes squinting into the early evening light barging into the wagon. Though she certainly looked sick and feverish, the young mare managed to sit upright (or as upright as one could manage in a hammock) and smile at Kestrel the moment she saw the bowl of stew. “Oh, thank Celestia somepony remembered me,” Silver said with a chuckle. “I thought I was gonna starve in here!”

“Yeah, be lucky I’m around to think about you. Roughshod sometimes forgets which side of camp to take a shit, so you’d be hopeless if left to his care.” Hopping up the step into the wagon, Kestrel passed the bowl of stew to Silver, who eagerly took it in her wings. The younger pegasus wasted no time plunging her muzzle into the bowl and scarfing down what she could manage in a few bites before she pulled her head back and licked her lips.

“Nothing like Miss Irons’ cooking to make a mare feel better,” Silver said, chuckling lightly. “I can already feel it yellin’ at me from the inside to get my sorry plot outta bed and start helpin’ ‘round camp.”

Kestrel snickered at that; Miss Irons was a hard one to make excuses to, though the old mare knew better than anypony else just how much rest Silver needed to start feeling like herself once again. She’d probably be ordering Silver to stay in that hammock for a week to make sure she really healed. Kestrel didn’t blame her, really—Silver’s wound had been so frightening at first that if Tumbleweed didn’t know a little healing magic to stabilize her, she probably would have died from it.

But that was hard to see as Kestrel watched Silver diligently finish off her bowl of stew. Though the younger mare’s eyes were still red and watery, and a little sheen of sweat glistened on her already shiny coat, she looked much healthier than the coughing, shaking, bleeding pegasus who’d crash-landed on the back of Trixie’s wagon after being shot out of the sky. Considering how much better she looked only a few days removed from a life-threatening injury, Kestrel felt she wouldn’t be surprised if Silver was flying again by the end of the week.

When she finally finished her meal, Silver let out a little burp and dropped the tin on the floor. “Mmmm… good,” was all she had to say about it.

“Good that it’s good,” Kestrel said, snatching the bowl off the ground. “Least you got your appetite back.”

“Gettin’ a bullet through your intestines ain’t that good for your appetite,” Silver said. “I’m a fast healer, though.”

“Well, that and you had a little help from Tumbleweed.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll make sure to say my thanks… again.” She let out a breathy laugh. “I’m pretty sure he’s tired of me sayin’ how thankful I am he saved me these past few days on the road.”

“Another time or three won’t bother him… much.” Kestrel smiled and sat down against the opposite wall of the wagon, shifting slightly to get comfortable beside the Chatter gun still stowed against the folded stage. “We’re just happy you’re feelin’ better.”

Silver leaned back in her hammock, her wiggling setting it rocking lightly back and forth. “Ain’t nopony happier than me, I tell ya,” she said. “Dyin’ don’t sound like it’s a party.”

“Nah, the party’s all ‘bout livin’,” Kestrel agreed. Her eyes wandered to the open door, where she could already see the flickering light of a campfire beginning to overtake the fading sunlight outside. “We’re certainly gonna have a party for that tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow or the day after. Depends on when we get to Hoofston and get some supplies; we’re plenty low on what we got left.”

“Mmhmm.” Silver closed her eyes, and for a moment, kestrel wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Then, grunting, Silver arched her back, coughed as she stretched her stitches, and flopped back down into the embrace of the hammock. “You better not have a party without me, Kessie, I swear.”

“Oh, you’ll be feelin’ better by then, anyway,” Kestrel said, dismissively waving a wing. “Ain’t you the one insistin’ you’s a fast healer?”

The young outlaw chuckled. “Hey, if there’s whiskey at the end of the tunnel, I’m as fast a healer as anypony. Maybe I got a bit of earth pony in me.”

“Certainly ‘splains why you was a pegasus livin’ on a plantation when you joined us,” Kestrel said. “That’s earth pony work, not pegasus.”

“Oh, it weren’t like I was the one workin’ the damn fields,” Silver said. “Pa had hired help for that. A few griffons from the Confederacy ‘cross the ocean, but mostly just earth ponies lookin’ for simple work.” She sniggered as she added, “Rough woulda fit right in with ‘em.”

“C’mon now, Silvie, you know slavery ain’t right,” Kestrel said with a teasing wink.

Silver laughed and shook her head. “Oh, hush. Pa was good to the help, paid ‘em all well. Not like some of the other plantation owners we was near, but that just meant he got first pick of the help he needed since he paid ‘em more.”

“You make it sound so appealin’. Maybe we should stop this life of crime and go do some simple, honest work.”

“Psshh. Pa’d tan my hide if I came back now. A life of crime’s a bad look for the family.”

“You’ve had a much shorter life of it,” Kestrel said, her smile faltering to something more thoughtful. “You’d probably be able to get out if you wanted. Go back to your family, put your life back together. You ain’t gotta ride and die like the rest of us.”

Silver blinked in surprise. “You ain’t tryin’ to force me out, I hope.”

“I ain’t doin’ nothin’ of the sort,” Kestrel said. “I always believed ponies should make their own ways in life. Do what you want, don’t let anypony tell ya no. And you, Silvie, you came from such a privileged life, I just don’t want you to feel like you’re throwin’ everythin’ away just to be an outlaw for a day.”

The younger mare managed to wriggle a wing out from under her blankets just to lazily wave it. “Oh, Kessie, I don’t miss that life at all. Trust me. You worry ‘bout ponies livin’ their own lives? I weren’t able to do that back home.”

Kestrel’s eyebrow rose. “Oh?”

“Pa wanted me to be the daughter he dreamed of,” Silver said. “I was always too wild for him. I liked playin’ in the mud instead of playin’ with dolls and teacups. I liked singin’ bawdy songs instead of readin’ poetry. I liked shootin’ guns instead of paintin’ watercolors. He didn’t like me doin’ any of that, so he was gonna send me away to Vanhoover and force me to turn into what he wanted by makin’ me stay with my aunt.” The mare shrugged. “You think I’d want to go back to that?”

“It’s better to have a family that loves you than one that don’t,” Kestrel said, looking down at her hooves. “My family didn’t love me none. If it weren’t for that, I don’t think I’d be on this side of the law.”

Silver slowly cocked her head. “I don’t think you ever told me nothin’ about your family.”

“Ain’t much worth talkin’ about,” Kestrel said. “My mama and pa were prospectors near Appleloosa. They went there to strike gold and get rich. Instead, they got two foals and a mountain of debt. They also got some nasty habits. Pa would gamble away what little he got, and he’d take out loans to gamble more, figurin’ he had to make it big someday. Mama just drowned her sorrows in the bottle and beat me and my little brother, Kite, for any little thing.”

The younger mare’s eyes widened. “Oh, Celestia, I didn’t know…”

“’Cause it’s old history,” Kestrel said, shrugging her wings. “I ran off with Kite when I was ten and he was seven. I got tired of tryin’ to steal so we could eat. I got tired of tryin’ to keep Mama from turnin’ her hooves on Kite when she got mad. I got tired of doin’ whatever I could to scrape together a few bits, only for our parents to take ‘em and burn ‘em on their addictions faster than I could blink.” She pulled the corner of her duster back and pointed to several white scars decorating her shoulder. “Mama threw a glass at me once when she was bad. It broke and cut me real deep. She didn’t care none that I was bleedin’ so bad. She passed out minutes later. That was when I knew I had to go. I had to take Kite and get outta there. Next time, Mama might hit me in the head with a pan and snap my neck—or worse, she might hit Kite.”

Silver had pulled her forelegs up to her chest as if she was hugging herself. “So you ran?” she asked.

Kestrel nodded. “I took whatever I could and ran off with Kite the next day. I didn’t care that I was stealin’ from my parents; they’d been stealin’ from me my whole life. We got on the first train we could sneak our way on and hid ‘til it finally stopped. When we got out, we was in Canterlot. I tried to find a place for us to stay, but we got robbed blind on the first day. We were just kids; nopony was there to look out for us. We ended up on the streets like so many other foals, but I promised Kite we’d get through it.”

“I remember you tellin’ me how you met Tumbleweed in Canterlot,” Silver said. “You two tried to rob each other, right?” When Kestrel nodded, Silver let a little smile flit onto her muzzle—but only for a moment. “But you never said nothin’ ‘bout… ‘bout Kite… did he?”

A pained expression overcame Kestrel’s face, and she winced hard and looked away. Even thinking about it made her hurt, more than twenty years later. “Kite got pneumonia our first winter in Canterlot,” Kestrel said. “I begged ponies to help him. I’d throw myself at the hooves of the doctors in their clinics. But we didn’t have nothin’, so they wouldn’t help him. I tried to steal medicine and got locked in a jail for a weekend. When I came back to the alley we’d been stayin’ in, Kite’d…”

Her throat seized up, and she coughed to try and open it up. A fetlock rubbed at eyes that she insisted to herself were dry. After a moment to breathe, Kestrel shook her head. “Be happy when you got a family,” Kestrel finally said. “A family that loves you. The Gang’s my family now, and I want to see ‘em all happy and safe. Even Rough,” she added with a forced chuckle.

Silver awkwardly shifted in her hammock, and as the silence dragged on, Kestrel considered simply getting up and leaving. But instead, Silver cleared her throat with a little cough. “You guys are a better family than the one I left,” Silver finally said. She smiled softly at Kestrel. “I wish I had a big sister like you when I was growin’ up.”

“Heh… Kite woulda liked you,” Kestrel said, managing to curl the corners of her lips upwards. “He woulda liked you a lot.”

Outside, the sun had all but disappeared, and the shadows began to creep into the wagon. Silver’s face gleamed in what little light there was left to hit it, shaping her features. The mare was tired, Kestrel could tell, and the sad story she had just unloaded was weighing on her. She needed rest, that much was certain. Kestrel, unfortunately, knew she wouldn’t be getting any rest anytime soon.

Perhaps doing something else would take her mind off Kite.

1.     See who’s sitting around the campfire. Maybe Wanderer’s got a good story, or Tumbleweed’s got some grand plans for us in Hoofston. Let somepony else do the talkin’, ‘cause I ain’t too interested in more right now.

2.     Walk in the moonlight. I bet the lake’s plenty peaceful right now. Might set my mind at ease, let me prepare for the next day.

3.     Try to get some sleep, no matter how difficult. Tomorrow’s gonna be a big day, I’m sure. I need to be awake and alert if we go into town and do some lookin’ around.

4.     See if Silver wants some company for the night. That hammock’s big enough for two, I suppose. Havin’ somepony warm by her side might help Silver feel more comfortable, and I reckon’ it might chase away my demons for a little.