//------------------------------//
// 13 - The Fall 
// Story: Cammie 
// by Jarvy Jared 
//------------------------------//

The Crystal Tearoom throbbed with a purple offered piously by the colony of lava lamps standing stoic vigil behind a short wooden stage up front, and a thick atmosphere of subdued excitement—one that smelled, oddly, of exotic incense, and sounded of melodic jazz—carried itself over every table, booth, seat, and occupant. It was the most packed of the shop that Chamomile had ever seen—and for a poetry SLAM, of all things, which by its very characteristics was unlike Alphabittle’s other planned Party Game Nights. It was the first of its kind, but one would not have been rebuffed for believing it was a popular tradition for Bridlewood. Seemingly all of its residents had filed in, from the old to the young, impossibly swept up in the equally impossible splendor of promising poetic amateurs and their precocious attempts at the art. The normally dull-eyed unicorns now looked at the currently empty stage with some interest, while the less dour—the ones who had not by their magic’s absence lost themselves quite yet—chattered at their tables in muted voices. 
Food and drink were being served, and it was really for this reason that Chamomile had come, more than any interest in poetry. Her little tea shop, recently opened, had enjoyed moderate success in the small sector of Bridlewood in which it resided, but she had expressed a desire to expand into other fields of business. Recently, as though being driven by the yarn of fate itself, Alphabittle came to her and offered a proposition—the Tearoom’s selection was limited, and her shop’s exotic, home-grown, customized mixes could spice up his stock. But Chamomile knew a shrewd business deal was underway, and so she decided to try and manipulate the offer: show her that entering into a partnership wouldn’t pull business away from her, and maybe she’d consider officially accepting it.
“How about this, then?” Alphabittle said. “Give me a few samples of your most exotic mixes. For the upcoming poetry SLAM, we’ll dispense them, generate interest, and direct those who want more to your shop.”
“But then you won’t make money from your tea.”
“Truthfully, it’s not the tea I need. It’s the bodies, the customers. What do you say? My place gets a little more presence, and you get free advertisement!”
Eventually she agreed to the little experience—hence why she was here now. A candle that smelled of vanilla and strawberry burned in front of her, and from behind its flame she watched and observed the other customers as they sat and ate and drank her tea, gauging their reactions.
The SLAM would not begin for a few more minutes, so she had plenty of time to sit and observe. More ponies streamed in through the crystal-polished doors like souls of purgatory looking for the ladder of ascension.
“Pardon me, is this seat taken?”
Chamomile turned her gaze. Another unicorn, male, with moss-green fur and a dark, thick mane, stood smilingly by her. There was something altogether pleasant about him—perhaps it was the serenity of his smile, which did not seem overly sanguine as to be cheesy, or the twinkling sparkle in his eyes that spoke of the secrets of the stars, and which seemed to hold the whole of her in its infinite fixations.
“It’s not,” she said. “Would you like it?”
“I would.” He sat down opposite of her. She noted he had a small satchel bag, and that sticking out of it were some scraps of paper.
“I’m Astral, by the way,” he said.
“Chamomile. What have you got there?”
“These?” He lifted the flap of the bag, as though surprised that it was with him. “Oh, they’re nothing, really. Just some scruples of creative integrity.”
“Poems?”
He nodded. His smile became a little self-conscious, but he did not appear wholly embarrassed by the admission. “And songs. Sometimes.”
“Are you entering the SLAM, then?”
“Me? Oh, heavens, no,” he laughed. “I’m just an amateur. I’ve hardly actually tried to write them—and even if I did, well, I doubt I’d qualify.”
She thought about that word: amateur. She recalled a lesson from her youth, from a teacher who was one of those rare unicorns who could still act cheerful and alive in the face of magic’s absence. It was a funny word, because while it meant somepony who did something with less skill than a professional, it actually came from an older word, “amare,” to love—and the noun form of it, “amator,” a lover. An amateur was someone who did a thing purely for the love of it—but she didn’t say this, kept it to herself, because it did not seem an appropriate time or place to foist such passionate revelations upon a stranger.
One of the waiters came by and deposited two cups in front of them. Taking her own but not drinking it, she observed as Astral took a spoon and stirred the contents of his cup. She wondered, rather suddenly, how he might like her tea, and with that thought there emerged in her some nervous expectation. She watched, with her breath held, as he brought the cup to his lips and drank slowly, clearly savoring every drop.
“That,” he said, putting his cup down, “is different from Alphabittle’s usual.”
“It should,” she said, unable to contain a note of pride. “After all, I made it.”
“Did you?”
One might have thought the question to be condescending, but from Astral, it sounded like he was genuinely impressed. Chamomile, her smile only somewhat obscured by the shadows that fell from the ceiling like talons, began to explain what she meant. When her explanation was done, Astral looked back at his tea, then up at her, with a look that conveyed he was delighted. 
“Well, you’ve earned yourself an eager customer,” he said jovially. The flames from the candle lit his face and made his smile seemingly glow with otherworldly light. “I think, if it’s all right, I’d like to come by your shop one day.”
“Glad to hear it,” she replied, and she knew she meant it, too. “And that would be more than all right, Astral.” And she took her own sip of her tea and was pleasantly surprised to discover it tasted fresh and new to her all the same. 
Gradually, over their drinks, their conversation shifted back to the event. Astral asked if she was here, like he was, to listen. “Yes,” she replied, humming a little thoughtfully to herself. She glanced away from him towards the stage, which remained empty. The chattering around them had grown a level, and some ponies expressed a small degree of impatience. “I’m honestly not sure what to expect. They didn’t give us a ‘program’s guide’ or anything.”
“I think that’s intentional. Adds to the atmosphere. You don’t know what to expect or from whom you’d hear it, so you can’t come up with any preconceptions.”
“This is for the poetry?”
“For the poetic performance. That’s what a SLAM is, after all.” He said this with the air of a sage, but none of the condescension, which only endeared him more to her. 
But she would have no time to tell him this, either, not for many years. For at once, the purple glow was banished, snuffed out by an invisible hoof; then there came a single, pale, moon-like spotlight falling upon a lone microphone. From the side came a light-gray mare with a deep-violet mane and a red beret and collar. She looked young. She approached the microphone, casting an almost priest-stern gaze over the room, silencing them. Then, in a rough, slightly monotone voice, she said:
“Please listen politely, and from your applause, refrain: welcome our first performer, Magenta Rain.”
She left the stage. A stallion took her place, ordinary in appearance in every way. He had on a pair of small reading glasses and looked closer to a cozy academic than a poet.
He announced the title, then performed.
Later, Chamomile would be unable to recall what he had performed. It had to be a kind of magic, the kind which was not loathed and scorned under the banner of suspicion and jinxes—it was an older, primeval, universal kind of magic, the magic of words. But though most of its intonations failed to collect in her memory, she knew she’d been moved—not quite to tears, but close to it, like that poet had reached out and touched her heart and revealed the aching desires and fears which she had kept hidden from the unkind world. And she knew that he had moved everyone else, for when she thought of this night in the days and months and years to come—in the many shades of happiness and shadows of despair, in the blistering summers and winters, in the empty expanse of her heart before and after—she could vividly see the strange yet calming tears sprinkled in many eyes, and hear the awed silence that transformed that humble tearoom into a ceremonial blessing-ground for them all. Who knew words could be so transformative, could remind anyone of what life was, what even love was?
She couldn’t recall the whole thing, no matter how hard she tried, yet, with exact, tremendous clarity, she could the last four lines:



And we, who think of ascending
joy, would feel the emotion,
that almost dismays us,
when a joyful thing falls?



“That’s my favorite line, too,” Astral would say years into their future, before his life came to a close. “But it’s probably also the scariest, don’t you think?”
“How so?”
“Think about it. A joyful thing falls—then what? You can’t just fall, you fall, and something stops you.” He’d look at her and become grave-faced. “A joyful thing falls—but it’s not the fall that dismays us. It’s the stop at the end.”











She stopped falling and came awake with a strangled gasp.
Yet she could hardly be sure she was even awake. A heavy darkness had thrown an impenetrable funeral veil over her eyes. She felt herself blink rapidly; nothing changed. Her heart leaped into her throat, but then, she remembered her horn, and attempted to activate her magic.
Almost as soon as that pale glow lit up the space before her, her head began to ache. A staticky sound buzzed, and her magic momentarily sputtered, before recovering.
She was in some sort of cavern. Her horn-light revealed an intimidating array of stalactites and stalagmites jabbing the air like dispatched teeth. Boulders her size and then some stood nearby, blanketed by miniscule particles of floating, nomadic dust. Her light was not very powerful; it reached only a few feet around her. She was afraid that trying to intensify it would inadvertently dispel it entirely, leaving her once again blind.
Experimentally, she stood. A soreness seemed to bubble all over her body, but she didn’t appear to suffer any extraneous injuries. A glance downward revealed the state of her gear: her parka was shredded, and her scarf lay crumpled under her hooves. She picked it up, wrapping it methodically around a leg.
“Hello?” she called into the dark, startled by how hoarse her voice was. She coughed hard, lungs squeezing air and spit out of her. She swallowed, tried again: “Clip? Polar? Gaea?”
For a moment there was nothing but the echo of her voice, and the sound of her heart beating a deafening tune in her ears; then:
“Chamomile?” Whispery, deathly and whispery.
That was Gaea. Her voice was faint, but she seemed to be somewhere far in front of Chamomile.  “Where are you?  Are you hurt?”
It was a few seconds—a few heart-stopping seconds—before Gaea was able to answer, still with that same weak voice. “A… A little. I can see your light—I don’t know where I am.”
“Can you come towards me?”
A grunt followed, then tense seconds. Gaea let out a pained sigh. “No good. I think I’m trapped under something.”
Chamomile tried to stow her panic long enough to think of what to do. She tested her hooves against the ground. Her joints ached but did not lock up from the pain. She looked up and into the dark, towards where she imagined Gaea was. 
“Stay there. I’ll come to you.”
“How?”
“Just… make some noise. I’ll try to locate you that way.”
There was more silence, and briefly, Chamomile feared Gaea had lapsed into unconsciousness. But then, with a weak, staccato manner, the darkness of the cave was illuminated by that haunted, melancholic melody Gaea had started singing a few nights ago.

Every time I shed tears
In the last past years
When I pass through the hills

Chamomile began to follow it. Her limited light source, combined with the abnormal acoustics of the cavern and the shuddering breaths Gaea took between each verse, intensified her fear to teeth-chattering levels, forcing her to move far more slowly than she would have liked. Every shadow seemed to hide a ghoul, every dark crevice some unspeakable horror—but she tried to focus on Gaea’s singing, and Gaea’s singing only, no matter how haunting it was. A part of her wondered why this song in particular had been chosen, what it meant to Gaea.

Oh, what images return
Oh, I yearn
For the roots of the woods
That origin of all my strong and strange moods

Yet, for how haunting it was, hearing it comforted Chamomile. It was not just because it evidenced that Gaea was alive. Chamomile thought about her own woods, about Bridlewood, about her son—all in fragmentary images that scattered like frightened morning doves in her mind. Thinking of home brought a bittersweet achiness to her heart, but it was one that, inexplicably, she thought she could take comfort in.

	I lost something in the hills
	I lost something in the hills

Finally, she found her. 
Upon seeing her, Gaea stopped singing. “Oh, thank goodness. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to sing the whole thing.”
“It was lovely… where was it from?”
“It was something Dad used to sing, actually, on the farm…”
“Well, you sang it very well.”
Chamomile said this with forced levity. It caused Gaea to chuckle, allowing Chamomile, for a moment, to ignore the dried blood that ran down the side of her face, darkening the lovely pink underneath. Her mane had soaked up a little bit of the blood in its tail, and the rest of it was covered in dirt and mud. The goggles she wore were cracked in one lens, but it appeared they’d managed to protect her eyes. Looking past her, Chamomile saw what kept her on the ground; a slate slab lay across her hind hooves.
“I… don’t suppose you could help me out?” Gaea said weakly. 
Chamomile nodded. She concentrated her magic on the rock and forced it to rise, little pebbles crumbling off the surface. Either it was heavier than it looked—which was already quite impressive—or she’d been severely weakened by the fall. “I can’t do this for too long,” she grunted. “Can you slip out on your own?”
“A little bit more—”
Already her magic and light were beginning to splutter. She couldn’t tell if she was even lifting the slab anymore—she prayed that she was.
Gaea grunted. There was the sound of her dragging her body forward, as well as the sound of her coat being torn as rocks cut up against it. 
“Gaea!” Chamomile gasped. “I can’t—”
“I’m out, I’m out—” 
Chamomile’s magic faltered, and with a feeble hiss, the light cut out. At the same instant, the slab was released from her hold, and landed with a horrendous crash.
“Gaea? Gaea, are you there?!”
“I’m here, Chamomile!” She felt hooves wrap around her. In the darkness, she frantically searched for their owner—and upon finding it, clutched her with all the strength she could. They were both shaking, and Chamomile herself felt like she was on the verge of crying. 
“I’m here, I’m here…” But it was unclear who was saying that.
They stood in utter blindness for an incalculable amount of time, before Chamomile realized. “You can stand?”
“Yeah,” Gaea whispered. Her voice was a little shaky. “Sore all over my hind hooves, but I’ll live. Us earth ponies are super durable, believe me. How are you feeling?”
“Sore, as well. And my magic…”
A magical hum filled the air as she re-activated it, revealing Gaea’s damaged body, a sight that Chamomile tried to ignore. They turned their heads up. A little orb of light emanated out of the tip of her horn, its size in a state of flux. “What about that flashlight we were given?” Gaea suggested.
Chamomile had completely forgotten about that. She inspected her pockets and felt something small and hard in one of them, but when she brought it out, she made a grunt of dismay. The flashlight had been crushed. 
Gaea found that hers was in a similar state, and she dumped the contents onto the ground. “Of course,” she grunted. “It couldn’t be that easy…”
She looked back at Chamomile, and then, realizing how close they were, stepped away. The air seemed to turn to ice at that moment. 	
“Where are the others?” Gaea asked, looking into the darkness around them.
It hurt that she would so quickly change the subject, but it also hurt that Chamomile hadn’t given enough thought to them. “I’m not sure. We must have gotten separated in the fall.” She paused to look around them.  “Speaking of, where exactly did we fall? It’s definitely a… cave, of some sort.”
Gaea took a moment to slip her goggles carefully off her head, letting them fall to the ground with a dull thud. “Looks like it. One that was under our hooves the whole time.”
The statement caused Chamomile to connect a few dots in her mind, and, turning back around, she regarded Gaea carefully. “Is that what you sensed earlier?” 
Gaea’s frown was tight and strained. “I think so. I must have sensed that the ground was coming apart right before it did.” She seemed unnerved by the revelation. “I… I had no idea I could even do that.”
Or that it was something that only earth ponies could sense. “That wasn’t an ordinary earthquake, then.”
“No…” Gaea chewed on her lip. “Earthquakes are caused by plates under the earth sliding against one another and building up pressure. This…” She paused, then looked up. “You remember that storm, right?” She could, but the memory sealed her lips, and she simply nodded. Gaea continued: “If that storm was that heavy, and if we were going into someplace extremely cold… That must be it, then.” 
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“The rain caused cracks to form, right? The water would have seeped into the ground, filling out every hole. In most cases this just makes the ground soggy and unstable, but what happens to water when it enters a cold environment?”
“Well, if it’s cold enough, it freezes.”
“Right. But if water’s in some kind of crevice or crack when it’s freezing, it’ll expand, weakening the cracks even further. And if that happens quickly, the ground can’t compensate. It splits apart. Maybe explosively.”
“Resulting in what we saw on the surface,” Chamomile realized. “So, if that thunderstorm hadn’t rolled in…”
“And if we hadn’t been struck by that sudden frost storm immediately after…”
They looked at each other in the darkness, feeling a chill creep along their spines. A whispering dread—the kind that invades the edges of dreams just about to tilt into nightmares—also seemed to be audible, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was enough to cause Chamomile to look over her shoulder back into the darkness as though expecting to find some speaker there, but all she got was the sight of the black nothingness that leered greedily without eyes at them, and the coldness of an underground world unused to the presence of ponies.
Not wanting to continue that thought, Chamomile returned her gaze to Gaea. “What happened to your bags?”
Gaea gasped. She searched her body, found nothing, looked at the slab, then groaned. “Oh, dash it all… it’s probably crushed underneath that dumb thing.”
Chamomile looked down. “So, we have no supplies… no food or water… and we’ve fallen who knows how far into wherever we are now.”
Gaea swallowed, considering everything. Chamomile could see panic rising in her—it was rising in herself, too. But she forced it all down to say, “We should try and find Polar and Clip first. Any ideas how?”
Being given an objective appeared to calm Gaea down enough to think. “Let’s just start walking,” she suggested. “We’ll call out for them—hopefully they’ll respond.”
Agreeing to this, they chose a direction that looked almost welcoming, and, cautiously, so as to not exacerbate any of their injuries, they began to walk. Chamomile’s light did not have a large reach, but what it did reveal was that the cavern was of monstrous proportions, with a craven darkness so intense that it seemed that the shadows the light cast swallowed the steps and spaces they left behind. In regular intervals they called out for both Clip and Polar, but only echoes, hollow and mocking, answered them.
Little familiarity existed—or rather, too much of it. They first went the way that Chamomile had come, but when they went further, it looked like they’d simply stumbled upon a clone of that area. When their soreness had come back and they could no longer continue on adrenaline and fear alone, they paused to rest in a space beset by shadows and stalagmites, listening to distant, underground noises that sounded like unearthly moans from some blackened demon. Then they got up and continued to wander and call. Their voices grew more and more hoarse with each utterance, until “Clip” and “Polar” became monosyllabic and disyllabic inferences without meaning. That nothing answered them—not even a faint resemblance of a voice not their own—must have meant two things: either they’d been more separated than they’d imagined, or Clip and Polar were…
“Ow!”
Just as Chamomile had begun to entertain that grisly thought, she’d bumped her head against something hard. Her horn buzzed with pain like how a springy doorstopper vibrates when struck by a hoof. Falling onto her haunches, she rubbed her head and made a hissing sound. 
“Chamomile!” 
Gaea dashed over, voice flooded with concern. It seemed almost comical, how her voice carried more energy when it came to shouting Chamomile’s name than it had in the past whoever-knew-how-long spent chanting “Polar” and “Clip.” 
Gaea stopped short of her, though, hesitating. She looked torn between reaching out and leaving her be. And it was easy for Chamomile to recognize why, a recognition which came with annoyance and self-inflicted bitterness. She pushed herself to stand, shaking.
“Are you okay?” Gaea asked somewhat needlessly.
“Yeah… Yeah. I just bumped my head, that’s all.”
She could feel her face burning up. She wanted to tell Gaea off for not helping her, but what good would that do? Besides, didn’t she understand the hesitation anyway? If she understood so much…
She shook her head, then looked at what she’d run into. A blank, clay-colored wall stretched up towards a sharply sloping ceiling. Past it was more darkness which her light could not touch. “Dead end,” she murmured. She looked to the left and the right, finding only more darkness. “I guess we should pick a direction?”
She worded it as a prompt, but when she turned to see what Gaea thought, all she got was a deliberate avoidance of her gaze. Chamomile let out a hot breath. Fine. I’ll decide, then.
She chose to go left, and trotted briskly ahead, not bothering to forewarn Gaea. After a few seconds, she heard her hoofsteps come after her. Gaea still kept herself at a distance, just at the edge of her hornlight, as though preparing at any moment to dive back into the dark. 
They didn’t call out. There didn’t seem to be much point, at any rate. In a silence burdened by the weight of unspoken words, they trotted further and further into the unknown.











But eventually, Chamomile had had enough.
“Okay, stop!”
She stomped her hoof against the hard ground, eliciting a loud smack that reverberated off of the unseen walls. Gaea yelped at her shout, but obeyed it, looking at Chamomile with a confused gaze. “Is… is something wrong?”
“Don’t,” Chamomile warned heatedly. She paused, however, trying not to let her emotions overrule her judgment. This was a delicate situation, she realized, and her getting angry would only drive them further apart.
She turned around and looked directly at Gaea. “We can’t keep going on like this.”
“Like what?”
Chamomile’s gaze softened. “Gaea… you know what.”
It was like shattering a particularly obstinate mask. Gaea’s face lost its confusion and transformed into an expression of resignation. She sighed—it was long and burdened, filled without a shred of relief at expending it. “Yeah… Yeah, I guess I do.”
“We need to talk about it.”
“Is now really a good time? We’re still in the middle of this cave.”
“Yeah, I know.” Chamomile grunted. “But if I had any say in the matter, we would have talked way earlier. But you have been avoiding me ever since it happened. I haven’t had a chance to speak with you one-on-one until now, when we’re literally in a situation that forces us to interact.”
She said this as calmly as she could, but she could hear frustration bubbling in her voice. Gaea looked guilty. Chamomile tried to ignore what that look made her feel. “So, yes, even though it isn't ideal, we’re going to talk this out, now, while we have the chance, because we have to. All right?”
Even though the question was entirely rhetorical, Gaea nodded anyway. 
“Good! So.” Chamomile cleared her throat. Her bravado was starting to slip already. “So… Why have you been avoiding me?”
Gaea started. “That… that’s what’s bothering you?”
“A lot of things are bothering me about… whatever this is, Gaea. I just figured I’d start with the easiest question.”
Gaea rubbed one hoof over the other. Then, as she began to speak, her hoof came up and tugged at her long mane, brushing it of all the dirt and mud that polluted the fibers.  “It’s just… how you reacted that night, how shaken you were… It made me realize I’d hurt you. I’d violated some part of you.” Gaea’s voice shook with emotion and self-disgust so acidic to hear, it hurt Chamomile. “Your husband… If he knew what I almost did, he’d… and you, and then I…”
Hearing that, Chamomile’s heart softened just a little. She stepped forward, then stopped. Gaea was still at the edge of her light, and Chamomile worried that if she got closer, Gaea would step away again. 
“And afterwards, I just… I couldn’t be anywhere near you,” Gaea said. “It hurt too much, remembering what I did. And I didn’t want to hurt you further, so I thought…”
“So you thought avoiding me would mean neither of us would have to deal with it.”
“Or we could pretend that it never happened. Go back to the way things were before that night. Could we?” she asked. She was looking at Chamomile, and her eyes glistened. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Chamomile simply looked at her. Gaea’s eyes lost their plea, and she lowered her head. “I know, I know… it’s a foolish thing to wish for. But I just wanted to forget it happened.”
“I couldn’t forget it,” Chamomile murmured. “I never could.”
Gaea flinched. “I couldn’t either, to be honest. And I’m sorry for that. Really, I am.”
Chamomile wanted to respond to that, but for some reason her voice would not emerge. The distance between them seemed to grow exponentially, even though neither had moved from their positions. Gaea tugged nervously at her braid, unable to keep her gaze, and Chamomile shifted uncomfortably on her hooves. 
Maybe this was a bad idea after all, she thought. Maybe I should have waited. But who knew how long that would be? And who knew if ever again she’d have that momentous, fleeting bravery—and its partner, frustration—to spur her to action?
She was aware they were wasting time by doing this—by talking, and now, by saying nothing—but—
“Do you hate me for it?”
Gaea, looking away, had spoken barely above a confessional whisper. But her words hissed like a hydra in Chamomile’s ear, and her head turned sharply. For half a second, her mind did not believe that it was Gaea who had spoken. Instead, it had construed out of her words the disembodied, suffering voice of Astral, back from beyond. 
“Well?” Gaea’s voice turned harsh. She glared at Chamomile, but there was no strength in it, only heated sorrow. “You surely must. That’s why you brought it up.”
Their positions had swapped, Chamomile realized—now she felt like shrinking back into the darkness around them. She knew she had to say something, but still her voice refused to work. She looked helplessly at the other mare, as if hoping that she could speak for her.
“Go on,” Gaea said. Tears gathered in her eyes, tears that would not fall. “Say it, okay? Just say it.”
“I…”
“Say it! You hate me, I get it! Say it so we can both just move on!” 
Move on… move on… move on…
So those words warbled in the darkness surrounding them, warbling and wobbling and teetering towards nothingness, and even after they had faded, they continued to strike, to pound, to hammer.
“Please,” Gaea said hoarsely. “If you say it, then I can move on from this. I can let go of this. I know I can.”
She believed her. She believed utterly that if she said those three words, Gaea would summon all of her strength and be done with the matter, whether it left her standing or not. Three little words. That was all it would take. Then they could, perhaps, find the others and make their way out of this goddess-forsaken cave for good.
Three little words. Nothing, in the grand scheme of things.
And yet… 
Chamomile felt herself slump forward, like she was about to fall, but at the last instance, she caught herself. She forced air into her lungs with a slow, precise, artificial intake of breath. The air tasted of some unspeakable or indescribable flavor, a mix of their sweat, cave odor, and something else.  
“I won’t say that,” she said in a muted voice. “I won’t, because it wouldn’t be true.”
Gaea sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything. 
Chamomile continued: “I don’t hate you, Gaea. I…” She swallowed. “I never could.” 
She thought this would bring relief to the mare, however little that might mean. But Gaea simply shook her head. “But when you go home, and when you tell your husband about this…”
There it was. The reason behind the reason. The great shame that dwelt hideously in Gaea’s heart was not that she should yearn, but that she should yearn for the forbidden—that in yearning for it, pining for it, she had intruded upon something impermissible and sacred. 
She seemed frail. Her legs wobbled; she might collapse at any moment. Chamomile’s heart split in two, and more than ever, she wanted to reach out and steady her. But this, she sensed, would not be welcomed—not now. Nor would letting this mourning continue under such pretenses. 
“My husband is dead.”
So quiet was Chamomile’s voice that it did not echo. It barely seemed to move the lethargic air around them, even less to actually be heard. But Gaea’s ears, facing away from her, twitched, and she raised her head. 
My husband is dead.
How often had she thought this, she wondered to herself. How many days and nights, and weeks and months and years, had that thought inscribed itself upon the fabric of her mind? How many times had it pierced her when she, sleep-deprived, cared for Juniper or the shop? In how many shadows had that thought lain; in how many of her cold, lonely beds; in how many tears shed and voices trembling, how many shambling steps through the blurred corridors of her life? 
And yet—how was it that, up until that point, Chamomile had never said those four words out loud? 
“What?” Gaea murmured back to her. 
Some precipice had been crossed, some threshold transcended. Chamomile had the impression that she could not have stopped herself even if she tried. She wasn’t sure she would have wanted to. 
“His name was Astral,” she explained, taking a step forward, cautiously, so as not to startle Gaea. “He loved the stars, and enjoyed talking about space nebulae and all sorts of things I didn’t understand. He had his own telescope. He showed me my star, once.” She paused, realizing that she wasn’t getting to the point she wanted. She slightly lowered her head. “But that’s the past. He’s dead, now. He died a few years ago.”
“Oh, Chamomile… You don’t, you don’t have to tell me…”
“I want to. I need to.” She took another step, paused, and looked intentionally at Gaea’s anxious eyes. “We had a son together.”	
“A son…”
“His name is Juniper.”
The rest followed. It was hardly easy. Chamomile strung her words together with the deliberation of a surgeon trying desperately to plug a sudden aneurysm. She spoke haltingly, sometimes in fragments, aware only by distant measures of how little she said, yet also how much. Throughout, she was slow to approach Gaea—she was hardly aware she was still doing so—and throughout, Gaea herself did not move. She was enchanted by Chamomile, and Chamomile by Gaea. Then they were within only a few feet from one another, neither of them shirking or shrinking away—and Chamomile continued to talk. 
She told her everything she could about Juniper—how he was born under a lucky star, born of a wish between father and mother; how he had beheld the unicorns’ lack of magic not with the stoic apathy which had, for generations, instructed and guided their race towards a quiet oblivion, but with curiosity so rare that it could only be kept safe by being made into a secret; how, after magic had returned, it was to her shock that she saw he himself could not wield it; how she had taken up this voyage to the north, far from the comfort of her shop and son, from the grove in which Astral lay, because she had heard tales surrounding that northern frontier; how she had thought that, if magic had lain previously in Equestria’s dormant but deathless past, then it might be possible that answers to its absence in Juniper might be similarly found in the isolated, crystalline shades of a world so long hidden from their present as to be forgotten without intention. She was hoping for answers, if not a cure, for Juniper deserved no less than the opportunity to feel whole, rather than live in subjugation to another generation’s familiarity with what had been missing and lost to time immemorial. 
Why was it that she could speak so verbosely about her son, but not her husband? Why was it that Juniper received the treatment, the privilege, of a full story, whereas Astral received only that single statement—“My husband is dead?” Perhaps it was because when you talk about the dead, you cannot speak of death and death alone; you must also speak to life, and the lives around the deceased. Perhaps the only way to speak of death fully is to embrace its connection to life, even as it appears to sever it. 
And it seemed, then, to sever Chamomile’s voice, too, for, without warning, she stopped talking. Some vice had clamped around her throat—no, that wasn’t right; she was crying. The tears choked back her words, and she could make no audible sound to otherwise release her heart. 
She looked at Gaea through blurry vision. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but seeing her there was somehow enough. She raised a hoof, almost out of some instinctual desire, and held it there, not knowing quite why she was doing this. Just as she was about to lower it, however, Gaea crossed the distance between them, and hugged her. 
She realized they were both crying, and that her earlier assessment—of there being no sounds—was wrong. Their breaths came shudderingly. Half-words and half-sounds filled the air and echoed in that lonely chamber of shadows. Gaea’s long mane wrapped itself around Chamomile’s muzzle like an extension of her hug. 
They hugged for a time they did not bother to count—perhaps against their better instincts. When they separated, it was with noticeable hesitation, for neither wanted to let the other go, for fear that, in doing so, the darkness would reach out and claim them. Chamomile dried her eyes; Gaea did as well. They were still close enough to be within a hoof’s length of the other.
For another little while—the length of which Chamomile was only somewhat conscious—they said nothing, staring into the reds of each other’s eyes. It was then, with an incredulity bordering on hysteria, that Chamomile realized that the blue of Gaea’s eyes was, in fact, two slightly different shades. The left was a little darker than the other, and there seemed even a little green in it, a mossy flake that floated in the ocean of her vision with an admirable casualness to it. A flaw in an otherwise ornate design—yet seeing it made Chamomile feel fuzzy inside, like she had come across an innocent secret that spoke not to some sinister entrapment, but the beauty of the ordinary and flawed. And upon witnessing such a thing, she thought, without aid from her hornlight, that the oppressive darkness of the cave receded, like scattered centipedes. 
“I am sorry, Chamomile,” Gaea whispered.
“You? What for?” Chamomile actually chuckled weakly. “No, Gaea, I’m the one who should be apologizing. I just unloaded all of that onto you.” 
“No… I mean, yes, that’s true, but what I mean is.” She began to play with her braid again, looking between it and Chamomile. Her cheeks were a little flush. A few tears idled on her cheeks before falling to the ground lazily. “I’m… sorry to have made you uncomfortable. And I’m sorry about your husband. Astral. He sounded… sounds like a good pony.”
“He is.” Then Chamomile reached back to grab her bag, only to remember—she’d left it on the train. It, and the two photos. But this did not dismay her. “Thank you for listening.”
“Of course.” Gaea paused, tilted her head. Her eyes were large and ornate again. “And besides, I think you needed to tell somepony… to tell me that. After all this time.”
Chamomile thought about it. “Yeah… Yeah, I think I did.” She managed a small smile. “I’m glad, then, that we managed to talk about everything. About what happened between us… I feel better.”
“I do, too.” Gaea giggled self-consciously. “I guess we should have from the start. Maybe then things wouldn’t have ended up so messed up between us.”
“Well, we’re a couple of messes, aren’t we?”  Chamomile reached forward and touched Gaea on the shoulder as she did this, and Gaea seemed momentarily startled by the gesture.
She was about to retract her hoof, only for Gaea to gently cup it with her own. She leaned her head against the hoof, and Chamomile could feel her breath gently wash over it. She was staring so deeply at Chamomile that she might as well have been staring through her, but for whatever reason, this did not bother either one of them. “At least we’re a couple of messes together,” she said, so softly it was like a sigh. 
Gaea slipped away from her hoof, adopting a resolute expression. “Let’s go find our friends.”












Their careful examination of the cave continued for a little while longer, yielding much the same as before—dead ends, echoing chambers, and geologic features that blended together. In the midst of their wanderings, Chamomile felt something wet beneath her hooves. She looked down, and by some miracle, only a brief chill raced through her.
“Blood.”
Gaea stopped next to her. She stared at the puddle, then looked at Chamomile. An unspoken decision was reached between them, and Chamomile gave a resolute nod.
They traced the puddle’s trail. At times, the trail thickened—the pony had stood still, let the blood drip in one spot, before continuing—then thinned back into a wobbly line. But it didn’t seem like the pony had been moving at an even pace. The trail was closer to a smear than a series of drops.
At one point, it wound around a corner leading them to a narrow corridor, with pumice and basalt replacing the clay. Neither of them was conscious of how their breathing quickened, how adrenaline forced their pain and exhaustion aside.
They raced down the corridor, following the trail—then skid to a stop, letting out a throat-crushing whinny of alarm.
Clip Styles was propped against the wall, his whole body slumped forward. His winter coat had been shredded down to cloth fragments, revealing a torso covered in a patchwork quilt of black-and-blue bruises. His head was lowered, his eyes closed. Blood dripped steadily from his head, pinkening his pale-silver mane. That blood alone, however, was not what had elicited their strangled gasp. It was what protruded above it—or what had protruded above it.
Where his horn had once proudly stood, there was a half-stub. Chamomile could see the brittle grooves where it had been split across the shaft, and it was a clean cut, so clean that it revealed the slightly off-colored nature of the horn’s living bone core, a sponge-like material that made up the extremity’s interior. Chamomile could not turn away, even as  her stomach churned at the sight.
Gaea’s voice trembled towards panic. “What the—is he even alive?”
“I think so. A unicorn’s horn isn’t a vital organ.” Chamomile felt coldly detached—I’m in shock, she thought. “There was… there is a story, or a few of them, about some unicorns losing their horns, long ago, and still living.”
“But—”
“I know,” Chamomile said. She tried to keep calm by focusing on everything but the stub. She knelt close to Clip, then held her breath. After a few seconds, she sighed. “Okay. He’s still breathing. I guess the shock is what’s keeping him unconscious.” 
“The bleeding, though.” Gaea came forward, audibly swallowing. “We’ve got to stop it. Any ideas how?”
“You’ve got your coat still, and I have mine. Maybe we can tear a couple of clean parts out of them, make some bandages.”
They proceeded to do just that, working quietly yet precisely, ignoring their growing desire to flee from the crumpled form. Gaea’s sleeve and Chamomile’s scrap of scarf were torn up and tied tightly together. Chamomile, afraid to exert her magic past the light she already provided, awkwardly managed to twist the makeshift tourniquet around Clip’s head wound. She tied a knot using her teeth. Blood entered her mouth, but somehow, she managed to not vomit, and it was only after the tourniquet was applied that she turned and spat. A trace of the metallic taste remained no matter how much she expunged. 
The bandage darkened considerably, but at least now the blood did not drip down his face. “That’s probably the best we can do for now,” Chamomile said.
“Any idea when he’ll wake up?” 
“No idea.” Privately, she wasn’t even sure if that would be a good thing. The stories of unicorns living without horns were, to her memory, vague as to how being hornless could affect the pony. It ranged from slight sluggishness to complete voiding of all faculties—though those were in the more extreme stories. Still, she did not want to think of Clip deteriorating while they were stuck underground.
Then she realized something. “Wait, how’d he get here? He didn’t walk all the way… did he? He was unconscious back on the surface…”
“Maybe he woke up just like we did?”
“Maybe… But do you remember how that blood trail looked?”
Gaea thought back. “Yeah. It was more like a smear than a series of drops. Like he was being dragged instead of walking on his own.”
Just as she said this, a loud whoosh bristled their fur. It came from down the corridor, past the impenetrable darkness. They stepped protectively in front of Clip, Chamomile brandishing her horn like a sword, and looked in the direction of the sound. A second later, there was a crashing sound, hooves landing awkwardly on rock, and a voice: “Ah, darn this stupid thing!”
Chamomile’s eyes widened. “Polar?!”
“Huh? Hey, it’s you guys!” He sounded a bit far off, and Chamomile couldn’t make out his form from the darkness of the cave. “Are you okay?”
“We’re fine!” Gaea answered. “Just some bruises and soreness.” She gulped. “But Clip…”
“Yeah, I saw. I was actually trying to do something about that.”
There was a grunting sound, then shuffling, followed by another grunt filled with pain. Chamomile scanned her surroundings, then took a step forward. “Where are you? I’ll come to you—I have a light—”
“No, it’s fine. You shouldn’t separate from him, anyway. Don’t worry, I’ll come to you.”
“How?”
The answer arrived when he did a few moments later. He grinned, though was enervated, his breathing pained. Sweat glistened his brow. His coat, curiously enough, appeared to be missing. He pointed at his eyes with a hoof. “Pegasus eyes are pretty good at seeing in the dark.”
“Your wing…” Gaea breathed.
His right one was fine, but his left wing was clearly broken. Some feathers were out of place and the whole thing looked like a foal’s approximation of a wing. He glanced at it, and though he spoke calmly, his voice pulsated with exertion. “Yeah. The fall screwed it over good.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Chamomile asked.
“Oh, like a beauty. But I’ll manage.”
“At least let us put it in a sling!”
His bravado didn’t last as long as his pain, and so he trudged forward for treatment. Gaea ripped apart the rest of her coat to start creating a makeshift sling. Chamomile noticed that he dragged behind him some sort of sack made from tied-together scarves, tool belts, and his heavy winter coat. “What’s this for?”
“Clip,” he said. “I can’t imagine him waking anytime soon, nor us being in any shape to carry him ourselves for any extended period of time. This should make it easier… yipe!”
His yelp was from Gaea trying to gently place his broken wing into the sling. “That was surprisingly well thought-out for you,” she said.
“When have I never thought things through?”
“What about when you were drinking?”
He winced, then after a moment, let out an impressed chuckle. “Heh. Touché, little pony, touché.”
For some time, the only sounds were Polar’s grunts as Gaea and Chamomile worked to set his wing. Chamomile’s adrenaline was beginning to wear off; pain, familiar like an old love, began to return, and her hidden weariness began to rear its head.
Once the wing was secured, each of them turned towards Clip. “Where’s his horn?” Gaea asked in a haunted tone of voice. “Maybe if we could find it, we could… reattach it, somehow.”
“I think it snapped off during the fall,” Polar said. His voice was low, regretful. “I tried looking for it, but… it might have been crushed under some of those rocks that came with us.”
Chamomile couldn’t stand to look at Clip anymore, so she forced her gaze onto the others. “What were you doing before we found you? Aside from making that drag-net?”
“I heard water—a lake, maybe, one underground.” He pointed back towards the darkness. “I thought I could follow it to its source—maybe it was coming from a mountain stream. If it’s fresh, we could drink it, clean our wounds, clean him. Had to turn back once I heard you, though.”
“Let’s head that way, then. You guys put Clip in the net.” They did so smoothly so as to not wake him.
“I can drag him,” Gaea told Polar just as he was about to slip the makeshift harness around him. He opened his mouth to protest. “Your wing,” she reminded him, both gently yet firmly, like an older sister to a younger brother. “There’d be no sense in you tearing it any further. Besides, you have to lead the way with Chamomile.”
He relented the load with a sigh. After Gaea slipped it on, he joined Chamomile at the front. With a nod of encouragement, she signaled for them to get moving.
With their injured numbers and Chamomile’s magic on low, they had to advance sluggishly through the dank, nebulous chambers, their steps and breathing echoing hollowly like a parody of a percussion section. Gradually the browns and blacks began to transform into lighter, almost greener complexions, and then even lighter, exotic shades of purple and violet. Chamomile reasoned that that was because they had to have passed into the mountains themselves, but this was a guess made only to assure herself that they were making some semblance of progress. Otherwise, the cavern was the same as before—high sloping ceiling, near infinite darkness, and a lack of clear direction. The only difference, she supposed with some relief, was that they were together. 
After a time, her ears detected a faint, popping sound. “Water,” she guessed. Next to her, Polar nodded, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“It sounds like it’s coming from this direction.” They made a left and found a ramp of pebbles and gravel sliding upwards. They trudged on, feeling the ground steepen. Gaea nearly slipped a few times, but managed to keep pulling Clip forward. Meanwhile Chamomile’s legs burned with exhaustion, threatening towards a deathly cramp. She didn’t know how long she could keep her magic activated, how much she had left in her.
The ramp plateaued into noticeably softer rock, silt, and clay. The cavern spilled open even more, revealing spines of stalagmites accompanying their ceiling-bred cousins. They kept on, barely taking note of the differences in their immediate surroundings, their minds preoccupied with moving one step at a time.
“There it is!” Polar exclaimed.
Ahead of them lay a lake of dark emerald-green, its surface so clear that it perfectly reflected the rocky surroundings and spiky overhang. It was so large, too, that its edge could not be seen; instead, it vanished into the surrounding darkness like an optical illusion. They paused before it, caught by its sheer size—then Chamomile felt her knees buckle, and with a soft “oof,” she sat on her haunches.
“Whoa, whoa, we can’t stop now!” Polar faced her, wincing as his broken wing awkwardly attempted to follow his body’s movements. “We gotta figure out where it’s coming from!”
“Just give me a second,” she said between breaths. “Not all of us have pegasus stamina.”
He was about to retort, when Gaea said, “We really should rest while we can.” She pulled up next to Chamomile with the harness and Clip still attached. She sounded winded; no doubt carrying Clip while she was fighting off her own pain had been an upward battle in and of itself. But equally no doubt that their last exchange had tired her out as much as it had Chamomile. 
“Oog.” Gaea let out a sound that was a mix of a sigh and a groan. “That water looks soooo refreshing. You think I could take a bath in it?”
“Better make sure it’s clean first.”
“How would I do that? Go up, grab a drink like it’s a self-serve bar?”
“Yeah, and hope it isn’t salt water. Might have some pebbles in it, though.” Gaea giggled. Chamomile felt light, and this made her chatty.
Polar looked at the two of them with wide eyes. “Goddess above,” he murmured, “just how badly did you hit your heads?”
But Chamomile didn’t care about the tone he was taking. Through a nearly delirious haze,  she watched Gaea stretch out her legs and neck. “Watch Clip, would you?” she told Chamomile. “I’m going to take a sip.”
“A dip,” Chamomile said, some levity in her now.
“Sip, dip, whichever one comes first.” She began to step out of her harness.
“If the water’s clean, we ought to clean his bandages, too,” added Chamomile.
“Good idea. Here I go, then.”
She cracked her neck, then trotted up to the lake. It was miraculous she could express soreness at one moment, then push herself to keep moving in another; Chamomile wondered if it had to do with her farmpony background. Polar was watching them, his mouth slightly open.
Gaea’s lapping filled the air; afterward, her contented sigh. “Oh, goddesses above and below. It’s fresh!”
“Save me a couple of drops,” Chamomile said.
“Get your own, girl, this lake calls to me!”
Chamomile laughed a little. She’d missed this, this levity between them. Amazing what one conversation could do—albeit a conversation conducted in a life-threatening situation. But she still laughed, perhaps because the only other option was to clam up and suffer. Laughter was a distraction from her pain and her spent energies. Laughter, she decided, was necessary. 
But the laughter seemed to disturb Polar greatly. He snorted like a donkey, and spoke severely. “All right. You two. You’ve had your fun. Can we get going?”
“Not until I’ve had a chance to rest myself,” Gaea said, coming back over. She looked a little refreshed now that she’d drunk something. She smiled at Chamomile, tiredly but still warmly, like they were sharing a private joke.
“There’s no time for that,” Polar grunted. He stomped towards them. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re currently trapped underground, with one of us unconscious and bleeding. And Clip’s horn—” He hiccupped, unable to complete the statement; he shook his head wildly, grit his teeth, looked at the mares and the mares only. “We can’t let up now,” he forced through his clenched jaw. “He’s hurt, we don’t know how much time he has—ugh!” Polar flapped his wings in an irritated manner, but, forgetting that one of them was broken, he cried out when it pulled against his sling. “I don’t see how any of you can be so calm about all this! Have you forgotten where we are?!””
This managed to break their cheerfulness. Gaea’s voice became defensive. “Hey, whoa, it’s not like we’ve forgotten, Polar. But look, we really are tired—”
“There’s no time to be tired! Don’t you understand that?!”
The fog around Chamomile’s mind began to lift. “Polar, wait—”
But Gaea was growing a little more heated. “Polar, we do understand. But we can’t push ourselves beyond what we’re capable.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
At this, Gaea bristled. “What? Do you seriously think we don’t care about what’ll happen to Clip?!”
“All I know is that we have to keep going, that we have to get out of here!” His voice was growing shriller and shriller by the second. He was nearly spitting his words, now, and his eyes danced with taunting misery. But his voice betrayed something deeper—worry that hid behind the scathing nature of his words. “Yet all I’m seeing are two ponies who would rather go for a swim than actually find a way out!” 
“For goddess’s sake, Polar, it was just a joke!”
“Does it look like we’ve got time for a joke?! For resting for even a second?!”
“What’s your problem? Not ten minutes ago you were perfectly calm and level-headed!”
“My problem is that I’m stuck underground with two mares who don’t have the decency to be scared of what might happen—”
“Who says we aren’t?”
Chamomile had hardly raised her voice—it was certainly far quieter than either Polar or Gaea. Yet, somehow, it quieted them with its gentle intensity. 
“Who says we aren’t scared, Polar?” She rose, feeling everything in her pop into place. A serene clarity seemed to settle in her mind, and she spoke without haste or hesitation. “Because let me correct you there: I’m scared. Oh, yes, I’m definitely scared. Maybe the most I’ve ever been. I’m scared for Clip, of course.” She looked at him, overcome by pity. “I don’t know if he’ll live for sure, or if he’ll wake up. Or even… If he does, will he still be the same? Will he ever be able to use his magic in the same way? Will it be gone forever?”
She looked from him to Gaea, who seemed startled by the change in focus. “And I’m scared for all of us. I’m scared Gaea won’t get back to her farm, to her father…”
She heard Polar mutter, “Farm? Father?” but she ignored this and faced him. There was an urge to smile, not in a comforting sense, but rather the kind of existential, ludicrously accepting smile one has when facing down sudden and inevitable oblivion. “Heck, I’m scared for you, Polar. I don’t know a whole lot about you, or where you came from, or why you took this job. But I was hoping you’d be able to complete it, whatever your reason, and be able to go home, proud of your accomplishments. But now you might not. I’m scared if that’s truly the case.”
Polar didn’t respond. That was all right—she didn’t need him to.
She looked over the lake. It did look good for a swim, distressingly so, but she became aware of the possibility that if she jumped in, she might not get out. Her hooves might cramp, either from the shock of cold or just sheer fatigue. She might drown and her body might never be found. This should have frightened her into curling up into a ball, and yet, it went in and out of her like a foal’s idle, classroom fantasy. “And I’m scared for me, too. I’m scared I won’t make it out of here. I’m scared I’ll die—everypony is, I guess, but it’s different now, it feels more real, a real terror. And if I don’t make it out, I’m scared for Juniper—my son—”
Here her voice broke; she could not let that thought go on. Next to her she heard Gaea approach, as if to comfort her, but then she backed off.
Polar said nothing. He did not appear particularly struck by the revelation that she had a son.
“And I’m scared that my horn will fizzle out,” she said, pointing up to it. “If it does, we’ll be left in the dark. Sure, you could probably see a bit, Polar, but Gaea and I wouldn’t be able to. You’d be guiding three blind fillies to whoever knows where.”
She looked away from the lake and faced the three of them. An edge came into her voice, but she manipulated it so that it wasn’t as cold. “So yes, Polar, I am scared. We all are—you can bet on that. But let me ask you—what good will being scared do for us? What’ll it do for us? I can tell you right off the bat what it’ll lead to.” She waved a hoof in the air in a general manner. “It’ll lead to this. To more fighting and arguing. And nothing good will come from that. And we won’t make it out then, for sure.”
She sighed. Now it hit her how tired she was. It seeped into her bones, into her soul. “We need to rest. All of us. You’re right that we shouldn’t rest for long—who knows how far we’ve got to go? But we’re going to rest.” She defined this with a short stomp that echoed around them. “Then, when we’re ready… we’ll continue on. For however long that will be.”
Something deep below churned and moaned, like the earth was once again threatening to split. In its wake came the steady drip of water onto the pale-ground they’d heard before—drip—driiip—dri-i-ip. Chamomile looked at that ground, watching the drops disintegrate into the dirt.
Polar fluffed his one good wing, said, “Fine,” and turned around. Chamomile did not watch him go for a time, listening instead as his hooves grew more and more distant. When they stopped reaching her ears, she looked in the direction he had gone. He had gone to the side of the lake to sit, just within the perimeter of her light.
“I’ll go wash Clip’s bandages,” Gaea said, to which Chamomile replied, “Yes,” even though they both knew she wasn’t asking permission.
Chamomile sat back down. She was tired, too tired, it seemed, to properly fall asleep. So instead, she lay on her back and looked at the ceiling. She thought of Juniper, held onto the memory of his face before it could tumble out of reach.