It was the fifth night since the team had moved into the camp. CharmingRhythm found himself lying awake. This time it was not from a nightmare. However, it was from anxiety that he might have a nightmare. Rhythm was really unhappy with how the base was making him feel. He thought that he would have had more control of his feelings.
Instead of trying to force himself to go back to sleep, Rhythm ventured out of his room. He grabbed some paper and pen and settled in the meeting room. The room was dimly lit by one light, just enough for Rhythm to see what he was writing. At first nothing came to his mind to jot down. He thought perhaps he could express how he felt about his dreams and the base through writing, but he could not find words to explain.
Instead, Rhythm's mind wandered back to the thought of Heartfelt. Even if he was sure that going on this mission was what he'd decide no matter what, he felt guilty for not referring to his wife first. Those feelings he was able to put into word- lyrics rather. His love of music shone through as he thought of rhymes and patterns. For my pride and my promise.
Rhythm was so focused on his lyrics that he did not notice when the door from the main room opened. A few hoof steps sounded against the tile floor, and Rhythm shot his head up. FeatherTune stood there with his eyes cast dark under the shadows.
"What are you..." Rhythm began.
"I had to use the bathroom but I saw your door was open. Came to check on you," Feather explained.
"Oh. Well, thank you, I guess."
The cream Pegasus found a seat next to Rhythm. His red eyes darted between the paper and Rhythm's face. "So, why are you up?"
Rhythm sighed. "Can't sleep. I guess I'm afraid of having nightmares..."
"Nightmares?" Feather raised an eyebrow. "What kind of nightmares?"
"The other night I had one about losing my leg."
"You still have those?" Feather exclaimed in surprise. Rhythm had told him about the dreams he had, although it was a while ago.
"Yeah. I guess coming here sparked them again. I just hope it's not a regular thing. I know over the past couple years they became less frequent," Rhythm thought aloud.
"You can't have those dreams forever, maybe they'll stop," Feather said.
Rhythm shook his head. "I don't think they'll ever stop altogether. Dad told me that he still has dreams of losing his leg from time to time, and that happened what - twenty-something years ago?" He referred to his father who too had a prosthetic leg, coincidentally the same one as Rhythm's.
Feather's eyes glared downward with shock. "Oh, well, fuck then. You sure you're okay with living here?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine. I just need to keep myself distracted and stay busy" Rhythm assured. Despite what he said, he knew there was no way to prevent the memories from reappearing in dreams.
"You've always been good at that," Feather remarked.
"My area of expertise," Rhythm said with a smirk.
"You sure your special talent isn't being a workaholic?" Feather teased, but then became more serious. "You work too much. Sometimes I worry about you. You need to relax at some point."
"Relaxing doesn't suit me. I like being busy," Rhythm pointed out. "And no, I'm pretty sure my special talent is writing music." He tapped his pen on the paper in front of him.
Rhythm knew the thing that tied his team together was their love of music and talent of playing. Sadly in this world, music wasn't as revered as it was many centuries ago. Fighting for the Resistance was the most important thing, and music came second. Many old songs played on the radio, but new ones were still being made. Rhythm's team had even written and submitted songs to the radio, and they were played every so often.
"Whatcha writing?" Feather asked.
"It's about Heartfelt," Rhythm answered honestly. "I feel bad about how things went before we left."
"Oh, I see. May I read it?"
"Sure, but it's just a starting point." Rhythm levitated the paper over to Feather.
After a few moments of scanning the lines, Feather said "I like it. I think the use of repetition really proves the point. You think you're going to make this into a real song?" He passed the paper back to Rhythm.
"I'm not sure, maybe." He shrugged.
"Maybe it could be another song we submit to the radio! That'd be awesome!" Feather proposed.
"I don't think this one is right for the radio. It feels too personal," Rhythm defended.
"I mean, aren't all songs personal somehow?" Feather made a point.
Rhythm sighed with a smirk. He explained "the melody and pace I have in mind for this one doesn't scream "radio song" to me. I think I'll leave it like that."
"Suit yourself," Feather said as he hopped off the chair. "I'm heading back to bed. Don't stay up too late or else those skeletons might really come back to life and chase you," he joked.
Rhythm rubbed his brow with a hoof. "Alright, see you in the morning, dude."
FeatherTune lifted his wing in goodbye as he exited through the door. The room was silent again. Rhythm felt better now that he was able to express his worries to a close friend. The Unicorn looked at his lyrics one more time before heading to bed himself. He pondered a title for a moment, and decided on "In Between."
In the morning, CharmingRhythm was surprised to find he did not feel as tired as he expected to be when he woke up. He realized he was awoken by very loud singing from the bathroom. It was HyperBlitz. He had a powerful voice, louder than any other pony Rhythm had heard. Rhythm entered the main room and saw BlazingFlair. The both of them exchanged glances acknowledging Hyper's performance. They just laughed.
Today the team worked on the inside of the base. They wanted to make sure it was in the best condition for living. SpinningNote had reactivated the computer he found, although the monitor was not of best quality. Rhythm promised him that they would get a better computer for their base. The one he found, plus any others in the village could be repaired for use of future residents.
"I found some files on this computer," Spinning said. "Their dates from like... 2160 or something."
"So you're saying they're 150 years old?! How the fuck did you get that thing working?" Hyper expressed pointing at the clunky computer.
Spinning did not answer his question, instead he speculated aloud, "Maybe they'll tell us what happened to the ponies in this village."
Behind the base building EchoBeat began a garden. He had set up a tarp roof attached to the wall of the building to protect the plants. A large fluorescent light stood as artificial sunlight. Echo kept a container of water next to the light. While this was a good start, he knew that they would need a much bigger garden to keep up with a whole camp of ponies.
BlazingFlair was repairing a large water filter that was attached to a water tank meant for the base building. "We can probably get this filter working," Blazing began, "But how can we use it without water? We need to find a source of water."
"That river we saw was too far away," FeatherTune thought. "Maybe there's another source of water somewhere. I could fly around and try to find one."
"Sounds like a good idea," Rhythm told Feather, and the Pegasus was off. Rhythm still spoke to Blazing. "But I wouldn't rule out the possibility of underground water. We know about the energy crystal cave, so maybe there are other caverns around here."
Blazing nodded. "We'll have to either find an opening through the energy mill, or start digging ourselves."
Rhythm trotted back into the main room to see HyperBlitz attempting to piece a chair back together. He recognized the chair as one of the pieces of furniture they found in the village. The chair almost completely collapsed on Hyper as he scrambled everything together with his forelegs. Rhythm levitated the pieces in his magic, and Hyper began hammering in nails until it was sturdy.
"Thanks!" He said to Rhythm.
"I'm not trusting you to put anything back together by yourself," Rhythm teased.
Hyper's copper eyes glared at him playfully. "What? Just because I break myself a lot doesn't mean I'm going to break everything I touch."
"You sure about that?" Rhythm smirked. Hyper still stared at him, crossing his blue marked forelegs. "C'mon. Let's go get some more furniture and fix it. We still need to see what we can recycle," Rhythm suggested.
Hyper bounded up and raced after his friend outside. They all worked through the morning and afternoon. Blazing fixed the water filter and was beginning to check on the other appliances in the base. SpinningNote found more computers, and EchoBeat marked out an area where they could set up a new planting tent.
A shadow circled overhead as Rhythm worked. He peered up to FeatherTune. "I found a stream down that way," He pointed his peach colored hoof to the west. "Maybe we can redirect it to the base."
Rhythm sighed. "Sounds like a lot of work. We definitely need more than six ponies to work on this camp."
HyperBlitz placed his red hoof on Rhythm's back. "Let's try to work on what we can for now. Then we'll get more help later for the bigger stuff, okay?" His smile was warm.
CharmingRhythm smiled back and nodded in agreement.