Centaurs evolve.
The filly couldn't tell you how the process originally took place, and it won't be all that long before her existence, added to that of all the others, starts to drive the remaining evolutionary biologists slightly insane.
There is no fossil record -- or rather, there isn't enough to form a consistent trail. Keeping the secret of the gaps meant arranging for the destruction of any evidence, and that very much included anything unearthed from ground and sea bed. Discrediting theories was even easier, and when it came to anything more substantial, which couldn't be readily reached by those few who could pass for human -- well, that's not an ogre's half-preserved hornless corpse: that's Piltdown Man, and the age of hoaxes made it so easy to turn everything into a joke. Some of the strongest proof for liminal existence wound up hidden in plain sight, laughed at by humans who paid a few dollars to gawk on their way to see the mysterious egress. And some of the rest? Well, it turns out that the one skeleton being stored in Manhattan wasn't warped by bone disease. Who knew?
But there was always a lie.
Until there wasn't.
What happened on her world, to send intelligence careening down forty different paths? The liminals have their own theories, but -- their history is hardly perfect. And the biologists can't work it out. It could be argued that the gaps helped in some way, keeping each species safe within a controlled environment, dozens of little Madagascars -- except that all of those species had achieved intelligence before isolation began.
And then you have to consider the human aspects, because every liminal has that touch of the familiar. Does this indicate a common ancestor? If so, where are they on the family tree? At what point did all of those branches diverge? Or was this evolution in half-parallel, where the ultimate survivors just happened to wind up resembling that which they hid from? Sheer coincidence? Maybe that's easier. Because if there's a common ancestor, then you get even more questions about mutation and just how much biology can twist.
A lot of people wind up thinking about those things, and the majority do so for just long enough to invent their own worst-case scenario. Say that intelligence is most likely to turn up in an apex predator, and you get the follow-up of just what the liminals are meant to be hunting. And if you've already decided that your reaction to the new and strange is going to be fear...
There will be questions after the gaps open, and most of the intelligent ones will be drowned out by the screams of conspiracy theory. Social media posts are made in the hundreds of thousands, with each originator trying to see whose nonsense can be retweeted at the level of frenzy. The liminals are here to hunt humanity. The real people, the non-animals, those with souls have a duty to go after the monsters. The creations of the adversary, the walking nightmares, the mythological and of course all myths found outside of the holy books are pagan monstrosities designed to lure the weak away from faith.
And then someone will come up with the question of interbreeding.
That might have been the truest point of panic. The remote, nearly-impossible, purely theoretical possibility that some liminals might be capable of having children with humans. And what would those offspring be? Humanity's replacements?
There are human faiths in the girl's world which have rules about sex: pretty much all of them, and they retain the option to edit for current events. They usually say something along the lines of one man, one woman, no exceptions. (Or, because religions tend to favor those who hold power within it, one man and as many women as can conceivably be gathered. The opinion of the females regarding this arrangement is moot.) The concept of 'one man, one lamia' hit all of them at once, long before any degree of truth got out, and... it didn't go over well. It couldn't be allowed to happen, and those with souls had to strike first before --
-- there were reasons why the laws were written so quickly, and too many came from the crushing pressure of yellow vests.
But for this dream, all of that still lies in the filly's future. For the relived memory of a years-departed 'today', in the chill which lingered towards the end of winter and soaked into her hooves through half-frozen ground -- on this cold, clear day, she is standing at the border of an enclosure which is fenced and has the base sunken about four meters below ground level. There are descending layers of cut soil visible around the edges.
The border reeks from the concoctions which are carefully renewed every week. Mares can marshal enough self-discipline to approach, but -- it's not a pleasant process, and the effort required to stay in place can become almost constant.
Her mother is slightly behind her, and about two meters to the left. Watching. And behind the filly's parent is what feels like every other filly -- or rather, those who are within two years of the blonde girl's age.
Most of those youths are standing in pairs. Within arm's length of each other. Hands reach out to the side until they encounter frightened fingers, clutch tightly. And they aren't supposed to look afraid. A true mare would present the aspect that nothing about this bothered them, there's no real effort involved in being so close to stench and enclosure and shouts and profanity and, because of what's confined within, blood. If you put this many together, they will start hitting each other. Especially when they're aware that someone is watching.
There are a few mares in the pit, galloping between the confined. Too much male aggression wins a weighted baton for the trouble. The boldest (or stupidest) still attempt to clutch.
Colt-wrangling is a specialized profession, and the filly doesn't entirely understand how it works. It's one of those things where your apprenticeship can only begin when you're an adult. To send younger mares among the colts...
Some of the fillies gathered around the rim have been this close to a colt, for a number have brothers. Interactions with males of their own blood tend to take place across divides. The other side of a room. Shouting across the house, assuming you can get your voice to go through the reinforced door. Because siblings fight, and when at least one of them is a colt --
-- it's very rare for things to go further than the fighting stage between siblings.
Almost unheard of.
Almost.
A society which has segregated itself away from humans and the other liminals still has one more dividing line to inflict. And some of the fillies have been this close to a single colt while under supervision, perhaps two -- but none of them have seen this many at once.
There are nineteen of them. Every last one is muscular and for the upper torso, some of that development has taken place in ways which limit the full range of their joints. They're burly. They were freshly washed for this, probably with the contents of buckets slung at them from a considerable distance, and they still reek of musk and maleness and testosterone. Hair is slicked-back, askew, or wild. Their features start at a baseline of 'functionality' and mostly demonstrate that with enough force applied over the years, a cauliflower ear could become a cauliflower anything.
They scrape their hooves at the ground. They rear up all the time. If any one gets too close to another, there might be a punch. Kicks, and then the wranglers have to separate the brawl.
Their eyes seem dulled. Speech comes in grunts: profanities are used as substitutions for any word which can't be remembered, which puts the frequency of their verbal appearance at about one in four. And they are very, very aware of the fillies. It's why they keep rearing up. Because they're trying to show off and when a colt places his lower torso on the vertical, it's because there's something on the underside which he really wants you to be looking at.
The blonde filly has seen such displays before, because colts are wrangled and that means it's possible to pass one while someone is wrangling him home. Or an older stallion will think there's a safe moment, one where no mare is looking, and they'll just --
-- she's seen it before.
She didn't want to.
Something about the mere act of looking seemed to create internal pain.
And now her mother is watching her. Silently.
Her parent's arms aren't folded with impatience. The posture is rare for mares, because there's usually too much in the way. Instead, the filly has the option to listen for palms coming to rest against the sides of the upper waist. Or breathing. Her mother has a way of breathing which suggests the local oxygen just hasn't lived up to her expectations.
For those within two years of her own age, there are nineteen waiting colts. (More colts than fillies. The adults are worried about that.) All of them have been wrangled into the sunken space. And the filly's mother is the strongest of mares. Something which hardly ever does anything other than hurt the daughter, who's constantly pushed and no matter what she does, she can't ever seem to get a lead in a race where the finish line keeps moving.
But for today...
Behind her, the other girls clutch at each other's hands. Because there is a scant amount of time given over to the thought of love, and being at the border of the enclosure means that time is ending. There might be a few chances to sneak off, seek each other out for furtive embraces in deep shadows, but -- the adults will be watching now, and it's so hard to hide those scents.
Some of them know what their place in the order is. For one, everything ends at the moment the filly turns away from the fence. Does so with a decision.
The time for love is ending.
The time for breeding looms.
The filly's mother is the strongest.
The filly is the first daughter.
First daughter, first choice.
The filly, if asked, would say she had done nothing to earn that. But with this, as with just about everything else... no one cares what she thinks. And after she picks, only after... the others will have to follow.
She looks down into the pit. The heat of male attention steams up, soaks her nostrils, makes her olfactory bulb long to compress in on itself to the point of collapse. Three colts rear up, trying to reach her. One manages a few words. Another simply tries to reroute his blood to where he feels it's most needed.
...she doesn't want to look.
She doesn't want to --
-- centaurs evolve. The speed at which the process happens -- that's something which will eventually give the biologists some trouble: on the human scale, the shift in skin hue from Grecian olive to Caucasian pink shouldn't have been that fast. At the very least, changes quickly spread through what the gaps have determined will be a rather sheltered gene pool.
(There are actually more than nineteen eligible colts, but with the filly at the fence, three are currently being held back. The mares recognize the need to close out cousins.)
And the males are crude. Almost always trying to show off about something.
The majority are barely literate. Numeration skills often stop at the ability to count up to MINE.
They often become angry when no one's paying attention. Sometimes they're just angry. They think with their muscles -- if they can be bothered to think at all. There are times when the organ in control is both much lower and hogging all of the oxygen, and it's the reason why fillies of a certain age are kept well clear of colts entirely. Because the fillies don't go through estrus, don't have a season, and for the colts who are still being trained -- they want that season to be all the time.
They might try to make the season into NOW.
Because they can count up to MINE.
And that's evolution.
It's a foal question, at least for fillies: why are colts like this? Why are they only allowed to see stallions when there are mares close by, with every last one holding something heavy? And there's an answer, but it's provided at speed to the very young, without much in the way of detail because... the mares are ashamed. Nothing about the current situation is the fault of the generation which cannot solve it, but... they're centaurs. It feels as if there must be some way to make things right, and... all they can do now is try to keep it from getting any worse.
Take a trait. Declare that it's the most important one. Breed for it...
Centuries ago, the mares of the past decided that the most important thing about a stallion was strength.
The filly was never told how this happened, or why. But she can make guesses. Her reading material consists of human debris and when teen magazines make their way into the gap years after the actual events -- well, you can go through about a decade of fads in a single afternoon. Fashion magazines work their way past the border because it's France, and that tells her that certain body types can come into style. (Once she reaches the human world, the upper torso exception will be hers.) At some point, the herd mares made a group decision: raw power was desirable.
Perhaps there was pressure from the outside world: humans expanding their population again, fear of armored bipeds marching into the gap. Or the most popular mare pretended to half-swoon as a stallion winked and flexed, with everyone else just following suit. The exact cause doesn't matter, because she's looking at the results.
Fads have a short life expectancy. One year, possibly less. The most exceptional might reach four. A few manage to become entrenched, hang on long enough to transmute into culture.
In the gap, the decision to choose strength for the sake of strength lasted for generations. And in a small gene pool, one which is only tapping a portion of its waters...
You can't say that strength exists as something fully divorced from intellect and gentility. Look far enough into the past and you'll find stallions who were powerful and smart and polite and worthwhile. The filly peered into the mist which obscures her species' origins and found Chiron: someone who's still held up as a role model for others to follow -- except that no one has been able to take on the teacher's duty for generations, because that requires contact with the outside world.
(The filly made contact once.)
(...once.)
(She's still waiting for the fallout --)
Chiron, the legend. The scientist, physician and, when you get right down to it, the myth. The filly isn't sure if she believes Chiron was ever a real stallion, because picturing a smart one is just about impossible. It's something which can occasionally spread to her text-based perception of humans. When she looks at history and the roles which males have supposedly played in it, the whole thing can strike her as rather implausible, decidedly sexist, largely inaccurate, and mostly shows how everyone involved should have spent a lot more time in listening to women: for the Dark Ages, that's just about any time at all. Besides, even if you truly believe in Chiron, there's some mythical evidence for his having been a rotten teacher. Or Heracles was just a lousy student --
-- strength, intellect, and gentility. With a chance of decent looks. They aren't mutually exclusive traits. At some point, there must have been stallions who had it all. But the mares decided that strength was the key, generation after generation.
The filly hasn't been told the full details. But she thinks that the gap's population must have been larger then. Enough that everyone didn't have to breed. There was the possibility for some stallions to die without ever having passed on their genes. And there was a favored trait being spread through the pool, one aspect desired above all others...
Eventually, the mares woke up. (The filly asked how it happened. Her mother said nothing, and did so in the sort of tight-lipped way which made the filly wonder just when the first cells were dug.) They saw the damage, and found that they had made a tiny world where strength was the only thing which had survived. With the remaining stallions -- the ones their false evolution had selected -- all power had been transferred to the muscles outside the skull. The ones which couldn't move the world.
But the mares were still intelligent.
Proud.
Beautiful.
Untouched.
(That particular 'Why?' will come after the girl dies.)
Centaurs evolve. Every living species does, if it lasts long enough and manages to keep from sabotaging itself. Looking at the colts in the pit makes the filly wonder if the process has been kicked into reverse.
But everyone who can breed, must.
And the first daughter gets the first choice.
The results won't be immediate. Once she makes her pick, the colt will go through further training. Eventually, they'll be allowed in the same room together -- with supervision. She won't be left alone with him until everyone's sure the training took. Negative reinforcement can take a lot of time to beat in through steadily-thickening skulls, and every generation now sees a few colts who aren't capable of getting through the program. Who wind up assigned to perpetual menial labor, always under guard --
-- in theory, should things fall apart or -- go wrong -- she has the right to choose again. But she can't take a colt away from another filly. She'd be down to the leftovers, or waiting for the next group to mature a little more -- physically-- and if the process then repeated, she'd be dealing with an increasing age gap. She has to make the right choice of colt. Of stallion. Of someone to breed with.
She doesn't understand how she's supposed to --
-- the girls have been taught. But when it comes to breeding -- for the fillies of the gap, youth sex education largely doubles as the self-defense class. These are the signs of a colt who doesn't understand that it isn't time yet, and this is where you hit him. And they're taught about pregnancy, about labor and the stages of foal development and becoming a mother. The blonde filly understands all of that, but she hasn't been taught anything about sex.
Anything at all.
The others in her age group instructed each other on how to masturbate. (Certain aspects are complicated by body shape. Others require careful positioning and trying not to bring too much weight to bear. Fortunately, when it comes to a certain still-developing aspect of anatomy, the answer to the yellow pegasus' query about nerve density is YES.) The filly had to figure it out on her own.
But none of them understand how sex is supposed to work.
Not that the others talk to her about it.
Or notice when she's listening.
All she's been told is that on the night before their first time -- that's when they'll be taught everything.
(When it's too late to back out.)
(When they're finally told why there's always a night when fillies can't look out their windows.)
(Always in the spring.)
And they'll all have to live together for a few months before that. There's a special house which is only occupied by young mares of a certain age, waiting for their first time. It's something about getting their menstrual cycles to synchronize --
-- there's a colt rearing up, over and over. Trying to catch her attention. Then he sees one of his fellows attempting to replicate the feat, and punches the other in the face. The girl automatically notes the clumsiness of the attack, how the colt's swing leaves him open to reprisal, spots an angle from which to strike with the baton --
-- he's trying to get her attention.
Her attention.
She... doesn't feel anything towards him --
-- no. That's a lie. Revulsion counts. But feeling it deeply enough would produce a scent, her mother is right there, and the filly concentrates on neutrality as the thoughts go around and around in her head.
Why is he looking at her? It's certainly not because she's attractive. She isn't. The other fillies are the pretty ones, and -- what's the point in being pretty? For appearance, the filly considers herself to be the least of the group, and... the colts don't care.
The requirements for attracting a colt are a vagina and a pulse.
A few more generations and one of those may become optional.
She's not attractive. They want her because she's warm and there and if she chooses one, might not hit so hard. In the time of love, there was a reason to be pretty: it was something which could draw in another filly. But the blonde never got to be any part of that, and... there's no reason to be pretty for a colt. Even less rationale for being built like a proper centaur --
-- no. She still wants to keep growing, become considerably larger. Like her mother. One thing, one thing (or two) which her traitorous, forever-second-place body got right. And then she'll be able to nurse her filly.
...it has to be a filly.
It has to --
-- they're hitting each other.
Five of them are battling now.
Blood is flowing. There's at least one broken nose. It doesn't do anything to make that colt uglier. Practically speaking, it couldn't.
The mares within the pit rush in to break things up, and the filly gets to see how part of the training is done. She also gets to smell it, because the ozone is as distinctive as the crackle.
Getting cattle prods into the gap isn't easy, especially when the mares can't settle for low-durability models. Batteries can be harder.
Somewhere behind the filly, the strongest mare in the herd is shaking her head in disappointment. (It's not something the filly has to look for. The scent is enough.) And the first daughter, the only daughter waits to hear how this is her fault. Clearly if she'd chosen quickly, there would have been one less colt in the pit. Remove the aggressor and everything would have been fine...
...they may not be ready yet, her mother announces. We can try this again in two weeks.
Fillies clutch at each other's hands again. Grip all the more tightly, because words which should have been an announcement of reprieve only serve as a reminder that the time for love will always end.
They were judged at birth, for the crime of having been born within a gap. But the sentence is fair, isn't it? How could it be anything else, when it's the same penalty which has been assigned to every mare for centuries?
The group turns away. Her mother silently leads the filly towards their house, and there will be words to come. Words, but -- not song. It's been years since the last time her mother sang. And the other fillies gallop away in relief which can't be too open, but so many of them are holding hands and no one holds the filly's hand, no one touches her, no one will ever touch her until she chooses a colt and the first night comes for all of them.
...what if she doesn't want to be touched?
What if she told her mother that she didn't want to --
First daughter.
First choice.
No choice.
Her sentence has been pronounced. No appeals. No parole. No escape.
(She escaped for one day.)
(She's waiting...)
Live.
Breed.
Die.
The air carriage dipped.
It had probably been unintentional. There was an elaborate system of harnesses and balanced weights which helped to keep the whole thing level while in flight. And when any of that threatened to fail, there was always magic -- but it was possible that several layers of cushioning spells had been disabled for the night. The pegasi were descending, the carriage dipped, and a few hundred kilograms of armored centaur slid forward. Multiple nerves immediately went on high alert, and the girl woke up.
Her body felt somewhat refreshed, although she suspected the majority of that was a false impression produced by merely having slept at all. She'd done so in armor, and expected a number of cramps to have their say as soon as she tried any actual movement.
Physically, there was some temporary improvement. Her mind ignored most of it and continued to peer at the fading remnants of dream with narrow-eyed suspicion.
Why did I dream about that? Did Luna --
She hadn't seen the dark mare -- but she also hadn't been aware that she'd been dreaming until the moment it had started to break up. Very few of Cerea's dreams qualified for true lucidity. She'd meant to try for it before falling asleep, at least to the extent that repeating 'I need to remain aware' to herself could help -- but she'd just been so tired...
The hairpins had been in place, and that seemed to help with griffons -- but with the alicorn, Cerea didn't feel as if she could be completely sure. The possibility of another 'visit' had been looming large in her fears. She just couldn't remember anything from the dream which felt like an intrusion, or a likely hiding place. The remembered sky had been clear...
Another dip. Her body shifted again. Sliding supplies clanged off the metal which covered her buttocks, briefly pinned her tail and then went off to the side.
At any rate, why would the alicorn have wanted to see that part of her life? Pure voyeurism? Or --
-- stop.
The hairpins might have been enough.
And she... tried to apologize. Sort of. I think. As much as she could.
And there were more reasons for Cerea to dream about a given topic than the mere machinations of magic. When she thought about it, looked past the fear and thought -- the answer felt obvious. There had been more than one thing on her mind when she'd fallen asleep. And in a lifetime of memories --
-- one hand tightly gripped the sword's hilt: the other sought out the baton --
-- there were only a few which centered around waiting to meet a male.
"Centaur stallions just want -- they want. That's all it is. Want. They want, and they don't care what anyone else wants --"
"Did something happen?"
No.
But they want.
We all went back two weeks later. First daughter, first choice. We were going to keep going back until I chose.
Every generation, they get stupider.
More determined to reach their goal, for the only things they can think of at all.
Harder to train.
Stronger.
Two weeks later was when a pair of them tried to reach us.
They nearly jumped out of the pit.
They got their hands onto the border. They were trying to pull all of their body weight up with just their arms, and...
The pit was deeper now. Something which had taken time. Another delay.
Tartarus deepens as more are confined...
Another dip. It was followed by the first jolt as the wheels touched down, and Cerea made the near-mistake of trying to scramble onto her hooves before everything stopped moving. It left her attempting to maintain balance as the jolts produced by losing speed on uneven ground just kept coming, a few of the more durable supplies bounced around and off her legs, and then the cramps came in.
Eventually, it all stopped. Except for the cramps.
"Two minutes!" one of the hauling pegasi called out. "We're taking off in two minutes! Everypony out now!"
Something which had been in the briefing. Touch-and-go. Get the transport team away from the area as quickly as possible. Just in case.
Cerea sheepishly lowered her body again. Dipped her upper torso to an awkward angle (and listened for creaking metal), scooped up everything, arranged some of it on the armor's netting, separated out the supplies which were meant for the others --
-- helmet?
Not yet. She could just carry it for a while. It would be easier to gauge the weather when she could feel the results on bare skin. And it would give the Bearers something to look at which was --
-- ugly. Hideous. Repulsive. But at least all of it moved.
She left the carriage as quickly as she could.
There was a moment when she was outside on cold, hard ground, well-lit by a full Moon's radiance. Amplified senses began to pick up on just how many ponies were staring at her, none of whom she could see because she'd exited at the side of the carriage and hers had been at the rear of the formation --
-- multiple teams of pegasi began to gallop. Flapped for all they were worth. And then the carriages were gone.
The girl stared after them for a few seconds. Checked the sky, found it almost completely clear. There was some moisture in the air: without the accompanying clouds, it was nowhere near enough for rain, and she felt it wasn't quite cold enough for snow. But it would help to keep static shocks down. A mare who'd been trained for armor had become very aware of incidental electricity.
...they're staring at me.
She couldn't quite seem to turn.
They haven't seen me in armor before. Maybe that's it.
No, it's not a really fast growth spurt. Everyone always looks a little larger in armor.
...still staring.
I can feel all of it.
I think Fluttershy's is leaving dents.
The girl forced a breath. Near-winter air had its way with her lungs, and she used the opportunity to test the Second Breath again. Most of what that did was encourage the cold to spread.
A cold night, and a quiet one. She couldn't hear any birds, for the few which would have remained after any normal migration. No sounds of small scurrying mammals. There was a relatively narrow path exiting their clearing, a forest sprang up to surround it all, and yet it felt as if the group was the only thing within the chill which yet lived --
-- there was a flare of green light somewhere behind her, accompanied by a very temporary impression of distant warmth. It made her turn. And by the time she could see them all, it was gone.
She was facing the ponies and reptile now. The latter was riding the little alicorn's back, with handling claws clutched tightly to the mane: the right was just starting to establish a grip. It was the first time she'd seen anyone ride one of the ponies, and it was only possible because Spike was so small. There certainly hadn't been anything provided which would have helped him to stay on Twilight's back: not a single piece of tack was present, and when it came to balancing...
Moonlight reflected off tiny embedded particles in the scales of his face. Just about everything else had been buried under multiple layers of cloth, each of which was a little less flexible than the last. The colors coordinated beautifully with his own, the insulation was superb, and it gave him the rough appearance of a starfish which had just become sapient and wasn't entirely sure what to do about it.
His handling claws were tangled up in his sibling's mane. It was an anchor. It was also a constant tug on the little alicorn's hair, but she seemed resigned to it --
"...really?" Fluttershy softly asked, staring at Cerea all the while. (Far too softly, and yet the words filled the clearing.) "Really?"
The girl blinked.
I just got off the carriage.
I couldn't have done something wrong already.
...I think...
...her stare is... sort of low this time. Not my face. My foreshoulders, or a little below --
-- oh.
"There are only so many shapes," the centaur defensively proclaimed. "No matter where one might be, a circle remains a circle. This particular icon happens to be a popular symbol in my homeland, and it was placed upon my armor shortly before I assumed my duties."
Something which was coming to an end.
A little more quickly, "The fact that this symbol also appears upon thy partner's flank is simply a rather strange level of coincidence --"
"-- and what does it mean?" Fluttershy subtly cut her off. "To you? When a centaur carries it, without any mark at all?"
Roughly eight hundred pages of heraldry lined up behind Cerea's tongue.
It depends on who you ask, and where. Because there are only so many shapes. France is just the most common association -- but it turned up in India during an age where there couldn't have been much contact. And with independent origins, the distortions of time... everyone wound up with their own interpretations.
For some, it's faith. Wisdom. Chivalry is popular. Others associate it with purity, and there's been a few which say it symbolizes a divine right to rule.
The Egyptians called it the poisonous snake...
The centaur swallowed.
Not those last two.
Not any of them.
"A lily's flower," she quietly replied. "That's all. A lily, and... home."
Twilight was silent. Spike shivered a little. Rainbow, wings already twitching, pointedly turned towards the path. Fluttershy didn't blink. Pinkie (and the girl wasn't sure if that was just the disc being rather obvious) was snout-balancing two items, which were then flipped backwards into waiting saddlebags. Trixie was carefully sorting through several large waxy cylinders, all of which were arrayed on the ground in front of her -- and she was doing so by mouth. Rarity was using careful head movements to adjust a rather pretty scarf.
Applejack's ears pressed against the sides of the hat. Tilted it slightly forward, and then green eyes took their own very open look.
"Home," the accented voice gently announced. "Ain't a bad idea, t' carry a little with you." The hat shifted again.
"I'm not sure," the little alicorn quietly said. "Sometimes the weight can drag you down."
"Depends on what you think of as home," Applejack politely countered.
Twilight seemed to mull it over for a second before nodding. The earth pony cleared her throat.
"Sooner started," she stated, "sooner ended. Everypo -- everyone, make sure your stuff is secured, and then we'll get goin'. This is as close as they could put us without goin' in, an' it ain't the shortest trot from here. We've gotta make time."
They all packed up. Moved towards the thin path, and...
The group seemed to have a marching order in place -- or rather, a redefined one: she suspected the standard model had a darkly-muttering Rainbow in the air. (On the rather dubious bright side, she was now receiving what might be a full education in the complete range of translated Equestrian curses. Possibly beyond, as there was one term which the Sergeant hadn't even used.) Applejack and Twilight took the lead, the pegasi had a middle position, Pinkie and Rarity had the back, and Trixie served as a sort of free-roamer: moving around the periphery of the group and checking the environment on all sides.
But there was a centaur-shaped (and very much centaur-sized) obstruction in the middle of it all. And they were supposed to be accompanying her. Guiding her in, to make sure she reached the Gate.
They knew where they were taking her. They just had no idea where to put her.
At the front? There was one point where she found the entire group trailing behind her like the world's longest, most discontent tail: it didn't take long before the extra mutters told her that no one could see over her, past her, and Rainbow was considering abandoning the Stay On The Ground order again because visibility was a great excuse. The subsequent group scramble placed her at the absolute back and while that fulfilled at least one religion's Get Thee Behind Me requirement, it also encountered what Cerea had seen as the philosophy's built-in flaw: if they were behind you, then you had no idea what they were doing back there. Having her in the middle still provided part of the group that traveling view of shifting armor over buttocks while seeming to positionally imply that 'group' somehow included her. Cerea was fairly certain that nopony was happy about that.
She tried to spend the first part of the trip off to the side: close enough for the others to watch her, while still giving them some distance. But the path kept fighting against her. There were silent trees on the edges, and low bare branches frequently pushed in enough to force her into veering. She had to keep checking her position, everypony's position, was desperately trying to prevent a metal-clad hoof from going into a pony flank or worse...
Eventually, she wound up just short of the backmost position. Hunched over in her armor and moving with knees half-collapsed. It didn't help.
The mares softly talked to each other. (She tried not to listen.) To the little reptile. And outside of what was produced by shod hooves on the path, those utterances felt like the only sounds in the cold, barren world.
The girl was alone.
Alone in a herd.
Again.
Always.
And then the white unicorn trotted up to the centaur's left flank.