“We call it the Forgetting Rock,” Alphabittle explained softly, even though they stood alone at the edge of the forest. The forest was called Bridlewood, and even though his memories slid out of his grasp like so many stranded fish after a storm (where did he know fish from?), he tried to hold onto every bit of information Alphabittle was giving him.
“Forgetting Rock,” Argyle repeated back to him, and pulled his cloak closer around him as a deep shiver went through him. He didn’t remember it, but looking at it made the pit of his stomach churn. Something bad whispered at the edges of his thoughts, something he couldn’t quite grab onto.
“I found you just over there, out cold,” Alphabittle explained, nodding his head towards a small copse of sapling trees on the path between the boulder and the forest. The boulder sat some yards away from a friendly-looking signpost, as benign as any rock could be. “It’s meant to be protective. No pony is supposed to find us here.”
“Why?”
Alphabittle’s eyes slid to Argyle sidelong, but he hesitated to answer when he saw only confusion in the blue pony’s gaze. What had been guff came out instead softer, more careful. “The unicorns of Bridlewood are very afraid of strangers finding us. There are… bad strangers in the world.”
Argyle wasn’t sure why Alphabittle was being so cautious, until it suddenly smacked him in the face. “But I’m a stranger! What if I’m the bad stranger?”
Alphabittle’s laughter was so sudden, so booming, that it startled Argyle very nearly off of his hooves.
“Sorry. There you go,” and with one mighty foreleg, he lifted Argyle back upright again. “I don’t think you are a bad stranger. I think you are probably just somepony who got lost and happened to wander a little too close to our trap.”
“Well, that’s very forgiving of you,” Argyle said a little sharply, not wanting to admit how embarrassed he had been to be knocked over by a laugh.
“I also checked you for any dangerous contraband before you woke up,” Alphabittle added, and it was Argyle’s turn to try and hide his reaction with a little cough.
“That was a good idea, probably, yes.” Argyle was grateful when Alphabittle’s laugh was much softer the second time, low and rumbly in his chest. “When will my memory come back? When can I go home?”
“If you remember where to go,” Alphabittle said with a little step forward, leading him out of the forest, “then you may go now. Whenever you’d like.”
Argyle took a confident step forward, then another, and stopped. He stared out at the verdant meadow, the saplings swaying gently in a breeze, the seemingly innocuous boulder that radiated malice from the center of a picturesque scene. He swallowed. He waited for a guiding memory that never came.
The pair stood quietly for a moment before Alphabittle broke the silence. “You will stay with me, then. Until you can remember how to get home.”
“What if I never remember?” Argyle asked, and his voice was softer than he had meant it to be, barely above a whisper.
“Then we will grow old together,” and there was some emotion in his voice that made Argyle turn, but Alphabittle had already turned away to walk back into the forest. “Keep that hood up,” he called over his shoulder, and didn’t bother to slow down so that Argyle had to trot to catch up to him to ask his next question.
“Why? You don’t have a hood.”
“Because I have a horn,” Alphabittle answered evenly.
Argyle smoothed his hoof over his forehead, and gasped sharply when he found nothing there. That was the panic that had zanged though his thoughts, the same feeling he got banging his elbow on a table. He wasn’t a unicorn - but Alphabittle was. All of Bridlewood was. And that was bad … for some reason.
Alphabittle was looking at him, and Argyle realized that he had stopped walking. “But I - I don’t -”
“If anypony asks,” Alphabittle continued smoothly, “you’re my cousin from a distant branch of my mother’s family tree who came from a far away forest, which was why you didn’t know about the Forgetting Rock. We will find you a substitute horn - soon. For now, let me do the talking.”
It wasn’t until later that night, when Argyle was tucked back onto the sofa beneath a thick mound of hoof-made quilts and with a belly full of a delicious dinner, that he fully understood the weight of what was happening. He was an earth pony; another fact that slotted into his memory, next to his name. Not a unicorn, but an earth pony, one who had wandered into a foreign land, and stumbled into a trap intended to keep ponies exactly like him away.
Why, he wondered, was Alphabittle so ready to take him under his wing? His final thought before falling asleep was that he may someday remember who he was, but he wasn’t sure he would ever understand Alphabittle.