//------------------------------// // Chapter 20: Dyeing // Story: The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards // by Cloud Ring //------------------------------// ⊛⊛⊛ Gentle Touch knew she was dreaming. As she left the tower elevator, she felt a faint click of magic under her hooves, as if from thread once taut but broken by her step. Far away from her — nothing but the highest spires on the horizon — lay Metropolis; She was there, seen from the tower as well as from the clover-covered hill. And in the sky — dark, almost starless sky, permeated by thin pinkish lines, without the slightest trace of the Net — there was the Red. The Red did not emit flashes or waves; it only painted the world in slowly shifting tones of pomegranate seeds and ripe cherries. No angry shivers; no beams cutting through the avenues; no alarms and pointers to the nearest vault.  It was simply there, and the pressing pain in Gentle Touch’s right side was nothing more than a phantom. Gentle Touch remembered how she lost Cursory Streak at the door of the mnemo station; how she waited there more and more plagued by the thought that the older pegasus simply slipped through the back door and flew away so that she would never see this useless pony again. How Gentle, yielding to a quiet call in her heart and the prompts of glasses, decided to hit the road and reach for Solid Line herself. The glasses were with her now too, benevolent as usual. But now there was a distinct glee in their mindvoice. Anticipation of sorts. Gentle Touch tried to clarify what they are happy about, and received the answer that ‘The feast is near.’ Attempts to clarify on that led either to repeats, or to long reflections on the arrangement of the festivities ‘Among other things, do not forget about two knives, one of volcanic glass, the other we will not name, oh no, we will not name it’, or to the equally cryptic ‘The path is over and the traveler returns victorious.’ Having spent a few slices running towards habitat sectors, Gentle Touch was finally convinced that this was just a dream: Blue Moon stood almost in nadir — Heralds, as they do, felt the precise place of their Moon all the time — not moving in all the time even for a third of Her radius. And despite this, Gentle Touch did not want to sleep at all.  She closed her eyes, looked around — nopony was nearby, only a few cobwebs among the dark contours on the horizon — and imagined four forget-me-nots behind her. She compiled their story — from a seed brought by the wind from the balcony of the one who loved gardening and carried this love in memory of her departed spouse; about how three helped the fourth to germinate, pushing the obstructing stone aside. Gentle Touch suspended the story before it blossomed too brightly, cautiously turned around and saw four half-open fluorescent blue buds. Yes, a dream for sure. And she was still deeply afraid of the incredible ease of working with the aspect of dreams; this horror made her dizzy and her stomach weightless. It was a third aspect for her. Even those who accepted it as the first and only aspect would spend, as the Blue Moon once said — and Moons never lie — square nine times as much power and nine times as much time on a task of the same difficulty compared to Gentle Touch. Yet Gentle Touch almost slipped into disbelief when she first heard about how hard it usually goes for other Heralds. What could be easier than telling a story? What could be easier than knowing that you are asleep, and therefore managing the world and ruling it to your liking? What adventures can compare with this reality, ready to burst open from only one plot spark, a fleeting thought? Then Blue Moon told and showed her the story of Violet Vision, a mortal pony who pursued her ideals far beyond any comparison in the mastery of dreams, rivaling the Blue Moon Herself; and, as if that was not enough, took her to an overgrown cemetery created specifically for the six square nines of Heralds who fell during the containment and subsequent battle with the Shimmering Horror birthed by Violet. Up to the cycle of her death, in a quiet and distant retirement home many rounds after the battle, Violet was neither able to understand what she did nor accept the consequences of her actions. The way she saw it, she merely helped the only possible reality take form. Dying didn't do much to change her mind. Then, at the unremarkable white tombstones, Blue Moon summoned Violet, and six questions in a conversation with her were enough for Gentle Touch to never talk about her third aspect. But the aspect continued to demand its own place. It was wrong; wrong from the very beginning. Usually, Heralds-to-be chose their aspect for themselves; Gentle Touch never chose dreams, nor did she study dreams until, in the shallow slumber of the hospital sector, trying to settle in a new, harsh and stiff room among the ash-blue walls, she first met a Moon. After that, she took lessons at the behest of Blue Moon, but only to keep her mind mostly in check.  The ability to control dreams was like a backyard of the house, where the soil is hardly suitable even for setting up a small garden: look in, walk through with a hard broom, sweep out the trash that was left after a casual party, dream for a beat that maybe it's a good idea to at least draw a graffiti on the house’s external wall.  Without any love for the backyard. Because she could guess who lives in this backyard and to whom it really belongs. Not to Gentle Touch, that's for sure. Not to this Gentle Touch at least, but to one carefree, fun-loving and cruel filly. One who took upon herself the qualities that Gentle Touch herself could not afford to have — being a healer, mindful and kind. Somepony who knows for sure how everything should be in the real world, and who has all the means to make it so. To steer everything in a more fun way; with no exceptions and no restraints. Not that Gentle never listened to her advice and never noticed the copper shine of her mane out of the corner of her eye. She was never trying to completely block out that voice. It was just that Blue Moon managed to convey what happens when you listen too closely to such voices, and in Violet Vision's laughter there were rather familiar overtones; so Gentle Touch drew conclusions. Still, it simply was there. Silently present, the aspect of dreams, unnecessary and unwanted, remained in her and she could not help but look through this door. Occasionally. With (not exactly) an utmost caution. Still waiting? Well, good for you... But now the exit from this backyard was locked — and Gentle Touch had no key. Time passed, slice by slice and cycle by cycle, and in the deserted Metropolis, Gentle Touch could not wake up, nor could she fall asleep. This dream, with all its obvious unreality, with uselessly blinking identifier lights on the airways where no one flew, with empty cafes, where unfulfilling food appeared on the tables by itself once you were to think about ordering and look away, with the trains, beyond the doors of which there was nothing but steady orange light, with immovable shine of the Red askew from the zenith — forever at the same point of the dark sky webbed by pink veins — the dream readily admitted that it was, in fact, just a dream, in little things and minor points, and Gentle could easily change the color of the curtains in the hotel room or the model of the aviette she called to search for other ponies. It refused to give in — or even be felt like a dream — in anything that mattered. Other ponies? Other dreams? Send a few words for Blue Moon or maybe for Cursory Streak? No. Not at all. Of course not, how could you even think of that. The glasses persuaded her to wait a little, and reminded her that three or so cycles later something might change. There was a time when they started the countdown, and there was a time when the numbers of this countdown went into the negative. Later, the glasses refused to admit that something similar had ever been said, and Gentle had nothing to check their words against. She regularly looked around, and each time she saw the faint web-like images of the other ponies; her sight was working in the scarlet. She chased them, on hooves, or on a train, or in an aviette, and saw the sparkle until the very last moment when, behind the last open door in the forgotten slums, or in the bend of a quiet river, or on the shore of the ocean, the emptiness met her. The images blinked out of existence just as she was about to witness them with normal sight. Once, in such a pursuit, she was quite sure that she saw a figure in a wide-brimmed Stetson hat — but only from behind and only as a silhouette in the dim light from the ajar door; then the door closed. In the cycle when she first saw the copper strands of somepony else's (her own) mane, she first tried to kill herself. It seemed easy — the city, even empty once, left her with many nines of ways to choose from. Pain, due to her first aspect, was not a problem either. It turned out to be more difficult to go through the anguish and fear of the passing life, without taking a step back. The dream she was trapped in allowed her to heal wounds and move herself contrary to the apparent skills of an imaginary body — by the end of the second round, according to the calendar notes, she mastered flight, and for several nines of cycles she was dimly pleased with the views from above and the freedom to float in the air like pegasus. But with the same ease it let her just stop dying, at any beat and despite any damage. And every method, once tried, stopped working, no matter the ingenuity of her attempts to repeat it. Time went on. She saw reflections of copper more and more often, until she finally saw that pony in a dark mirror inside an empty hotel. So they had met, and suspicions were gradually replaced by curiosity, then cautious sympathy. Sharp Cut, as she was called, taught her to not only suppress the pain but appreciate it, strolling on the edge of life, as with each next cycle Gentle Touch felt the world around more and more muffled; the pain was a way to feel at least something. That, in turn, required her to distinguish glass from clay from steel. She did not feed Gentle Touch’s false hopes, and Gentle Touch resigned herself to staying here forever knowing that even death would not be a way out, because Gentle's death meant that the Red could be defeated, which means that the Red will not allow it; plain and simple. At least that's what Sharp said. Among other conversations, Sharp described how exactly she said goodbye to her family and some friends to finally move here, beyond the mirror’s edge, and Gentle agreed that while the departure was possible otherwise, alternatives were just that much more dull; although after the first chapter of the story in the foyer of a quiet cinema, she was slightly nauseous. The ‘slasher movie’ itself, which they were watching shortly after the talk, black and white, but with wild applications of red and scarlet streaks — deemed unacceptable in the real world which became somewhat blurred at the edges for Gentle Touch at that moment though — was weirdly appealing, and she confided in Sharp Cut that she does like it. Sharp Cut admitted reluctantly that Gentle Touch’s family might be fine in the real world, for now. But she also said that the Red’s world beyond the mirror did not follow mundane causality, and that Gentle Touch’s presence here meant that the act had already happened. Gentle Touch was troubled by this and tried to make sense of it, but failed. She asked bluntly if it was a prophecy, and got a clear “Yup!” in response. She cried into Sharp Cut’s coat, which was absorbent enough to hide her tears. The bone blade, short and dull orange to rhyme with her coat, not yet a knife but still sharpened with care, that Gentle received as a gift for the next anniversary, in any case, had nopony to apply it to. Around the same time, or a little earlier, the glasses finally fell silent. In memory of Cursory Streak, she began to get involved in detective stories, then science fiction, then romance novels, then she returned to detective stories. In the romance novels’ phase Sharp Cut refused to have sex with her, saying that Gentle was not ready yet. It was a challenge, and she tried to master the appropriate techniques from the books, but Sharp did not even examine her, no matter how inviting and provoking Gentle Touch was. She just repeated, “It's too early for you. There may be a pony who loves you here, and it is not me.” That was too cryptic for Gentle Touch’s mind — it was well established that nopony ever exists here except them. However, during this long time Gentle Touch had one opportunity to taste her nonetheless. She was copper in that way too; and that was enough. In comparison, the art of patterns dyed on the coat as well as on the skin under it, and then deeper still, turned out to be almost a revelation — Sharp Cut was enthusing in approving her new notion, was glad for her and gave to Gentle Touch whole sequences of exercises that, according to her, were worth mastering.  So they passed the time with drinks and foods, competitions and challenges, books and sightseeing, blood and scars; and many, many rounds later, the Blue Moon still stood in the nadir, and the Red slightly aside from the zenith. Then she asked Sharp Cut to kill her. The companion was a little surprised, reminded that it still would not help, but fulfilled the request, not denying themselves the pleasure of stretching the process a bit. Gentle had no particular objections — Sharp Cut was, after all, helpful, and in a major way; she had found new and impressive routes to the death, sufficiently obscure to avoid the dream’s detection too. The dream caught itself and brought her back to it from the shores of death three times nine beats after she reached them — thus actually escaping the dream if only for a short time. Still, this delay was enough to write a letter, put it in a bottle and send it across the Last River. They made it a habit of sorts, and after each following message the sluggish flow of time resumed for Gentle Touch (Sharp Cut), as it always did.