//------------------------------// // Chapter 35 // Story: Celestia Goes West // by DungeonMiner //------------------------------// Caramel slowly forced his eyes open and stared at the ceiling of his apartment, fully aware that he could only do so for another few weeks. He’d prepared his resume and sent it out to a dozen or so places, but that wouldn’t fix the problem. The unicorn even managed to get an interview at a local convenience store, but without someone else helping him, he wouldn’t be able to afford the rent anyway. A part of him said that he could go to the Sentinel and actually sell the story he made Luna cry getting, but all he could hear was the alicorn’s sobbing every time he considered it. He sighed and rolled out of bed before wandering to his kitchen for a toaster pastry breakfast. It’d been three days since he asked Luna where Celestia had been, three days since everything fell apart. All of this for “she’s taking some time for herself.” What was he supposed to do with that? He was sure he could still sell that to the newspaper. It was factual information from Luna’s own mouth that Celestia wasn’t in the mansion. The Sentinel could probably sell thousands of papers with a confirmation that the older sister wasn’t in the estate, even if he had nothing else. Sure, he might not get the 10 thousand, but he’d still be paid well enough. Still couldn’t do it without hearing Luna’s sobs. The toaster popped up, revealing two warm, cheap pastries that Caramel swiped onto a plate he carried to the couch. He fell into the cushions and sighed as he stared up at the ceiling again, hoping that the time would pass quickly so he could just be thrown out and die with whatever dignity he had left. Someone knocked on his door. Caramel glanced down over at the front door of his apartment for a moment. Nothing happened for a long moment, and he turned back to the ceiling. Why bother answering? It might be someone asking for bills, and he just couldn’t afford that right now anyway. The frantic knocking sounded again. He glanced back at the door. Then again, it might be the Guard. Maybe Luna was going to arrest him. Making a princess cry had to be a crime punishable by several years in jail. He’d probably deserve at least that, if not more. The door knocked again. This time, Caramel sighed before he stood up, setting the plate down on his coffee table. He wandered over to his front door, where the pony on the other side of the door knocked again. “Comin’,” he muttered. The knocks came a fourth time. “I’m coming!” he called before he opened the door. Thistle stood on the other side. A part of Caramel wanted to close the door on him, but the look of him shocked him to stillness. Heavy, heavy bags sat under his bloodshot eyes. His mane hung disheveled, and the tie that he always wore hung loose and crooked. As soon as Thistle saw him, though, his eyes went wide and glinted with a manic light. “Caramel!” he said voice croaking. “Am I glad to see you!” Caramel blinked before he began to close the door. “Can’t say the same.” “No, wait!” Thistle said, shoving one of his hooves in the door. “Please, just give me a moment.” Caramel started to shove Thistle’s hoof out of the way. “Look, do you want your job back?” Thistle asked. Caramel stopped. “No, no, of course, you don’t. It’s a terrible job. Do you want my job?” Caramel gaped as he glanced up at his former employer. “What?” “It’s a nice job, not a whole lot to do. It has great benefits. You’ll love it.” “What are you talking about?” Thistle smiled widely, though maybe a bit too widely. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll make everything work out. I’ll get the paperwork signed. They might make you take a few months of training, but it’ll be fine, I promise. Nothing’s going to stop you from being the best boss ever.” “Thistle, what are you talking about?” Still smiling, Thistle leveled his eyes directly at Caramel’s. They glistened with tears. “I haven’t...I haven’t slept for the past two and a half weeks. I don’t know why, but I know it’s because I fired you. I didn’t care to start with, but it’s been…” he started laughing. The laughing got louder, more manic, and somehow more desperate. He stopped, head drooping. “I need to sleep,” he muttered. “No matter what price, I need the sleep.” Caramel blinked and stared at the stallion for a long moment. When did this happen? Where was the petty stallion that fired him by mail just to make a point? Why— Why did he have such a hard time sleeping? “Look, I need to sleep. Just take the job, please? If you do that, I might be able to sleep again.” Caramel wasn’t paying attention anymore. Instead, the pegasus’ mind reeled with possibilities. Who else could affect the sleep of a pony? There was only one pony that he could think of, but why would Luna do that? Why would she haunt…? His thoughts trailed off before the answer hit him like a passing freight car. Luna knew. Of course, she knew. Somehow that mare knew everything, but if she knew that the stallion was unemployed, then, of course, she’d know about the newspaper. Then why tell him anything? Why not just throw him out like he deserved the moment he opened his mouth to ask such a stupid question? Why say anything at all unless— Oh, sweet Celestia, she was trying to help. Another thought slammed into him. What if Luna not only knew but was still trying to help? That’s why she gave him just enough to work with. Oh, Celestia strike him down for being such an idiot! His stomach twisted at the realization that she even tried helping him as he betrayed her. Why did he have to be such a moron! He turned to Thistle, who stumbled on his hooves and said, “I’ll think about it. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?” “Sleep? I can’t get sleep,” Thistle said, turning before he lost his balance and stumbled into the hallway wall. It caught him, and he slid down to the ground, muttering the entire time. “Can’t sleep. Can’t sleep. Can’t sleeeeeeezzzzzzz.” He began to snore as he hit the ground, but Caramel didn’t care anymore. He had to make it back to the mansion. He had to. ---☼--- Marble ground his teeth together as he lay on the jungle floor. His body lay broken. Both wings were shattered, he couldn’t move all but one of his legs, and his ribs burned. The only part of him that burned worse was his heart, which was screaming at him to do something. “What can I do?” he thought. “I can’t even move right now.” They said they were going to kill Celestia. He couldn’t just let that happen. “I can’t even stand. How am I supposed to fight my way back in there?” You promised! Marble groaned before he began moving his one good leg. “This is stupid. I’m actually thinking about crawling my way back there. I’m actually considering heading back to the temple to be stomped on by the first Guard that finds me. All for a mare that lied to me.” Vanilla would want you to save her. She would, but a part of him knew that he wanted to save her as well. He couldn’t let her die like this, even if she had lied. He pulled himself by his one hoof before he felt his ribs light up in agony. He stopped, hissing before he shifted his barrel and tried again. He dragged himself forward across the ground, cursing himself and Celestia for this stupidity. Then he heard the growl. He rolled onto his back and stared up into the canopy where a jaguar glared at him. It pounced, and Marble rolled again, trying to save himself as several hundred pounds of feline muscle and claws slammed into the ground. The pegasus didn’t have the maneuverability he usually did. He didn’t have the strength, and he could barely move, much less fly. He rolled again, using his only good leg to reach for the only weapon he had. He pulled the tooth dagger and flailed it about wildly, trying to threaten the big cat, broken bones and all. It appeared amused. He swung and roared, trying to scare it back, but the jaguar only circled slowly, looking for a delicious place to start. Marble grit his teeth. He didn’t deserve to die like this. In fact, Marble was fairly certain nopony deserved to die like this. “Go away!” he yelled at the cat. The cat circled again before it pounced. Marble held out the knife and felt it dig deep into the cat’s side, but the beast’s teeth bit deep into his shoulder. He nearly yelled before he pulled back the dagger and stabbed again, and again before he tried to throw the cat off. He shoved with all his might before he reached for his wounded shoulder. With his free hoof. The one that should be broken. He blinked as he looked down at his hoof, which came away from the shoulder clean. There hadn’t even been any blood on it, somehow. The jaguar growled as it hunched low, staring at Marble with angry eyes. It glared at him with annoyance, as though it knew that Marble had no right to continue living. Marble shoved his confusion to the side and focused, propping himself up with his good leg while he held the knife in the other. The cat stared at him for another moment before it began backing away, seemingly to decide that perhaps this pony wasn’t the easy meal it thought him to be. It continued to back away into the jungle before leaving him entirely. The pegasus sighed for a moment before he slumped his shoulders. He took a moment to glance down at his now-whole foreleg before he began dragging himself forward, using his two legs to waddle along. He kept his teeth clenched as his hindlegs ran into every branch, stone, and bump in the earth. He used the knife to dig hoofholds in the dirt dragged himself further ahead with every step. What was happening? Why was his foreleg better now? Everything in his leg felt better now, and he could have sworn that the breaks in his leg would have taken months to get better. How did it heal? He stabbed the knife into a tree and held onto it as he took a moment to rest. With his ribs burning like this, he’d have a hard time moving and— His ribs weren’t burning anymore. He looked down at his barrel and pressed at his sides, but there wasn’t any pain. Then he noticed the falling leaves. The tree above him shed leaves like coats. They fell in a dense curtain of vegetation as the tree above him slowly died. As he glanced up, he suddenly heard a pop in his hind leg and stared down at it as he watched the considerable break snap back together. He was healing, and the tree was dying. He glanced over at the knife buried in the trunk and saw a dark spot grow around the blade edge. The tree was dying, and he was healing. He pulled the knife out of the tree and stabbed it into another and felt his wings slowly snap back into place, break-by-break. He pulled the knife back out of the tree and watched as another curtain of leaves fell as the tree died. He stared down at the knife in his hoof before he glanced back up at the tree. He turned back to the dagger. “Did you always do that?” The dagger didn’t respond. He took a deep breath and slid the knife back into his saddlebags. The pyramid stood in the distance, and somewhere inside, captured in a cage, sat Lady Celestia, the mare that lied to him. The mare that he was going to save. Either that, or he was going to die a horrible death at the hands of that giant mandrill. He sighed again before he spread his wings and took to the skies. “At least,” he thought to himself, “I’m not crawling anymore.”