Radiowaves

by mushroompone


AUGUST

The summer ends, as any day does, in a long, orange afternoon.

August is a time of constant closing and ending. It is a time when, no matter how old you are, you can feel the end of freedom rushing towards you like a freight train. Or perhaps it was the feeling of being shackled to a hard place with a rock on the horizon.

Night Glider had been feeling more shackled than usual of late. Between her tension with Clear Sky, the unremitting voices of long-lost lovers on her radio, and the promise of a return to real life in just two short months, she couldn't decide whether she needed the summer to go on twice as long as usual or just stop in its tracks right here.

She stared out at the woods as she retrieved a weak breakfast of a half-eaten protein bar from underneath her cot, as if expecting them to vanish should she dare blink.

The woods, however, stayed right where they were.

Night rubbed her eyes and took another bite of her stale protein bar.

She knew that watching for wildfires was technically the only thing in her job description (she had been promised the occasional chance to scold a negligent camper, though this opportunity had not yet arisen). Yet, somehow, she felt that leaving the voices an unsolved mystery would be abandoning her post.

Is this what magic did to you?

It made you… liable?

"Hey, Night? You up yet?"

Night was torn from her listless staring by the sound of Clear Sky on the radio. She sighed and grabbed hers out of its cradle. "Yeah. What's up?"

Sky, in her awkward stiffness borne of an admissionless admission, hesitated a moment. "I just wanted to let you know that, um… it's looking like wildfire conditions out there," she said. "So. Be careful."

Night Glider did not look at the radio. "Copy."

Clear Sky did not attempt a reply.

The voices had been silent these past few days. Night had tried not to read into that, but it was nigh impossible not to—how else was she meant to respond? First Sky wouldn't talk, now even the voices had decided to shut up?

Fat chance. Terrible timing on their part; their story was just getting interesting.

Night rubbed the sleep from her eyes and turned to her notebook. It was a messy thing, scribbled all over in the smallest writing she could manage, but it still had one great advantage over Star Hunter's snarl of papers: it was still in chronological order.

The book was still open to the previous encounter's notes, dated a little over a week ago:

Tybalt Trail, NW point

M: —acting ridiculous. No way this is safe

S: You don't trust me

M: I don't trust this thing

S: But you don't trust me either. I know it

M: [??] —taking things personally. I'm not talking about YOU I'm talking about—

S: I know you're not normally a trusting creature, but I thought that—

M: Why would you say that?

[long pause]

M: Seriously. Why would you say that?

[long pause]

S: I'll fix the lean-to. Sorry.

Night frowned, overcome by deja vu, and flipped back a few pages. Though not precisely the same words, the same spirit of vitriolic and deep-biting argument could be found in many prior entries.

Their arguments were some of the harder things to really understand. Even just catching snippets of their conversations about each other, or about what their lives had been like before coming to the park, most missing pieces fell into place.

The arguments, however, seemed to run deeper than that. So few words truly exchanged. Quick, heated back-and-forth which communicated an intimacy gone sour, an ability to complete each other's sentences that was twisted into a method of constantly shouting over one another.

It spoke to a much richer life outside of the woods. One that only occasionally managed to seep into the park's actual boundaries, infecting them quickly and completely.

Night sighed, turned to a fresh page, and dated it. She closed her eyes and silently wished that today would turn up more than another blank page.

She had other wishes in mind, but she chose not to give voice to them. Not even in her head.

And, with that, Night Glider was off to work.

The woods were… perhaps not arid, but certainly a new sort of heat. Night had thought naively that, by now, she had felt them all, but August brought a strange feeling to the air. She swore she could see it as she trotted the familiar paths: a tint of orange-yellow that had baked itself into every surface.

Night considered radioing Sky to ask about the weather. She loved to talk about the weather—one of few living ponies for whom that sort of excitement was truly genuine.

But, despite the unfamiliar feeling of the radio bouncing against her hip, Night chose to leave it.

Sky came here to forget. Night was becoming a reminder.


It started with a feeling.

Night Glider was accustomed to dryness and heat. She had spent some formative time living in the desert, after all, and still considered it her home. She knew well the way the sun would bake her back, the tingling of an oncoming sunburn, the ache in her throat simply from breathing.

She knew what danger felt like, too. Long ago, she had learned to feel it instinctually. Even the slightest thing out of place, the tiniest ripple in the air, would send a shot of adrenaline through her core.

This was different, though. A different sort of heat. A different sort of feeling.

More than any one creature in danger. This feeling bubbled up from the ground itself.

Heat.

A wave of heat.

Not down, but sideways. Rolling along the forest floor like lava, like fog. Not like the sun at all.

Night Glider felt her wings begin to itch. At times, the itch in her wings had been so powerful as to wake her from a sound sleep, tangled up in blankets, spasming frantically to get away.

The heat baked her cheek.

Her wings shuddered.

She held them firm with all her might.

A sound.

A sound like the trees. But not the trees. Not leaves rustling. Not static humming. But so similar, she couldn't think of the word.

A smell, too. Sharp and strong. Bitter, almost. Her throat ached. A word for this, too, but she couldn't find it.

And a bigger word.

A word for it all.

The word eluded her. The word she knew she had to say. She needed to pull the radio off her hip and say that word into it, as quickly as she could.

"Do you smell something?" 

A familiar voice from her hip. Nameless and masculine.

A scoff. "It's probably you."

"I'm perfectly clean," he snapped. "It's you who—"

"Would it kill you to bathe? I know we're in the woods and all but—"

"Ponies are not dirtier than griffins! That's such a—"

"Wait a minute."

"—such a stereotype, and I can't believe—"

"Shut it."

They were quiet.

She sniffed. "Smells like… smoke."

Smoke.

Crackle.

Fire.

Night Glider murmured something wordless as her hoof flew to the radio at her hip. 

Adrenaline does funny things. Those who know well that icy feeling often come to trust it as a guiding force, something they can surrender to entirely in the face of fear. It brought a calm to the mind, a sort of transcendental blankness, even as the body fought for survival.

Night Glider had been one such pony. Her time in search and rescue had taught her to allow autopilot to consume her. For her, the blankness was part adrenaline, and part talent—something innate to her since her earliest memories.

And yet, as Night began to feel that wave of heat bearing down upon her, she found herself frozen.

Her hoof on the radio.

The distant crackle of the flames.

The smell of smoke, her lungs fighting against it.

The adrenaline pooled within her. Nowhere to go. No action to take. Only growing. Burning.

Burning.

Stuck.

Radio.

Night managed to unhook the radio from her saddlebags and hold it to her face. She pressed it against her cheek, even the plastic warmer than it should have been, the vents of the speaker tickling her fur.

“Fire,” she said. Quietly. “Sky, fire.”

A pause.

The longest pause there had ever been between them.

"Where?" Sky asked. "And how sure are you?"

Night's voice trembled. "I-I don't know. Very sure."

"Stay calm. What window are you looking out of?"

Night swallowed hard. "I'm in the woods."

Another pause.

The heat rose.

"Night?"

"Yes?"

"I need you to listen very carefully."

"Okay."

"You need to get above the canopy."

Night's wings shook. Beyond a tremble. Something violent. Something fighting to take over. "I can't."

"What?"

"I-I can't, I just can't." Her voice, despite the shaking which had taken over her body, remained remarkably even. "I'm going to run."

"Night, listen to me! You need to get away from the smoke, or you're going to—"

But Sky's voice faded beneath the pounding of hooves and the ever-increasing sound of crackling flame.

It was easy to run.

That feeling of weightlessness came over Night, a total release that allowed her to be carried upon the pools and rivers of hot air which blew over and through her. She hooves beat the ground. Her head bobbed with every stride. Her heart and lungs pumped with all their might.

The crackle grew to a roar.

At first, Night thought the tiny pricks she felt on her face and back might have been raindrops. A fleeting feeling, fading before it even registered.

Rain would have been lovely.

But the prick caught the soft inner surface of her ear, and it burned terribly before crumbling away.

Embers.

Not bigger than fat snowflakes, blowing across the path. Their heat so intense it could be mistaken for cold.

Like freezing rain.

Like hail.

Needles of surprising pain which pierced her skin.

Just like—

"Small rockslide to the northeast. Can we get a scout to rope it off?"

Night Glider squeezed her eyes shut against the memory.

"I'll do it," she said. "Time me."

It had been raining that night.

Freezing daggers.

Night Glider growled to herself.

Her wings convulsed against her sides.

"You sure you're up for this?"

"To rope off a trail? Yeah, I think I can handle it."

"But the weather—"

"Screw the weather."

Screw the weather.

Famous last words.

The conditions were fine, but Night Glider was not. 

Hadn't been in a long time.

Hooves met stone, breaking her out of the memory.

Night Glider followed the feeling and the sound of the stone beneath her, despite the tunnel which closed in on her vision.

Stone didn't burn.

Stone was safe.

Safer, at least.

She could already feel the heat letting up. The wildfire fading behind her as she finally got ahead of it, carried by the frantic thumping of her heart as opposed to the fire's limited sources of fuel.

As she did, the sound of her radio slowly returned to her ears.

"Night Glider, come in!"

"—move! Get above the canopy!"

"My wings! My feathers!"

"Night Glider, please come in!"

"Go without me, babygirl!"

"I'm not leaving you!"

"Night Glider!"

An endless chorus of anguished and panicked shouting. Some voices from now, some from an unspecified past. 

Night did not pause to retrieve her radio. The shouting carried her forward.

Hooves on stone. Wings flared, pumping hard and wild to keep her tiny frame from tumbling over. Embers nipping her heels like a sheepdog. Heart hammering. Lungs fighting.

And then, like a miracle, Night Glider stumbled forward, up the stones, slamming to the floor of a tiny alcove.

Her wind was forced from her chest. For a long moment, Night found that she could not breathe, blink, or move. The adrenaline shot, at last, into her mind, and the word finally came to her:

Wildfire.

She gasped.

The air still smelled of smoke, but the scent of cool, musty stone was just as strong.

“Night Glider, pick up!” Sky’s frantic voice echoed through the alcove.

Autopilot. Night’s hoof flew to her hip. “I’m here.”

A long pause.

Not a laughing pause. Not a thinking pause. A catch-your-breath pause.

“Thank Celestia,” Sky huffed, her own voice strained with heavy breathing. “Where in the name of the sisters are you?! I need to report this, and you need to get out of there!”

Night sucked in a deep breath and turned to look back out at the forest.

It wasn’t as spectacular as she thought it would be. Very little of the woods actually roared with bright orange and red flames—rather, a magnificent black plume of smoke rose into the sky, a sinister glow of fire lurking in its heart.

Not nearly as far below her as she thought.

She looked to her left and right. She spotted the tiny speck of her tower on the horizon.

“I’m, uh… I’m on the ridge,” Night managed to gasp.

“I think I’m seeing the smoke now. Southeast of your tower, right?”

Night did her best to orient herself. “Sounds right.”

“And where are you?”

“Close,” Night said, before breaking into a small fit of coughing. “I’m in a… I dunno, a little cave or something on the side of the mountain.”

“How close?”

Night looked out at the fire. “Close enough. It’s hot in here.”

Sky swore softly under her breath. “Sit tight, okay?”

The radio cut out.

Night clenched her teeth. She sat down hard on the stone, looking out at the smoke as it spiraled into the sky. 

“—going to get out of here,” her radio muttered. “I can’t believe I was this stupid!”

“D-don’t talk like that,” the stallion’s voice stuttered. “We’re gonna be—”

“Don’t!” the griffin snapped back. “You talked me into this! You talked me into living in wildfire country because of some idiot fairytale!”

A silence.

“This was never gonna work.”

“What?” the stallion replied. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Us,” the griffin replied. “We have issues!”

“Society has the issue!” the stallion replied. “That’s why we came out here, remember?”

“The interspecies thing is not what I’m talking about!” the griffin roared.

The sound echoed through the alcove.

Night felt her spine prickle.

“You have problems,” the griffin went on. “I have problems! And the problems don’t go away just because we decide to ignore them!”

“But that’s the point!” the stallion argued. “We’re choosing, babygirl! We’re choosing to forget about it!”

“We chose to ignore everything! We blundered out into a wildfire!”

The stallion did not reply.

“And now we’re gonna die. Because we couldn’t just break up already.”

The quiet lingered a moment longer. Just static hissing in the back of the cave. Then, with a click, the voices of the lovers went quiet for the last time.

Night clutched the radio close to her chest. It was a familiar feeling, now—a strange comfort in the face of the rising heat.

And the heat did rise.

The fire, while not entirely out of control just yet, was spreading.

She could see it now. The flames growing. Moving like a herd, a flock of birds, natural in a way that was still entirely foreign and eerie and wrong.

Reaching the mouth of the cave.

Sealing her in.

The heat began to feel like an oven.

Like the wave that hits you, unexpectedly, as you open the door. A sudden and strange brand of pain, a sickly dark surprise in a moment of complete innocence.

“I’m sorry,” the stallion said.

Night clutched the radio clever tighter.

“You need more than I can give you, okay?” the griffon replied.

“I-I know…”

“And… I’m sorry. That I can’t,” she added. “And that I acted like I could.”

A silence.

Crackling.

Crackling flame.

Crackling static.

It tingled.

“So?” the griffon prompted.

“What?”

“Your turn,” she said darkly. “Say your thing. Die with some dignity.”

Quiet.

Tingle.

“Or don’t. I don’t care.”

“I never got you,” he said. Quickly. Softly. “I think I just… liked that you liked me. And I was scared to lose it.”

Quiet.

Crackle.

Tingle.

“Well.” The griffon grunted. “There ya go.”

The radio clicked off.

Night felt it. Right then, for the first time.

The phantom.

It wasn’t quite like Sky had described. It wasn’t something she’d forgotten. Not a thought hanging out in space, waiting to be caught when you turned to leave the room.

This was something else. A thought without form. Without words. A simple, complete, concrete idea that she couldn’t ever hope to describe.

It made her feel very heavy. Not at all the renewing lightness she had anticipated when all the pieces, at long last, came together. It made the room feel much smaller, but the fire so much further away.

A small feeling.

A dark feeling.

A cold, close, isolating feeling.

She pulled the radio away from her chest, feeling keenly the impression it left in her clammy skin as she did.

Slowly, carefully, she held it to her lips.

“Sky?”

“They’re coming, Night. Just hold on, okay?”

“A while back, someone took my cutie mark,” Night said, an overwhelming calm in her words.

Sky stuttered. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I took it back,” she continued. “I mean… it’s there. But I don’t think it’s really back yet. Y’know?”

“I need you to keep your head above the smoke and stay with me, Night,” Sky ordered.

Her words tight.

Trying to ignore.

Trying to forget.

“That first time I really tried to use it again, I just… broke.” Night chewed thoughtfully on the inside of her cheek, watching the flames roll through the woods beyond her hollow. “All that stuff I thought made me me was gone. Like my brain still had it locked up, even though the mark was back on my flank.”

She lifted one wing and looked back at her cutie mark.

It still felt wrong. 

Like it was someone else’s.

Like she didn’t deserve it anymore.

“Anyway. That’s what I came here to forget,” Night said. “Someone took my wings away from me, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get them back.”

Silence.

Night tried to imagine that she was still there.

But maybe she wasn’t.

Whether or not she had heard, though, the heaviness lifted from Night’s chest. SHe closed her eyes and felt a wave of calm come over her, relaxing her every joint and muscle, as she fell against the wall of the cave.

“I just wanted you to know,” she muttered. “Just in case.”

The smoke was creeping in, now.

Thick and gray. Almost like fog, but for its sharpness. A bladelike feeling which caused Night’s lungs to ache terribly.

“Your turn,” she added in a quick rasp. “Tell me your thing.”

A silence.

Night shimmied against the stone. 

She tried to imagine what Sky’s secret might be—a rabbithole into which she had forbid herself entry—but came up empty. Whether that was from the smoke or from the near perfect picture of Sky she held so carefully in her mind, Night wasn’t sure.

And then:

“My daughter,” Sky said.

So small.

So meek.

Night sucked in a hoarse breath. “I knew you had a daughter,” she said. “The mare at reception told me.”

“Not that I have one,” she said, very nearly laughing. A joke she longed to share, even now. “That I… I can’t see her right now,” she explained, tears choking her voice.

“Oh,” Night said.

She wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

“It’s—she just looks so much like her father, and he’s—” she caught herself. “I hate myself for it.”

The flames grew.

Climbed higher.

Roared louder.

“I just hate myself,” she repeated. “And I want to forget it all. And sometimes I almost can, and then I hate myself so much more.”

Night reached up to rub her eye, though it hardly chased away the sting of the smoke. “I don’t hate you,” she said.

A cough snuck out.

“Night?” Sky called, desperation quickly taking hold. “Keep your head above the smoke! Don’t breathe it!”

Night coughed again.

Small.

Meek.

Her hoof, quickly losing strength, quivered against the button on the radio.

“I don’t hate you, Sky,” she murmured. 

Her tongue heavy.

Her eyes stinging.

Tears rolling down her cheeks, though she could hardly feel them.

The radio, at last, slipped from her hoof and tumbled to the floor of the cave.

“I don’t hate you at all.”