(“Right look, I’m not too sure how to describe it, you just got to like…imagine spreading out?”)
(“Imagine?”)
(“Yeah I guess, has Bean ever told you about like, just imagining things floating and it happens”)
(“Who’s Bean?”)
(“Hope, has she ever told you that?”)
(“Maybe?”)
(“Alright, just like, you know, push like outwards in your chest and think about shifting to shadow”)
(“Ok”) Sombra did as he was told. He squeezed his eyes shut, a soft tingle spread slightly in his chest before it vanished.
(“anything?”)
(“Like, a small tingle, that’s it”)
(“small progress is good progress, it’ll come better over time”) Opal told him in a slightly more encouraging tone.
(“Why can’t you do it?”) Sombra was wondering why Opal couldn’t just demonstrate, like his sire did so many years ago.
(“I’m not exactly an umbrum, nor do I run of dark magic”)
(“Why?”)
(“I dunno ask biology, or Bean, she’s a damn sponge for it, I’m a good thousand years old and she’s made me feel like an idiot and she’s seven”) Sombra remembered back to the day where Hope boggled the minds off everyone as she explained how the horn worked. Nothing stuck.
(“I’m gonna try again”) Sombra said, he did the same process. Shut his eyes and blew his chest out. This time the tingling spread and for a brief moment his hooves ever so slightly lifted of the wooden floor of his bedroom. He lost his grip on the change and returned back to normal with a soft clink of his hooves.
(“did I do it?”)
(“When you start to float it normally means you’ve dissolved your organs, so yeah getting closer”) the description made Sombra a little wide eyed.
(“there really isn’t a nice way to say that your pulling yourself apart to a cellular level, or the fact that eventually you can half shift and blood still pumps normally, so there’s no nice description and don’t question anything alright?”)
(“…Okay”) there was a ringing from downstairs, it was the bell for food. From bellow him Sombra heard Hope scamper out of her bedroom and down the stairs. The pair made their way down to lunch as well to find fresh bread and different spreads, a usual lunch. There were four plates. One had three slices, two had two slices and another had one. They all sat down to eat, while Opal lifted chunks of his bread in his talons.
“You wanna do some painting?” Hope asked him, she took another bite of her jammy bread.
“Ok” the pair ate their bread quickly and left the Cloud to slowly chew away while they went to Hopes room. She had a candle lit, a red one. Like spicy apples and cherries. Hope levitated a bunch of paper out onto the floor with the block water paints. Sombra grabbed the little pot out of her drawer and got some water from the bathroom.
They sat down on her floor together, smushing the cheap brushes into the water and blocks of paint. Creating colourful bubbles on the chunks and dragging the colour across the paper. Hope had more control thanks to her magic, making her lines much smoother in comparison to Sombra’s, who was relying mostly on his mouth. He looked over to see Hope had drawn her fairy’s again.
“Who’s that one again?” Sombra asked.
“This ones Tulip, she’s the monarch” Hope told him. Tulip was holding different crowns, as if she was deciding which she wanted to wear. She was decked out in jewellery Sombra noticed, it was a little smudged.
“She likes shiny things, she’s a little mean sometimes” Hope continued to paint the golden fairy.
“What are you painting?” she asked him. Sombra looked down at his picture where he wasn’t really focusing on what he was painting. But he had drawn stick versions of his tribe.
“Are they your family?” Sombra nodded.
“There’s me, then dammi and sirri, there’s granddam and grandsire, there’s auntie and uncle Amarilla and Folre, my cousins Yesqen and Yesric, then uncle Folwin”
“Wow, you have a big family, how are you an orphan?” Sombra stayed silent, although he mostly didn’t know. He just knew they weren’t here. He grabbed his paint brush and added in a barely visible white Opal next to his little figure.
“What about your family?” Sombra asked her.
“I dunno, I only remember the orphanage, but I must have a mommy and daddy somewhere right?”
“But you say Miss Chestnut and Cloud are your parents”
“But they’re not my actually parents, they just adopted me…” she had said something else, but Sombra noticed a change in his mind. It was Opal, he often forgot he was there, there was a form of sadness in him.
(“What’s wrong?”)
(“Nothing”)
(“Do you know what happened to her parents?”)
(“You are too young to understand”) there was a light thump next to him and the scrap book was on the floor. It had a couple more pictures in it now, mostly of them in the sandpit which Cloud had taken from the patio, Miss Chestnut wasn’t home often enough to take them. Hope patted his painting gently, it had dried up quickly.
“I think it should go in here”
“Why? What about yours?”
“I put my old one with all three of my fairies in already” Hope put the paper into the back of the scrap book where Sombra saw her other drawing. They sat there for a few more hours, drawing and painting random things. They went through too many papers by the time they got hungry again. While Hope just got a snack, Sombra was allowed out to hunt.
(“I think there used to it now”) Sombra told Opal.
(“They’ve probably realised it’s this or you starve”)
(“Can we go East today?”)
(“…sure”) they walked silently, there was a few ponies out on the street. They mostly kept to the ally’s between houses, occasionally crossing over. Again they crossed into the middle grass land and headed towards a forest. Halfway through Sombra found a dirty pathway. The grass was slowly claiming it and the soil had spilled over.
(“Look, a path, we should follow it”) Sombra said.
(“Er, well game doesn’t usually follow pathways, theirs not exactly grass on it, and you would stick out easier”)
(“I still want to follow it, but I’ll get like, a rabbit first. I think my teeth are big enough now”) Sombra turned from the pathway, scanning for holes in the grass and dirt. He knew they were often by trees and undergrowth, but there was no harm in checking. He had learnt where the burrows exactly were on the other side of the empire. It didn’t take long though for him to spot a pair of long grey ears sticking up through the grass. The back of the ears, he was behind it. He hunkered down, but he kept his leg mobile beneath him.
(“Tilt your head, your horn has grown a little now, it sticks up straight. Tilting it will make it look like it’s just something fallen over, and not propped up by a skull”) Opal told him. Sombra jutted to a halt as the rabbit shifted, the inner ear flicking at him. It went back to its grass, his hind legs tensed. Muscles coiled like a spring. Wait. Wait. He pounced and clamped down.
(“I did it!”) the rabbit’s last strain of movement wriggled between his teeth and then it stopped.
(“You did well for your first rabbit. Many struggle considering how skittish they are”)
(“How do I cook it?”)
(“Honestly, I don’t know. I think most just eat them as is. They never sold for much so there just eaten”) Sombra put the dead rabbit down and ripped its belly open. It had been so long since he had the taste of meat. The last time was a piece of Amore, at least rabbit tasted better. The blood was still arm, the bones crunched between his teeth. What he would do for a good slab of wyvern, spiced with whatever magic his grandam seemed to use. Tormentors were alright, but it depended what part you got. He liked the legs the best, boiled in the shell. The rabbit was gone now, just a slightly damp patch of soil was left.
(“Can I follow the path now?”)
(“You…you do remember what’s up their right?”) Sombra stared at him blankly.
(“You’re not taking no for an answer are you”)
(“No”)
(“You know what, sometimes it’s best to learn things the hard way…but I guess that’s the only way to learn this so off we go I guess”) Opal hopped onto his rump, sounding oddly enthusiastic, as Sombra stood up. He trotted back over to the path, then followed it into the trees. Patches of snow were resting sparsely over the ground.
(“She’s reduced the barrier to hide it, how clever”) Sombra twisted his head back to look at him.
(“Snows very good at burying stuff, especially from the North”) Sombra continued up the path, which was getting steeper. He could just about trot up it now, he used the giant roots of the redwoods like stairs. He looked to one side.
Between the trees there was a sea of pitch black. Yet there was colourful patches. Often there was a patch of no colour, amongst the blues, reds, yellows and every other colour but green. If he looked beneath them, there was a tangle of silver. He took some steps towards it. He realised they were flowers. Large petal dense black flowers, like roses. Each petal was tipped with a vibrant colour. The colour shimmered as if it was glitter. The silver was the stems, growing out of- he stumbled backwards. He landed hard on the ground, pushing himself back to the path.
A large skull stared him down. the silver stems of the roses sprouted from it, one from the mouth, another from the eye socket. There was still strands of half rotten black flesh strained across it. The teeth giant, roots stretching up into the nose bone. Fractured and broken. There was an echo, deep in his mind. yet it was not his voice.
(*And the black roses they bloom from our graves…*) across the chord Opal was singing to himself, yet he was not speaking to him. Slow, mellow, respectful. Sombra weekly raised back onto his legs. He trundled back to the path. And yet he found himself going up the path, not back down.
(*Built to last till the end of our days…*) there was more roses, more dense now. Bodies piled on top of each other between the trees. Almost as if they were thrown down the steep slope. He started seeing cut bricks stacked neatly along the path.
(*But when the time comes, the black roses will fall…*) A structure came into view. Looming from the side of a mountain, archways of stone stacked on top of each other. Then there was more bodies, covered in snow now. It was in thick layers, hiding everything. The structure towered high, yet still it was hidden behind all the redwoods.
(*Crumbling away to times embrace*) Sombra stood at an entrance way now. The stone was freezing over, frost in the cracks. There was staircases to his sides, going up to the archways. They were the only way to go from here. He climbed one, it was thin and cramped for just him. Through a smaller door like arch, he found himself looking out into a circle. The structure was a ring of seats, all focused on a central arena.
It was mostly blanketed in snow now, wind was rebounding in a spiral inside. Not strong, but certainly cold. There was a large mound around one side. A large animal of a sort. It was weird though, it didn’t look like one thing. There was a severed insectoid like tail. Then a pair of bat like wings, its head was mostly covered by a thick mane of fur. however Sombra’s eyes were drawn to a lone body in the middle. It was preserved in frost, and it was an umbrum. Fully grown yet skin and bone, pelted with arrows. There were roses growing out of them, frozen stiff. Even through the frost, Sombra could swear he could recognise the umbrum.
(“What are you doing? Why is your curiosity so morbid?) Opal questioned Sombra as he hopped down to the ground. He approached the umbrum. Its roses were blue tipped, so were the cracked hooves and claws. The horn was long sawn off. They were covered in more animal like scars, not so much the chains on the neck and legs. Sombra peered down onto the face. A shaggy overgrown beard and long thin hair. The eyes were half open, a foggy haze from being exposed was over them. The royal blue had faded beneath it, even so he recognised them.
“S-siri…get up” Sombra tugged at an ear, nothing moved. He tugged some more.
“Please, get up” he collapsed down to curl up into his sires cold neck. Opal stood there, a little deflated looking. His wings weren’t tightly tucked into his side.
(“I’m sorry, he’s not getting up”)
(“Why not?”)
(“He’s dead. I won’t sugar coat it, it is something that can only be learnt the hard way”) Sombra sat there, sniffling, tears dripped into the snow. He sat their for what seemed like hours to him.
(“We should go home, the sun is starting to set”) he reached a wing out and patted down Sombra’s eyes. It took a little coaxing to get Sombra standing again, he didn’t want to leave. But he got up in the end. They walked silently down the hill, occasionally Sombra lost his footing and slipped. Opal wasn’t sitting on his back, instead walking along side him, hopping down the root steps which were to big for him.
By the time they got home, Hope and Cloud were having tea, Miss Chestnut wasn’t home yet. Sombra walked straight past them, and up the stairs to his bedroom. He curled up into his blankets.