//------------------------------//
// 73.5 Home is Where the Broken Heart Sits 
// Story: Prey and a Lamb 
// by Lambs Prey 
//------------------------------//




An extract taken from a government recruitment drive pamphlet-

The civil service industry of Equestria is filled with many unique and fantastic opportunities for everypony.

Are you a proud pegasus? Then the wide ranging industry of Weather Control might be right for you. There is always room for weather pegasi at all entry levels, both new and aspiring, and experienced and returning. Everypony from farming towns to our great cities needs our vital service. 

Whether that be working on the National Weather Plan, delivering exotic weather effects from Cloudsdale, fending off wild weather on the borders, clearing the skies, delivering rain to farms, mapping wind routes, or recording and predicting new weather pattern shifts, Weather Teams are an important part of what keeps our great nation running.

If you don't think you're quite ready to take on any of those jobs, don't worry and believe in yourself. Even if you're approaching retirement, or are after the quiet life in a more rural setting, Equestria's Weather Towers are always in need of experienced hooves to monitor vital changes. Don't delay and please contact your local Weather Team branch for additional information and opportunities.

-Extract end.

It is a bit of a misguided assumption of the ground bound folk that all of Equestrian weather comes from the Cloudsdale's Weather Factories. Most don't stop to think to consider it, but it only takes a moments thought to spot the logistical blunder that would be. 

Cloudsdale is always kept within commuting distance of Canterlot. Why would a local Weather Team working at a small town, days away from Cloudsdale, fly all the way there just to fetch a shower or cloud cover, and then fly all the way back? Doing so would take days on a round trip, and nothing would get done in anything resembling a reasonable time frame.

Well, the largest weather phenomena usually do still need to come from Cloudsdale, and are planned and organized in advance. But for smaller, everyday requirements, either the local Weather Team scavenges up what they can locally, or go to the closest Weather Tower. And while there aren't as many Weather Towers as would be convenient, (only twenty-five built so far in Equestria), they have been strategically spaced so as to offer coverage to the more far out villages and towns who otherwise couldn't enjoy the safety of tamed weather. 

A Weather Tower is a land based spire, unlike the airborne factories of Cloudsdale, and usually only needs a small hoofful of ponies to run. A few Weather Towers, which weren't placed with perhaps quite as much foresight as might've been hoped, only actually need two or three pegasi, rotating in on fortnightly shifts, to meet the low level weather production requirements of the sparsely populated countryside.

Hence the recruitment offer for older or soon to be retiring pegasi, or those who enjoy quiet solitude. And while everypony except Their Royal Majesties get old, the latter reason of solitude is a less usual one for the social pony species to seek out employment on a Weather Tower.





Prey was going on holiday. 

That sentence still didn't sound right, even in his own head.

Well, it wasn't going to be a 'holiday' by any definition of the pony version of the word. Prey wasn't going anywhere to relax, he was travelling outside of Canterlot to work, to finally cross off the third item on The List. Or rather, try to cross the third item off. The task involved wasn't an easy one. Prey didn't honestly know if he could do it, even though it wasn't the risky sort of task which threatened his life. 

That was number two on The List; survival. No amendments or sub points to it, just that one word, survival. There was no need to attach anything else to that goal, much like the third task he aimed to complete really. 

The first thing on The List, number one, the thing which had been the very reason Prey created The List, was actually a placeholder, since it was never going to happen because it was an impossibility. But it still held first spot on his list, and it would stay that way until the mountains ground to dust and the oceans dried up.

But that first wasn't something Prey could do anything about. But he could try to do something about the third item. And for that, Prey needed to get out of Canterlot and catch a train. Which meant going on holiday.


---


Prey had predicted Screech wouldn't have a problem with him requesting two days holiday for the first time ever, which combined with the one free day he was getting this weekend making it three days off in a row. Gloom and Crimson were in Griffonia, so it wasn't like Prey was doing much of anything important while they were gone. 

The latest news on the two absent ISND members and Nighthawk's mission was that through local sources they'd succeeded in secretly tracking down the ex-ambassadorial aide Hafflow last night. The bad news was, the griffin was still working for the embassy. Snatching him was going to be a lot harder than they'd been hoping for, but not than they'd been  expecting. 

The verdict was still out on whether Griffonia knew about Hafflow's duplicity or not. Either way, the two undercover Night Guard squads needed more time to observe and think up a workable plan, which was going to further add another couple of days to their original time frame of a week-and-a-half. 

It was still so strangely disconnected to Prey. Gloom and Crimson were out there, while he was back here, only getting second hoof reports through Lieutenant Screech. 

Prey didn't like danger, it was often terrifying, but he was not used to not being forced to face it anyway. It felt... disrespectful. That Gloom and Crimson's efforts could so simply be summarized into one paragraph of a report, it was wrong. Words on a page completely disassociated the very real threat and constant tension of what they were facing out there. Prey knew it from the other side, he knew what it was like to be the one on the ground, but now he was on this side of it instead.

Gloom and Crimson were on the ground out there in Griffonia, wearing disguises, trekking around Griffon Stone, getting translations through their hired local pony guide, seeing griffins and foreign architecture everywhere, with sprinklings of snow already falling at night this time of year, the rugged terrain of the highlands, and finding clues by themselves. And here he was, stuck in Canterlot. 

It wasn't a complaint, just an observation of the juxtaposition.

Prey wasn't arrogant enough to think he could've solved everything if he'd been taken along, but he might've been able to help at least. But he'd never know now, because he was just a passive observer back here in Canterlot getting second hoof reports.

Anyway, that was all beside the point, and that point was; there really wasn't much chance of them returning from Griffonia before Prey would finish his requested three days of holiday.

Prey had thought Screech wouldn't have any issue with his request despite it infringing on the terms of his unwilling probationary restrictions. Screech was a thestral, and Prey was one of his Night Guards. 

Turned out, Prey had thought wrong. Screech did care about the restrictions.

Not because he thought Prey was going to go out to some village and murder everyone with bone rot mines, he already knew Prey had the knowledge to be dangerous, that wasn't the issue to the slit eyed thestral Lieutenant. The issue was that it was against the rules. Screech acknowledged some rules were stupid, but Prey was a Night Guard, and so he needed to hold himself up to the highest standard as a representative of Princess Luna.

"Sorry Prey, but for now, this is best. Maybe Captain Nighthawk will think differently, so ask again once he returns." Screech had said, not bothered at all about expressing the notion that he might be wrong and that Nighthawk might know better than him as the Captain.

"I hope you understand my decision Prey."

Prey liked Screech more than he liked Starry Wing. Which didn't mean much. "Yes sir, I understand sir." 

'I just don't agree. But you will agree with me.'

And Screech did agree, changing his mind after Prey spent five minutes explaining to him why it was a good idea. The conversation didn't actually involve the use of mind magic on the Lieutenant at all. It did however involve Prey reading Screech's surface thoughts and tailoring his words to convince him, all the while absently twining his blue ribbon round and around his hoof.

Now convinced that Prey's argument was right, Screech signed off the request form Prey had gotten from Taffy.

A good friend would've thought to at least inform Scenic and Lilly about his suddenly granted respite, but they weren't his friends, so he didn't. They were acquaintances which he didn't hate quite as much as the rest of ponykind. Scenic and co would come by at some point no doubt, and wonder where he was, but that was their problem, not Prey's. He was under no obligation to keep them updated on what he was doing with his own life, and while they'd probably panic a bit, Prey didn't particularly care.


---O---


Prey jolted out of his meditative doze as his head bumped into the train window just hard enough to hurt. He sat up too quickly, blinking and righting himself against the rocking of the train carriage.

*Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack*

Prey rubbed at his bruised ear as he absently glanced out the window. Trees were speeding past, a living green tunnel just a few paces beyond the glass. They were somewhere in the countryside then, but it was still at least another four hours to the end of the line, and then from there, he and Lemon needed to catch the overnight train.

Lemon Pink was laid out on the opposite train bench, floppy sunhat tilted over her eyes and travel cloak folded up as a pillow. Their luggage, two light and utterly plain looking backpacks, were  stowed under her seat. They hadn't needed to actually pack the backpacks, merely picked them up before leaving. Prey had a number of identical backpacks hidden in various locations packed and ready to go. Dried food, water, a medical kit, a travel cloak, flint and tinder, a very sharp knife, rope, and a number of small but carefully folded packages. Oh, and some poison, and blinding powders included.

*Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack*

That clack of the train on the tracks was like the ticking of a clock it was so regular; tick-tock, tick-tock. If he thought on it too long, it got on his nerves.

Prey settled back into the crook of the train bench, leaning the back of his skull against the window. There were few other passengers in the carriage, only another seven. Prey checked none of those seven had moved seats or were looking suspicious. They hadn't.

None of them knew who he was, or had any immediate nefarious schemes which might involve him either, (he'd checked their surface thoughts when walking past to his seat). As to the seats, of course they were the farthest at the back.

*Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack*

Prey absently looked up at the carriage ceiling, unseeing. He hadn't even waited one day after getting permission from Screech to leave. He wasn't sure if he waited that he wouldn't change his mind. And Prey  didn't want to change his mind right now, although he probably would later, so he was committing now and trying to force himself to go through with it later.

Prey wasn't honestly sure if his self imposed strategy would work, or if he would still end up turning tail right as he was about to get there.

Hopefully, Lemon would help him with the committing bit. It's why he'd brought her along. She didn't need to be here, at least not for any practical reason. Prey was perfectly capable in theory of doing this himself. In theory. So on his orders, she'd cancelled her dinner out with Randy Pickaxe, and met him at the train station within the hour.

Prey let himself be distracted for a minute with scornfully scoffing at Randy inside his head, but that didn't last and then it was back to the rocking of the train carriage and staring up at the wooden celling boards. The varnish was starting to peel on some of them in places.

*Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack*

Tick-tock, tick-tock. Tick-tick, tock-tock. Minute by minute, they were steadily getting closer, the train tracks unswervingly leading to one destination.

'This is it. I'm finally going to go finish it and cross number three off The List. It's taken sixty-one years, ten months, and sixteen days, give or take a few.' He thought he'd kept pretty good track of the days in Dreverton, but it was always possible he'd missed a few. There had been some dark, insane patches where it was hard to stay focused in the now of his cell.

*Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack*

'Well, better late than never. I can do it.' Prey fidgeted, tugging at his ribbon, 'I, maybe I can't do it. This was a bad idea-No. Cut that out. Commit. You're going to do this.'

Prey angrily slapped himself, hard enough to make his cheek sting. He was having doubts already? Literally in the same line of thought after telling himself he could do it? How pathetically weak was that? He couldn't even stay resolute for fifteen seconds. That was not acceptable. His cheek hurt quite a bit more than he'd intended from his hoof.

'Serves you right crybaby.' 

Right, from now on, he was going to stay firm. When next the doubts came, and they would, he'd push them out of his head. Prey fixed that in his forethoughts. He was on the train, he'd gotten the holidays signed off, Gloom and Crimson were on a mission and he'd never get another chance like this. It was too late to back out now, he was doing this, and that was that.

*Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack*

Tick-tock, tick-tock. Prey let out the sigh he was holding, scowled at the ceiling from his bench, and tried not to count the seconds.

"Raven, magpie fly away, Scarecrow, keep at bay~", He hummed without thinking about it, then caught himself. 

On instinct, Prey hurriedly glanced around the carriage, as if the scarecrow golem could've crawled out from under one of the benches. But of course it hadn't, he was in a train carriage, one he and Lemon had already checked for danger and traps.

'Enough of this, get a grip already! Just think about something else. The bodies from the morgue, how can I best utilize the horns of the deceased unicorns? Use them to test the defence arrays? How about replacing an external channel component of a machine? What would that do?' 

Prey made himself focus on thinking about his ongoing plans and experiments instead. He was stuck on this train, so he would use the time productively. Time was his most precious resource after all.

Usually Prey didn't have to tell himself twice. Usually he crammed every second into every minute. Usually he cared much more about his precious time.

Usually. This was not something usual he was travelling to do. It was not usual at all.

*Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack*


---<O>---


Humpty dumpty sat on a wall, 
When something inside started to stir,
Down humpty fell, down to his death,
And from within, all the yoke and the mess,
That little something, took its first breath.


---<O>---


Where could Prey said to have been born? Where had he taken his first breath? The rotting bowels of the Deeper Green maybe? When had he finished fully crawling out of the shattered eggshell of what had once been Gossamer, the lamb his mother had raised? Gossamer had fallen, and broken, and died, and the twisted little pieces left had been cobbled together and made...

Prey.

He was Prey. That was all he was, all he ever had been, and all he didn't want to be. Prey was Prey. 

A rose by any other name is still a rose. A killer is a killer. A murderer is a murderer. A failure is a failure.

Prey was Prey. The little lamb who still wished he were Gossamer, and Gossamer who's only want had been for things to go back to being just a little cabin on a failing farm, built on the edge of the wilds. To have things go back to that way for forever, or a week, a day, or even for only a single hour. 

But life is uncaringly cruel, and it has never given back one inch of what it takes. The greatest triumphs to the most wretched grief strewn tragedies, life just doesn't care. All is dust, time never goes back, and life rolls uncaringly on.

Gossamer died where monsters are born, Prey was born where monsters die, and it was time for Prey to return to the place of his birth.

Prey was going home.


------


They had arrived. 

Twenty-one hours spent onboard trains. It would take another twenty-one hours to return to Canterlot too. The train would be departing the small rural station at six-fifteen this afternoon. That gave him just under ten hours to do what he had to here. 

The morning sun played in shifting swathes across the land as the thick clouds blew by high overhead. Wind, with sun and shade in equal measure. The air wasn't warm, but it still held a restless humidity to it.

Prey stood on the rough cut plank platform, and breathed in the air. His eyes were closed. He felt the Longridge at his back despite the closest peak's base still being a mile distant. He smelt of grass, the last of the seasons dying flowers, dirt, and of course, farming. This was a border town outside of Equestria. Their livelihood was farming the tough and uncooperative wild lands. This train station was the last on the line, the train tracks terminating here in the border town of Straperdale.

Straperdale. The only border town to survive the Resistance War which had officially ended sixty-one years ago, although in Equestria they didn't call it a 'war'. And except it also hadn't really ended then either. The war had really ended fifty-seven years ago.

Prey heard the buzzing of insects somewhere. Flies, or some of the numerous stinging insects which weren't helpful and productive bees. 

Prey opened his eyes. Lemon stood silently to the side and waited, cloak, sunhat, and saddlebags on. Only one other passenger had been left on the carriage when they'd disembarked. A grey donkey, who'd boarded only two stops back.

Slowly, Prey let his eyes pan across the border town, and beyond, he saw a vivid green fuzzy blanket laid across the land in the distance. Trees. He didn't hurry, he didn't rush, and he kept his breathing even. Straperdale was not as he remembered it. In structure it was similar to Alfalfa Dale had been, but conversely that meant it also wasn't like how he'd last seen it. It wasn't the Straperdale he'd known. This Straperdale might as well be a completely different location.

This border town had walls; uneven in direction, height, and repair, but those were still walls. Only about the height of the house roofs, but walls nonetheless. A barrier of wood, with stretches of uncut stone foundations, rough and ready wooden pegs visible in place of nails, and clearly built and added to by many different sets of hooves. 

On the border, you were always fighting against nature and had to use what you could get. A dusty hard packed dirt road wound between the houses. Wood and dry thatch buildings, all simple and built without any kind of helpful magic. Stubborn grass tussocks sprouted in places where people didn't step, the level of the dirt path worn down slightly lower where it skirted these tussocks. And towards the middle of the miss-matched town walls, a broken watch tower stood craning above all other roof tops.

The tower wasn't anything special, indeed it wasn't even solid, just a timber framework you could see into from all directions, with a couple of ladders to climb up to the crow nest at the top. Which was broken and burnt. A lightning strike, if Prey had to guess. How incredibly unlucky. The rickety structure looked years old. Evidently, it wasn't ever needed if no one had gotten around to repairing it. 

If Prey had to bet, the watch tower had been built when the townsfolk had first returned. But it hadn't ever been needed, and over the years, its importance had waned until it vanished altogether.

Prey breathed, making himself keep it steady and rhythmic. In and out. 

He kept it up until it came easily and the trembling in his hooves stopped. He couldn't back out now. There was only going forwards. He was finally here. Well, it wasn't exactly here he was aiming for, he and Lemon still had a long three hour trot ahead of them, but this was still almost here.

Then a goat kid ran passed with two lambs bigger than Prey in tow, all raucously shouting in pre-adolescent voices. Prey's careful breathing hitched in his throat for a second. The rear most lamb, a scruffy ewe with brown wool, skidded and blinked back at him.

"Hey, who're you? I don't know you." She accused in curiosity.

Prey didn't say a word as he stared at her. Children. Non-ponies. Children living normal childhoods. They all looked physically older than him. Prey wished he was wearing the sunhat, and not Lemon Pink, but she was the pink unicorn in a town with only a couple of other earth ponies, and he'd thought she would stand out the most.

"Whose that Tuffy?"

"Dunno', she hasn't said yet. She's got a nice ribbon though."

"C'moooon! You're supposed to chase."

"Yeah Tuffy, chase! Chase!"

And like that, the three children decided he was boring and off they went again in their game, no doubt getting in as much fun as they could before it was time to do their big list of daily farm chores.

Prey swallowed dryly. He looked at the townsfolk out and about in Straperdale, contributing to packing the dusty dirt of the road down even firmer, and every single one of them busy with tasks relating to farming and making a living. There was no slacking off if you wanted a harvest to eat next month, and little leisure available. 

Prey saw a cart of straw being pulled, a stack of planks carried across two donkeys' backs, a basin of balanced water, rakes and spades carried over shoulders, and more. No doubt they'd all been up since the dawn.

All normal people. Sheep, goats, cows, donkeys, all those who rarely, if ever, lived in Equestria. Here, Prey wasn't the odd one out. He didn't receive the disbelieving looks. Only mild surprise because he wasn't recognisable as anyone's child. In a small close packed community such as this, everyone at least vaguely knew everyone else. 

Here, Prey was a nobody and a somebody. He fitted in instead of standing out for being born a sheep instead of a pony. And while Prey didn't care about what the arrogant privileged in Canterlot thought whenever one of them deigned to even notice him, his still couldn't help but notice.

Prey could fit in here, but it wouldn't be real. He wasn't from here. This border town was new to him. Hell, he'd been alive before it had been restored. He could go around the town for a day and not stand out, but he couldn't ever be part of them. He'd know, even if no one else did.

Prey shoved the idea from him, stomach squirming. The thought of pretending, here and now, nauseated him. Fake fake fake. 

Standing here with the uneven platform beneath his hooves, dust in his nostrils, having returned, and looking at it all-Just no. Prey hadn't come here to fake it.

"Come on Lemon," Prey's voice was reedy in his own ears, "There's a long walk ahead of us yet."


---


The familiar wall of the Longridge loomed at Prey's back as they walked over rocky grass. The peaks weren't as tall, nor snow capped as those of the Ridgeback had been, which was a continuation of the huge mountain chain forming the thousand mile long wall effectively making up the West border of Equestria. The Ridgeback was further North up the mountain chain, where the land grew colder and the trees turned into pines.

It was entirely due to the randomness of nature, which had formed these mountains in eons past, that the land here was comparatively warmer and drier than the land up North beside the Ridgeback. The downside was, it was drier. 

You could live through the winters here without much fear of freezing, but in turn, your fears were about drought instead. There were no weather teams or towers here on the border, you'd have to cross the mountain range back into Equestria to get that benefit.

In the distant past, Prey remembered the village of Rushweed begging their earth pony landlord, Green Fields, to try convincing Equestria to send rain in times of hardship. Prey could only remember Equestria ever listening once, back when Prey was four years old, even though Green Fields was one of their own, a pony. Or perhaps Green Fields had never tried that hard to be convincing. After all, the villagers had only ever known what he'd told them. 

People had slowly starved. Prey remembered so clearly what it was like, the constant sore gnawing gurgling hole in your insides. And what was more, you saw it.

You saw it in the faces of villagers, cheeks slowly turning sallow, work cloaks hanging looser everyday, the father and the mother goat going hungry to feed their five kids. At those times, everyone was just trying to make it to the next crop, each day trying to scavenge what additional food you could from the also struggling land around you, while everyone else was doing the same. You couldn't live solely on grass, not for long. Assuming there was even any left with a drought going on.

Those had been tense times of slow building hunger. It was always there. 

When you woke, when you went to sleep, when you were digging at the hard dirt of your failing fields, legs weak, the sun cooking you in your wool, the edge of the hunger getting hungrier was always there. Prey knew hunger, and he also knew of hunger. Hunger can never be defeated. It can only ever be driven away for a time. But it'll always be back.

And it was all so achingly, disgustingly, terrifyingly familiar. The constant rocks strewn in the patchy grass as you placed your hooves down, those little hook briar weeds which always got stuck in your wool, the expansive floppy leaves of hogsweed bushes covered in vicious stinging hairs, the way the uneven rising and falling of the land hid what was right around the next bend from you, but not what was three bends ahead, and the scent of the reddish dusty earth.

So familiar. Yet so... not familiar. Prey realised he was slowing, and made himself pick up the pace again. 

'Breathe. Stay focused. There's no backing out now. Just keep walking, one hoof after another.'

At his side, Lemon Pink said nothing as she matched his pace, eyes ahead on their path and watchful for snakes. Not that there was a real path, or at least nothing trodden. But in Prey's head their path, with all its misleading windings and rocky overgrown dips, lay as clear as if it had been scorched into the earth.

Prey caught himself breathing too fast, and involuntarily slowing down again. 'No, keep going. You can't stop. There's no backing out now coward.'

Angrily burying the ridiculous fear, Prey made himself walk even faster, head raised and eyes forward.

It wasn't nearly long enough before he realised he was slowing again. There were caterpillars crawling in his stomach, and he'd lost control of his breathing again. Prey buried his weakness under more anger again, and continued leading the way, Lemon treading along easily next to him in silence.

There seemed to be a lot of bees around here somewhere. Except Prey didn't remember there ever being any fields of bees. Wasps, flies, and other nasties, but nothing as helpful as bee hives. Wait a moment, was the droning buzz just in his head?! 

Prey blinked out of the buzzing hum, and realised he'd yet again begun to falter. And worse, the caterpillars wouldn't go away.

'Coward! Zoma'Grika useless coward. Move! No more excuses, keeping moving.'


---


When next Prey caught himself the time after that, he realised he'd stopped completely. Just standing there, in the middle of the path while Lemon Pink waited.

And the time after that, it was because he'd started crying.


---


It was hot. The sun was directly overhead. The clouds had been burnt off. Humidity squatted in the air. 

The thick blanket of trees spread in a layer over the horizon wasn't so distant anymore. They appeared so vividly green and dense in the light. The sun shouldn't be shining. This wasn't the time for sunshine. But still Celestia's uncaring sun shone down. There was no rain or gentle shadows to hide the details. It was just like it had been sixty-one years ago, a repeat, laid bare under the harsh shining sun.

Prey sniffed messily and rubbed his eyes. The scars on his cheeks felt hot, but there would be no more tears. No more time to be a crybaby, because he was here. Finally here. 

Prey stood on a slight rise, thick with weeds, and looked around from his vantage point. At a first glance, it could've been overlooked. Just another stretch of uneven land like the rest, with rocks, reddish dirt, scrubby trees and bushes, with a hill there, and a dip here. 

It looked like any other piece nature, wild and messy and untamed. That blocky shape covered in weeds was simply an oddly shaped outcrop of rock, that rotting clump of small stumps covered in mould simply a cluster of dead saplings-

-And then no, you looked twice and saw the subtle differences. 

That was a crumbled wall under the weeds, those stumps half burnt posts. And once you spotted those, the rest of what you were looking snapped into sharp focus.

The ruins of a small village, razed and burnt decades ago, and now the ruins mostly overtaken by nature. There were no walls more than half a hoof in height left upright, old foundations merely creating a suggested outline beneath grass and creepers of buildings which had once stood. There really wasn't much, but it was like an optical illusion. Once you'd seen it, you couldn't unsee it. 

Prey's eyes tracked over where the village of Rushweed had once stood. His memory filled in all the details that simply weren't there.

Over there had once been the village's mill, now nothing. And that open weed strewn space had been the square which'd doubled as the market every second week. That angular clump of stone under brambles had been the corner of old Merry's house with its badly fitted door that was askew, and that round impression there in the dirt was the wheel off Mrs. Barely's cart, right where she'd always parked it beside where her house used to stand.

It was all so clear, so solid, but yet also so stilted to Prey. It felt like he was walking through water as he started down the rise, but he wasn't, everything was solid and real. He didn't know what to call the sensation as he began to pick his way through the low scattered village ruins. He was vaguely and yet also acutely aware of Lemon Pink staying one step behind him as he led.

But Rushweed itself wasn't his final destination, no, that lay beyond, another half-hour's trot. The invisible buzzing bees were back, but the caterpillars in his stomach had gone still. They'd gone into cocoons, and were now waiting to hatch.

It wasn't far. Prey's hooves knew the way. They carried his body there without his input, as if he'd walked it a hundred times, and not only that once.

"Oh..." 

The exhale left Prey, and his strength went with it. 

He sat on the dry dirt, legs shaking, just within the border of Rushweed's ruins. He stared at a bare patch of dirt and tough grass, just like any other around it. There was nothing there, nothing there to indicate how wrong it was. There should've been something, anything there to indicate where a shrine, a grave, a marker, even just a lump should be.

There wasn't a single thing in the world to show where a ewe with cream wool had lain down and never gotten up. There was no fire now, no smoke, just the sun beating down against his wool. All it takes is one or two breaths. But there was nothing here. Not even a single old bone. Nature had long ago reclaimed what belonged to it, the cycle of life and death rolling unceasingly on.

"Oh..."

Oh indeed.


---


A long time later, Prey wiped his stinging eyes clear with the back of an ear. It didn't seem to help. Everything still had a blurred visage of water to it. 

He hurt, wrung out like limp string but also brittle. He kept having to swallow, but the lump in his throat had stayed firm throughout. 

The sun pounded on his aching head. Prey didn't deserve the right to mourn, it had been Gossamer's mother who'd died, not his. Prey didn't have a mother.

He swallowed a hiccup, ineffectually wiped his stinging eyes again, and pushed himself onto shaky hooves. Tough grass stems rasped together briefly as a waning breeze briefly stirred the hot air.

Prey shakily turned himself towards the far off trees. It wasn't far to go, and he was almost there. He took one step, glanced back, and broke down crying again.


---O---


His chest hurt, and it wasn't just his heart. His lungs were physically sore from crying. His eyes were stinging even worse now, and gummy eyelashes kept getting stuck in his eye. He couldn't keep doing this, he needed to keep moving, otherwise he'd pine away on this spot and never move again. He was such a pathetic crybaby.

Prey tired wiping his eyes yet again for the hundredth time, the lump still clogging up his throat. He heaved in a deep breath, and then and only then, happened to finally catch sight of Lemon Pink.

Beneath the shade cast by the sunhat, Prey saw wet tear tracks down the pink fur of her cheeks, and she was breathing heavily. For a moment, Prey could only feel confusion. 

Why was Lemon Pink crying? What did she have to grieve over?

Then, blistering fury. How dare Lemon Pink cry! How dare she pretend!

"False, lying, faithless, treacherous, d-disloyal, Grhaaar!" Prey spat, inarticulate. How dare she cry? She hadn't even been alive back then, she knew nothing! How dare she act like she had a right to cry?

Lemon started, blinking wet eyes, "I, what? I don't, I don't-" She rasped.

"She wasn't your mother, she was Gossamer's! You, you, you filthy lying scum! Fake! You're a faker, a mimic!" 

In his near blind moment of rage, Prey reached out for the kill rune on Lemon's neck. Almost. He crest the wave of blind emotion and there, teetering on the peak, realised his irrational instability. The wave turned to ice water and washed down his spine, drowning the worms squirming in his stomach.

Prey stumbled back, while Lemon still continued to suck in heaving lungful's of air. She looked lost, uncertain, her face blank and confused beneath the sun hat.

"I don't-I didn't ever, but I remember. I remember it. Yes, no not mine, yours, but also mine. I remember." She stuttered blankly, more tears dripping off the curve of her cheeks. "It hurts."

Prey tried to swallow past the damned lump. it didn't work this time either, but still he persevered and got out the words; "Those are my memories, not yours. Those weren't ever, they're not... you're just projecting. It never happened to you."

"But I remember."

Prey rapidly blinked stinging eyes, the sun and headache making everything hazy. He searched for more words. None came, because Lemon's plaintive words were true.

She remembered. She hadn't been there, but Lemon had Prey's memories of when he had been there. Prey had created her mind from a blend of his own memories and the few left intact of her own. Lemon intellectually knew the memories of the event hadn't happened to her, and that she was only remembering it from Prey's perspective, but what is a person if not a cumulation of memory? 

Her words were the truth. She remembered. She'd grown up in an orphanage as Night Watcher, and now standing here on this spot, with the ruins of Rushweed behind here, she remembered the death of a mother that had never been hers. 

It wasn't the same, but it wasn't completely different either. Whatever Prey said or did, he knew at the end of the day, Lemon Pink would still remember it all.

Prey swung his head away, half over balancing as he stumbled. The real world of humid air, sun, hard dirt, and weed covered ruins felt disconnected. It was so surreal that Prey almost laughed without knowing why. It was just that, this, everything, it was all so textbook dramatic and tragic that it had to be a joke. A bad joke. But no, it wasn't a play or an act, it was happening. 

'It's all just like breezie dust in the wind. Everything's a thread about to snap with the stitches falling apart. Heh.'

Prey focused on just breathing and getting his headache under control. 

Five minutes... ten minutes... more? Something like that, but he wasn't sure with any certainty. He just stood and breathed and gulped and tried not to cry again until he could talk and think.

"I'm, we're not s-stopping here..." His voice came out warbled, "...Not arrived yet. Still need to go o-on to the f-farm. Just that bit f-f-further. C'mon."


---{O}---


Many say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The only ones who believe that are those who have never experienced all the horrific ways life can break a person.

Ponies advocate that by being brave and facing your fears, you'll come out the other side better for it. Such advice only held true for mundane fears, and sometimes, not even then. 

Facing a phobia of wasps, and facing one of basilisks were two very different things. However, sometimes, the sentiment behind the words could still hold true.

The problem though was simple; what if facing you fear doesn't work? What if it's the thing that breaks you instead? Because the truth everyone always seemed to overlook was that life will always win in the end. Always. It's inevitable. So before you face your fears, assuming you have a choice in the matter, you need to ask yourself: 'Am I prepared to risk finding out if today is the day life takes the final win?'


---{O}---


'It's not today.' Prey thought in a kind of dreadful relief as he placed the third and final engraved stone down. 

He was wrung out and emotionally spent, but it was at least that one weight was off his shoulders. He hadn't broken today.

Cracked and twisted, deformed and bent maybe, but he hadn't shattered. Returning here to Rushweed had cost him, and it wasn't a price he'd been willing to pay, but he'd paid it anyway and he was still standing.

'Not today. I can keep going.' Prey brushed dry dirt from his legs and pushed himself back upright from placing the last stone.


---


The first thing Prey had recognised, stepping around the head high thorny bushes, was the old well. There was precious little else remaining which he could've spotted. Completely covered in weeds and overgrown, but the well was still the only structure which had been made of stone on the farm. Prey's heart ached when he saw it, but that was it. It didn't break.

There was nothing left of the cabin, not even rusted nails since the logs had been joined with wooden pegs instead. 

Prey sifted through where the one room wooden cabin had once stood, turning over the dirt and picking through the stones and weeds to see if he couldn't find anything which might've somehow miraculously survived. 

His digging unearthed a few chips of dirt encrusted broken pottery, a little bit of rusted something even he couldn't identify, and an old dull sewing needle. And that was it, even though he continued searching.

The fields which the three of them had slaved for so long over were gone though, not even recognisable as fields any longer. It was just land now. Nature had reclaimed it all. There was no farm left, but that was okay, after Rushweed Prey hadn't expected anything more. So he didn't break down again. 

He had ignored the hatched butterflies in his stomach. He had walked without his runt legs betraying him again. And he had successfully stood in the middle of it, and looked, and seen, and been able to carefully immortalize everything in his memory for later. Prey knew he'd want to torture himself with this again in the future.

'I never learn my lesson.'

But he'd still come here today knowing this, because he needed to cross it off The List. For his own good.

'For my own good.' Prey repeated to himself, and even half believed it. 


------


Prey lifted the three-quaters full water skin Lemon Pink had hoofed him, and gulped deeply. The sun beat down on his face until he finished and lowered his head with an exhale. He absently wiped his mouth on the wool of his shoulder, looking at the ground before him.

Imbedded in the hard earth were the three flattish stones which Lemon had used her magic to carve words into. Simply put, gravestones, but graves without anything buried beneath them. Because, putting it simply once again, there was nothing left in the world left to bury. 

The carved words were crude and capitalized, and even that hadn't been easy for Lemon to manage, but it wasn't like anyone would ever see these stones. Prey had seen no signs on the trail of anyone from Straperdale venturing into the remains of Rushweed, let alone out to here and closer to the trees. Here, the land undisturbed by sentient hooves. Inside a year or two, these grave markers would be buried under wind and dirt, and forgotten from history. So in other words, this was meaningless. 

Prey had Lemon make them anyways.

Three badly engraved stones. Nowhere near enough for what they represented, but few gravestones ever were. Three names; Fleece, Gossamer, and the name of their mother. Their father wasn't worthy of any remembrance. The name Yarn was worthless.

Prey sat down with his back to the well. The stones were so thickly overgrown he could rest against it without discomfort. With the sun directly overhead, it didn't provide any shade, but even that was fine by Prey. He wasn't going anywhere. Not just yet. 

Lemon had pushed aside some of the thorny vines trailing over the edge and down into the well, but decided it wasn't worth the effort for the no doubt dirty water. The water skins held enough for their return. She was standing off under one of the scrubby trees which had grown in the last sixty-one years, looking off into the distance, doing her own thing.

A monster or predator might come along right now. If so, it would die. Or Lemon and him would simply leave. The tree line was closer here, but still far enough away. It didn't concern Prey, because it wasn't the start of the Deeper Green. No, that was much further in. Those trees were just the outliers. The Deeper Green didn't start until the sun no longer touched the forest floor, and you looked back and couldn't see the way out.

Prey untied his ribbon, closed his eyes, and waited. Just... for however long it took. He didn't know what he was waiting for, he was just a little runt who should be long dead, but he'd know it once it arrived. He'd finally come back, and he could cross this from The List. He could try to move on. 

Prey breathed out, let it go, and took a new breath.

'Humpty dumpty sat on a wall, 
When something inside started to stir,
Down fell humpty, down to his death,
And from within all the yoke and the mess,
That little something took its first breath.'


------


The only thing Prey took with him when the left, after re-tying his ribbon, was the old sewing needle. The metal had somehow survived this long, so he wasn't leaving it behind. He'd find somewhere to store it once he got back. Prey knew he shouldn't be taking a reminder, he'd come back so he could move on, but it was just the one thing. Besides, he didn't want to forget, even if he could. He only wanted to move on.

Prey didn't say anything to Lemon despite the hours the return trot took, and she didn't say anything to him. They just walked, each attending to their own thoughts. Prey's hooves hurt mildly, and the beginnings of afternoon shade had begun to pool behind bushes and scraggly trees by the time the first outlaying farms around Straperdale came back into their sight, followed by the ramshackle barricade walls around the border town itself.

There wasn't a road to follow, but there was a simple track in the weeds around the closest farm's most Southern field, (filled with half-grown potato plants), so they followed that instead around of simply trampling across the farmer's crops. 

Looking out over it, the ploughed fields were more a selection of rectangles and oblongs fitted together than the picture postcard patchwork you saw in Equestria. Out here you planted where the ground was flat, meaning humps and dips often cut into the fields, meaning the ploughed furrows had to go around.

Neither did the fields have fences, since there wasn't a point, just shallow ditches dug in the hard earth to help catch any rain when it finally fell. When you live out here, there isn't really a fence you could build which might stop any boar which came all the way from the forest foraging. You had to be alert and chase them off instead. Birds didn't care about fences either. And any monsters which came wouldn't be looking for potatoes. 

For these farms, a solid door you could bar was much more important than a fence. 

Or if you were lucky enough to live inside Straperdale itself, you got the additional protection of those homemade town walls Prey supposed.

Lemon slowed a step next to him. Prey glanced up, following her eyeline. She was looking towards the closest thatched farm house. Prey saw movement, it looked like someone going back inside, but his damaged eyesight couldn't quite make out the fine details at that distance.

He slowed down, "What is it?"

"I think someone, a child, was keeping watching for us, and has gone back inside to inform whoever it was that set them to watch, Prey." She answered.

Prey was so utterly drained that this information didn't even worry him. He'd spent everything and now all that was left was a mild; "Oh. Okay. That's probably not good."

Who would be watching for Prey? Also, since Lemon was still wearing the notice-me-not sunhat, it was unlikely they'd been waiting for Lemon Pink's return, because they should've just dismissed her when they'd first seen her in town. But someone had still noticed, and someone had seen them leave town and in which direction, and that same someone had set a lookout.

Lemon Pink subtly used her magic to undo a side pocket on one of the saddle bags, and while using her body to block the view from the house, floated out a sheathed dagger. She also had the one hidden in the collar of her loose travel cloak, hood back because of the heat, but that would not impede her draw. With the advantage of magic, why only use one knife at a time if you had the skill to manage joint levitation? Plus, she also wore the plain looking electrite choker at her throat, boosting her magic.

Prey? There wasn't much he could do head on. He was a runt and a lamb. Once again, runes were only good if you'd had time to prepare the ground ahead of time. He could've made a runed knife, but that meant risking getting close enough to use it. He was a runt, with weak and short legs. He was good at sneaking, but they'd already been spotted. 

But all of this was moot. You never willingly walked into a potential fight if you could avoid it.

The best choice right now was to turn around and walk away. Use cover, and circle around and return to Straperdale from another direction. And while Prey wanted to know who had been waiting for him and what they knew, he wasn't going to risk a conflict with an unknown when he could simply avoid it.

"We're going around." Prey said. He was just turning around to retrace their path between the fields when there was another movement at the farmhouse door. It opened, and someone came out with a child in tow. He saw a mix of brown and whiteish fur.

Prey squinted. The details were blurry to his eyes. "Who?"

"Adult goat, female, not armed I think, and a kid-"

"Hoy there!" The mother goat raised her voice to bleat out across the field. She didn't sound hostile or upset.

'What now?' 

Prey motioned to Lemon. She raised her hoof and waved back to the brown and white goat, but didn't call out. They stayed where they were on the edge of the field, forcing the goat to choose. Either come to them if she wanted to talk, or stay where she was.

It seemed she chose the former, because she started trundling across the potato field, easily picking her way through the plant rows with what was nearly certainly her child following. As the details come into focus, it  looked even more certain. Their coats obviously shared a heritage. Prey made another motion to Lemon. It meant 'wait and see'.

The mother goat's horns were short and snub, and Prey spotted a ring on one horn. Just plain tin, but it proved she wasn't a widow, so her husband was obviously just out working at the moment. She wore an old work belt across her chest, with loops for tools. There was a large wooden mixing spoon in one. 

The kid was a gangly youth, who waved to them as he and his mother walked up.

Prey zeroed in on the mother's thoughts the moment she trotted into range: '-what were they looking for out there? S'nothing out that a'ways-'

"A'hey there. Saw you pass by the farm tis' morning. Where might you have been off to? There's nothing much out that way." She asked, eyes sliding off Lemon Pink, meaning by elimination she was addressing Prey.

'-she's looking a might rough. She? No wait, he's a little ram, not an ewe-'

Prey blinked tired eyes at her. Despite the time it had taken to walk back, Prey knew he hadn't cleaned himself up sufficiently to look great. It was a pleasant surprise to find someone who correctly identified him for once, even if she was raising one sceptical eyebrow at his ribbon for not matching.

"You're right about there not being much out that way, so we've come back." Prey said, not answering her real question.

"Yah, there's nothing out there and you're not supposed to go near the trees anyways." The kid butted in with all the tact of a child to importantly inform Prey, another child to his eyes.

His mother absently raised a hoof and rubbed his head between the nubs of his growing horns, "That's right Jerry, and don't you be letting me catch you forgetting it again. Oh, this one here's my Jerico, and I'm Cally, nice to meet you both."

"Nice to meet you both Jerico and Mrs. Cally." Prey lied. He didn't care who they were, and would never see either of them again after five minutes time. Nor did he introduce himself, and Lemon stayed silent. As long as she didn't do anything to make either goat focus on her, such as talking, they'd continue to keep dismissing her in favour of Prey.

"Well if'n you didn't find what you came to town for out there, you probably weren't looking for Redwood either were you?" Cally asked.

"Redwood?" Prey prompted to get her to think about whomever that was.

'-don't know him? Then they're not here in town to see the foul grumps moldy display then-'

"Thought you might'n be looking for him since you went out that way, but no worries it seems. You're not missing much, take it from me, the museum isn't worth the time."

The kid Jericho actually echoed his mother's previous thoughts, '-I don't like Mr. Redwood he shouted at us-'

"Sorry, museum? And why would us going out that way indicate we were looking for this Redwood?" Prey asked.

'-he speaks very nicely for a lamb-', Cally thought, raising one bushy brow:

"You didn't know? Only thing out that way is'n an old village from that war. Just ruins now. Thought you might've gotten the wrong message, being from out of town an' all, and gone looking for the museum out there. It's back in town, an' Redwood owns it. He doesn't like showing it to people though. He doesn't like much of anything at all."

Cally bleated a quick laugh there, "Nothing new there, he wouldn't like his own hooves if'n they didn't get him places."

A museum, and she'd indicated it was about the war. But a museum, here? On the border? That didn't seem likely.

"Well I wasn't here for that, but perhaps this museum might be worth a look anyways. Where did you say it was?" Prey asked.

"You sure you want to go there? It's not really worth it, an' I'm sure Redwood'll try to charge you an admission. He never lets anyone in otherwise." Cally's eyes traced down to the golden tracer bands on Prey's forelegs: 

'-perhaps that's fine for them though. That there's real gold unless I miss my guess-'

"But if'n you're set anyways to have a looks anyways, Jericho can show you the way." She offered.

"Awww but mom-"

"None of that. You're not doing anything useful and you can go off ta' play with Itty and Vello afterwards." Cally interrupted Jericho's whine, tone that of a no-nonsense mother.

'They didn't even know about the war back in Equestria. For some reason, I'd expected they would've forgotten about it here too because this isn't the original Straperdale.' Prey thought. 

Did he really want to attend this museum, though? After what had just happened back at the remains of the farm or should he just leave, consider his duty fulfilled, and never return. But the reasoning could work the other way too, since he was never going to return. 

He rubbed his fetlock across his face, "Thank you very much Mrs. Cally, that would be... 'appreciated'."

The goat gave him a second look, but he mustered up a bland smile and she dismissed it, "You're welcome. I hope you find whatever you's looking for."

"Thank you again, and I hope your crops prosper."

"The rain will come eventually." Cally answered philosophically, nodding farewell to Prey. She still didn't more than subconsciously register Lemon Pink as being there, but not as a part of the conversation.

"Right this way. Just follow me." Jericho chirped, already thinking of finding his friends Itty and Vello after he'd discharged his duty.


------


Redwood was an earth pony, and he glared at them when Jericho pointed him out, before the kid quickly scampered away. Redwood's fur and mane were rough, there were bags under his eyes, and Prey faintly smelled home brewed cider coming off of him. He looked to probably be forty or fifty.

An earth pony. The only pony race you ever found in border towns like these. Pegasi and unicorns wouldn't deign to descend to the level of the locals. But even so, as an earth pony, Redwood seemed to be well off. Or well off by the level of the locals. 

After having seen the opulence of Canterlot first hoof and the wastage that went on there, Prey doubted he would ever judge anywhere he went by any other level from now on. But still, Redwood was well off, evidenced in no small part by the fact that they'd found him sitting on his porch, instead of out working. If you had the time to sit at home during the middle of the day instead of labouring over your fields, then you were well off. 

Plus, nearly nowhere else in Straperdale had a porch. What actual practical use was a porch on a house? Add to that the faint scent of alcohol, ait affirmed Prey's assessment.

Redwood glared down at Prey from his seat on the porch, dismissing Lemon Pink as just a nobody because of the runed sunhat once again. Prey didn't back off though, not when he had Lemon Pink next to him, a unicorn, ready against anything the earth pony might do.

Prey decided to try to polite approach, even though he was not feeling polite in the slightest; "Good afternoon Mr. Redwood. I'm visiting Straperdale today, I'm from a village close by. I'm told you have a museum here, and we'd very much like to see it please."

"Which village?" Redwood asked grouchily.

And there went Prey's patience right on the first words out of the Earth pony's mouth, "Oh, it doesn't really have a name, not anymore. Hardly anyone lives there but it's home."

Redwood's baggy eyes narrowed, and he leaned forwards, "Don't you try getting lippy with me, because I know how to deal with bloody rascals. I'll tan your tail five different colours. It might take a while, since I've only found four so far."

Prey smiled innocently in confusion, "Um, sorry? Aren't you Mr. Redwood with the museum I heard about?" 

Redwood didn't see beyond the smile. The ungroomed earth pony decided to emphasise his glare by glaring some more. His eyes kept sliding over the pink unicorn standing literally in front of him: 

'-who the bloody Tartaras decided to start telling everyone with ears about the dumb museum? Actually, nah, going to show them bugger all and they can sod off-'

"Museum's closed today. Try again next week. Or don't. S'nothing a lamb's brave enough to see anyways." Redwood snorted, leaning back in his seat, happy that that would be that.

"Why? What's so secret in the museum?" Prey asked, reigning in his temper.

"Beat it, before I start beating you." Redwood snapped, but of course his thoughts still flashed to what he'd been asked:

'-bloody dad, I never wanted your old Guard junk and to get stuck in this bloody town for bloody ever-'

"We'd like to see this museum please." Prey announced. A passing cow pulling a cart filled with earth shook her head as she overheard the conversation but didn't stop.

Redwood's eye twitched, "Are you deaf? I said it's closed. C-l-o-s-e-d."

"Oh, it's about an admission fee isn't it? Don't worry, we can pay."

A loud snort left the scruffy stallion, "Fine. Ten bits, five each for you and your, er, your guardian or whathaveyou."

'-there. That'll finally get the little sod to sod off and leave me in peace-'

"Alright, here's your ten bits." Prey announced almost before Redwood could finish his thoughts.

'-no you stupid little sod, I meant sod off!-', Redwood began rising in frustration, but stopped halfway when he saw the coin pouch Prey was holding up. He hadn't seriously expected someone to have any gold to waste, he'd just been trying to fob Prey off. 

'-seriously? Really going to pay ten bits to see dad's stupid collection? Whatever, I'll take it. A fool and his money are soon parted-'

"Ten bits up front. No refunds."

Prey removed a few coins from the pouch and then tossed the rest of the pouch to Redwood. He had no desire to get into hoof range of the pony. "Here you go."

Redwood suspiciously checked the pouch to see that, yes, it did indeed contain exactly ten bits. He accepted to money with ill-grace, especially considering he was overcharging them. Here on the border ten bits were worth a lot more than they were in Canterlot.

"Fine. The museum is round the back. Go around and I'll open the door." Redwood said, turning to go in through his front door.

Prey looked at him, then put on another smile, "We'll be right there." Unless the pony spitefully changed his mind between here and the walk to open the back door, he did intend to actually let them in and wasn't just shutting the door in their faces. And if Redwood did, it would go poorly for him.

'Or I could be the one to walk away right now. Is this really a good idea?' Prey asked himself. 

Redwood's deceased father had been one of the filthy, lying, traitorous Border Guard, one of those who'd been there during the Resistance war, and apparently had created something of a memorial. It was lucky for Redwood he wasn't a retired Border Guard himself, but did Prey really need to see this? He'd been the Border Guard's hated enemy, and he doubted there could be much of worth seeing in this homemade museum out here on the border in the back of a grumpy stallion's house.

"Prey?" Lemon prompted, asking for confirmation of what they were doing. Leave or stay.

'It'd be smarter to walk away. I've already done enough to cross this off The List. Do I really want to hurt myself some more today? Dumb question, I'm a crybaby who doesn't know how to let go of the broken glass instead of clutching it tighter.'

"Well, it'd be a shame to waste those ten bits. Let's go in and see what lies this Border Guard left to his son." 


---


Redwood's house, (as were all houses out on the border), was not a big one. Partly because you really didn't need to stuff it full of all those useless knickknacks ponies in Canterlot insisted were the bare basics, and partly because building without easy access to bricks and cement was a pain. Still, when Redwood opened the back door to let Prey and Lemon inside, Prey immediately gave the room a once over and saw that it was quite spacious for a house in a border town. Spacious, like you'd find in an attic. As in, wide but not high. 

An attic may not have been the worst descriptor either. Prey's second glance after checking for any visible traps or ambushes showed him Redwood's father's 'museum'.

A strong smell of dry wood, old wax, and yellowed parchment permeated the air. 

The room was split, with shelving going down each low wall, with tables set below each shelf and with space only to walk down the middle isle. There were no glass display cases, everything here was home made and wooden. On these tables and shelves were various objects and spread out on the tables were curling, yellowed papers pinned down with stones.

Prey saw an old khaki Border Guard uniform on display, looking like if you took it off its hook you could use it as a plank it was so stiff. There was a dull, scuffed helmet set on a shelf, a dented shin guard with a broken strap, some Guard badges, a rusted horseshoe, four crossbow bolts with their flights covered in dust, some twisted tree branch which was supposed to mean something, a canteen, tent pegs, a ripped hammock, and a blunted pocketknife among other things.

Prey continued to look around as the smell of age gathered around him. Redwood grunted, gesturing half-heartedly around at what his father had once thought was important but he himself obviously disliked:

"Welcome to the museum. You can look but don't touch anything. If you have any questions, don't ask."

It wasn't a hard story for Prey to piece together. A father who'd fought in the war and been scarred by what he'd seen, and had never been able to fully move on. He'd collected up this detritus and leftovers of a war which to Equestria had been nothing more than a silly skirmish beyond their borders, and built this memorial. An angry and distant father, unable to connect with his son or explain why he was the way he was, teenage rebellion, Redwood not living up to his fathers ideals and discipline, never reconciling before the old stallion died, and this here was the end result.

'And I'm indirectly responsible for a lot of that.' Prey thought, and felt a spark of vindictive satisfaction that at least one more Border Guard had suffered even if only a portion of what they deserved after the war.

"So what's this museum commemorating?" Prey asked as he walked up to a table, as if he didn't already know.

"I said no asking questions." Redwood repeated, voice rising, "And what does it look like? Look around. Or are ya' blind?"

Prey tilted his head, "Well, it looks like some old junk collected by a dead Border Guard after he betrayed all the villagers because they weren't born ponies, and then cried like a kitten when the Resistance absorbed the remains of those betrayed locals, followed by a year of pointless murder under the command of a unicorn Captain who should've been smothered at birth."

"I'm sorry what?" Redwood demanded, honestly stunned, and still in the process of transitioning into anger.

Prey peered over the top of a table, only just below his head height and looked at the yellowed page spread out on it, "I said that your father was a Border Guard."

The faded parchment was a letter, written by the mother of a Border Guard serving out here. On the bottom, a separate note had been tacked on, written in faded ink; 'A letter to the deceased Prv. Onyx Stronghoof. I knew him well. Never forget the real heroes.' 

Prey idly skimmed the letter written by a parent who obviously hadn't a clue what life fighting against guerrilla strikes on the border actually meant. He didn't feel anything.

The scruffy stallion finally got his tongue to work, "You say what about my old dad?! I warned you, come'ere so I can tan your flank-"

Lemon Pink's toneless voice stopped Redwood on his first aggressive step forwards; "Please refrain from foolishly attempting violence."

'-bloody road apples, what the bloody Tartarus?!-' 

Redwood stared at the unicorn standing there. Lemon Pink was literally right there, and somehow he'd tuned her out even though he'd known she was there all along. A unicorn wasn't someone you saw on the border. Immediate confusion and not a little fear shot through the stallion at the sudden situation.

Lemon Pink was still wearing the sunhat along with her travel cloak and the saddlebags, but now that she'd drawn attention to herself Redwood wouldn't be suddenly dismissing her again. She hadn't made any threatening moves to accompany her warning, she was just standing there, but Redwood still backed up.

'-what's going on? Why wasn't I noticing her? She's not doing anything though, but this here is my house-',

"What the buck do ya' think you're playing at?" He demanded, flipping from his initial scare back to anger. 

The alacrity with which he could regain some of his previous aggression was almost impressive. But the stallion didn't forget all of his caution either. He stayed where he was, eyeing the two strangers he was only now realising he'd let into his house. Still though, Redwood was a stallion, one who was used to being angry and feeling he could enforce getting his own way.

"Well? I'm still waiting. You answer me before I beat both your flanks and kick you out my door." He barked.

Lemon blinked slowly at him, pushing up the brim of the sunhat, "We are looking at this museum, of course. We paid your admission fee, remember?"

Redwood stared at her some more, ears aggressively laid back, before an intelligent thought finally occurred to him; "Why is it you're so interested in my dad's old war stuff?" He asked Lemon Pink slowly.

"Part convenience. Part coincidence. Mostly though? Disappointment at historical accuracy." Lemon answered blandly.

"Historical accuracy my cutie mark. Tell me the real reason." Redwood loudly demanded. He was evidently one of those who thought raising your voice and shouting gave you additional power.

"She just did. You just don't believe it." Prey replied, having moved on to looking at a black and white map with lots of now ineligible pencil scribblings on it, and detailing one of the Resistance's four camps:

"Take this map for instance. Completely inaccurate. The camp wasn't set out like that, and was another mile West at the least through jungle, vines, thorns, snakes, poison patches, and basilisk's territory. Plus the estimates are way off. There were never that many fighters in any of the camps, you'd have needed to combine at least two to get those many."

"Right, that's it! I'm done with you crazies. Get you flanks outta' my house!"

Redwood tried to take a step forwards, tried to grab ahold of the rude lamb and shove both him and the weird mare out the door. Tried.

Redwood struggled, and then looked down. His hooves were stuck to the floor. Silver and red light leaked out from under the flat of his hooves and bubbled up around the edges, like he was standing in magical glue.

And as simply as that, right in the middle of his house, without any warning, the struggling stallion found himself trapped. 

Redwood couldn't lift any one of his four legs, couldn't get any leverage. He was trapped there in the middle of the floor. There was nothing for him to physically fight back against. Maybe if he had something to leverage himself against or grab... but he didn't. Lemon stood there, horn glowing silver, and held him helpless.

Just like that. Magic was so terribly unfair against those who had none.

Prey tilted his head back to address the taller Redwood, still smiling like he didn't have a care in the world, "Don't make me tie this ribbon onto you, because believe me, I am tempted. If you were a Border Guard, and not just the son of one, then... Well, you're not, so it doesn't matter. But please try to remain civil. We're both being civil, so you also try to be civil, understand? Because I can do uncivil too. Just relax, and be polite until we're done, and you can go back to being a bitter drunk failure after we're gone."

At no point there had Prey made a straight up threat, nor did he stop smiling, but now Redwood, trapped by Lemon Pink, took the words in a completely different light. This was his home. He'd thought he was safer, he'd thought he had at least some measure of control. It had never ever occurred to him that he might suddenly find himself being subjected to having his freedom stripped away under magical might.

"This here's my house. I can come and go as I please. Don't even try an' stop me." Redwood demanded, but he couldn't hide the undercurrent in his voice as he stood trapped there.

"Weren't you listening? When we're done. But seriously, you can relax, you're going to be fine. Seriously, stop worrying. Because if I lived each day like it was my last, my body count would be staggering." Prey lightly joked.

Redwood just stared at him bug eyed, ears pressed flat. '-a lamb, that's a lamb. Just a lamb, there's no way a lamb could actually mean any of that-'

Prey sighed tiredly, his false humour draining away. It had been a long, harrowing day, and this mask of unaffectness was weighing heavy: 

"Or don't relax, it's not like it matters what you do. Very little matters. You won't be remembering this anyway." Prey turned away, going back to strolling along the shelves and tables, looking over the dusty, disused objects they held.

He kept on like that, disinterestedly skimming the shelves as he went around the room, until he got right to the center piece. There, hanging on the wall, were three wooden Resistance masks in a bundle. Masks of the blooded fighters. One had been painted a vicious staring red and black at one point, with a snaggle tooth, the other was cracked with pieces missing, only really half a mask really, and the last one at the back of the bundle was crude and unadorned, which was why it had been placed at the back, but it was...

"No way. No. Way. That's more than a coincidence, that shouldn't even-" Prey broke off, staring open mouthed up at the trio of masks. At his mask. 

His mask. Prey didn't have enough left in him to feel honestly surprised. There it was on the wall, just like that. He jerked around to face Redwood. Somehow, Prey wasn't even surprised. He was too tired for that.

"Now where did your father get that?" Prey mused, "What did you say your father's name was?"

Redwood clenched his jaw, but Prey read his thoughts just as easily.

"Ironwood was it?" Prey hummed and thought back, but no, the name meant nothing. "Hmm, not getting anything. He must've just been one of the Guards dealing with the clean up after I got captured in that trap. Pure coincidence."

Prey should feel more angry thinking back on his capture, but it was so long ago and he'd been over it so many times before, plus, right now, he really didn't have it left in him. Redwood though, on hearing Prey's words, did.

The earth pony jerked backwards in shock, but Lemon's magic kept his hooves firmly rooted, "You what?" He breathed.

Prey reared up onto his back hooves so he could reach the trio of masks, "Those war stories your dad told you when he got drunk enough? They were true, more or less."

Prey got a hold of the mask bundle and jerked it off the hook. He tossed the other two masks aside carelessly, the sharp clatter of and crack of the broken one splintering further making Redwood flinch. Prey paid him no attention. He only had eyes for the mask in his hooves which lightly shook. His old mask. Prey's mask. A murderer's mask. A Resistance mask.

The untreated wood was dried and warped with the years, and the heft a bit lighter, but otherwise it was exactly how Prey remembered it. 

The blank, empty eye holes gazed sightlessly up at him like a skull. It was plain, rough, and unadorned. He'd never personalised his mask to try and inspire fear like the other Resistance members had. There was the crack all the way down the left side, the little wedge missing from the top where a crossbow bolt had clipped, there were all the little grooves and imperfections in the wood he'd long ago memorized.

Slowly, Prey turned it around and fitted it to his face, the museum around him forgotten. His mask didn't fit perfectly, but it never had. There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but otherwise, it was exactly how he remembered it. The momentary blocked sight, and then the thin weight of wood on his face, and he was looking out at the world as a faceless killer.

"I wore this mask when I killed Captain Fire Strike." Prey commented out loud to nobody.

There was a sharp inhale of breath. Prey jerked his to face the wide eyed and pale faced Redwood. He narrowed his eyes unseen behind his reclaimed mask, "But I don't think you deserve to hear those private details."

"W-why not?" Redwood shakily asked.

"What do you mean, 'why not'?" Prey echoed incredulously, "Because I don't want to tell you, because you don't have any right to know, because I said so. You're an idiot for even asking such a stupid question. Did you honestly really expect me to just, what? Tell you? Just like that?"

Redwood swallowed, licked his lips, flinched, glanced between Prey and Lemon, and hesitantly offered, "Yes?"

"Really? Huh. You really do. It's all mixed up with caution, anger, and fear, but you don't see why I wouldn't tell you." Prey pulled his old mask off, returning to being Prey. He rubbed at a spot behind one ear.

"You're the sort to honestly know better than to ask, too. You live on the border, you know what it's like to go to bed scared at night, because sometimes it's better not to know the answer. Your dad's old stories of the Deeper Green and all his friends deaths didn't come from out of nowhere." Prey was still smiling happily at Redwood, in fact the smile even reached his eyes, but all three of them knew it was false.

"Poisoned quills in your bedroll which made your flesh split like a plumb rotting from the inside out, true. A pitfall which skewered Pholio on barbed spines, and they had to run and leave him behind, screaming for aid, because a manticore was chasing their patrol, true. The griffin warriors clawing a hole in your stomach and pulling out your intestines and leaving you to die, true. The flesh crawler spiders the size of a plate that laid eggs under your skin while you slept, true. Brain maggots, the ones you were sure your father was making up, also true. Burning the Resistance fighters alive at that hill and finding the carbonized flesh afterwards, true. It was true, all true. All of it."

Redwood couldn't speak as Prey pulled the fears from his brain one by one and laid them out in the open. And still Prey smiled as innocently as a child, like it was his real mask and the wooden one he held was just a bad joke.

"Even now, even though you despised your dad Ironwood, you also still respect him for being a Border Guard because deep down, you don't think you ever could've been one. Well you're wrong, you could definitely  have been a Border Guard, Redwood. Know why? Because they were, and still are, racist, lying, cowardly betrayers, thinking they're better than any non-pony, and worshipping the Sun Tyrant. They self-importantly march onto your land, start a war putting your life at risk, force you to support them in their war, and abandon you the moment you're inconvenient. Yes, you'd fit right into the Border Guard, Redwood."

Prey took a breath, "Hear that? They were every bit as bad as the Resistance they were fighting back then. One snake trying to kill another snake. No matter which wins, you're still left with a venomous snake. Betrayers and traitors, all of them. They betrayed me, used me. Everyone was just a tool to further the violence. Resistance, and Border Guard alike. The strong take, the weak suffer. I'm weak, I was weak, just a runt, an acceptable sacrifice."

Prey looked down at the cracked face of his mask, upturned towards himself, "Even being Snake's only surviving apprentice wasn't enough, there weren't enough fighters left by that point. There were only one camp left, and it was strained, exhausted, wounded, and on the brink of collapse. The filthy Guard were going to find us by the next day, or the one after that at the latest. They were so close, always closing in, cutting off our escape routes one after the other. But Torment and the others thought if they could just buy some time..."

Prey had to stop and took a long, shaky breath. There was no reason to be retelling this. He'd been there when it happened. He already knew his own history, Lemon Pink knew it, and Redwood wasn't going to remember any of it. But today had been a strange day filled with laying bare painful history. So why stop now?

"Snake told me the camp was to be abandoned, and where we were shifting to somewhere else in the Deeper Green. The Resistance was very good at not leaving tracks. He said that the wounded would be forced to keep up, or silenced to stop them spilling our destination. They were breaking camp, taking what they could at that very moment too. He then sent me out to gather as much last minute Hellibore's End as I could, to lay a last minute poison mist trap for when the Guard found the abandoned camp. Told me I had one hour. That if I wasn't back in time, then I'd be left behind."

Prey's smile twitched, "I didn't have any reason not to believe him, that was exactly the sort of thing he would've normally said anyways. So I raced off, like the good little terrified apprentice I was, desperate to finish and get back in time. I'd spotted a patch of ripe Hellibore's End four days before. I knew where to go, and I ran right there. I only had an hour, I wasn't being as cautious as I should've been. Snake asked for Hellibore's End on purpose. I ran right into those Border Guards scouts who'd set up there. Right where the Resistance already knew that particular patrol was."

Prey stopped as his voice wavered, halting before it could fully crack. He turned his old wooden mask over and over in his hooves: 

"They knew they were there. Snake filled me in with fake information and then sent me out to get caught. I was just a weak runt lamb. If I had been a griffin, they would've shot first and asked questions never. But I was just a lamb. Snake picked well, just like he always did. By all the dead, I hate that zebra. I hate him so much."

Prey looked down again at the mask in his hooves as he continued to near compulsively flip it over and over:

"This was back before... before I could defend myself. I'm just a lamb but I had on this mask, a blooded Resistance member mask. Just a lamb, but they knew what I was, and even though they only gave in for probably ten seconds, but those ten seconds were still... Afterwards, after they were... done, they dragged me back as swiftly as they could to their main camp to be interrogated. I lost my first ribbon there, it was just a stand of grimy string by then, but still. It was a bit hard to focus on anything other than breathing at that point, and I remember this eye was too swollen to see out of."

Prey reached up and touched at his left eye, "I was a prisoner, one who'd been taken alive and wasn't physically dangerous. A valuable source of information. Tied up on the floor of some tent, not knowing where I was or what was going to happen, this officer starts yelling at me and demanding I 'tell him everything'. Everything, he didn't even specify or ask. Just yelling and shouting and threatening. Scared, alone, and I hated them. Hated, hated, hated, hatedHatedHated! Hate them, hate them, hate them. I hate them."

He could taste that old hate, even now. It tasted like blood and hot ash, "So I bit my lip and refused to say anything. Nothing, not a single peep. More of them came in. They were all shouting and screaming and threatening me, bound on the tent floor at their hooves. I was scared and alone, but I told them nothing!"

Prey stopped to breathe after near shout-squeaking that. His smile twitched and jerked, but he kept it up, unable to stop, "The smart thing would've just been to tell them. All the dead know the Resistance never did anything to garner my loyalty, but I didn't speak. The Guard say they don't torture. That's false. They do. They just... Weren't willing to bring themselves to do any of the things which would've made me scream and beg immediately."

I don't torture. That is what Prey had told the thieves. He didn't torture, never for the sake of torture. It was hardly any better, considering what he did do and had done. Worse even. But he didn't torture.

"No knives or fire. They didn't want to see blood. Didn't want to see legs bending the wrong way and bones popping. Just... hit me instead, you know, just kicking and stomping, not bucking, and avoiding the head. Everyone breaks under torture. Everyone. No one holds out forever. Everyone one breaks. It's just a matter of when, and what the torturer uses to make it happen faster."

Prey sat down on the floorboards quite suddenly, stopping flipping the mask over and over. Instead, he reached up to brush at the blue silk of his ribbon, his second ribbon: 

"If they'd kept it up, even just the hitting me, I would've broken. Soon, or maybe later, I don't know. I was hurting and so certain I was going to die, but the bitter hate, you can't understand it. Fire Strike was there you know. Anyway, they weren't getting their answers out of me fast enough. They were so close to discovering our camp and they knew it, they so desperately wanted the war to be over with, but none wanted to be the one to 'do' it. So Captain Fire Strike, he steps in. They left the tent, he stayed. Just him and the tied up prisoner. His officers thought they knew what he was going to do, thought he was making the hard choices for them."

Prey stopped moving. He sat there, abruptly still. He kept smiling placidly at nothing.

"Did you know Fire Strike was also a rudimentary mind mage? I don't know where he got his illegal knowledge, just the barest basics of the magic, but I didn't have any back then. I had potential as a mind leech, but no runes. That, and Fire Strike was a filthy, Zoma'Grika unicorn."

Prey shrugged helplessly, "Magic always trumps everything else. I didn't properly know how to resist. I still tried. I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know what a mindscape was, all I knew was that it was wrong and he was invading me and I couldn't keep him out. He trampled in and tried to take it all from me. So disgusting. He tried to see my secrets, to take it all, to read my mind. I didn't know how to resist, yet I did. In the end though, all I could manage back then, broken and in pain and only half conscious, was to give him one false piece of information."

Prey held up his hooves, just a tiny gap between them, "It was so close. I gritted my mind, I steeled everything I hadn't known I had, I mentally screamed and thrashed. I gave it everything. And when he dug in deeper despite all my efforts, I tried again. And then again. I fought. I didn't give in. But when I saw I wasn't going to win, I fixed one concept in my mind and I held onto it even if it killed me. Captain Fire Strike snatched it from me like it was the Sun Wolf's own crown. He thought he had the direction the Resistance were fleeing in. But I'd given him the exact opposite direction Snake had told me."

Prey giggled, light and high, exactly like a real child might, "Oh what a stupid, foolish, misguided child I was. I still hadn't worked it out I was supposed to get captured, that I was just a disposable sacrifice. I gave him the opposite direction Snake gave me, but it turned out to be the real destination the Resistance were fleeing in. He-khe-khe! It's so ironic! So because I didn't break, because I had that one moment of clever resistance in the face of Fire Strike, he inadvertently got what he really needed."

Lemon Pink didn't give any sign as she listened. She knew all of this already. She just listened to a retelling of what was, in a twisted way, half her own past.  

"And just like that, the Resistance was finally broken. It had been breaking for a long time, but the Captain gathered up all the Border Guards and broke them for good. There were less than ten survivors who scattered into the trees. Snake was one of them, of course. I don't think Fire Strike expected me to recover, he was an amateur and wasn't gentle. If I hadn't had a mind magic aptitude, then who knows? I escaped, the how's a different story, but I did and I crawled back through the Deeper Green to where the new camp was supposed to have been moved to. And guess what I found after my clever deception?"

Prey shrugged apathetically, "That's right, nothing. They weren't where they'd said they were going. And then I knew, and when I met up with those few last survivors, guess who they blamed for the Resistance's final destruction? Me. They blamed me for not breaking when I was supposed to, for being a traitor."

"And that's more or less it. The official end of the Resistance war and victory of the Border Guard. They said we were gone, they said that they'd won. Most of them packed up and went home. Some other stuff happened too, stuff your dad didn't know or didn't tell you about. And me? Snake tried to dispose of me properly, said there was no more need for me and that he was leaving the land to go back to Zebrica, that cold unfeeling bastard. Some more stuff happened. Dark things were done. And then it was just me. Just Prey. The last of the Resistance. And then I let them know the war wasn't over. That it would never be over."

Prey clapped his forehooves sharply together, old mask set beside him, "So that's the story of the last days of the Resistance as it really happened, not what your lying old dad has mistakenly recorded in this pitiful excuse of a museum. Thanks for listening, and I hoped you learned something."

Redwood had looked rough when he was sitting on his front porch outside. It could safely be said he looked worse now. His face was pale under his ill kempt fur, his ears back and tail tucked away. There was no defiance and angry confidence left. He was trapped and helpless, just like Prey had been all those years ago. Magic was unfair like that. The earth pony licked his dry lips almost compulsively:

"That, but that was a long time ago. You can't, you can't have been. But it doesn't matter, because you don't have to do this! Just let me go, I promise we can work somefing' out. Anything. Ah just, ah just don't want any trouble, please-"

"Too bad, and I don't care," Prey carelessly interrupted Redwood, "This story wasn't for you. It was for me. If you'd deal with him please Lemon? I'm... I'm too tired, and I don't really feel up to making a clean job of it."

"Yes, Prey. We, I, also remember. I wasn't there. But I am here now, and I remember it too." Lemon Pink said, only looking at him, not her captive, as her sharp horn flashed silver.

"No no no! You don't have to do this I won't ever tell-!"

"Be quiet." Lemon said, and stunned him.

Prey let Redwood slide from his attention. The earth pony had never been important here, it was only what he represented. Prey slowly picked up his old crude mask. The odds of him finding it again after all this time really were astonishing. He lifted it up above his head, studying it. He could put it back on. It was just a mask, there were no runes or anything on it. It was just old, unpainted wood.

'I could put it on again. Start the madness afresh. The war never ended, the battlefield just changed.'

Be the last of the Resistance again. Except there was Lemon Pink now too. They could become the Resistance again. They both knew how, they both remembered doing it before. Start the madness anew.

Prey gently placed the mask back down, and aligned it to sit straight. He brushed the last of the dust off its rough edges, before placing his cloven hoof directly in the middle of the wood.

'Tjak', Meph'la, 'Kran', 'Phelp', just four basic runes. It took about five minutes while Lemon quietly finished up with Redwood, and while he could've just gotten the flint and steel out of her saddlebags, he wanted to do it with runes. 

When he was done, the mask caught fire like the bone dry wood it was, merrily blackening and curling in the orange flame.

The worn floorboards underneath also blackened, but didn't catch like the mask did. Lemon fetched the other half broken mask from its wall hook, splintering it into smaller pieces with her magic and fed them into the small fire as well. They both stood and watched in silence for ten minutes until the mask was just a crumbled mess of charcoal.

Prey wiped one eye, "So."

"So."

"Let's be on our way."

"Yes, Prey. I don't wish to ever come back here."

"A personal wish, not a tools wish." Prey noted, standing up.

"Yes. I, yes, Prey."

"Fair enough."


------


A quiet, if long and generally uncomfortable, train ride back was all that Prey wanted. 

He'd been emotionally exhausted beyond what he had ever expected. He'd known going in that this visit was going to be hard, but not how hard. He was tired, and just wanted to be left alone to sit and think in peace. So a quiet ride back on the twenty plus hour train trip was all he was really after.

The train carriage was dark, the endless rocking motion making a hypnotic rhythm. Lemon Pink had taken over one of the train benches all to herself, stretching out on top of her travel cloak. Prey had removed one of the blankets from their packs and also made himself comfortable on his own bench. 

Prey just wanted to drift off into the deep, dreamless depths of his inner mindscape, to sleep under the endless ocean until he was ready to face the world again.

And that's what he was doing, right up until he wasn't any longer.


---


There was a pull, a tug from outside of the ocean even though there was nothing but ocean in Prey's inner mindscape. He tasted the cold air of emptiness and distant starlight, indigo blue swirling everywhere. The tugging presence reached out to pull him up, and Prey was abruptly in his outer mindscape, grey ash and burnt trees everywhere.

"Aha, there thou art. We could not find thee in this drab and empty landscape for a moment. We thought we might even have the wrong dream. Thou wast not where thou should have been, but no matter. Lieutenant Screech has told us that thou were using thy vacation days to visit thy family." 

What? Who was speaking-

Luna. Of course it was Luna. Who else could it be but Luna?

Panic. The grey-purple skies of his mindscape roiled, collapsing in on himself as Prey rushed to wake up. Luna was here. 

'Get out get out get out-!'

"Fear not Prey, for it is us, Luna! Thy Princess." The alicorn's dream magic hooked Prey out from somewhere and halted his escape.

But she'd promised! She'd promised not to touch his dreams unless she thought he was having a nightmare, and this wasn't one.

'You promised-!'

"Fear not, thou art merely confused. It will swiftly pass, thou will regain thy faculties now that we have brought you into our presence." More swirling indigo blue and star speckled night sky, and Prey felt the jarring sensation of being moved, like the rug he was standing on had suddenly been pulled with him still on top.

Prey felt abruptly cut off, like he had less senses than he should have. He felt small, like he was a person in one place, as opposed to being aware everywhere. Everywhere was night sky and stars, both above and below, just stars and night time. 

'This, this isn't my mindscape anymore. This isn't my dream.'

Something grabbed Prey's perspective and shifted it. Stars shot past, although he had no sensation of movement, like the distance was being moved and not him.

"And here Prey is. Welcome Prey, to this shared dreamscape. Since we were hosting this meeting of the minds anyway, we felt that thou deserved this opportunity to speak. Thou art honoured." Luna boomed from nowhere and everywhere.

More presences, nothing like the overarching power of Luna permeating everything, but definite presences. A hooful, seven, eight? Smaller, like him. Small stars. Prey 'blinked', and everything sucked into focus. No, it wasn't everything coming into focus, it was him coming into everyone else's focus. Eight stars were gathered up, eight stars which were actually people.

"Prey? That's you, right?" The muffled voice of Gloom asked.

Gloom, Nighthawk, Starry Wing, Bramble Weft, Crimson, and those who had been sent on the infiltration mission to Griffon Stone. The stars were a lot less like stars and more like ponies. They had shape to them, equine, and they were still coming into focus, gaining more and more detail. Those stars were actually them. 

'We're all asleep, and Luna's linked us all into one big dream.' Prey thought in shock. He hadn't even considered this might be possible, this meeting of sleeping minds.

"Is that you Prey?" Gloom repeated, closer.

"Tis' him, worry not our good Sargent. The child is merely lacking a dream avatar. Tis' unusual, but nothing to be concerned about, it happens in the realm of dreams. But he is here, and as able to converse as thee all are."

"Ah, thank you, Your Majesty." Gloom said. He looked like Gloom now, but with certain features smudged, or too smooth. The other seven were the same, gaining features and distinctness.

The unmistakable gruff figure of Nighthawk grunted.

"Think nothing of it."  Luna announced magnanimously. There was a huge figure above them, made out of the stars in the night above. A swirling mane and body created from stardust and tiny galaxies. Luna had depicted herself as immense and powerful, but the feeling of safety and warmth was projected throughout the shared dreamscape. 

Prey recoiled from it, drawing his mind in tighter on itself. He cast about, feeling for an exit or escape and trying to make out which of the other six figures was Crimson's.

His silence and efforts went unnoticed by Luna, whose starry gaze swiftly shifted to Captain Nighthawk's avatar:

"Now come! Share with us thy nightly update so that all may hear. Thy squad is split in two to cover more ground, is it not? This is a grand opportunity to co-ordinate we offer to thee all. Information is how wars are won. Come! Tell us of they progress."

Luna's words brought the rest of the pony presences to something like attention. Nighthawk's presence looked like it was flying, or at least floating. All eight of them did. Blurry flashes which might've been wingbeats appeared around Nighthawk as he answered gruffly:

"There's been a development since last night. It's bad news I'm afraid."


---I---