And with her time having run out, the very concept went away.
There was nothing in her which was aware of seconds passing. She was barely capable of comprehending distance, at least as anything more than something which had to be crossed. Her existence was empty streets and freezing air rushing through her fur as the unwinnable race created its own headwind. She couldn't truly see buildings as anything more than the most basic markers: I have come this far, and there is still so far to go.
There was pain, because the backlash had strained her muscles, the rough landing adding injured hooves, and it didn't matter because she had to gallop. It was the only thing left. The act of thinking was pointless, and when it came to speech... she'd heard her own words.
(Everypony had heard them.)
(Everypony.)
And that was enough.
At times, she almost felt a vague, sub-primal awareness of other sounds. Wings might have passed overhead a few times: surprisingly powerful ones. It gave her nothing more than incentive for the sharpest turns.
She galloped as something which existed without true thought, wishing never to think again because thought itself was nothing more than pain. And then she recognized that the ability to understand that concept meant she'd already lost, that you had to be capable of thinking in order to desire its opposite, for the true silence of a mind, for what she deserved --
-- and then she was aware of her lungs burning from the chill, something she hadn't realized was even possible because she'd never galloped when the temperature was this low. She hated the cold. She didn't understand why it needed to exist. The mare had come from a place where date palms flourished. Home was so much warmer than this --
-- she didn't have a home.
She didn't have a future.
The sum total of her possessions added up to a horn which couldn't summon enough power to save her, a body which was on the verge of giving out, sapience which refused to discard itself, and an unremovable titanium circlet which was constantly telling select parts of the world about exactly which portion of it she occupied.
She slowed as the pain built, and doing so seemed to allow the concept of time a chance to establish a renewed tooth grip. Heartbeats registered. Not just the pain in her lungs, but breath. The most basic ways life had of measuring existence. All which would remain to her in the scant days before her execution.
Her hooves were on a stone upslope. One of the bridges, because Ponyville had more than a few rivers and streams in the area. There was one which cut around the back line of the Acres, just outside the farm's border: that one had been crossed on the way to the cider line. Before autumn had fully taken over, she'd heard children happily discussing their last seasonal chance at the best swimming holes. And to get in and out of the town, for nearly every route... at some point, you would probably have to cross a bridge.
The stone was chill under her hooves: something she felt most acutely through the left hind one. Cold as a secondary source of pain, radiating up and through. A split, then. Something she was steadily aggravating through movement. She needed to find sealant...
...it didn't matter.
Nothing did.
The injury was ultimately pointless. The bridge was simply a place to be. Somewhere she could be found, because the police chief could always find her.
Slowly, she approached the apex. Allowed her trot to lose all momentum, coming to a stop at the scant summit. A section of leveled false terrain. This part of the stone was about four body lengths across, and the bordering walls of carefully-cemented rocks rose to a height of what, for a normal pony, would have been just above the sternum.
She wasn't normal. Nothing about her had ever been so.
She turned to face one wall, painfully reared up. It put too much of her weight on the injured hind hoof, and... that didn't matter either.
Fleur partially draped her forelegs over the wall's rough top. It was wide enough to support pasterns and cannons: her hooves were left dangling over the forward edge. A hard posture to hold for long, but... that pain wouldn't matter either. She always hurt.
And then she stared out at the stream from the summit of the bridge, because she couldn't run. It was pointless.
I said...
...that didn't matter either. Not as anything more than another source of pain. Something else which would never heal, but... it didn't have to. All she needed to make every last agony finally go away was patience.
Wait to be found. (She could have dropped, turned, trotted for the police station, but... Miranda should have to do some of the work.)
Wait for the trial.
Wait to die.
I said I wasn't...
...when?
...when did I...
she hates me
Maybe it would be a very quick trial. It wasn't as if she was going to stall matters through entering a Not Guilty plea, and as for hiring an attorney... well, if nothing else, Fleur could let Ponyville retain the services of its slightly pointless dress shop...
...her sister...
That was why Rarity had understood. Even with ponies, having a sibling involved made certain ponies... protective. And a mare who'd tried to target Blueblood with blunted needles -- that mare would comprehend Fleur's actions.
But with --
-- no visitors in prison.
No witnesses from outside the country.
There were usually witnesses to an execution. Typically, the best perches would be given over to the victim's surviving family...
...I'm going to see them...
She stared at the stream.
Almost winter. There were a few small pieces of ice bobbing up and down in the water, and they tended to get smaller as she watched because the rest of the liquid wasn't quite cold enough yet. She was watching at the flow as it came towards her, and...
...ice. Small pieces of ice, and as she watched, the surface became littered with scattered fragments of long-dead wood.
She didn't feel like that counted towards the last requirement for making a new plan. You stood among the debris of your life and tried to think of a way to go forward. But she had no future to plan for and when it came to what was floating on the water... none of it was the right color.
That was how far she'd plummeted. Even the debris was gone.
Everything was gone.
Every secret. Every plan. Every dream.
Even the one she hadn't let herself see. Something denied.
I'm not g --
The last of it.
The last of her.
What could she have done differently? Was there anything which could have been changed if the supposed time travel spell actually worked as any such casting obviously should? Thirty seconds given back to her, a mere half-minute in which she could do something else, anything else and --
-- but she would have gone back further than this. To before the door had collapsed. She would have arranged for herself to have been in another part of the ranch, somewhere that she had a ready exit on her own level. The monsters would have rampaged through empty outer halls. There still would have been a need to set off the firewall, and the losses would have been significant, but...
...I did this after I killed her.
The same thing. Not even knowing the spell existed. For weeks.
It's pointless.
But still, she looked back. It was easier than thinking about the words. About everything which had led into them, everything she could now see with the self-imposed blinders ripped away. The things she'd refused to acknowledge, because she'd been so majestically stupid.
What could she have done differently? Not gotten caught, for starters. She could have left Fancypants alone: pursuing him felt as if it had been the most recent true launch for this leg of the lost race...
...I wouldn't have been able to resist.
An asexual who was actively trying to cover it up. Who didn't understand himself, and was afraid of what would happen if other ponies found out. With money and connections which -- with fading bitterness -- well, turns out they went all the way to the top. But without knowing that -- there was no way I wouldn't have tried to extort him. To use the secret...
Because that was what secrets were supposed to be for. You learned them, and then you turned those hidden facts against the one who would do anything to keep them hidden. But Fancypants had a friend. And when it came to secrets...
So this is what it's like. Waiting for somepony to turn everything they learned against you.
I deserve it.
And even that was better than thinking about her last words.
What could she have done differently? Tell Discord that she was there to forge what the palace wanted to see as new chains? No. Announcing that she was present to become his friend as Fleur The Thirtieth wouldn't have been much of an improvement. She could have told him so many things... but what ever could have worked?
It could have been argued that there were no good words. Something likely would have happened no matter what she'd chosen to tell him. The right response might not have existed at all.
But he was going to drop by. (He hadn't, not all that often. Not where he allowed himself to be visible.)
He would see things. (He had.)
He would wonder. (She had no doubt about that having taken place.)
And if he saw enough things, any total lie would fall apart. So she had given him a partial truth: she was there to teach Fluttershy about dating.
In the end, so many things had come from that...
...she was just staring at the stream. Waiting. Even with her time having run out, there had to be something better she could do with the last false seconds than just waiting.
She was dirty. She had to be. All the time in the cell with detritus being shaken loose from the ceiling, and then the gallops and sweat and fear. She hadn't had access to her soap in about a day: she was probably on the verge of smelling sweaty. Of... smelling like a pony...
...her head arced forward a little, and the horn ignited. A bubble of energy descended towards the water. And she was trying to sort out the fragments and splinters, but it was hard going. All she wanted was enough clean water to wash herself with, but -- liquids interacted with a field in strange ways. You couldn't really shape your energies into a clumsy mug, because the water didn't pool in the center. It flowed around the borders of the rough construct, got tangled up.
She was a unicorn. (She didn't understand why. She had a griffon's heart, and nothing else matched.) At the very least, she had to be capable of this...
But the liquid was twisting its way around the bubble: a tiny planet covered by false waterways. Some of the splinters were poking halfway out of the edges.
She could just close her eyes. Bring it up, let the splash hit her, take care of the detritus later --
-- it was only the edges of the light's white flash which reached her. Something which had bloomed from behind, near the back wall of the bridge. And she heard a hoof take the first uneven step across stone, the claws dragged a little...
The Protoceran kept staring at the river. Continued to focus on bringing enough of the water up. There was nowhere to run, nothing she could do -- but she wasn't going to let the fear become visible and in any case, it was better than looking at him.
"She sent me ahead." There was open petulance in the draconequus' voice. There often was. "...well, she technically asked me to go first. But when you think about it, that just means she was sending me ahead. Sending." The pout was also audible. "I'm not completely certain how that works. Or -- how she keeps doing it."
Another step, and then he stopped.
"What are you doing?" Discord asked. "With the water. If you were thinking of taking a swim, it's far better for you to enter the stream. Trying to bring it up to you is simply --"
Another voice, female and a little high-pitched.
"She's trying to wash up," the book worriedly decided. "And the water's too cold for that. As wet as her coat already is from sweat and froth, when it's this chill... she could get sick. Could you... would you please..."
His shrug came with its own sound effect. It was something like a mainspring coming loose. "Since you asked."
She heard talons snap against each other, and the next bloom of light came from her own form --
-- the natural reaction would have been to pull back. To run again. But there was nowhere to go, nothing she could do to resist. It left her motionless in that half-braced position, looking at stream and field bubble and the dirt worked into the bandages on her forelegs.
And then the bandages were clean.
She was still hurt. None of the injuries had been touched. But her fur was dry, and every bit of filth which had entered her fur seemed to have simply evaporated. Even the dressings were renewed --
-- no. It was more than that. Most ponies wouldn't have picked up on it, but -- there were very few mares who carried the subtle weight in just about every moment of their lives. The shielding layers. He'd removed anything small and fine, and that meant the last of her cosmetics were gone. She was out in the open, within near-winter air, fully exposed --
don't look at me
-- in an empty town. Where he and the book were the only ones that could see, with her secrets already out. The vulnerability which came from fully bearing her most natural appearance was, at most, redundant.
"And she could use something to warm her up," the book carefully added. "Especially after that run. Maybe... a hot drink?"
Another snapping sound, and she finally turned because the least of what she was expecting him to conjure started with lava --
-- the draconequus was gone. So was the book. There was nothing behind her except an empty bridge and chill stone.
She kept looking at the vacated spot for about a minute, because she had very little else to do. It meant she saw the exact moment when the pair returned.
"Here," the draconequus roughly said, and the first of the two mugs floated towards her.
The one which had stayed next to him was, in fact, filled with lava. Small diamonds were floating on the surface, as were some oddly-surviving marshmallows. The one designated for her had the scent and steam of a hot vegetable broth --
"Like I'm going to trust anything you create," Fleur stated.
He glared at her.
With open offense, "I paid for this."
Fleur blinked.
He what?
The "...really?" more or less slipped out.
"Over the last few moons," Discord proudly announced, "I have been gaining an education on multiple subjects. One of them was the supposed joys of earning a salary. And might I say that in my own newly-expert opinion, I was the most capable servant he ever had." A brief pause, during which the mug came forward a little more and deliberately bumped Fleur's snout. "'He' being --"
"-- I think," the book carefully interrupted, "she probably figured that part out."
There was something like a 'hmph' from the draconequus. It entered the air as a thing with fur and feathers both, took a moment to check on its limb count, and then scurried off to safety before its creator could notice.
"At any rate," he continued, "I only conjured my own. Nopony serves good lava in Canterlot." He sniffed. "And as a customer, I am rather curious as to why nopony perceives the market inherent in my needs. But I paid for yours, because I am learning." With the air of a student reciting a hard-won fact, "I used the earnings from my salary, because money is exchanged for goods and services."
He squinted a little at Fleur. So did the book. (It was a little suggestion in a crinkle of the lettering.)
"I suppose you represent both," Discord decided.
Fleur glared at him. The book winced.
"Drink it," the volume said. "It's safe. I promise."
The "...really," was a little more dubious the second time around.
"I also made sure he tipped." Covers awkwardly shifted. "But he didn't change himself first, so I think the main tip they wanted was just getting us to leave. You're cold. Please drink?"
He created you. Or brought you to life. You're something of his. There's no reason to trust you.
But the voice was female, somewhat high-pitched, a little apologetic, strangely sincere, and -- young.
Discord set the mug down on top of the sidewall. Fleur's field took custody, and he examined the stone. Moved about a body length to the right, and then the warped form leaned forward somewhat, offered elbows to a stretch of air until a section of wall raised itself to support him.
The talons gripped the lava mug's handle, while the book remained balanced on the upturned paw. Fleur put a forehoof through the loop of her own container. They each took a sip.
"This is from Caruzoup," Fleur stated. "In the Heart. I recognize the blend --"
"They were getting ready for the lunch crowd," the book softly explained.
"And I," the draconequus grandiosely stated, "never need a reservation."
Both drank again.
Red and pale violet eyes watched the stream. It was easier than looking at each other.
The book seemed to scoot very slightly backwards, nudging the base of the paw.
"Talk," the volume inexpertly whispered. "She asked you to talk..."
The red eyes briefly closed.
"She..." Stopped. Took another sip of lava, worked his jaw until the diamond came free from a gap between his teeth, and then Discord's head dipped. All the way down to the top of his wall section, with his neck stretching out to match.
"...she finally wanted something," the draconequus finished. "Friends are supposed to give each other things. Aren't they?"
Fleur, who'd mostly been given things by family, ponies seeking her favor, and a number who were hoping doing so meant the extortion would eventually stop, mostly nodded under the pressing weight of theory.
"And she's very difficult to deal with, when it comes to gifts," he continued. "...well, you've seen that now, I suppose. She always tries to send things back."
"With an apology note," Fleur softly groaned.
He nodded. "Or, in my case, requests that their creation be undone. I've tried to give her money, and -- she just starts on how creating funds which aren't backed by anything is just going to do bad things to the economy." Another sniff, followed by a sip: he had to pour the lava down towards his lowered mouth. "No one should ever be forced to study economics. And that is why I stopped trying to create money for her, because the punishment was simply too harsh." A soft sort. "Trifles. All she'll ever accept is trifles..."
"What kind?" Because morbid curiosity had its own power.
The talon gestured: a quick flicker of power kept the lava within the mug. "The most she would ever allow me to make were a few small snacks. Things which the two of us would consume." With some pride, "She did appreciate any fruits which were out of season. She..."
He stopped. Stared out at the stream, as several fragments of plank floated by.
"...loves grapes," he quietly finished. "Green ones, when they're on that border between sweet and sour. The rabbit gets most of the cherries."
And all Fleur could do was nod.
The planks floated past them. Under the bridge, out of sight.
"She finally wanted something," Discord eventually resumed. "I wanted to be the one who provided it." And there was petulance in the next words -- but it felt as if there was a little less of it. "Not you..."
The book made a sound like someone taking a breath. Fleur didn't know how that was possible. Nothing about the volume had shifted in and out, as if breathing was actually taking place. Perhaps the sound was all there was.
Sound. Words. A mind...
"I thought he was your rival," the book sadly said. "I got stuck on that for chapters. Because he was working against you. But it was for the same goal. And that's what rivals do." The gold lines on the cover awkwardly twisted against themselves. "But it wasn't quite right. I think he's more like a parent. Somepony who feels that almost nopony in the world could ever be good enough for his filly. So he has to sort out anypony who tries to win her. Get rid of the bad ones, probably by scaring them off because that's comedy. And make sure whoever's left has his approval." The edges of the spine seemed to twitch. "Which obviously never happens until you're just about at the end. The story has to wrap up pretty quickly afterwards. You usually get it just before the aftermath and coda." Hopefully, "Do you know what a coda is?"
The draconequus raised his head a little. Wearily regarded the book balanced so carefully upon his paw. "Not helping, Harem."
"It wasn't meant to help you," Harem quietly replied. "She sent us ahead. Fleur, do you understand? He just wanted to... make sure it was right. Because he could finally give her something. And he wanted it to be from him, and..." A little more softly, as the print seemed to focus on the entity holding her. "You knew it meant less time with her, didn't you? And that hurt. But as long as you could be the one who decided how that time was spent -- who it was spent with -- then it was a little easier..."
He could have snapped the talons again. Silenced the words. Gotten rid of Harem, turned Fleur into no more than mist, made every survivor believe that his next presented false choice was the best one. A single moment of power would have, from his perspective, fixed everything.
But all he did was sigh. And if it was a faked sigh, then it was one which had seen some serious education go into the performance. It was filled with things which wanted to pass themselves off as regret, weariness, and even the subtle frustration which came with recognition of personal failings. It was sigh as art, and Fleur had no idea how he was pulling it off.
The stream flowed. Little pieces of broken gears rushed along the bottom.
"Protection," Discord eventually said. "Strength, so many kinds. The ability to provide. It should have been so simple..."
"It isn't," Fleur's exhaustion offered. "It never is. And you left out security --"
"-- neither of you," Harem broke in, "said 'love'. Because I think you're both afraid to say it. But he loves her, in his way."
He was silent. Little bits of silica glinted and gleamed around the edges of his resting limbs.
"And with you..." the book continued.
Fleur could feel the book looking at her.
"Fleur?" Harem timidly asked. "When did you fall in love with her?"
no --
But every lie had burned down. Including the ones she'd told herself.
Her eyes were watching the river. The broken remnants of her soul forced themselves to search within.
"I didn't."
She had the vague impression that Harem was now outright staring at her, and the book had company.
"You didn't." There should have been celebration in Discord's voice, any degree of joy. But the tones were so flat as to briefly level the ripples of the stream.
"You don't fall in love," Fleur softly stated. "You slide..."
She couldn't say when it happened. A mare who's forced herself to become so very good at tracking time never acknowledged the moment when the transition took place. Nothing about her would have let her perceive that instant, because...
...they heard the words, book and draconequus. So did the Bearers, along with the beautiful monster. The hated police chief got an earful, and the mare is too weary to remember all of the details on why she's supposed to hate the dark unicorn. Most of that is simply habit. The mare committed the worst crime anyone ever could, she's spent so much of her life running from it, some of the attempts to rest were made in gang hideouts... after a while, fear of those who enforce the law was just part of the background noise. The resentment quickly followed.
They all heard the words. She's convinced that, given the decibels achieved at the end, most of the town heard. Evacuation just gave the syllables empty streets for building up speed.
Everyone heard that sentence. Including its subject.
She... doesn't want to think about...
...she didn't fall in love.
Imagine a slope leading away from level, safe ground. It's an extremely subtle one. The angle just barely exists and you can move freely along the slant without worrying about a fall. But it only goes down. And it's so subtle that you might never notice you were moving down at all. Not when you refuse to ever look up, because doing so means acknowledging what's been happening...
Guardian and charge. Well, you can't really stay neutral as a guardian, can you? Not when you're supposed to be looking out for the welfare of the weaker. Duty without emotion is a prison sentence, and -- she'd already had that: the Grimcess (and the chaos entity's lips quirk when she uses the word) had ensured it. But the mare had never been a guardian before, there was but a single example in her life to truly draw upon, and...
...she was supposed to make her charge happy.
And there are those who say the Bearers' missions are impossible? Clearly every last one could be accomplished, because the world is still there and there's six Bearers in it. (Also a little dragon. She wishes she'd had more of a chance to speak with him.) The mare is the one who had the true impossibility nosed over. Take her charge, this Fluttershy and the last syllable is frankly a deliberate understatement -- and make her happy.
So she had to care about her charge's emotional well-being.
...she had to start caring...
...and she's spending every day at the cottage. Around animals again, for the first time in years. On the outskirts of a veterinary service. The mare isn't going to let herself think about that any more than necessary, because -- you get one manifest, and her personal version of the miracle was forever tainted. But she's moving on the borders of a dead dream. And her charge is making it work. Her charge's mark is for communication, not healing, and she's still making it work. Even if so much of the town refuses to see that --
-- the mare has to tell the draconequus about Sweetbark then, because he left before it happened and his friend had her own reasons for not letting him know about what the relationship between town vet and cottage had been. Both she and the book see the rage starting to build, it takes a minute to talk him down and five more before he allows them to claim the victory of his leaving the departed in peace --
-- her charge is doing it. But communication... it's such a powerful gift, and the mare has -- secrets. Nothing more than the ability to ferret out desire, and her charge's secret is that every desire died long ago. It gives the mare no other insight into the pony she's supposed to be guiding. The mare has to watch. Learn.
...the mare is at the cottage every day...
Her charge is naive. Foolish. Doesn't understand much of anything about how certain aspects of the world truly work.
Her charge is so strong.
Watch. Every day, death is on the doorstep. The final loss lurks outside the bedroom, waiting for her charge to slip. For a single moment of bad luck, for the ones who can't be helped. Everything Sweetbark runs from, because there's a price for facing death and her charge has the strength to pay it. Endless responsibilities, including the greatest and last, and her charge just keeps getting out of that horrible bed every morning, whenever there's a desperate knock in the middle of the night, even when the only thing she can do is the final thing because she's just that strong.
And the mare sees that strength, when so few others recognize it at all. She admires it.
But her charge isn't happy.
There's an old dream. It tosses about while the mare sleeps. It was the dying wish of a dead filly, who lost both manifest and destiny to the desperate need for survival. It wants to be part of this. To bask in her charge's strength, while remaining on the outskirts of the life which the mare was forever denied.
The dream tosses under Sun, and the mare offers to help...
So now she's in the same room with that power, for all of those hours. Every day.
And she sees the strength. She sees the pain. She doesn't believe there's any real way to truly make it go away forever. That's a filly's wish, and the filly is dead. But memories are restless, and... in another lifetime, under another name... the mare could do something about pain. It's just that no one is worthy of the mare's trick.
Either use. Because for the facet which attacks, she's been on the hunt for a lifetime, and -- it's just about subconscious now. The fear may be permanent, but the search is something automatic. She checks. She moves on.
But for the facet which pretends to bring relief, if only for a little while... Her charge deserves that illusion, and so much more.
The mare admires her charge's strength. The ghost of a dead filly warms itself by the fire of another's dream. And the mare is supposed to make her charge happy, her charge deserves to be happy and the world doesn't seem to care, nopony is doing anything about the cottage's finances or Sweetbark or to find a way of making the settled zone acknowledge that her charge deserves to be happy...
...but her charge just keeps going. Every day. Without recognition, acknowledgement or, too often, joy. When nopony else would be that strong.
And... the thing about the slope...
...it's a patch of falsely-level ground at the top of an emotional mountain. The mare elevated herself. She can look down on her own pain. When it comes to feeling anything positive towards others, she's simply above it. Because the chain of domination is, in the ideal form, about caring for those who are weaker. Caring about them, and that's how the connection of responsibility is forged.
The mare thought that if she never cared again, then she wasn't responsible. Domination could be the whole of it. She probably has to explain --
-- oh. Good. Book and draconequus were in Protocera. That... saves some time.
Guardian and charge. The mare, for the first time in her life, is the guardian. She has to care, at least a little. It's wrong to set someone up with a bad match. The Protoceran orphan placement system cares. They want every lost child to have a chance at a true family. The goal here is family --
-- oh. Her charge -- well, if there's a relationship, then foals would be sort of inevitable, so... yes, that's just another way to describe the long-term goal.
(She's almost certain he bought that. The book, however, seems a little dubious.)
-- she resents her sentence. But this isn't her charge's fault. Hate the Grimcess, but do the job.
Be there every day.
That's how you see the strength. The devotion. How special her charge is. How much her charge deserves to be happy...
...and the mare slips.
It's so easy to start going down the slope. A subtle slide. You might never notice anything happening, not when it's so gradual and you've told yourself to never look up, because you can't let yourself see what's taking place. You...
...the mare loved once.
She lost everyone she ever loved.
Every time she loves, someone dies --
-- the book asks the draconequus to give the mare a minute. The draconequus points out that he can't make time, and then the book has to explain something else.
-- the mare is slipping down the slope. The ghost of the filly stirs every night. And there's a first date, but that was designed for rejection because Caramel is --
-- somepony who could be better...
...talons and claws, when the buck did she pick up a second charge --
-- it doesn't matter.
-- it's a date designated to fail. Caramel isn't good enough.
The gifts start to arrive from Canterlot. Some of the presents are quite suitable. The senders aren't good enough. She can find a flaw in every last one of them, and if that occasionally takes a little more looking than might have been suggested before a prospective first meeting, then she's just doing due diligence on her charge's behalf. Scrape any diamond long enough and no facet will look perfect. Or maybe you'll uncover the flaw which shatters the whole thing, so the mare might as well keep inspecting, and here's the little hammer to drive a tiny chisel as a wedge between her charge and those who just aren't good enough...
There's a party on the schedule. She can show off her charge in front of Canterlot's intellectual elite. Of course, they won't be good enough either. How many of them could deal with daily life on the grounds? Sure, the writers might say they're content to let her charge go about normal business while they hide themselves away and compose, but the chipmunks are always going to get in eventually. A party is a night out, a taste of what the mare used to have, showing her charge how much more life could offer and it's also the opportunity to let a new segment of the capital know that they may dream (and the mare will make sure they dream), but the mare is still the only one who goes to the cottage every day.
The mare is...
...she was settling in, wasn't she? There was a routine. Nothing wears away time faster than the grinding produced by the spinning wheel of repetition --
-- every day.
She goes to the cottage.
There was singing once. The mare doesn't understand why.
She stays close to strength, when there's so much to admire, and she doesn't understand why the entire world doesn't want to be near her charge every day. But that's fine. Most of the world doesn't deserve it.
Not good enough.
...the mare has to order feedbags and make sure the coops get mucked out, that journal article should probably get another look because it's easier to wrap a cat by field, and her charge is tired and sore and the mare's horn ignites because there's somepony who's worth that and it all happens every day until the job is complete.
And what happens when it is?
The mare might get her escort's license back. But even if that happened, the palace knows about her talent now. A fresh round of extortion is effectively impossible. The remaining time in an escort's working lifespan -- even with normal tips (and will she even be hired now, with the blackmail secret out?), it's not enough to arrange security. If she went to another nation -- escort services aren't exactly legal everywhere and so Prance is out, she can't go home, there's nowhere else with a strong enough pony population and even if she found a rich and dedicated minority, the Grimcess would surely send warnings ahead.
The mare doesn't know how to do anything else. Nothing which would bring security. And her talent is... something she has to carry for a lifetime. This was the only means she could think of to make it actually produce income. With that gone...
What is the mare supposed to do with her life, when the sentence ends? Released from the prison of Ponyville into -- what? Does she have any future after happiness and foals are gifted to her charge? A gentle pressing of white and yellow hooves, a soft goodbye, and then...
...the mare doesn't have an answer.
Routines. Sometimes, the jailed are fearful to venture back into the world. A few reach open air and immediately commit a crime: not from malice, but in the name of going back. There's a routine in prison and if it goes on long enough, it can become oddly comfortable.
Of course, part of that depends on who you've been locked in with.
The mare has been confined with what sometimes feels like the strongest pony in the world. She can bask in the warmth of that strength. Of that caring...
...and every day, the mare slips a little further down the slope.
Don't look up. Her charge is right there. Her charge is so special. (Why don't others see that? Schedule another party after this one. Make them appreciate.) Instead, look into that one visible eye, whichever that is at the moment, and wonder why it can hardly ever be both.
If the mare looks up, she has to realize how far she's slipped --
-- worse: voluntarily descended.
The mare devotes herself to the happiness of her charge. Putting that ahead of everything else. It's the focus of the mare's life.
And when everything about you, everything, is devoted to making somepony you care about happy...
She looked at him, across and up, and she was waiting for his next words. She even thought she knew what they were going to be. 'I don't understand': that had certainly set off the last round.
She'd said all of that, because confession was --
-- stupid. It was stupid. All confessing did was give others more to use against you. She'd told Miranda all of her crimes just in the name of getting to stay awake for a while longer, and the price of that was going to be...
...it was nothing she hadn't been prepared to give up at the moment she'd recognized a pedophile's puzzle. It could be said that the whole of Fleur's life after the murder had done little more than postpone the payment.
She'd told him -- no, them: Harem, so clearly young and a strange sort of innocent, had to be acknowledged -- just about everything. It was strangely easy to talk when you were sure no one would truly understand what you were saying...
But Harem spoke first.
"It's a hard plot to pull off," the book decided from the center of the paw. "You're asking for the audience to really pay attention. Not just reading the words, but looking back at the spaces between them where things weren't said. That's not easy." The covers shivered a little. "It's... not something which should be tried too often. But..." and the tones lifted "...imagine what it would be like. To have it work..."
"This isn't a story," Fleur quietly countered. There was no point to raising her voice with Harem.
"Your life is the story you tell yourself," Harem offered.
A soft snort, however, was allowed. "I don't have control. So it isn't a story. If it was, I would have... I wouldn't even be here, Harem. It would be the story of a vet in Protocera. Who was probably looking for somepony to settle down with." And because she'd learned a lot over the years, "Possibly a vet who had a modeling career on the side."
Her eyelids began to dip.
"Who... always gave her sister a break on the bills. Even when they fought about that, because her sister wanted the vet to succeed. To be happy. But every summons made the vet happy, even when it was an emergency. Because it was another reason to visit the ranch. To see her parents, and check on her sibling, and..."
She forced her eyes open. Stared out at the river, and still saw no fragments of deepest red going by. She hadn't really expected to. The mourning box's hiding place had been a good distance away from the water wheel.
"I think I said it wrong," Harem gently corrected herself. "Your character is the story. You write yourself into the person you think you should be. Fleur... how does the story end?"
The answer was immediate. "My identity is backtracked. The palace finds the original, then notifies Protocera. That gets the charges called in. I'm extradited: it'll be easy, since the Grimcess will cooperate and I don't have any protections from being an Equestrian citizen. It's a short trial, especially since I'm pleading guilty. The typical execution method is to --"
"-- how do you want it to end?"
She couldn't look at the book. The gentle, innocent, naive...
"That's the only way it can end," Fleur evenly stated.
"There's a lot of ways this could end," Harem countered. "I think you're just going for the easiest. The one where this is the last big scene, and the author can just cut to a grave." With a little sigh, "You probably don't even have anyone visiting it. Or anypony. Ever."
"Harem," emerged as a protest. "You're -- how old are you -- wait. He probably found you the same day, you've been around for a few moons. You don't understand how things work --"
"-- I understand characters," the book offered. "A little. And I think people are characters in some ways, because everyone writes themselves. Interprets. And they decide it's too hard to go for a happy ending, so they'll just let it end."
"You don't understand --"
Discord snorted.
"Still here," the chaos entity declared. "Not that anyone appears to remember that."
Both females stopped. The draconequus watched the river.
"We were sent ahead," he told Fleur. "No matter how she chose to describe it, that was what it was. We were sent. I could resent that, you know. I really could. But in the spirit of the thing..."
He stopped. His talons wrung against themselves. The paw, where Harem rested, was utterly still. A platform of soft pads and fur. Something which looked softer than before --
"She yelled at me," Discord muttered. Just a little more loudly, "She's... better at that than you might suspect. And she said -- that if I ever did something like this again..."
The red eyes slowly closed, and Fleur tried to tell herself that it was something faked. He presumably didn't need eyes to see, every tenth-bit of body language was a performance, the extra-hunched spine took the lead role and the little tremble in the mismatched shoulders was the gift provided by a talented new recruit...
"...then we couldn't be friends any more."
You are not in pain --
"No monsters," he said, not looking at anything. "No trying to scare you off by any means, or arranging for others to do so on my behalf. No -- suspicious coincidences, and she is prepared to be suspicious about everything. If I wanted to remain her friend, then I had to accept you. Not necessarily like, because that's asking for rather a lot, don't you think? But -- accept. Or she would never speak to me again."
He allowed himself the luxury of a breath. It went on for a while.
"Quite obviously a threat," he irritably told them. "She feels free to threaten me, can you believe that? -- well, of course you can: it happened. Not quite in front of witnesses, at least, as she did see fit to drag me off first. By the tail. With her teeth, because she has decided that friendship is threats. It was enough to make me ask myself as to why I put up with the very concept. Really now: what could friendship ever grant me which I could not simply conjure for myself?"
The uneven shoulders slumped. Every horrible feature collapsed.
"...her."
And all Fleur could do was stare.
"So we have a truce," he declared, as all of his body audibly snapped back into place. "For as long as we both shall live --"
"-- short-term, then," Fleur broke in. "Obviously not for you."
"Is that what you think?" His voice was oddly soft. "Really now? Or 'Truly?', as Our Lady Of The Perpetual Inner Darkness would no doubt put it. Is that the best you can wish for yourself?"
The Protoceran, in the unexpected presence of two sources for pure naïveté, fell silent.
"I said we were sent ahead." He adjusted his posture somewhat, which only served to increase the warp. "You might notice that we've had privacy. That was discussed, with multiple parties. And the condition will linger for a time after Harem and I depart. But it was being sent ahead, Fleur. Which implies somepony to be coming after. And as we are about to leave... what will you say to her?"
no
"She'll come in right after we're gone," Harem quickly said. "That was the arrangement. Fleur, you have to talk with her -- do you need more broth? A blanket? You're shaking --"
"-- I can't talk to her," Fleur desperately forced out. "There's -- there's nothing I can say. She won't understand, she'll hate me, anypony in this country who thinks they're sane, all they could ever do is hate me --"
"-- you have to tell her --"
All of the weariness came back at once. The exhaustion. It was too much for a single day, for a few waking hours.
Too much for a lifetime.
Her body went back, and her head dropped. Chin and lower jaw sank between her forelegs, pressed against cold stone.
She'd heard her final words at the end, just before some of the monsters had vanished. (There was still one on the bridge.) There were ways in which she was still hearing them. On multiple levels, she'd pronounced her own sentence.
If she said it enough times, even to the naive, there might be a chance for them to understand.
"I'm not good enough for her."
It was the movement which caught her attention, made her focus. He was flexing his talons -- no, shaking them. Compulsively, harder and harder, as if he was trying to make them detach from the palm, and there was something familiar about it --
-- the filly had been dead for years. But the mare remembered her. All of the pain, and -- only a little of the joy. But there had also been extended periods during which her parents were trying to figure out the ranch jobs that would be right for her. Some of that time had been spent in the butchery area. Learning how to cut meat. And the filly had never really gotten more than the basics. She could carve a steak, but not on a level which served as its own art. Just getting past the vomit reflex had taken so long...
But there had been more than that.
There was fresh meat in the ranch's butchery section. Some of it was fresh enough to still have had a heartbeat earlier that day. It dripped. And she wore protection, but she was learning, she slipped, fields did strange things to liquids and when they dripped...
The filly would shake the limb. Hard, fast, over and over, even when she knew it wouldn't do any good. It was a reflex. Instinct recognized the contact before thought did. And then you were trying to fling the liquid away before it soaked in.
Because there was some part of a filly's mind which felt every bloodstain would be forever.
"Well," he softly told her, "that would make two of us."
The talons stopped.
Touched.
Light flashed, and did so twice.
Discord and Harem vanished.
Fluttershy appeared.