In the bedroom, the bed was made, sheets folded and tucked delicately around the pillows in that kind of way that looked nice, but had to be completely undone to actually use as bedding. Rather than bothering with that, Shinespark had set a snoring Valey straight atop the sheets and pillows and everything, standing watch quietly nearby. Valey didn't seem to mind one bit.
Starlight blinked at Shinespark and the bed, wondering why she hadn't climbed in too and realizing rather suddenly that it was a bed sized comfortably for two adults, the same size her parents' old bed had been when she was here before. Why did Fishy give them that? She knew Maple and her were alone, right?
"Evening," Shinespark greeted, not whispering but still keeping her voice low. "Bed? I'm surprised you're one of the first to leave the party."
"Are you?" Starlight tilted her head. Did her friends really not know how hard it was, being this close to an impending end and holding her head high anyway? "The party's over, though. Everyone is just doing dishes and cleaning."
Shinespark shrugged. "Well, maybe I shouldn't be. I only left because it was past this lug's bedtime." She shook her head fondly at Valey, running the tip of a hoof through her fur. "I don't know what got into her. Maybe she just tired herself out from enjoying herself too much. If she did, she deserves it."
Starlight felt like she deserved a thing like that, too. Or, at least, she wanted it. Who was qualified to be the judge of what she deserved? In her book, though, all of her friends did. Even if the party had been a difficult medicine for her to swallow, her friends had enjoyed it, and she enjoyed seeing them do so. At least they were happy, if nothing else. She knew that didn't count for enough when she was still unhappy herself, but it was worlds better than everyone being miserable.
"It is late," she pointed out.
"And Valey's stayed up all night many times before. I was expecting her not to sleep at all tonight." Shinespark glanced at the bed again. "But here she is."
Starlight glanced at Valey again. "Why aren't you with her?"
"It would be awkward if it was just the two of us." Shinespark flicked her tail, settling for leaning against the bedside and sitting on the floor. "Just waiting for someone else. You don't have anything else you want to do before bed?"
"No." Starlight swallowed. It was half-true. What she wanted was to spend an eternity growing up with her friends at her sides, but going to bed was synonymous with ending the last few hours of their time together and saying goodbye. But she knew as well as anyone how impossible that was, and so everything she wanted, she couldn't do. Bed was her only option, closing her eyes until it was over.
"Well, feel free to join," Shinespark invited. "I'll be along in a while. But Valey is in a cuddly mood at the moment."
Starlight stared at the bed. It was wide and open, her green-maned friend doing her best to hog as much as she could and still leaving ample room for others. The window blinds were open; she could easily look out at the night-clad roofs of Sires Hollow, her past and future home.
Numbly, she put a hoof up on the edge of the bed, feeling like she was taking her first step into the mountains so many months ago. Stepping from one life to another, in the space between Sires Hollow and Riverfall, like this one night was equivalent to the weeks she had spent shivering and on her own...
She hauled herself fully on board. Valey immediately sleep-hugged her and held her tightly in her forelegs.
Starlight squeaked as her lungs were squeezed and she was nuzzled against Valey's chest, but her sleeping friend was still gentle. Starlight suddenly didn't want to be let go.
She was still facing the windows, and from here, it was like the view of the town was straight beneath her. Sires Hollow was where she would land if she fell, and she was currently soaring above it, carried aloft by her friends. It was so distant and yet so close, far beneath her and yet a single leap away. Just like the leap off the cliff face to make it from the mountains to Riverfall... She had to make it to the bottom, and her time was almost here. Would she try too hard to prepare, just like last time, and be swept over the edge in an accident? Or would she jump on her own power, ready or not?
Starlight wanted to jump. She wanted to tear away what she couldn't keep, leaping halfway backwards and halfway forwards into that potent mix of past and present, the fragments of her old life that still endured across time waiting to mix with the shards of her new one that she was allowed to keep. Maple. Fluffy. The ponies she remembered in the north. The ponies she was remembered by in the south. But time wouldn't budge, moving at its own, determined rate, and the only leap she could take was to close her eyes and pray that everything would be alright.
"It's me..." Slipstream's voice quietly greeted behind her. "Oh, am I early? Gerardo says he'll take a mat beside the bed so his beak or talons don't poke anyone in the night..."
Starlight waited, and Slipstream crawled into the bed. Valey grabbed her too, and suddenly she was sandwiched between two mares, though with plenty of room to breathe. She could still see the window when she cracked her eyes open.
Slipstream was a pegasus, and neither of the group's pegasi were as close to Starlight as Maple or Valey. In fact, she couldn't even remember if they had done this before, the feeling of Slipstream's wings new and almost unusual. This close, she wasn't as familiar with Slipstream's smell, either. Even laying in a pile in a bed only served to emphasize how much Starlight didn't know about her, and Starlight didn't know how that made her feel.
Wasn't part of the point of settling down so that she could expand out and have more ponies in her life, after all? Why bother when there were ponies still around her she could know so much more? She knew that Slipstream liked Gerardo, sweaters, and was too wowed by her place in life to ask for much more, but how much more was there to this pegasus?
She was a pony too, after all. Her thoughts and hopes and wishes were probably just as complex and varied as anyone else. And because Starlight was saying goodbye, this was the best she would ever know her. It was a closing door, the end of an opportunity. The end.
...But weren't there dozens of other ponies in Sires Hollow? Scratch that, there were at least a hundred. Each and every one of them would be the same, and Starlight knew them even less than this pegasus who had joined her pile. It would be impossible to hold each and every one of them close with the closeness she wished others to have toward her. Only a goddess could do that.
Wasn't there any middle ground? There had to be, because for all Starlight didn't know about this mare, she still didn't want to let go.
"I see we're gathering," Nyala murmured, entering the room. "May I join too?"
"Let's get this started," Shinespark agreed. "The bed has plenty of room for more."
Two new bodies entered the pile, though still, Starlight's view stayed unblocked.
Valey and Shinespark, they were family. Starlight wasn't sure what Maple was to her anymore, and she wasn't sure about those two either, but she had never seen their happiness as her paramount goal. Their safety? Sure, she had put herself on the line for them many times. But they were ponies she was distant from enough to look up to, yet close enough to admire as well. She would miss them, she knew... but what was Nyala?
Nyala was Valey's sister, and the pony on the ship she knew the least about. Starlight felt like if she had to tell someone everything she knew about all of her friends, there were some where she could ramble for hours, and yet for Nyala she would draw a total blank. Quiet? The batpony was quiet. Valey's sister? They had a shared history, though Nyala had never talked about it where she could hear. She had once given Starlight a glance into her mind at Kinmari, when she talked about the cave she had found in Icereach that descended to the lifestream and how she didn't like seeing it used for science. And that was all Starlight knew.
For losing Nyala, it was less a mourning of what was lost and more what could have been. And perhaps it was simply for the sake of telling herself that partings were painful. She could just as easily spend time around Nyala as any pony in Sires Hollow, after all. Distress at the idea of losing her...
No. It really was just distress at the idea of losing anyone, period.
Sunburst had left. That had hurt. She felt like she had been told to get over it, though she really couldn't be sure. And so trying to say that partings didn't have to be painful, despite how she desperately wanted it to be true and knew that some way, it could be, felt like saying that all that pain was unnecessary.
Starlight didn't want to hurt for no reason. She wanted there to be something, some light, some relief at the end, that would make it all worth it and let her live happily ever after. It was a fool's dream, but it was hers. And if there was nothing else she could hold onto and keep for herself in life, she could always still have hope so long as she cared for herself and didn't let it burn out.
"...This pile is looking large already," Grenada remarked, entering the room. A sound of hoof against wood rang out. "A sturdy frame, though. I think it can manage me."
"Good thing none of us are particularly large," Slipstream mumbled back.
Grenada joined the bed, further away from Starlight in the pile. How did she feel about Grenada? Like Slipstream, Starlight knew more about her than Nyala, yet didn't engage with her as much as her other friends. Grenada was a friend of a friend, Shinespark's sister and Harshwater's old boss, rival, nemesis... Whatever their relationship had been in Mistvale.
Starlight remembered, once upon a time, how she first met Grenada in the dining hall of the Immortal Dream. She didn't recall if it was evening or morning, but could still hear Gerardo and Shinespark speaking about the plot to bomb the dams. She could see Grenada freezing up, going from a cocky teenager with utmost trust in her leader to overwhelmed by the prospect of losing her home to a flood in mere seconds.
How had Grenada felt, in the wake of that devastation? She knew Shinespark's response; she had been there in person and flown with her for weeks during the recovery. Whatever Grenada's true experiences and feelings, she felt like another hole in Starlight's mind, a place in her tapestry of friendship where she didn't know what was woven. Starlight shivered. She wanted to have a perfect memory to remember her friends by, not merely be biased to the ones closest to her whose lives she had experienced more of. She wanted to take everyone's stories with her...
Maybe that was the point of the party. Suddenly, she appreciated it a whole lot more, and wished she had realized this a few hours earlier.
They were still in bed, though. Her friends weren't gone yet. There would be breakfast first in the morning.
Valey sensed something in her sleep and shifted, hugging Starlight tighter.
"I'm not late to the party, am I?"
Now it was Harshwater's turn to arrive. She settled down much closer to Starlight, probably trying to avoid Nyala and be close to Slipstream and Valey, and Starlight felt her rest on one of her legs. What was Harshwater to her? Just another friend? The more Starlight thought about it, the more solidly a major realization clicked into piece: each and every one of the ponies who called the Immortal Dream home was there because wherever they had been wasn't their home anymore.
Shinespark's Sosa was gone. Valey's Ironridge had never been a home in the first place, and had little left to offer Slipstream. Harshwater had built her life around Kero, who sent her off to die...
It wasn't just Felicity on the sound stone who could relate to her. It was everyone. Any one of the ponies in this bed, she could pick, and they would know something about leaving their world behind, or having it ripped away. All of them could help her, tell her what they found and walk beside her. One might even go as far as saying it was why the group of them traveled together. For finding ponies who knew about dealing with loss, she had to look no further than the ones who had surrounded her for the past weeks and months. Why was she letting them go on ahead? All the expertise she needed was right here...
Except it wasn't. Because if any of them had known the secret to truly finishing their searches and rebuilding their lives, they would have gotten off the ship and been done looking.
Starlight's view of the parting immediately turned on its head. What if she wasn't being left behind, but leaving them behind? What if the unknown she was stepping out into was precisely what all of them were looking for, and had yet to find? It was an idea of hope for her, but for her friends...
They weren't going out on a heroic adventure to get the Writs of Harmonic Sanction so they could bring her and Maple back into the fold. They were finding them for themselves so they could catch up.
How could she handle this? How was this okay? She owed her friends everything. Could she really take the weak road and walk toward her happy ending early, leaving the rest of them to fly on alone?
No, Valey's voice chided in her head, she had it all wrong. It was absolutely okay because she was at the end of her rope and her friends had the strength to keep going. And the only way to get everyone to the finish in the end was to give no one more than what they could bear.
Starlight started crying, tears trickling from her eyes without any change to her breaths. She didn't even sniffle. She had done that too much today to have energy for anything more. But she cried because she was weak, because she had to be the one who finished first, because she didn't have the strength to make sacrifices and protect her friends and do what it took to care for them, even though she was the strongest filly she knew. Starlight cried because whatever all her power was worth, it measured up to nothing compared to this. She cried because she couldn't... and because she didn't have to.
She no longer had to be the strongest. She could afford not to, because her friends were stronger than her. It was what she had always been afraid of, having to rely on fate for a good outcome when she lacked the strength to intervene herself. But was relying on her friends the same as relying on fate, when she knew they would fight for her and for themselves with every bit of fervor she could muster on her own? This was what she was terrified of, but it was what she also so badly desired.
At long last, Maple and Amber entered the bedroom, scents more familiar than any of the others save Valey. They closed the door behind them, still not sharing a word, and the bed shifted and groaned one last time with their movements. Maple tucked against Starlight, and Amber sprawled atop Maple, and while the rooftops of Sires Hollow were still visible, looking out in that direction now held the visage of Maple as well.
Starlight was looking at her future. Maple was still there. Amber was a part of Maple's story, and they would both miss her keenly, but out of all the goodbyes Starlight could think about all of her friends, Maple was the one she didn't have to. She was the one she could hold onto. She was safe.
She trusted her never, ever to leave like Sunburst.
"Mm love you," Starlight mumbled, her mouth pressed partly shut by the bed.
"I love you too, Starlight," Maple whispered against her. "Let's get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow."
Starlight closed her eyes one last time, and tried to sleep.
Outside the window, the roofs of Sires Hollow were still all visible, lit by the stars. Those same stars shone down upon forested slopes and mountaintops, refracted across sheets of snow and ice matching the sheer, jagged peaks in a kaleidoscope of silver sparkles. To the east, the constellations remained unchanged, the moon waxing and nearly full, covering rivers and seas and desert peninsulas and oceans and Kinmari, and the lands beyond where Gunther and his griffon crew may or may not have returned home. The stars were also unchanged across the Aldenfold, the same heavens and the same moon looking down at what had become of the Griffon Empire. Far beyond Starlight's view, the stars themselves still reached.
They shone over Mistvale, no one left to report whether its nights still magically carried on forever. They washed the wavetips of the northern sea, a crossing that had once been the staple of the northern world economy, though who but the stars could say who was crossing it now? They flowed over the mouth of the Yule, the badlands and deserts of Varsidel, the tall conifers of Riverfall and the mountain crater of Ironridge, because as vast as the world was, the stars were higher still. The Aldenfold itself, the stars also saw, a route Starlight had traced months ago through the lonely peaks and valleys. That sight, it could be reasonable to say, she was the only mortal they had ever shared it with.
And as the route Starlight had taken around the world looped back and met itself back where it began, the stars looked down on one more sight that was for them and them alone: the shielded ocean bay where the Immortal Dream sat, harmony comet powered down and doors locked tight, where a tiny northern airship sized for one coasted down the mountainside and came to a rest on an outcropping, as hidden from view of the town as it could be.
Thump. Four paws alighted almost silently on the deck of the Immortal Dream, and a feline muzzle raised its nose and sniffed. Two rounded ears folded and pressed back hard.
A single claw extended, delicately trying a door. Locked. They didn't try to force it.
With a rush of wings, a shadow glided to the boat's side, glancing in through porthole after porthole. Empty cabin. Empty cabin. Empty.
"Where are they!?" High Prince Gazelle squealed under his breath, anxiety leaking from every corner of his body. He moved like a shadow, impossible to detect, but there was no one to detect him. The Dream was completely unguarded.
"No... Not even Valey is guarding their stupid boat?" He hyperventilated for a whole second, fighting and regaining control of himself. "It's empty..."
He knew Lyn wasn't here. He could feel it. She was over that low-lying ridge, just inside town. But if nobody else was here, where else could they be but there as well?
With a nervous twitch, his wings propelled him up to the ridge, and he landed near the top, where a small picnic area had been set up that didn't seem to be in use. Some of the town's buildings still had lights on. Most of them were dim. His quarry was all the way across town, to the west.
He didn't even bother with stealth. He just spread his wings and flew all the way around, skirting the town entirely.
Soon, Gazelle had his target narrowed down to a single house, and felt like it was on the upper floor at that. The lights were all off. He alighted on a first-floor roof adjacent to a window, peered through... and blanched.
There was a little bed, and a little desk, and a few crates that were half-opened and filled with filly things. This... This wasn't a fortress, or an inn, or an ordinary place to rest their heads while they carried along on a journey. This looked like a home, and it was being moved into.
He circled around, checking for more windows. There was one, wide and second-floor and painfully close to Lyn. He latched onto the wall and stared inside...
They were all there. Every last one of them, Starlight and Valey and however many others, piled into a single bed and sleeping peacefully. And by the foot of the bed, there was a discarded, filly-size set of saddlebags, and they held his prize.
Lyn was right there. Heavily guarded. In a home. And every one of Starlight and Valey and their friends looked like they were moving in and guarding her and there to stay.
Gazelle sucked in a breath, his heart's desire so close and yet separated by a thin piece of glass and an impossibly powerful filly. She was right there... like bait in a trap.
He breathed raggedly. Since skirmishing with Starlight at Kinmari, he had collected a few brands, but not as many as he had held then. He was a god, but she... Starlight had to be something sent to stop him, and now she had her friends instead of being alone. Desire for Lyn pressed him like a physical force against the window, and yet Starlight was there. She was here and her friends were here and all of them were staying and they weren't going to move and he had come all this way only to meet the end of the line.
Gazelle was a god. Fate was the will of a god, nothing more than occurrences that came to pass because whoever was strong enough to make them happen dictated that they be so. But Starlight had fought him, and Valey too. Their fate was stronger than his, and if it was destined that he couldn't take back Lyn, here at the end, then what was he even hoping to achieve? Why had he come all this way? In hopes that fate would bend to him for a change, and Lyn would be left forgotten in town while Starlight and Valey slumbered on the ship, too far to protect her?
But no. They were here, and here they were going to stay. An image stretched out in his mind, reaching for eternity, of the lot of them sitting in this town right there in that bed and guarding his sister forever, and...
He almost broke the glass. It almost would be better to die trying than to give up when he was so close. But he knew he couldn't do it. Starlight would prove stronger. It wasn't fair, but he couldn't do it! Why!? Why hadn't he been enough back on Kinmari, when he had her and underestimated that wretched filly and lost everything again!?
Whyever it was, Gazelle couldn't do it. He hung against the window and stared in despair at the satchel, so close and so barely out of reach.
Inside the house, Starlight's eyes were squeezed shut, but she was far from sleeping.
She felt her friends all breathing against her. All of them had calmed and drifted off long ago, and she wished she could do the same. But now that she was here, all she could do was lay restlessly, praying that morning would both come soon and yet never come.
Her world ended tomorrow, but she had survived such a thing before. Or had she? Could she really call where she was now survival?
She could. Because that was exactly where she was: surviving. Maybe not living. That was the next step. But she would survive.
It would be okay. She could do this. She wished she could do it, knew she could do it, wished that her wish would be granted and she could have a strength worth believing in, to let go of her friends and face a future without them. But with them all here, so close and present, they were impossible not to hold onto. Starlight prayed that she could do the impossible.
"You can do this," she squeaked, her tongue moving halfway through the motions and no breath following to make sound, a tiny, high-pitched noise in her throat all that reached her ears. "You can do this... You can do this... You can do this..."
"I can't do this," Gazelle breathed, the cold reality he had been running from for a month of travel hitting his face just like the window to Maple's bedroom. What hope did he ever have of getting Starlight to leave Lyn alone and give her back? Force was the rightful option. It was his right to use that. He could have anything. He could raze this town to the ground as it slept, take all their brands, and decree himself to be in the right purely because it was within his power... but what purpose would that serve? The town had a guardian angel, and the one thing he cared about, she was sitting on and would never let go.
It had been possible to deny it on the long flight from the Griffon Empire, telling himself stories about how she would forget, or lose her powers, or be effortlessly swatted aside. But those were fantasies and wishful thinking... the only fantasies he didn't have the power to bring to reality in this barren world! That and get Lyn back.
Who was Starlight guarding? What was she the angel of? Once, he had thought she stopped him to bring him back to his senses, long ago when the Empire was still his own. But no... She was like a dragon, zealously guarding the things she claimed as her own. She only bothered him when he tried to take something she wanted. Like any other pony at all.
Gazelle hissed in rage, his jaw contorting in a silent, helpless scream. He was so close, and he couldn't!
He couldn't do it.
Screw Garsheeva and her bargains and plans. He didn't care about whatever she had to offer, unless there was a time machine that could bring back the past in that fetid temple of hers. He would become the most powerful being in the world for Lyn, do anything for her... and that was where his road ended, because of this accursed filly who wouldn't get out of his way.
Even by sleeping peacefully in a bed, she stood in his way, and there was nothing he could do.
He couldn't do this at all.
"Please," Starlight whimpered, her voice still a wordless, tiny squeak that was too high for anyone else to hear. "If anyone is out there and anyone can hear me, please help me..."
What was she wishing for? Strength to survive and go on living, even though she was already so strong she could fight off windigoes, Crystal and Gazelle? Someone to carry her when she was weak? She had Maple. She wished that Maple would be strong, that she would believe herself when she told herself she could do it as her adventure ended. Starlight knew she could make it through this and into the future, and she knew the future could be bright. Surrounded by her friends for the very last time, she was riding on a bed of hope, trusting that the world tomorrow would still exist around her and that there would still be ground for her to stand on as she got back on her hooves.
She wished that trust would be returned. She prayed that trust would be returned. She hoped and dreamed that when she told herself she could do it, the world would let her be right... and slowly, in a feverish focus, she lost her grip and slid into sleep, and dreamed of shooting stars.
Gazelle fell back from the window.
It was less than an inch, but he still broke contact, like a screen of water was now separating him from Lyn like the surface of a lake, and the more he stared, the deeper it became.
He couldn't do this. The water was pushing him away. He was losing his grip, would surely drown if he didn't stop, and yet he couldn't break away and put Lyn down.
There was something behind him, he knew. A night sky strewn with stars, and a whole world, and his unimaginable sphinx powers. He could do anything in the world, anything he wanted, if only he could let go of the one thing Starlight wouldn't let him have.
But Lyn was all he had. She was all that defined him. If he let go, he'd be nothing. But clinging on and trying to reach her... He just couldn't do it.
Where was the answer? There was none. But what could he do? Stay where he was? Night would pass, and morning would come, and Starlight would see him, trap or not.
He couldn't reach Lyn. He knew Starlight would stop him. But he couldn't let her go, either... There was just nothing he could do. He was almighty, and he couldn't do anything. Not anything at all.
...Gazelle ran away.