//------------------------------// // 2 - We’ve Got Some Catching Up to Do // Story: Urban Wilds // by Rambling Writer //------------------------------// Bitterroot didn’t know if Oily Cake in the Crystal Empire and Donut Joe in Canterlot were related at all, with Cake being Joe’s great-great-great-great-whatever-grandmother thanks to the Empire’s chronal displacement, but she had her suspicions. The fact that the two were different pony tribes didn’t matter much; Bitterroot herself was a pegasus and had a unicorn for a father. Pony genetics were weird like that. Nor was she basing this on the fact that they simply both made donuts; plenty of ponies made donuts, even if those donuts weren’t quite as good. Not even their surprisingly similar colorations; several dozen generations of mixing could result in anything, and they had fairly neutral colors, besides. No, she was interested in the ways both of their strawberry frostings had this wonderful little tang in them that she hadn’t tasted anywhere else. Oh, other donut shops tried, but it didn’t jump out at you the same way it did in Joe’s and Cake’s. The two frostings weren’t even that similar otherwise, but Bitterroot could always recognize that pop. Was it an original family recipe and a thousand years of refining that recipe? One way or another, she didn’t think it would be a coincidence. That was what ran through her mind as she ordered her coffee and donut (strawberry-frosted, of course). She knew what she wanted, but she could see the exact moment Amanita was hit by panic from the size of the menu. Her eyes flicked slowly over a few lines, faster and faster down the next, then her ears started trembling. Luckily, she seemed to know what was going on and quickly settled on a regular glazed donut. Then, to Bitterroot’s surprise, Amanita went straight for a cup of mulled cider. Large, too. Oily Cake’s cider was… solid, but nothing really special. Yet when they sat down, Amanita cradled her cup in both her hooves and her magic like it was a newborn baby made of glass and took the same slow, delicate sips from it one would some hyper-rare, hyper-expensive wine. Once the heat from her coffee was running through her body, Bitterroot asked, “No offense, but… cider? Not coffee?” “We had coffee in jail,” said Amanita. “Being deprived of coffee would’ve been cruel and unusual punishment. But cider was a luxury. I haven’t had it in years. Circe didn’t like it.” She snorted. “Really should’ve been a warning sign. Who doesn’t like cider?” Another long, lingering sip. “Heh. Right.” One of the problems with being pen pals with somepony was that it was hard to tell what topics they didn’t like. In person, it was easy to press an issue, get rebuffed, and learn something. If she asked Amanita a question in a letter and Amanita ignored it, Bitterroot might forget which question she’d asked by the time she got the reply in two or three weeks. Still, she needed to get the conversation rolling somehow, and she might as well start with the obvious question. She kept her voice light as she asked, “So how was prison?” All the while, she prayed Amanita would see that as the joke it was. She didn’t, but not in the way Bitterroot had expected. “Not that bad, actually,” said Amanita. “Security wasn’t that tight, so I had some freedoms, and I got to see a therapist.” She took a long drink of cider. “Either she was good at her job, I needed to just stop running, or both, but you know how I was a little ball of self-loathing when you last saw me? I managed to mostly wrestle that into submission. I still get nightmares, but it’s not all I can think about.” “Yeah, you told me some of that.” “Sorry.” Amanita’s face reddened. “I just- do better face-to-face than with letters. If I mess up now, I can tell you immediately. Not in letters.” She quickly stuck her muzzle in her cup. Bitterroot took a sip of her own to give Amanita time. Already, she was less closed-off than she’d been before prison, or at least less fixated on her own guilt. Then again, the last time they’d talked talked, they’d just spent almost a week running through the Frozen North and fighting a lich. Maybe she’d just been tired. Either way, her mental health had vastly improved. She swallowed her coffee and said, “So, uh, what happened to Circe? I forgot.” “She’s dead, thank the Princesses,” Amanita said. She almost sounded relieved. “Her phylactery was destroyed just after you left. Prince Shining Armor actually sent me a thank-you card for bringing it to him. Let me see if I can find it…” She levitated her bag to the table and started digging through it. “Any chance of her coming back? Even if it’s from another necromancer?” “No, also thank the Princesses. When a phylactery’s broken, you don’t just die. Your soul’s destroyed. You don’t even go to the afterlife; you just stop existing.” “I might feel sorry for her if she wasn’t Circe.” “I guess. Ma- Here we go.” Amanita pulled a card from her bag and passed it over to Bitterroot. Bitterroot did a double-take. She’d expected a vague, generic card, something you picked up in a supermarket on the way home from work. What she saw was a beautiful miniaturized oil painting showing a smiling filly sitting in front of a dazed chimera with stars twirling around its heads. Above the picture were the (embossed!) words, Thank you for saving Equestria! She flipped it open; inside was hornwritten, Circe has been properly dealt with. Thank you for your help; I hope you find your peace of mind. —Prince-Captain Shining Armor Shaking her head, Bitterroot passed the card back. “Did he have this custom-made or is Equestria’s card industry a lot weirder than I think?” Amanita shrugged. “He’s Twilight Sparkle’s brother, right? He probably has a stockpile of them.” She nibbled at her donut for a second, then asked, “Speaking of Princess Twilight, did I hear right? Celestia and Luna have abdicated and she’s now ruling Equestria?” “Yep. Her coronation was a few moons ago, and holy Tartarus, did it clog up the streets in Canterlot.” Amanita nearly snorted her cider across the table. “Said the pegasus.” “These-” Bitterroot opened her wings. “-didn’t help! Other pegasi were also there and they didn’t bother following any pinnaestrian traffic laws and that idiot was crossing the street at the wrong altitude, it’s not MY fault she-” She snapped her eyes shut, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, closing her wings as she did so. She opened her eyes. “It was busy,” she said flatly. “Kinda strange, isn’t it?” Amanita said quickly, taking the hint. “Celestia just up and retiring after millennia. Nothing against Princess Twilight, she’s just not Celestia. You’d think that she’d always be there. I mean, she’s Celestia! She’s the constant in this world if there is one.” “So was Luna, until Nightmare Moon.” “Eh. True.” Then Amanita frowned. “So, wait, if Luna’s also abdicating, who’s taking up dreams? Is Princess Twilight also doing that? Are we all just on our own? Or…” Her voice trailed off. “What? Pfft. No.” Bitterroot snorted. “That’s Princess Moondog’s domain.” Amanita’s face went blank. “Princess Who?” “Moondog. You kno- Oh, right. You don’t. She’s…” Bitterroot rustled her wings and frowned at her coffee. What was the best way to describe this? Sometimes, she had trouble believing it herself. “She’s a dream automaton,” she said slowly, “built by Luna to… I don’t know if she was made to replace Luna or just to help Luna. Either way, Luna retired and Moondog took up her mantle. As far as I can tell, she does a good job. I guess Princess Twilight’s reign is gonna have some big changes.” Amanita blinked. “…When… When did this happen?!” “Eh, two years ago. I think.” Bitterroot wiggled a hoof and grinned apologetically. “Sorry, I’m a little fuzzy on the details.” Amanita blinked again. “I- Our dreams are being protected by a one-year-old golem?” “I just said she was two.” Amanita hat-tricked her blinking streak. “…So how ’bout that weather, huh?” They exchanged inane pleasantries for a little while, Bitterroot doing most of the leading. Amanita didn’t have much to talk about from her time in prison; ponies steered well clear of her after hearing she was a necromancer, so the last two years had been about as dull as you could hope for. Bitterroot was fine with that. She hadn’t expected much, anyway. Although there was one question that was nagging at her: “Is this a simple parole or is it some other kind of early release?” “It’s not parole. No officer to report to and no restrictions on movement. I think Prince Armor talked with my therapist a lot to get a feel for how I was doing and might’ve pulled some strings.” “Really?” “Dumping a lich’s phylactery and the lich herself on his doorstep left an impression on him. That, or he’s learning from his sister.” Amanita shrugged. “Either way, I’m grateful.” “Yeah. I’d be, too.” Bitterroot lapped at the last few dregs of coffee. “Do you have anywhere to go? ’Cause if you don’t, you can stay at my place.” Amanita pulled into herself a little. “I don’t want to be a bother,” she said quietly. “I’ve got the money to-” “I don’t care,” Bitterroot said flatly. “Do you want to live alone out of a hotel room for the rest of your life? Living on precooked meals every day, having to leave during the day so somepony else can clean the place, sleeping in a bed that’s had Celestia knows what happen in it? It’ll be prison all over again.” “Could be worse,” Amanita mumbled. “Could be better, too.” “And when your neighbors hear you’re housing a necromancer?” “The ones that would disapprove of me because of that already do because I’m a bounty hunter.” “Is that most of them?” Bitterroot opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. Her social skills weren’t the greatest, she knew. But you didn’t need the greatest social skills to see what was going on. All of these were decent excuses, but terrible reasons. There was something else going on, something Amanita didn’t want to admit. Maybe she was scared of it, maybe she didn’t want to bother Bitterroot, whatever. Everything she was saying was just a smokescreen in the hopes of dissuasion, pretty much grasping at straws. Bitterroot leaned forward, propping herself up on her foreknees. “You know staying at my place won’t be a bother,” she said as kindly as she was able to. “Why don’t you want to?” “It’s not that- There’s no-” Amanita bit her words back and sighed. “Because the last time I forced myself into somepony’s life, I got them killed and couldn’t bring them back,” she said distantly. “Before that, I’d been raping my dead marefriend’s mind without knowing it every time I called her up. I, I know neither of those was my fault, but…” There it was. Something Amanita never would’ve been confronted with in prison. She’d been surrounded by ponies who she didn’t need to be friends with, had her needs for food and shelter met free of charge, and even gotten therapeutic help. She might’ve thought that she had her mental issues under control, only for them to return the second she was in a position where they mattered. It wasn’t like she’d depended on a friend to survive in prison. “Look,” Bitterroot said lightly. “Maybe you think something bad’s going to happen to me, but I’ve already died. You were the one to kill me! It can’t get worse than that, right? But if it does, you’ll just bring me back anyway.” “I guess,” Amanita said. But she grinned, just a little. Bitterroot hid the silence from her thinking by taking a bite of donut. When she swallowed, she said, “How about this? You stay at my place for, I don’t know, two, three days. We’ll see how it works out and go from there. Okay?” Amanita stared down into her cup. Bitterroot wanted to push her, but knew it’d be a bad idea. Amanita was going through a lot and snapping for an answer now was probably one of the worst things Bitterroot could’ve done. She didn’t know what having that… paranoia could do to a pony’s psyche. Just the thought that if you hung around somepony for too long, they’d get hurt. It might’ve been amazing that Amanita was thinking about this at all. Then Amanita downed the rest of her cider in one gulp and nodded. “Sure. Let’s do that.” “Alright.” Bitterroot stood up and flexed her wings. “Let’s get to the station. It’s a long trip to Canterlot.” Everyone was staring at Amanita behind her back. She just knew it. It was obvious from her pallid coloration that she was a necromancer (and the facts that she’d had that color before taking up necromancy and that she wasn’t even the only pale pony on the platform didn’t matter). She whipped around to catch them- But nopony was looking at her. Nopony was giving her a wide berth. She was just another pony. Except she wasn’t. Bitterroot emerged from the crowd. “Got the tickets,” she said. “Straight shot to Canterlot. It’ll take most of the day, so you got any place you want to sit?” Amanita twitched and gave the crowd behind her another look. Still nobody was looking at her. “Uh… N-not really, no.” “Observation car, got it. Come on.” They walked through the train. Amanita found her gaze flicking back and forth. Nopony was looking at her any more than they would any other pony. She looked over her shoulder. Nothing. They don’t know, she told herself. They don’t know. Maybe they should. Amanita imagined herself climbing onto a seat and yelling that she was a necromancer. The reactions of the other passengers ranged from a terrified mob lynching her to crickets. Weirdly, the crickets seemed more likely. Why would they believe her? What kind of idiot just proclaimed that she was a necromancer like that, out in the open? They’d probably think her drunk or joking. Maybe both. But the truth would come out eventually and, if she wasn’t the one to reveal it, the needle would swing more towards the lynch mob. Run out of town, at best. And Amanita couldn’t blame them; she didn’t think she deserved it anymore, but at least the reaction was semi-understandable in a knee-jerk sort of way. The history books weren’t exactly teeming with nice necromancers. Or necromancers at all, really, unless you got into the weirder, darker parts of Equestria’s past. If she ever settled down, when would be the best time to reveal her past? They were in the rearmost car. “You ride trains a lot?” Bitterroot asked. “Not really, no.” Only once or twice. Circe had claimed they could be tracked by their tickets. Amanita didn’t think so, but she’d learned to keep her mouth shut. “I do. Love ’em. Flying’s nice, but it just doesn’t have the same… I don’t know, relaxedness of trains. You don’t need to work at it, and if you’re ever bored, just read a book or fall asleep.” Bitterroot flexed her wings and took a seat near the back of the carriage. “Just don’t get me started on them.” Amanita sat across from her. “Why not?” “ ’Cause I’ll never shut up. Like, this locomotive is a 4-6-2, which means-” Bitterroot clapped her hooves over her mouth and muttered, “No. Bad time.” A piercing shriek filled the air as the whistle blew and the train lightly lurched. Outside, the station slowly began moving back. Bitterroot immediately looked out the window, as if this were the most interesting thing in the world. Amanita turned her attention to the other passengers. They were ordinary, something that’d been missing from her life for a long time. They were doing plain, boring things: reading the newspaper, nibbling on a snack, trying to keep their foals corralled. The small, quiet actions of ponies without much in the way of issues or problems. Amanita found herself imagining doing those things, but it always felt like she was forcing those acts. Nothing ever really fit. Except for one thing. Maybe. Amanita found herself staring at a couple near the front of the car. A stallion and a mare were talking about something, easy, casual smiles on their faces. She was resting her head on his shoulder as he made gestures to punctuate his words. The two of them were holding hooves and their tails had gotten twisted together. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t need to. They knew each other well enough to be alone together. A pang jolted through Amanita’s heart. Love. That was something she missed. It was love that’d driven her to necromancy in the first place, after all. Zinnia hadn’t been sweet. “Sweet” implied a certain naïveté. She’d known the ills of the world and had been delightful anyway. She’d been honest, both with herself and with others, without either being abrasive or sugarcoating things. That was probably why she’d been so accepting of her illness. Amanita and Zinnia had first met in high school as freshmares. By the time they’d graduated, they were dating, even exchanging cheap lockets to remember each other. They didn’t have much money, either to move out or to go to college, so they’d started working odd jobs around town. For her “real” job, Zinnia wanted to be a florist. Amanita didn’t know what she wanted to be. Not until she first heard the news. Zinnia got liver cancer. Just like that. No real reason. The universe had apparently decided it didn’t like her. It only took a few moons for her to be moved to hospice as her vitality evaporated and her body withered. Amanita’s special talent was related to healing magic. She could heal cuts and bruises in a few seconds, worse if she had more time. She could fix this, right? With the confidence of every young adult who’d learned a little bit about a skill, Amanita threw herself into it, working day and night. She withdrew from society. Her performance at her job suffered. Her friends drifted away. She didn’t care. She needed to save Zinnia. She almost did it, plenty of times. Almost. “Zinny, I think this could work-” “Nita, stop burning yourself out-” “No, listen, I really think-” “Why are you the one figuring it out and not any of the doctors?” “It WILL work!” It didn’t work. It never did. “Told you.” “Yeah.” “I’m grateful that you’re trying, but you need to face the truth.” “I’m sorry, I just… I-it’s not FAIR, y-you sh-shouldn’t…” “Oh, come here. It’s okay. You know I’ll always be with you, right?” She was still there, if painfully thin with breathing tubes and an IV drip. Easy to believe then. Less so after her funeral barely two weeks later. If only Amanita had worked a bit harder… If only, if only, if only. Zinnia’s family was supportive. Amanita didn’t know them very well, but she knew them well enough that they knew what she was going through. Amanita’s own, less so. They’d always been distant, never really caring much about her. Or each other, for that matter. Maybe it would’ve turned out okay if Amanita had just had a familiar shoulder to cry on, but she was left adrift and drowning in an ocean of grief. Amanita had heard ponies drank to dull emotional pain. And so, on the evening of her twenty-first birthday a moon later, Amanita’s first real experience with alcohol was going to a bar and drinking herself into a stupor. She regained consciousness in an alley in a puddle of her own vomit. It hadn’t worked. She still despaired. Zinnia was still dead. That was when Circe found her. Amanita blinked herself back to reality and quickly looked away from the couple. It’d only been a few seconds, but it felt like much longer. Was Bitterroot staring at her zoning out? Not yet, no. She was watching the station lumber by, then disappear. As soon as the train was clear of the platform, Bitterroot got up. “I’m gonna be on the observation deck for a little,” she said, and sidled to the back of the carriage. And suddenly, Amanita felt very alone. Nopony had cared about her in prison except for someone who was paid to do so. She hadn’t minded at the time. But Bitterroot had seen her in action and still thought she was alright. They could chat. Not talk; that implied something meaningful. Just chat about… whatever. Cider. Coronations. The weather. Banks. Inane, but so what? It was like standing in a warm shower: pointless, but pleasant. Now that Bitterroot was “gone”, just about every other pony in the train would shun her if they ever figured out what she was. Amanita wasn’t paranoid, thinking Bitterroot would vanish and leave her alone. Of course she wouldn’t, she was right there. It was more a realization than anything else. This entire car was the world in microcosm, a collection of ponies that didn’t care who she was now but would suddenly have a lot of opinions on her once someone said she was a necromancer. Even if they thought she was okay, they’d have their preconceptions and would likely walk on eggshells around her. She couldn’t even blame them. She was walking on eggshells around herself. But not Bitterroot. Bitterroot stood on the deck and let the wind tug at her mane and feathers. Amanita looked at her, at what she represented. She hadn’t been this connected to her when they were exchanging letters; why now? Why were all of these feelings suddenly exploding to the forefront when she thought she’d vanquished them already? Simple: she literally hadn’t known what she was missing. It was almost in a daze that Amanita stumbled onto the deck. She wanted to be near a friend. Bitterroot nodded at her and didn’t say anything beyond a vague, “Hey.” Amanita nodded back, but inside, some part of her cringed. Fear had driven her out when she’d just been alone on a train car. She knew so little about normal ponies, it was like she was starting life anew, which sounded grand until it happened to you. And she was paranoid of being found out because of her past, something she couldn’t change. Even if she adjusted, figured out the best way to play nice with everypony else, would Equestria have a place for her? Well. One way or another, she’d find out. Civilization vanished into the distance as the train streaked across the Frozen North.