A massive, dormant bristlecone tree acted as a lighthouse of sorts for the dwarfed cottage at its feet. Thanks to Gaul’s directions and description, Tempest had no doubt that she had found her destination: the home of the eccentric doctor George.
Although the house looked young situated next to the ancient tree, it nonetheless embodied an older style of architecture than any of the other homes Tempest had seen thus far, Gelfand’s included. It bore the weight of countless seasons’ worth of accumulated wear to its stone foundations; however, these were merely cosmetic blemishes, and in every other aspect of its upkeep—the tiled roof, the paneled siding, the wrap-around porch—it was clear the home had a caring owner.
As she approached, she spotted what appeared to be a sentient pile of coats in the front yard. On closer inspection: A griffon tending to a bed of chill-lilies, his back facing toward her.
“Hello. Is this the doctor’s house?” she called out politely, from a distance.
Tempest’s hail was either not heard, or ignored; the griffon continued tending to the flowerbed.
Approaching further, to almost within hoof’s reach, she tried again: “Hello, is that you, George?”
This time the figure took notice, turned around, and indeed Tempest recognized the face of the doctor. “Ah, if it isn’t our resident veteran! Good afternoon, commander,” he hailed, with a salute of the wing. “What brings you here?”
“I’m out doing groceries for Gelfand.” Tempest nodded to the bags of produce slung over her shoulder. “But don’t play coy: Gaul told me you were expecting this much. That I would come to town and ask around for you.”
“Ah yes, I can say I had a hunch...”
Tempest smirked. “You knew it was only a matter of time before a pony like me would wind up talking to the only grain farmer in town. And I bet you knew I would have a question or two for you.”
“Sharp as a tack, commander.” George ambled up to cottage’s front door and produced a key ring from within one of his several overcoats. He fumbled in search of the right key. “Now what’s on your mind, huh?”
“Well, it’s just something you said when you were checking up on me. I can’t quite figure out what you meant by it… and I can’t get it out of my head, either.”
“The simplest of meanings can escape the greatest of minds, I always say. Yeah?” Finally, he found the means to open the front door, and stepped inside. “Come on in, but don’t let the draft in.”
Tempest followed George’s lead, and upon crossing the threshold into George’s home, turned around to shut the door behind her. “I’m sure you didn’t mean it so harshly as it came across, but, well, you accused me of ‘lying to myself,’ and frankly I just don’t—”
Tempest dropped her groceries onto the floor with a startle: Returning to face the doctor, she now found a scalpel pressed against her throat, and a claw clenching her shoulder painfully. “Easy, commander, easy. Now no shouting, no sudden movements. You understand?”
The very first instincts of hers to process the situation were those instilled in her by a lifetime of combat training. The sequence assembled at lightning speed in her mind: Drop her head back from the blade’s reach, wrap around and trap the claw that held her, swivel in place and deliver a back kick to the abdomen, tackle to the ground, pin the weapon—but then she came to wits with the situation: “This is revenge. Isn’t it?”
The doctor’s solemn expression spoke for itself.
“For all the lives I’ve ruined? Those of the soldiers you treated, back when I—”
“It ain’t revenge for distracting me from my lilies!” he spat. “Now tell me, how does it feel? After years of enabling atrocities and war crimes across the kingdoms, to have it all end in some grizzled, vindictive old bird’s cottage?”
“I would say...” Tempest swallowed uncomfortably against the pressure of the blade. “...that it feels only fair. I’m in no position to beg for my life.”
“Ah, ‘reap what you sow’ type? ‘Eye for an eye’? You sure you won’t struggle or plead just a little bit?”
“I will not.”
A crooked smile from the doctor. “Say, you almost look like you’re enjoying this, commander.”
Tempest blinked; a moistness on her eyelashes. Relaxed her shoulders; an inexplicable tranquility within her. “I suppose I am… Do what you have to do.”
The doctor chuckled. Whistling comically, he pressed the scalpel deep, and dragged it across her throat, the full length of her jaw. Dropped the blade at her hooves. Walked away and settled down in a nearby armchair, shedding his winter clothing. As if in a dream, Tempest raised her hooves to feel her neck… nothing. There was nothing there but a shallow indent in her fur where the blade had passed. She bent down and inspected the scalpel as it lay on the floor; a piece of masking tape had been applied along the length of its cutting edge, defusing it entirely as a weapon.
“Does that answer your questions?” George called out, tugging with his beak at a stuck zipper.
Tempest was dizzy with adrenaline. “I-I’m afraid it’s only given me more of them, George. What was that?”
“I’ll get around to answering that, but first, some questions of my own: You said you came here on a quest of reformation. How does trekking all the way out to our insignificant, inhospitable little town help you with that?”
She shied away from the doctor. “Because I felt I needed some time away from warm and familiar things, maybe. My self-interest, my ambitions in life, all they’ve ever done is corrupt me.”
“Okay. So how does that bring us to your toil and servitude at Gelfand’s household?”
“I suppose I just wanted to be responsible for some amount of pure good in the world, however small, to the benefit of one among thousands I have wronged.”
“You sure it wasn’t for the pure pain and penance of it? This country, this season, this harsh occupation?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “No matter the cost to myself.”
“Hm. So about that ‘pure good,’ how does that new scar you gave yourself play into it?”
Reactively, Tempest brought her hoof up to the claw mark on her cheek, which by now had scabbed over. “I didn’t give this to myself, I got it when—”
“When you blurted out something frighteningly upsetting to Gwendolyn, I imagine.” Finally free from his outdoor wardrobe, George stood up and positioned himself closer to the increasingly anxious unicorn, and began to pace. “What’s the matter, was Gelfand not as harsh a master as you were hoping?”
“I was only telling Gwendolyn about my past, George. The facts of my life. At that moment, my only intention was to inform.”
“I’ll just have to take your word for it, seeing how I wasn’t there.” He held a claw to his chin in feigned contemplation. “But where does that leave us regarding not-so-slowly starving yourself to death? Y’know, the thing that originally got us acquainted on a doctor-patient relationship?”
“T-thinking ahead might not be my strong suit,” she said, stumbling over her words as something vague, something unsettling inside her threatened to boil over, “but I can tell you that the specifics of my dietary needs weren’t at the top of my priorities when I—”
“Oh but they must have been at some point, weren’t they? Like before you made the perilous hike all the way from, shoot, Canterlot at the closest? For a pony to prepare their rations well enough to survive such a treacherous journey and then plain ol’ forget a basic staple of their diet is, well, very confusing to me!”
Tempest opened her lips, poised to reply, before realizing she hadn’t yet thought of anything to say.
“But that’s not so important, not compared to the main question: How would it help you to reform, how would it do any good in the world, how would there be any sense at all in dropping yourself on the knife of some grizzled, vindictive old bird, when I know perfectly well you had—and still have—the means of fighting for a better ending?”
He had made his point by now; Tempest could recognize his point of view, and all the evidence in favor of it. So desperately, all she wanted to do right now was to tell him that he was right, and that he had given her a lot to think about, and then to graciously pick her groceries back up and bid farewell. To learn from the experience what she needed to, and then to rationally move on.
Instead, all she could muster in response, was to sob. To sob for however long she did. To somehow go limp in George’s open arms. To somehow be laid down with a blanket and pillow on his living room couch. To ultimately cry herself to sleep, beseeching dreams and nightmares—come what may—simply to appear and spirit her away.