//------------------------------// // Chapter 27. Bereft of time // Story: Learning to see Luna, the story of Vivid Colour. // by Hope //------------------------------// Luna followed the charge of her army, as it swept across the battlefield and into the trenches on the opposing side, following an explosion large enough to be visible from every part of her camp. She staggered from rock to blasted rock, feeling quite drugged and struggling to stay aloft when she spread her wings to glide over trenches. Smoke was still rising as she found the crater, with pieces of unrecognizable debris strewn around a hole that burrowed down into the clay-like bedrock below the dirt. But she saw no pony bodies, no shards of horn or hoof, and so she kept a thin sliver of hope as she combed the wreckage. But it was one of the soldiers that found Vivid's still form, tossed into a trench nearly ten yards away from the edge of the crater. She was bleeding, slowly, through several dozen small cuts, turning her fur a dark almost black-red mottled with her natural maroon. Luna carefully cleared the chunks of dirt off of her, and put her ear to Vivid's neck. There was a pulse, just barely there. "I'm leaving, back to Canterlot. I'll return after I rest, in the evening. Can you lead the charge until then?" She asked General Pie, who stood nearby. "Yes, your highness, but I need to know, are we to drive them back or hold this line, now that we've found Vivid?" Luna hesitated, eyes picking out every wound on her unconscious lover. Trying to think of anything but getting her the help she needed, was a struggle. "Keep pushing. They will be receiving more fuel, we must deprive them of any advantageous position at which to mount a counter attack. We will use this advantage to its fullest." Pie nodded, and Luna brought her magic to bear, picking up Vivid, wincing as one leg hung limp, but finally translocating them back, all the way to Canterlot. The flash of light startled the nurses in the hospital, but moments later they were rushing to attend to Vivid, a swarm of doctors and nurses clustered around a lone bed as their princess sat next to it, tears tracking her cheeks in silence. "Your royal highness," a doctor finally started. "Luna. I am just Luna today," she replied. "Luna, we need you to step away," the doctor insisted, her tone strained as she was torn between her duty as a caretaker, and her respect as a citizen. Luna's head bowed and she stood, taking three steps away before sitting again. "How is she?" The princess asked weakly. The doctor looked back to the others hard at work. The blood on their tools and the small mountain of gauze being set aside. "If we cannot stop the bleeding in her lungs, she will die," the doctor admitted as she looked back to her princess. "Could my magic be used to keep her alive? I can hold the blood aside for..." She trailed off as the doctor grimaced. "Perhaps it would give us more time, but it would damage her lungs in doing so. Let us work, and we may yet save her without... Divine intervention." "What use is there in being divine if the power is not enough to help anypony besides yourself?" Luna asked, her throat so tight from the threat of sobs that she sounded so much older, and so much more tired. The doctor hung her head, but there was nothing she could say. A second later, one of the others called for her and she returned to the table, and the mare upon it. Her head kept drooping, Princess Luna still fighting the effects of the spells that Vivid had cast on her, but she did not fall asleep as the adrenaline from her rescue faded, and the miserable fear of Vivid’s struggle to survive became her only focus. The doctors stopped the bleeding, but Vivid was weak, so weak that a doctor stayed by her side and checked her pulse minute by minute, trickling a little water into her mouth in the hopes that she would stay hydrated. Luna continued sitting there, where she’d been told to sit. She could have overpowered Vivid, she thought. She could have stopped her from going off to the battlefield. But as the sun rose and Canterlot descended into slumber, she heard hoofsteps approach from behind. “Princess,” Posey, mage of the Archway, said gently as she stopped behind her. “May I sit with you?” Luna nodded her head once, and the unicorn found her spot next to the princess a moment later, watching the weary doctor tip a dewar of water into Vivid’s mouth ever so slightly. “If she does not live,” Posey whispered. “What will you do?” Luna turned away as tears welled in her eyes. “Nothing,” the princess admitted a moment later. “I will do nothing, but be misery’s champion, and embrace decay.” “Your ponies still need you, Luna,” Posey said, still so gentle in her tone. Luna looked back to the mage, incredulous and frustrated, but in her eyes she saw for a moment a pony she’d not seen in so very very long. She saw the ghost of her sister. The Princess looked up to the ceiling at the dawn light, letting tears slip down her cheeks and neck to wet her torc. “They will always need me,” Luna whimpered. “So what then? Must I bury my heart, break my soul and be their rock? For a hundred more years, a thousand? Will time hold meaning for me, when there is no pony who counts it for me?” Posey’s hoof touched Luna’s back gently, not to tell her that the fears were not real, or to persuade her of something, but just to be there in the same space as her for a moment. “When I die, I’ll make sure there’s someone like me, who worries after you,” Posey promised. “There will always be somepony who cares, who can count the time with you.” They both were silent for a few minutes, and then Luna was startled a little when Posey actually began to count. “One. Two. Three. Four…” Luna sniffled, but smiled a little. “It’s a bit of poetry, Posey, I… Thank you, but you need not sit here and literally count.” She put a wing around Posey and sighed as she looked at Vivid on the bed, eyelids heavy. “If she passes… when she passes, some day, I will hurt. More than I’ve known in a very long time. But I will be here, you can rest easy in that.” “I’m glad,” Posey said, smiling a little. “I wouldn’t want to lose you.” But when Luna looked into Posey’s eyes again, she saw just a pony who cared, no ancient alicorn in those eyes. Just a buried wish in Luna’s heart. “Not just because you’re my princess either,” Posey added. Luna thought over that addition, and sniffled a little before looking at Posey. “I thought for most ponies that’s all I was. Their princess.” “No, you’ve comforted me when I was really scared and small. You gave me a safe place to stay and learn, and… Well, I think we’re friends,” she admitted. Luna smiled and nodded, before standing and walking towards the bed. The doctor looked up warily. “I can help,” Luna said firmly. “Let me help for just an hour, then I’ll sleep, and leave you alone.” “I’ll accept that deal,” the doctor agreed. “Just enough water to wet her tongue, if she swallows, then a little more. Let me check her pulse.” The work to care for Vivid was repetitive and simple, the doctor taking care of anything critical, and suddenly Luna was being escorted to her room by her guards. “I can sleep on the floor next to her,” Luna objected gently. “You’ve already said that, your Majesty, and the doctor said you were not allowed,” Lyra Major, her personal guard said firmly. Luna pouted, but she couldn’t do much more, she was so exhausted. Lyra pushed her gently into her room, and then took her torc, crown, and boots off. A maid-in-waiting rushed forward to brush her coat clean, and then with their combined effort they got Luna to lay down on her bed. “But… Vivid,” Luna whispered. Lyra put her hoof on Luna’s side, and sighed. “I’ll go to her,” Lyra said, pulling up the covers. “I’ll be by her side, in your place. Now sleep. Sleep, your highness.” The guards waited until their princess stopped struggling against the covers and finally fell still except for her breathing, and Lyra shared a glance with Kingfisher, before stepping outside of the royal Chambers and locking them. Kingfisher removed his helmet, and the enchantment that made him look like any other thestral faded. His emerald feathers and the dark circles under his eyes becoming visible as he rubbed his head. "Will you be alright holding a solo shift here for the day?" Lyra asked, leaning against the wall. He nodded, blinking slowly. "She couldn't have poofed her retinue back before collapsing?" He asked, not angry but clearly exhausted. "Her royal Highness doesn't think things through when it comes to Vivid Colour..." Lyra conceded. Kingfisher huffed, but after a moment put his helmet back on. "If you could find a wall guard to take my place, I'd appreciate it. I've never been good at staying up past Dawn." "I will. Just... Keep to protocol for now." King nodded and found a spear stored in a nearby nook, sitting himself in front of the door to Luna's room, the spear tucked under his wing and standing upright. "I'll see you on the morrow, Commander." Lyra saluted before setting off down the lonely sun-soaked hallways, squinting a little in the mid morning light. But she made it outside to the walls just fine, and found a guard to take Kingfisher's place, before returning to the infirmary. It was so very quiet in the clean room, except for the soft tap of the doctor’s hooves as she trickled yet more water into Vivid’s mouth and checking her pulse, before resting her head against the bed for a few minutes. “I’m here in her Highness’s stead,” Lyra said softly. “How can I help?” The doctor blinked several times, staring at Vivid, before finally looking at the guard. “She’s… as stable as she will be. We just have to wait, to see if she will survive. She’s lost so very very much blood… being so low on the red humor, it must replenish before we may balance it to her other humors.” Lyra stared at the doctor blankly. “Just… watch her. Wake me up in an hour or two, or if she makes any movement.” “That, that I can do,” Lyra said cheerfully. “Humors and whatnot… I’ll leave to you.” “And that is why I am a doctor, and you are a guard,” she said with a tone of superiority, as she left through the door to the doctor’s offices. Lyra smirked, amused but unbothered by the doctor’s superiority complex, as she sat next to the bed and looked over Vivid’s injuries. She didn’t have to be a guard and former soldier to know the pain of an injury from battle, but it did add a certain amount of personal history to the recognition. The bruising that spread across her lips and around her eyes were from a full body bruise, common among pegusi and thestrals who fell great heights. The many many small cuts across her body were shallow, enough to cause pain and bleeding, but not enough to cause lasting harm. But the cut on the back of her head… Lyra turned away for a moment and sighed. There was no way of knowing how badly a head injury would turn out, without the pony being awake. At least if the horn was broken, then recovery was more likely, though magic would never be a skill for that unicorn again. But the skull itself was so much more essential. “This is the pony that our princess has given her love to,” Lyra sighed, shaking her head sadly. “If only she’d picked somepony less brave.” “Well then she wouldn’t have chosen her.” Lyra twitched, looking up quickly to see a robed figure in the corner. “Who goes there?” Lyra asked, standing in a defensive position. The mare pulled her hood back, smiling calmly. She was a somewhat overweight mare, with a cream tan coat and light green mane, with bracelets around her hooves and a golden circlet on her brow, settled just above her horn. “Mage Posey of the Archway, madam….?” the mare introduced herself, prompting the same from Lyra. “Lyra Major, Commander of the Royal Guard,” she held out a hoof and Posey stepped closer to shake it. “Why haven’t I seen you around the castle? I know Deep Sheen, and Princess Sunlight.” Posey sighed, shrugging a little. “Well… The last two years, I’ve never left the Archway. I was…. A little scared by one of the other mages… She betrayed us.” “I see… well, I suppose you’re right about her Highness, anyhow… she wouldn’t have chosen a partner who did not stand for her ponies,” Lyra agreed, looking back to the nearly still figure on the table.