This is how the charcoal-maker died.
There were a hundred kraals in Pundamilia Makazi: city-states with differing concepts of how zebra governments should function. This accompanied an equal variance of beliefs in things like rights, self-determination, and freedom: if you were unfortunate enough to live in one of The Three, the low end of that quantity could be measured as zero. Legally, the charcoal-maker was a citizen for one of the less restrictive kraals: it was just that she spent nearly the whole of her adult life outside the borders which had been created by curving walls of still-growing thorns. It was where she lived, it was where she worked, and it was where she would die.
Even The Three recognized that it was best to allow a charcoal-maker to enter and exit of her own will, because the other option was to have the smoldering mounds (each taller than a zebra, with a diameter at least three body lengths across) within the walls. The creation of charcoal was perceived in three ways: as a necessity, a delicate process which was best left to the professionals, and something which involved the near-constant use of fire.
It was flame which had been buried under a coating of earth, because charcoal required trapping as much of the heat as possible. When a marked creator was involved, it was often possible for zebras to trot over the surface of active mounds -- although anyone doing so was advised to move in a hurry. Because there was heat, and somewhere under that was flame, and charcoal required tending to an extent which required the mark's magic to include the ability to get by on very little sleep.
Zebras loved to cook with charcoal: it was one of the few agreements which echoed from all one hundred kraals. It was also something they recognized as a potential weakness, because being a zebra generally meant working with the flow of the world: taking what was provided and then, whenever possible, making sure it could be replaced. Charcoal required the use of great quantities of wood, and that meant there had to be vast amounts of lumber ready to be naturally taken. If demand exceeded any supply which the world might provide...
You couldn't constantly harvest from living trees, even if you planted replacements immediately after. Trees only grew so fast, especially in a non-nation which had an earth pony population consisting of a few expatriates, just about all of whom charged for their services accordingly. The zebra collective appetite for charcoal to use for warmth and the delicate tastes it added to roasting vegetables could easily reach the point where it stripped the land clean, and they knew it. That was one of the two major reasons they left its creation to the marked, because those were the ones who could work with the land's natural balance while making sure the delicate harmony was maintained.
The other major reason was because zebras who tried to shortcut past the financial demands and limited supply would decide the process looked simple enough. It wouldn't take long before they had a smoldering mound with flame boiling away underneath it and because they understood that such things required tending, they would build that mound in a place which was personally convenient. Such as, just by way of rather frequent example, close to their home. They wouldn't necessarily remember to check that they'd used the proper kind of soil, or had varied the thickness of that coating where necessary: most of them wouldn't be aware that such care was required at all. There would just be a very large fire with a rather temporary cover near their residence and eventually, inevitably, they would fall asleep.
The hundred kraals of Pundamilia Makazi agreed on very little. But one of the few universal accords was that charcoal had to be made by professionals who resided a good distance away, and so even The Three allowed those with the mark to live outside the thorn walls. The most restrictive kraals just made frequent visits to such huts, because they always worried about those who had the opportunity to run.
But even if this charcoal-maker had been a citizen for one of The Three, she never would have thought about running. It would have meant leaving the mounds, and the flame, and the core of her soul.
She had resided in her hut for years now, and did so alone. The charcoal-maker was perfectly content with her own company (which was another aspect of the mark: those with it were known to marry, but they generally got together with other charcoal-makers and then spent the honeymoon locked in a giant argument about which one had to dismantle their piles), especially when she knew there was no such thing as true loneliness. There was time spent with other zebras: the seasonal points on the calendars when she allowed the fires to dim before taking her goods to the market. Conversations could be had there and if they were mostly about the varieties of charcoal and just how this particular type was the best for your peppers, then those were the things worth talking about. If she ever felt isolated -- and why would she feel that way at all? -- then all she had to do was stand among the results of her ongoing labor and let her fur drink in the love which rose on the heat.
The charcoal-maker considered herself to be rather worldly. She would use her time in the kraal to order books from other nations: the time required for communication and delivery usually meant they were ready for pickup two seasons later, but -- charcoal-makers had to be patient. She loved her little library, even though only the vast majority of the books were about charcoal.
Studying the process, refining the magic which rose from her mark... it had occurred to her that other nations used charcoal, and so each might have its own way of making it. Zebra methods were traditional and reliable, but that didn't mean they were the best. So she had ordered books, acted on what she read, and now the typical mounds had some rather rare company: kilns which had originally been sketched out by minotaurs, with an ibex-styled köte nearby. The latter gave her a place from which she could watch some of the secondary burns, along with storing her small supply of rare woods because as long as you were ordering books of things to experiment with from the other nations, you might as well get something to experiment on. The results always sold well.
She ordered books, just about none of which were available in the common zebra tongue of barabara, the language of the roads between kraals and their laws. It had required studying linguistics, and as long as she'd both learned to read foreign symbols and was ordering books anyway...
The charcoal-maker felt herself to have a good life. Her creations were appreciated. The fires gave her company and love. There would have been far-traveled stories on cold nights, but no night spent near the mounds was truly cold and so any warmth from the printed words reached her heart as something extra. She knew she was spending her time under Sun and Moon in the way which was best for the world, and reaffirmed that belief in her soul whenever she looked at the sky.
She loved to stargaze on clear nights within the mtisu, and there were so many of those. She would stare up at Moon and the strange dark pattern which covered so much of its surface, forming a shape very much like the head of a mare. A pony mare, from the species which had the horn. She would sometimes wonder what those ponies were like. She'd never met one...
Then she did.
She died seven years before something which had begun nearly a millennium prior ended within ancient stone walls, in a place no story had ever spoken of. She would never see Moon freed of its scars, hear those tales of the Return which reached her kraal in a form which had already been distorted beyond all hope of truth.
The charcoal maker was tending the most distant of her fires, adding fresh soil to cover the places where the heat had dried it out: she wouldn't allow the flame any chance at escape. It was the location which put her closest to the road, and it was that which allowed her to hear the distant turning of cart wheels.
Her ears perked. She listened to that rare sound: something which slowed as it approached the branch path which led to her hut -- and then, in something close to ultimate miracle, began to turn.
She finished tending to the mound first, because some things were important. Then she went to greet her visitor and in doing so, met a unicorn.
She had less than two days to live.
There were very few accords among the hundred kraals, and one of them was hospitality. Some of the resources within Pundamilia Makazi were limited ones: metal was scarce just about everywhere, and wars had been fought over access to clean water. The best way to prevent the battles had turned out to be offering a few things freely. Sometimes it was just what you could spare -- but whenever possible, it would be enough to make sure the traveler could reach the next kraal.
The tradition had expanded in small ways. Shopkeepers kept small baskets of edibles for their customers: this included those who sold food. (The charcoal-maker had a garden which she used to both keep herself fed and supply shoppers with those foodstuffs which zebras knew would only be improved by grilling, and it would die shortly after she did.) Water was always available, because it had to be. And when a stranger came down the road, you welcomed them. Just for a night, most of the time: enough for the traveler to rest, refresh themselves, and tell a few stories as payment -- but you welcomed them.
(Every kraal had a tradition of hospitality. It was just that a few of them had views on letting anyone leave.)
This visitor was a unicorn, and the charcoal-maker welcomed her.
The unicorn was tired, and the charcoal-maker thought it was from excess effort. The pony didn't look very strong. It could be said that there were muscles under the lilac coat (and she'd never seen a coat so bright in her hut), but they mostly existed as a matter of anatomical necessity. The mare certainly didn't look as if she had the physical power to pull something halfway between cart and rolling home across the winding trails of a foreign land. It meant the charcoal-maker quickly decided that the mare looked tired because she'd been exercising too much in dragging all of that wood along, and immediately made sure her visitor got some water.
(She was right, and she was wrong. She'd reached the cart after the glow had winked out, and so didn't know the unicorn had been moving the mass by a different route. But the mare was tired. There was another, constant effort being made.)
The mare's strength was starting to run out. Coincidence had found that happening near the branch path, and the unicorn had turned down it in hopes of finding a safe place to rest. Halting words (because the pony spoke some barabara, although not very well) explained all of that, along with surprise that it had taken so long after the turn to actually reach a hut. The charcoal-maker carefully told the pony about having to keep her fires isolated and after that didn't quite get through, proudly escorted her guest to the mounds because the view might be more comprehensible than the words.
She felt the unicorn would be impressed. After all, ponies used charcoal.
The mare looked at the mounds. She asked for permission to inspect the kiln. Then the questions came, and they kept on coming. The unicorn seemed to be genuinely curious about everything which went into the creation of charcoal, because the unicorn was something of a scholar. She was traveling, she said, in order to learn. Knowledge could be found everywhere: that was why she'd left her own nation for a time. To see what kind of learning existed beyond the borders, and a charcoal-maker who ordered books from everywhere readily agreed.
Light opened the saddlebags which never left the unicorn's flanks, extracted a notebook and quill from the right. The unicorn walked around mounds and kiln and köte, writing everything down. It was something which the charcoal-maker watched with delight. She'd never seen that kind of magic before, and witnessing it now meant the mare wanted to learn about her. She appreciated that.
Eventually, Moon was raised. She prepared a meal for the unicorn: something which had a few interruptions as she went out to the garden for extra ingredients and the kiln for a mandatory status check. They ate together.
The unicorn... almost seemed to enjoy the meal. At least, the smile arrived after the chewing began, and the mare took care to thank her. It was just that -- the smile arrived. The mare's features didn't gradually shift over time. The normal reaction would have been the progression from a base of anticipation and somewhat-worried neutrality to acceptance and then, with any luck, delight. This smile felt as if it had just shown up, placed as a single unit upon the mare's face because the time had come around for it to be there.
The charcoal-maker thought it had something to do with the spices. Ponies just didn't have any experience of tri-kan or dried nettles.
She'd prepared her only guest bench: this mostly meant cleaning books off it, and then her own body could occupy that space. The unicorn was offered the charcoal-maker's favorite, accepted the perch. And then they settled in to talk.
Well... the zebra settled, because she was curious to hear pony stories. She'd read a few, and it was that which gave her some limited command of that language. (It was her first time trying to speak any of it, and she was rapidly learning that knowing what the words looked like when written down hadn't given her any instinct for how they were pronounced. The unicorn politely corrected her now and again, and didn't snicker once.) But stories were always better off free in the air than trapped on a page, and that was a belief from the species which claimed first invention of papercrafting.
She told her guest about that part of the hospitality tradition: the trading of stories. She received a nod. But no story came forth.
That was all right. The host could certainly begin. And as the first story was generally about oneself, so that two could come to know each other a little better -- since there was one thing which ponies and zebras, separated by distance and culture and so much else, would always have in common -- the charcoal-maker knew which tale to tell.
She smiled and, careful to keep her vocabulary within that which the unicorn understood, told her guest the story of how she'd found her mark.
The unicorn listened. Her ears were rotated forward, the purple eyes seemed to be focused -- but there was something odd about it. The same strangeness came when the unicorn spoke, and it was nothing which had arisen from the difference in cultures. There was an oddity to all of it, and it was something which the charcoal-maker didn't truly recognize until shortly before her death.
She finished her story, and waited eagerly for the other side of the equal exchange. There were only a few hundred marks known to zebras, although such often represented broader categories of talent. Ponies supposedly had thousands (with some indicating a truly narrow focus), and that had to mean an equal number of stories. She'd never seen the mare's icon before, had barely seen pony icons at all. Most of that had come from story illustrations. There had to be a tale...
But all the mare said was "Do you ever regret it?"
The charcoal-maker blinked.
"I don't understand." They were faltering words. She hadn't been expecting the question, wasn't sure what it meant, and she also wasn't sure whether she had pronounced 'understand' properly.
"You must have had dreams, when you were a foal," the unicorn eventually said: it took two verbal stumbles before she managed 'dreams'. "Learning about the world and everything in it. Things which you wanted to do. Every foal has dreams. What were yours?"
The charcoal-maker was being polite, because that was part of what hospitality required. It meant she thought about it, and the silliest memory came back first.
She blushed: something which was readily apparent beneath half of the stripes. But the unicorn didn't seem to notice. She just... waited.
"I thought about being like the Princess," the charcoal-maker said. "But I think everyone does."
There was a little twitch in the mare's features: something which started around the eyes and transitioned into a small pulling-back of the lips. The zebra spotted it, was about to wonder why -- and then the saddlebags twitched.
The fabric of the left one bulged. Pushed out from within, as if something had just shifted within the stationary balance. Then it abruptly domed, surged to one side with such force as to distort away from the lid --
-- the mare's horn ignited with light. Color flowed into the container, and the movement stopped.
The charcoal-maker said the first thing which came to mind.
"Pets?" She would need to bring in more food.
The mare needed a moment to work out the word.
"Traveling companions," the unicorn tried. "Temporary."
"Do they need anything?"
The mare shook her head. "Just magic." Her eyes scrunched a little around the corners, and did so at the same moment her lips thinned: on a zebra, it would have indicated someone who was fighting off a headache. The light winked out again.
Plants in the pony nation lived partially on magic, at least when earth ponies were involved. Perhaps some small animals did the same. "M'changa?" Offering the safest of multi-species painkillers.
After a moment, "Thank you."
The charcoal-maker recovered the mix, infused it and let the unicorn take the wooden mug. The mare pushed a slim foreleg through the hoof loop, drank, set it down again. It took about ten minutes before the features relaxed enough to allow speech.
"I don't think it's good to be the Princess," the unicorn haltingly said. "Just having to.. be. Every single day, just so there can be days at all. I think she must be tired. It's been a long time. She must want to rest."
There was something strange about those words, and the smallest part of that came because they'd emerged from a pony.
"It's what the world asks of her," the charcoal-maker carefully said. (It would be some time before she would wonder why her words had been so careful and by then, she would already be close to death.) "Her mark."
The unicorn looked directly at her.
(It was the first time that happened.)
(It was the only time.)
She felt the weight of that gaze. An intensity which almost seemed as if it had its own light, because there was something behind that focus and magic would have been the most reasonable explanation, the thing which was easiest to accept. There had to be magic in the unicorn's eyes, because there was power and she didn't want to imagine any other source.
The charcoal-maker started to pull back. An instinctive reaction, something which rose from close to her core: the need to get away from that gaze. To retreat from an uncontrolled fire.
But then the unicorn spoke again, and it was all the zebra could do not to laugh.
The mare wasn't good with barabara: the zebra's spoken Equestrian was limited. It meant their discussion wandered back and forth across the linguistic borders, and... sometimes things got confused. The next sentence emerged as three words, all delivered in the most serious of tones. As if they were the most important words which the unicorn could ever say. But it was three words in two tongues. Everything had gotten mixed up.
It was, given the context, one of the funniest-sounding sentences the charcoal-maker had ever heard.
It also turned out to be her death sentence.
"Why are marks?"
The hostess didn't laugh. She wanted to, but... this was a guest. And she didn't mean to mock with her reply, because she was having just as much trouble with the pony's language.
She wasn't entirely sure what the question was. Why did the Princess have that mark? Or -- was it more philosophical? Was the mare asking why marks existed at all?
That was something the charcoal-maker had never really thought about. You had a soul and in time, you had a mark which reflected it. That was the natural path of the world. It wasn't a question which had to be asked -- but perhaps ponies thought differently. So she answered, and did so with similar syntax. Something not meant as mockery, but to show equality of difficulty in communication. That each was doing their best, and both were allowed to fail.
Marks simply were. And when it came to things which simply were...
"Why are Sun and Moon?"
All of that focus abruptly turned inward.
The mare's flanks seemed to loosen, as if skin wasn't quite connected to muscles any more. Limbs threatened to drift, and the ears sank down against the skull as if searching for echoes from within.
The unicorn wasn't really looking at her now. The eyes were simply trained in that direction.
The charcoal-maker started to pull back again.
"Are you all right?" She thought she'd mixed the infusion properly, and it was supposed to work as well on a pony as it did for every other sapient! She could get the mare to a doctor, but it would take time -- she didn't think she'd made a mistake, it wasn't her mark but m'changa was so basic...
The answering voice came across as something... distant. A sound which had been anchored to the mare through the fast-weakening demands of technicality.
"It would be so simple," the unicorn said, "if it was the same answer..."
The mare blinked. Smiled all at once, because a smile was required.
"Did you think about anything else?" she inquired. "Which wasn't a Princess? Any other way your life might have been?"
...well, yes. Every foal did, and so the charcoal-maker told the unicorn about a few filly dreams. It was something to talk about, and it kept the mare from staring. It also seemed to keep the mare present, at least in focus. The mare was very much present in the hut, and the charcoal-maker wasn't sure --
-- hospitality. All travelers deserved hospitality.
"Those are good dreams," the unicorn said. "Do you ever wish you'd followed them?"
"I'm a charcoal-maker," the zebra replied. "I have the fires. I understand them, and they love me. I'm... happy."
"Are you?"
It was a simple question in any language, and might have still felt like blasphemy in all of them. The charcoal-maker started to react, almost did so in a way which meant hospitality would be broken --
-- but the unicorn kept talking.
"No real tracks on your road," the mare said. "No visitors?"
She swallowed back the last set of words, forced replacements to come up as something which burned her throat like vomit.
"I go to the kraal once a season, when the fires are safe," she answered. "Moons from now. Usually don't see anyone in between. You're the first in a long time. I like it out here --"
Something about the next word felt especially strange.
"Friends?"
"I like those in the kraal --" trying so hard to keep the anger out of her voice, unsure why it was even there "-- when I'm in the kraal. When I'm here, I love the flame."
"So you're alone," the pony decided, and adjusted her position on the bench. "And you don't know how to be anything else."
The adjustment turned into more of a standing-up motion.
"I'm glad I found you," the unicorn said. "I think you'll be glad too. Thank you for the place to rest. Where can I sleep?"
Words failed the charcoal-maker, and did so on a level which reached too far down. One where, just for a moment, she wished she'd been a talespinner. Someone who could express herself best in means other than fire. And there had been no tale from her visitor. No story, not even of the mark. It meant hospitality had been broken, only from the other side. She could simply tell the mare to leave --
-- no. Not at night. The charcoal-maker had protection, and some of that came from the presence of muted fires. But to send a stranger to the land onto the road at night... it would take too long to reach the kraal, especially when the unicorn was so tired: hours of pulling the cart. She seemed to have been traveling for some time, had done well to get this far -- but it didn't mean she knew all the dangers of Pundamilia Makazi, or how to best fend them off. The unicorn would stay the night, and be offered a meal before departing in the morning.
But she would depart. The charcoal-maker had been curious to meet a unicorn, and now she had. It made her wish to meet another, mostly to go through all the myriad ways in which the experience could be improved.
"This way," she said, and led her guest to the sheltered hollow within the hut. The unicorn took a few more notes, then quickly fell asleep.
The charcoal-maker stayed awake for a time, because that was part of her mark and the burns needed tending. But eventually, she laid down to rest, and her last thought before dream was a wish for skill with words. To have found the ones which could properly answer questions which didn't need to be asked at all.
Perhaps that was why it happened, once the unicorn stopped pretending to rest and approached the host's sleeping form. It might have been a moment of wanting to be something else which made it all possible, and so that might have been something the unicorn had been trying to create. Or it could have been the lack of resistance, with the charcoal-maker unable to fight back from the depths of sleep.
She never woke up, and part of that was due to the half-sphere full of mists and vapors which the unicorn carefully pressed against her snout. But something in her knew and in the deepest part of her nightscape, the charcoal-maker's scream shook the dreamworld as she watched her soul come apart.
The zebra was groggy when she woke up, unnaturally so. She nearly tripped over the short column which had been left next to her bed, and was too weary to recognize that those items weren't supposed to be there. Her first priority, even before attending to her toiletries, was her guest. She had to make sure the unicorn was all right. Let the mare sleep for a while longer, then prepare the meal which would let the pony get back on the road. The zebra wanted to see the unicorn off, and something in her also wanted to make sure it was going to be a one-way trip.
She was tired, and so there were many things she didn't notice as she stumbled towards the sheltered hollow. They would have been hard to pick up on in any case: the little spheres had seen their colors deliberately muted, and the curves of the hut offered multiple opportunities for shadowed places near the ceiling.
The hollow was empty. Blankets had been folded with precision and arranged on the far end of the cot. Her guest was gone.
She glanced through a window, verified that the half-cart was showing an equal amount of absence: the brief look failed to register any hint of what lurked well before the horizon. Another, somewhat longer survey had her inventorying the items around the area, because no story had been given in return and so it seemed possible that something might have been taken...
...nothing missing.
All right. So she'd had a guest for a night, gaining no stories from the experience. All she seemed to have acquired was a sleepiness which would not fade, along with a fast-arriving headache. But she was awake, and as soon as she got some food and mixed a little more m'changa for herself, her labors would be calling. The first thing she had to do was --
-- was...
...the mounds were outside. The kiln. The köte. Two days ago, she had done something which had originated in foreign lands, using a pyramid of wood stacked in such a way as to be a chimney within a burn. She had to look at that and...
...why was the headache getting worse?
She stumbled towards her bathroom, nearly went over the little column again. Her skull was quickly starting to reach the point where her fur felt sore, perhaps from some level of empathy. And her hips felt as if she'd recently pulled a small, crucial muscle in each. Had she been shifting in her sleep so much as to injure herself, stress over the visitor sending legs which should have been at rest into something approaching futile gallop?
There was medicine in the bathroom.
There was also a mirror, and the angle at which she entered meant she got a look at her reflection first. The full length of her left side, from the disheveled brush of her mane to her --
She didn't scream. There was no point. No amount of screaming would have ever sufficed. She could have stood there screaming until her lungs collapsed, until blood flooded them in an attempt to fill vacuum, until the last of her life turned into expelled red liquid vibrating with pain, she would have fallen into the lake of her agony and it still wouldn't have been enough.
So she ran.
It was instinct, and it was also thought. Something had happened: something which imagination never would have dared to visualize, released from a place where the darkest of night terrors did not venture
(there had been a dream)
and she didn't know how to deal with it. The most natural instinct when facing abomination was to run, even when it meant that violation was traveling with her.
That was the instinct. But there was also thought: a nightmare had erupted into the waking world, and perhaps it had not done so for the first time. There were doctors in the kraal, along with storytellers who might have been holding back the darkest of legends for a night on which even those who called themselves fearless would be made to scream. To run was instinct: to gallop in a specific direction meant seeking help. She had no cart to haul, and she could safely leave the mounds behind without supervision for a period of --
--of...
...she galloped, away from her hut and down the approach road at the best speed she'd ever known, something where even partial maintenance of the pace would have her at the krall in less than two hours. She ran and her hooves pounded against rock and soil and she let the run suffuse her body instead of thinking about what had happened to her and she didn't notice how the light had changed or the strange look of the too-close horizon until three seconds before she would have gone snout-first into the wall of light.
Her instincts recognized the danger before her mind did, and used the only move which could have saved her from broken bones: dropped her down and dumped all of the momentum into a slide, sending her skidding across the uneven road as small rocks extracted a lesser toll, putting bruises into her skin and setting blood flowing within her coat. An extra shade to carry back into the hut, when the lilac of the visitor had been the brightest living hue ever hosted within more natural walls.
The slide slowed her, and did so at a rate which saved her (if only for a little while). Her hooves ended the process through the lightest of bumps against the new barrier, and the energy which flowed across them upon contact with the turquoise made them tingle.
The zebra's frantic eyes stared up at the wall made of light, found the place where it began to sharply curve into a dome.
She forced herself to get up, one leg at a time. Turned to face away from the barrier.
Kicked it.
Again.
Again.
Again.
...it... surrounded her lands. She'd been around the full perimeter now. Her hooves were sore, because all kicking it in multiple places had done was to prove that she retained enough sensation for her hooves to become sore.
At least, that was true of her body. She kept looking at... where it should have been. And whenever she did so, a sort of numbness spread through what remained of her soul.
It was rare for her to be truly cold: this part of the continent had the capacity to experience snow, but -- it was the sort of event which a local zebra might see thrice in their lifetime, and only for the lightest of coatings. Which was assuming a traveling pegasus stunt show didn't ask the kraal's residents if they wanted to learn what true winter was like, just for a day. Her mother had told her about that. Everyone had been having fun right up until the moment when they realized just how cold they were -- which was, of course, when the pegasi had made it all go away.
She didn't know what it was like to trot through white and feel something which was a single lost degree away from becoming ice trickling through her fur. But she'd been through lesser chills, and heard storytellers speak of the warning signs which any traveler had to beware of when the true frost closed in.
At the start, it could hurt just to move. But then there might be... numbness. And if that continued for long enough, you would start to feel something worse. The sleepy inner assurance that everything was fine, in fact there was no chill at all and you were actually beginning to feel rather warm now. You were so warm and sleepy that you could just rest right here, and if you gave in to that urge, you would rest. You would rest so well as to never wake up again.
There was numbness. But there was also a sort of vacuum and whenever she thought about what had happened to her, tried to focus, it pulled at her from within. It felt as if it was hollowing her, and that made sense because... there was a gap. Why shouldn't the rest of her simply tumble into the freshly-gouged chasm within her soul?
She wondered when the warmth would start. When she would feel so weary as to let herself simply rest. But her head still hurt, and her hooves ached from kicking at the light, and...
The zebra had tried more than that. None of it had worked. It had occurred to her that it might be possible to dig her way out, but her species was meant to do little more than scrape down a short distance until they reached water. And one of the most crucial parts of making charcoal was...
...was...
...after a while, following many failed means of not thinking about it, she compared the lack of inner sensation to the games she had played as a filly. It was possible to learn anatomy from a book: how all the bones were lined up, the attachment of muscles via tendons, whatever it was which cushioned the joints -- and none of it would ever give anyone the instinct which rose when the ball was heading their way and, without any consideration of motion, angles, physics, or physiology, they would simply kick.
She had understood the flame as something which was part of her heart, on the level of her soul. The zebra had loved it, and recognized that it loved her in return, as its custodian and partner -- but also as someone who respected it, and so understood that it could never be truly tamed. And she still had knowledge -- but it was cold.
Cold and dry, like ink in a unicorn's notebook.
The unicorn. The unicorn had...
...there were certain necessities to making charcoal, and one of the most important was making sure that any mistake would have some trouble with spreading. It meant that when she got away from hut and little garden, the zebra was mostly living on rock. She currently had to bring in fresh soil from a small distance in order to -- it was for the mounds, and creating the earliest ones had also served to clear out her lands of things like dead grasses and whatever could catch.
She could barely scrape into soil. To create a gap through the solidity which was large enough for her own body, when her garden tools had been meant for just that... it might be the work of weeks. Her hooves would give out long before the stone did.
The well drew some brief consideration, but the little underground stream it tapped wasn't large enough for her own body. Even if it had been, there would have been no guarantees of air pockets along the way, and she didn't know where it came out -- or if it ever emerged from the land at all.
The zebra had tried to spot the unicorn, because it felt as if this kind of magic had to require the caster to be close by. (Or perhaps she simply hoped that, with whatever was left that could still feel hope at all.) The wall was clear enough: it simply distorted sight with its hue, the same way the unicorn had...
...'distorted' wasn't the right term for abomination.
She had desperately searched along the perimeter of the prison. But the unicorn wasn't in sight. And when it felt like the time for screaming had finally arrived, no one came.
She was trapped.
Trapped and... sundered.
Broken.
The little column near her bed turned out to be books.
She nosed through some of them, because her mind was looking for anything to do which wasn't thinking about the dome or what had happened to her and why it wouldn't stop. Every last volume was printed in her own language, and every page from the fifth on made her want to laugh without mirth: the sort of applause you gave to the worst joke in the world, in hopes that it would prevent the agonizing jest from ever being told again. The zebra had received a gift from her visitor, perhaps in exchange for the hospitality.
...or perhaps because the unicorn had seen fit to leave something behind, after the most vital part of the zebra had been stripped away.
Turn the page: here's someone making a potion. A few more, and a mtemi is presented. Does either of those appeal? Is there something about brewing which resonates within you? What about taking up the robes of an ambassador, the living voice of your kraal sent out to speak with all of the others? If that's too complicated (because trying to negotiate with ninety-nine others, sometimes simultaneously, can produce the sort of pain which m'changa can't touch), then here we have a shopkeeper. A custodian of thorns. Windwhisperer. Surveyor. Physician, all described in the most basic, friendly terms which a time-limited vocabulary could offer...
There was a chasm in her soul, and it couldn't be filled with the pages from a foal's career guides.
(There were a few pages torn out of the back third of the last volume. She suspected that was where the illustrations for charcoal-making had been.)
She laughed. There was no choice but to laugh, and it didn't make the cosmic jest go away.
She cried. She did so until there were no tears left, and nothing changed.
She kicked the books, chased them down where they had fallen and tore apart the pages with her teeth.
She vomited.
And when she finished with all of it, the wall of light was still there.
She... was supposed to check on the mounds.
It was something to do, when she couldn't do anything else. Waiting for help -- it would be moons until the next time she'd been expected at the market, she only came into the kraal for shopping and delivery pickups during those times because the fires had to be in a state where traveling away from them for a few days was possible. Under normal circumstances, it would take at least that much time before she was missed.
She would be missed: the zebra was sure of that. Fail to appear at the market and someone would, at the minimum, guess that she might be sick. A doctor would be dispatched to check on her.
Outside of that... she hardly ever had visitors: the unicorn had guessed that easily enough. Taking in those who were on the road, perhaps as often as twice per year. No lovers, because she had yet to meet someone who could ignite anything within her which matched her passion for the fire. And as for friends... she had drifted away from them, carried on smolder and smoke. She saw them when she went into the kraal, but -- they had their own lives, recognized that the existence of those who tended the burns was a solitary one, and let her be.
The dome sharply curved. Staying below the treeline. It could still be spotted from above, but... there were no expatriate pegasi or griffons in her kraal and until the necessary time had passed, who would come close enough to her home to see the wall of light? Even if someone did, how would they get in? It might be possible to send for one of the few unicorns who resided in other kraals, and if that failed... then someone would get word to the ponies' embassy. Surely there was someone who could counter the magic. Or -- somepony, was that the word she was supposed to use? Somepony who could help her. All of that felt like a certainty.
A certainty which existed in a future which was nearly three moons away.
And until then, all she could do was... check on the mounds.
It was something to do.
Something which wasn't looking at her hips over and over.
Something which wasn't hitting her head against the nearest wall. (The blood was finally beginning to dry in her fur.)
Something which wasn't biting at the skin of her forelegs because waking would not come. (Most of those wounds were still flowing.)
Something which didn't fill the chasm within.
The mound's coating soil looked... dry in that one spot.
She was supposed to do something about that. Stand close by, gauge the difference in the level of rising heat. Decide what to apply atop the dry spot, or whether she needed to...
...to...
...it was just -- hot. It felt hot everywhere against fur, skin, and exposed flesh. She had been able to determine the exact degree of heat just by wanting to do so, and now there was simply fire under soil, with wood blackening as the flame stripped away all which was unnecessary, leaving behind a form of fuel which was the most perfect --
-- the most...
...black lumps. You took away everything which wasn't necessary and eventually, you took away the fire. It left behind something cold and hard. Something which was waiting for the flame to come back, so it could burn one last time.
Something had been taken away from her. Something the unicorn had seen as unnecessary.
(It was at that moment when her mind broke. She simply did not realize it, because one of the requirements for recognizing insanity is to still be possessed by its opposite. Every thought the zebra had from that point on made perfect sense: there was nothing left which could tell her otherwise. It, too, had fallen into the void.)
Her flame was gone, and she was cold. Cold and hard. If touched, her surface might crumble. Some of the dried blood would certainly do that.
She laughed, because that image was funny.
The mound, and the dry soil...
...she listlessly shoved a little fresh earth onto the dry patch, because she felt that was what the books would have said to do. She was sure of that. Books and memory, but not instinct or magic or a soul. There was a hole in that last one: the pony had poked it with her horn.
Maybe that was what the pony's icon was for. But the image made the zebra think of smoke. Something which rose away...
Something which evaporated.
She toured the rest of her lands, or at least her legs did. Every so often, she would shift something, or there would be a little displacement in one direction or another. She couldn't gauge the heat. She understood the process as knowledge only, and...
...she had loved the flame. There had been times, looking over the endless effort of passion, when she had felt as if she was the flame. Everything around her knew that, and responded accordingly.
The fire was still there, buried under the earth. But it didn't seem to know she was there. Perhaps that was because the part it knew was gone. It didn't recognize the husk. And when there was all this work to do, when the part of her soul which knew it as something other than labor was gone and there was nothing left which understood why she was doing all of this when all it could ever produce was something cold and hard and dead...
...she was getting tired. It was too early in the day to be tired. She bit at her right foreleg, because that was a horrible way to wake up, but a good way to stay awake. The blood flowed, but didn't seem to take much of her weariness with it. That meant another bite.
She... relocated a few things, here and there. Then she went inside to eat, and she kept eating because there was a void within her and food wouldn't fill it either, but there was a chance that it might cover part of the hole. She found out she was wrong when she started to vomit again. And then she laughed.
The zebra was too tired. She had to rest. The mounds would do their work without her. It was just a chemical process, wasn't it? The only magic was that which she brought to it, such as the subtle effect which allowed her to tend things so deep under Moon. It didn't matter if she was there or not. Fire happened without her. Fire didn't know she was gone. Fire could call out, and the sound would be absorbed by the void.
There was no need to visit her bed. She could sleep right where she was.
She felt very little from the world outside as she lay down within the little kitchen. Not the aching wounds, not the flowing blood or the puddles of vomit staining her fur. Most of what she knew was the chasm.
The zebra closed her eyes, and waited for the rest of her soul to collapse.
...smoke.
There was often smolder. If she kept it at the smolder level, then she was tending to things in a manner which was...
...smoke. She smelled smoke, and the final instinct which rose from the last shred of sanity was what woke her up.
She stumbled outside, unsteadily moving on legs which would have shown the first signs of infection in a day or two. It took very little time to find the source, especially when it was so actively calling for her attention. Calling out to that which had been taken away.
The fire loved her still. But it could not find her, not when that part of her soul was gone. So it was searching. And in order to look, it needed to see. That was why it had used a dry patch as a means of escape, erupting to the surface of the largest mound, spreading as quickly as it could across the limited resources available.
The blaze was bright and huge and the reason it took the absolute devotion and magic of a mark to supervise the process, because to not tend the mounds properly, almost constantly, properly patching every fault in the soil, would result in this. Charcoal meant fire, and fire was almost impossible to control. It took a charcoal-maker to make sure the blaze slept beneath the earth, and even the best could make mistakes.
It took a charcoal-maker to truly recognize what was happening. To think of the fastest way to stop it, using tools which were never very far away. And even a charcoal-maker might have recognized this situation as something where all they could do was save the rest of the mounds, isolating the growing inferno so that no additional damage was done.
A charcoal-maker could have managed the situation, or at least moderated it.
But this was a zebra.
She looked at the fire, the reflection in her eyes didn't reach her heart, and then she understood that it was calling her. It had erupted to search for her, but fire could only see flame and there was none left within her soul. But the fire was still looking for her, trying to look into her, and she realized that it was doing so when the unicorn had not.
The unicorn had never looked at her. The unicorn had never truly spoken to her, or listened to any careful words which came in return. The unicorn had simply directed gaze, ears, and voice towards a place where a zebra happened to be.
A zebra who existed as something cold, hard, and dead, something which fire was meant to ignite, and she told herself that she heard the call, that she understood, that there was something left within her void which could yet burn, and she broke into the last gallop of her life and pushed off from the hard ground as she came as close as she ever would to flying, soaring into the blazing heart of the only thing which could still save her.
Perhaps it did.
The unicorn's shield hadn't quite dispersed at the expected speed, in part due to the constant... distraction. It meant she had to raise her legs a little more than usual in order to get past the final ridge, and that was annoying. Minor inconveniences often were.
Some time was used for inspecting the site, or what little remained of it. Under normal circumstances, fire was only able to spread across that which would burn, and the land had been deliberately arranged to minimize that. The improperly-maintained mound, left to itself, would have been likely to simply burn out.
Fire could do very little with exposed rock. Fur, however, offered a million tiny wicks.
She doubted the zebra had been thinking at the last, any more than the former occupant of the land had been thinking before the jump. A reaction below thought, flailing and running to get away from the source of pain in the final moments when there had been any life at all. The direction might have even been random. But seared muscles and snapping tendons had possessed some degree of final momentum, and it had been just enough to drop the corpse at the entrance to the hut. The door was designed to be resistant to heat, but the door had been open, and there was all of that recently-shredded paper inside...
The unicorn wasn't sure how the garden had caught. Shields were generally air-permeable, but she didn't think enough of a breeze had gotten through to start a secondary blaze. It was more likely to have been the heat itself, creating strange wind currents within the little space. No fault of the mare's at all. She'd been using just about all of the focus she could spare on keeping the smoke from getting out, not to mention moderating the flame's light in order to keep the increased glow from being spotted at a distance. If she'd had any idea of what was going on with the garden... well, she certainly would have thought to try and protect some of it, because she always needed supplies for the road. But her attention had been so split already, and she hadn't thought to plant any of her special devices around the garden...
She inspected the corpse, or what was left of it.
The unicorn recognized that zebras were the best doctors in the world: she assumed that an equal level of skill applied to their pathologists. She hadn't been able to personally witness the autopsy techniques, and while the corpse was certainly burnt to a level where no absence would have been visible anyway...
They probably wouldn't test for magic, or any lack thereof. It was likely that the test didn't even exist. But until she could find her way into one of their morgues, or located a book which possessed enough detail to tell her exactly what was being done...
It was necessary. But it was also annoying, and added its share of the emotion to every other cause. She'd lost multiple devices: that meant crafting and enchanting the new ones from scratch, plus she had to recover the remnants anyway. The unicorn knew spells which repaired books, had been planning to use them -- and now she had to purchase replacements. And as for permanently disposing of the corpse, wiping away all traces of events and turning the little patch of land into a mystery none would ever solve... she had to do it all, and she had to do it alone.
She was trying to see it as part of the learning process. In the unicorn's perspective, the simple fact was that if you were going to study marks, you shouldn't be prejudiced about it. A true scholar would recognize the need to include zebras, which incidentally meant that Equestria could claim a pitifully small number of true scholars. So by going to the kraals...
Her horn ignited, and turquoise surrounded the leftovers from a rather poor result. All things considered, it was best to begin the disposal process some distance away. That also meant hardening her field somewhat, all the better to keep falling bits from forming a trail and giving her more to clean up. She concentrated --
-- her eyes slammed shut, and did so in the instant before her forelegs gave out. It dropped her down far too close to the corpse, she caught the scent of cooked flesh, the recoil was instinctive and that cost her the last from the underlayer of her concentration.
Her left saddlebag violently domed outwards. The seams almost split, and she tried to refocus, but the scent was still in her nostrils and the pain was surging behind her temples, her head felt as if it would split before the fabric did and it was all she could manage to levitate the little sphere past the lid. Something which flashed with barely-contained energy, power which twisted and roiled and fought against her as the edges of her field began to thin, that without true form warping over and over again in its endless effort to get out...
It was possible to see many things within that power, if you were looking closely. At the last moment before the sphere broke, any witness might have imagined the rough shape of a charcoal-burner's mark.
The power flashed. And then it was gone. Evaporated into nothing.
(She wondered where the energy had gone, and how many questions that single answer might solve.)
It took a few seconds before the unicorn could make herself move, and that was mostly a little scoot backwards on her barrel. Getting a little distance between herself and the smell. The pain required considerably more time to fade.
...all right. She hadn't been able to hold it for quite as long that time, but the duration was actually quite reasonable when she thought about all of the other things she'd needed to do. What she really required was something which could hold it on her behalf, but... that was a work in progress. Everything advanced through trials, and that included the one she was about to put herself through.
Eventually, she got up. Snorted to herself when she realized that not only was all of the garden burnt beyond hope, but she had a headache and any m'changa left in the burnout was probably ruined too. And she still had to dispose of the corpse, all by herself. She was doing all of it by herself, the same way the zebra had been isolated to think about endless possibilities and -- responded rather poorly.
The unicorn didn't understand that. Her subject had been isolated due to necessity. But materials had been provided: things meant to assist with the transition back to sanity. Was the fog from a lifetime of madness truly so comfortable as to have made the zebra retreat back into its vapors?
She wasn't sure. There were times when she nearly felt that in order to properly gauge the effects of madness, she would almost need to experience some of it. And she didn't want to try that, because it had lured so many others and just might manage to keep her in its jaw grip. Even as the only truly sane pony in the world.
Sane, and -- annoyed. She had to make new devices by herself. She had to get rid of the corpse by herself. And when all were truly equal, there would be group efforts in all things, because working together would be the only way to get things done -- but even in her current best-case scenario, that would take a pony's lifetime. (She was already working on the 'lifetime' part.) Right now, she was on her own. If there was just somepony else present to assist in her efforts, somepony who could already think...
...she might as well wish for Sun and Moon while she was at it...
Assist. Group effort.
The unicorn blinked. Her horn ignited (and did so as she winced: she'd started casting again a little too soon), bringing out notebook and quill. This was important enough to write down.
Isolation may be impeding adjustment process. Use small groups?
Which meant she needed to be capable of holding onto the energies from a small group. She wasn't even sure she could manage two for more than a day. Not yet, anyway.
Addendum: run mutual-assistance adjustment trial with no more than single pair until device is ready. Scale up as required/possible. Research calming spells to smooth transition?
She nodded to herself, and began to put the notebook away.
Anyway, if you were studying marks in the manner of a proper scholar, you really had to include the zebras. To do anything else was just bigotry. And if you also had to start your studies with test subjects who could be fully isolated, you needed zebras. There were more outliers with kraals than with settled zones. Simple fact. More isolated zebras, who were somewhat less likely to be missed.
She'd get around to ponies eventually. Once her studies had advanced somewhat further. But until then, she was in Pundamilia Makazi, which really wasn't a bad place to be. After all, if something went wrong, a hundred city-states also meant a hundred subsections of law enforcement whose jurisdictions were forever running out.
The unicorn felt as if she would be staying on the continent for a while longer. She was just at the beginning of her road, after all. It would be trials, measured stages, and slow advancement until she had reached her goal.
Her field levitated the corpse, because there was a lot of work to be done and for now, she was the only one doing it. That meant getting started, because there were still more kraals on the road ahead. More study...
A second bubble went back into her right saddlebag. The notebook and quill floated forth, because she needed them out of the container in order to open the former properly. The actual writing, however, took place without so much as a glance back. She had control, and she knew what she intended to make a note of. Watching wasn't necessary.
But when it came to properly managing and evaluating her efforts, always recognizing that it was fully unreasonable to expect that she would be able to save the world after just a few experiments...
Repeat isolation conditions with #7 to check for/verify additional duplicate results.
That was the scientific method.