//------------------------------//
// Chapter 34: Colorlessness 
// Story: The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards 
// by Cloud Ring 
//------------------------------//


🥧🥧🥧


Two groups of ponies met on a narrow overpass. On one side there were Faraway Storm, Solid Line and Cursory Streak, with the suited pony a few steps ahead. On the other there was Pink, yet she refused to count herself as just one. Two or three were not an exact answer either.

Once she gave it a bit more thought, the number that came up was not even natural.

Sharp was a little ahead in Pink’s being, not allowing herself a word or action until Gentle permitted it from behind. Pink was their overlap, and yet more than that.

The road, otherwise bending lazily around the landscape, rose in a wave here, as if allowing invisible ponies to pass underneath. It cut through the sloping wall of the hill, crudely attempting, with no success, to turn into a tunnel with a single gray-brown wall of lined clay. 

The giant steel doors of a vault, visible from afar due to sheer size and covered with pale blue cracked paint, were less than a throw away from each of the groups of ponies. They were coated with dust, obviously having not been open for a long time, whether from the outside or from the inside.

Now, as well, the doors were still and silent, and no direct ray of the Moons' light could reach beneath the clay canopy. The lights in the label ‘Infusion shelter, AA+ certification grade’ went out long ago. They were totally covered by moss. The only ones who might have known about them, let alone could catch the general meaning of the text or even read it outright, were Pink herself thanks to the Red, and, as Pink reluctantly admitted, possibly Solid Line with her link to ancient tech.

The duo could think of nine, if not more, explanations for why she sees the vault and knows what lies inside; it was not that important now.

She was somewhat upset that the option of running away through broken mirrors did not work as Gentle found her guts and forced them into being Pink, the synthesis, for the purpose of this meeting, as well as meeting itself. Traveling through mirrors they could, if not in a beat, get to another continent, befriend some of the local tribes, and wait for Storm to lose their trail, and then... planning was never Pink's forte; still, they would most likely be free from pursuit.

Instead of making convoluted plans, she trusted fate. Through her many long lives, even before going to the Red’s nonexistent kingdom, Pink learned how to befriend it, wander along common paths, look into secret nooks, enjoy the taste of life and go home with a pleasant fullness in her stomach, memory and heart, knowing that fate will make a few adjustments for her being such a nice pony. 

More than a few times Pink met those who could destroy the world, and she usually did not take her friends along then; friends forced her to behave in a certain, expected way, and this was not always convenient. A long walk, a conversation under the Moons, a set of cupcakes made with care, and everything somehow turned for the better by itself, because Pink knew where to look to see this ‘better’ and never lost her heart. 

Gloomy prophecies came true but only in a letter and as if a stern hermit in the Great Desert decided to put a cruel but funny joke on one specific page. The schemes to summon demons were, without changing a stroke, turning out to be innocent plans for a skyrow game. Deep buried foalhood traumas were becoming, in fact, relatively easy to work through, as Pink was just there for them.

So this meeting would have been nothing new to her, in a broad sense — had the ‘new acquaintance’ been anypony but Storm, the seventh out of the six.

All normal prophecies and expectations, once fulfilled, fell silent and ceased to demand anything of note, alike to hunger. Once a prophecy came true, ponies could forget about it and clear out consequent wreckage. 

This was not the case with Storm. 

The prophecies concerning the seventh of the six were told in seven colored editions and, when fulfilled, in any of their outcomes, they launched other prophecies in an eternal convoluted web. ‘Black Storm’ was usually a mystical ally, ‘White Storm’ could be relied upon in all circumstances, ‘Green Storm’ meant a tough but friendly barrier between Home and Adventure. Pink knew the set of Storms throughout, as a set of cards held dear to her heart, with all possible meanings for each one. The six were meeting the seventh much more than once, thread after thread and life after life, and each next meeting was inevitable, and only rarely did Storm signify outright doom to the six’s effort.

What Pink saw now she did not want to call silver. Technically, to somepony else's eyes, it probably could appear so. In fact, there was nothing but a gray of hopeless despair in the approaching figure. Not a quiet, timid, song of silver which could mean temporary relief and defensive support, but an exhalation too shy to actually become the last one; a coast of the freezing ocean; an envelope for which there is nopony to open.

This color of Storm prophecies did not speak about, or Pink did not know these words.

She sighed and stepped forward; an instant meeting of internal voices determined what and how to say, “Hi, friends... I... I must have been wrong in running away. Excuse me... Is there something... can I help you? If there is something to help with.”

She knew that she was breaking the written and unwritten rules of the world, that she was acting rude, but she did not know how else to stir this gray fog; and only after that she noticed that Cursory Streak was sleeping tall, and there was practically no life in Solid Line, apart from subtle currents; only the tabby cat on her back was looking at Pink with intent green-eyed stare.

The material body limited Pink, as before going into the mirrors, but the Red, as always and never, held a hint of rule over what could be happening.

In fact, Pink had not come closer yet, and at this distance they could neither hear each other, nor distinguish any facial features on each other's silhouettes. But the world curved for these three beats, and ‘it could have been so’ became ‘maybe, just maybe, it was so’, and for this moment — this moment only, and in their lasting memory of what didn’t came to pass — they were close, almost touching nose to suit’s faceplate.

In a few beats, the unfollowed possibility left nothing but memories in its wake. They stood as before, too far away to hear each other, at a distance of a square nine of steps, as if nothing happened. Because nothing did happen. 

And yet they remembered Pink's question that was never asked, as if it was.

And, likewise, Storm's reply was never given, “You can. We followed you for far too long and even your friends are tired now, as I suppose you see. My base is contaminated by moonlight, and now only after three cycles I will be taken up by the secondary base. That is your doing, isn't it?”

Curving obdurate and harsh reality to what-once-had-been-possible through that sticky gloom wasted too much energy, more than she had thought, as the Red, of course, was not in the sky; it never was allowed to be in the sky, so no power could come from it to one small pink pony; except unallowed and unhappened would be its strength, and in this paradox there was a leyline for Pink to make her own little inconsequential wonders, like this one.

With injected memory set and known, Storm and Pink walked slowly towards each other, Storm leaving a sleeper and non-sleeper behind, and stopped short of nine steps. This time nopony went for an attack nor a threat, and in the gray noise of the wind in the artificial crevasse of the hill there were — Pink heard it for sure — no hopes, no curses, no thoughts. 

And as any question, even an unasked one, invites an answer, Pink gave it, and tried to make it as if she had not seen the no color that enveloped the meeting place. Open and without fear she said, “Most likely not, and if mine, then this coil of me does not know anything about it.”

Storm nodded, “Nopony will let the Red's object into the vault. So, we shall speak here, on the threshold.”

"Nopony will," Pink agreed. She put her hoof to the door, and the blue-and-white slab buckled and tore open, with little to no sound split by a wide crack; thick steel gleamed with jagged edges. On the other side it was dark, motionless and full of no life; it smelled of plastic, dry chocolate chip cookies and imaginary monsters. Those who stayed here to become the last had no time to clean up their restless dreams on their way out.

“I am nopony without Gentle Touch and Sharp Cut, so I will let us in. Let me just clean it up and we'll talk,” Pink said, “But first, what — and why — did you do with your destiny, my friend of old?”

She waited for an answer. Storm turned her head to the now broken vault door and made a quiet raspy squeak, followed by “But… but… how?! It is rustless steel, you’d need a gun or elems to even have a chance to buck it! It is, by design, made to stand against the Red, protected by unaging! How?”

“We will talk about that too,” Pink smiled. She walked past Storm, then stood on her hindlegs and pushed the suit into the dark vault. A few beats later she stuck her head out of the crack and looked around. Then she pushed in Solid Line and Cursory Streak too, the former in deep trance, the latter in a slumber completely out of her phase, and soon nopony was left behind and uninvited for a party.

The cat went in much later and on her own.