//------------------------------//
// 14 - Requiescat In Memoria 
// Story: Cammie 
// by Jarvy Jared 
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Their bedroom didn’t resemble a bedroom anymore. Everything else in the room had been stripped bare so as to make sure that enough space existed for both patient and caregiver. The mirrored vanity had been taken down so that there was more room for the various pill bottles he had been prescribed. The telescope which had been Astral’s prized possession had been moved to the attic without notifying him, and he had spent a few days in a delirium over it, before the fact finally settled sadly in his mind. His papers and scraps of ideas had been shoved into a locker that had also been taken out of the room. The carpet was removed to expose the wood underneath—they did not want particles getting stuck in the fibers and possibly affecting his breathing. They had moved all the drawers to stand outside the room so that the hospice equipment, which consisted of rubber hoses and tubes, a metal rod for hanging fluids from, and  rudimentary electronic devices, could sit close to the bed. The  doctors said they were meant to check all of Astral’s vitals, but which Chamomile believed were just examples of pointless specialization speaking to the same observation: he was dying. He was dying very soon. She didn’t need the five or so doodads hooked up to their hastily constructed supply of electrical energy to know that. 
Even their bed had been changed. The queen-sized mattress which, for years, had been their little hideaway from the world, was in storage somewhere. In its place was a thin hospital bed that had been outfitted to provide maximum comfort to Astral, but which was so small that he was the only pony who could sleep in it. Bars had been constructed so that he could use them to pull himself up, but he always did so with faint noisiness, and it was a struggle to watch. At night, Chamomile had taken to resting in the wheelchair which had brought him from the hospital back to their home. Sleeping in it proved almost as nightmarish as waking, for she could never stay still for more than a few hours, and after the first night, she’d developed a crick in her back that only worsened with every shift of her muscles or bones. 
But she’d never complained, though her tongue flapped against the lid of her mouth whenever the pain shot through her. Who was there to complain to, after all? Astral, under a spell of heavy medication, slipped in and out of consciousness, and even had he not been treated to the ambrosia of painkillers, he would not have heard her, for by that point, his world was full of beeping machines beeping and pumping ventilators. Juniper was off-limits, obviously. But so were any friends that might have dropped by to assist. 
“If you ever just need to vent,” Penny had told her one day, “I’m always here.” Chamomile knew Penny too well to think that she was doing this out of mere obligation; her word was as true as her name. But she’d never take her up on that offer. To vent would mean giving up, in some way, in surrendering to the forces that wanted her to lose her stoic resolve. It seemed selfish of her to complain of her woes when, just in front of her, was a pony who was suffering without even fully realizing it. How could she allow herself that, if it meant prioritizing her discomfort over the dying?
The ventilator made a hissing sound—a gap had emerged, and air leaked like a cat dripping water onto the floor. Chamomile rose from the wheelchair, feeling everything in her jostle around. Astral’s eyes were closed, but his breathing slightly changed to reflect the disruption of the device. She reached over and re-adjusted it so that it better fit over his mouth, and after a few seconds, his breathing returned to normal—as normal as a shuddery pattern could be. Chamomile sat back down and watched him. 
Sometimes, when she watched him, she’d entertain the idea that one day was better than the last. That he was not worsening; that, in fact, he was growing stronger. She’d attribute this to a change in the rhythmic beeping of one of those confounded machines. If the sound was louder, perhaps that was a good sign—his heart was gaining strength, perhaps. Sometimes she’d attribute it to this, his breathing—if it seemed less shallow, less hesitant, less like his body was rejecting the air itself, then perhaps that was a good sign. But she knew that this was nothing more than fantasy. In contrast to their earlier huffing and puffing, the doctors were quite certain as to his state, as well as to its progression. “We’ll do what we can to keep him comfortable,” they’d told her. 
“Here, at the hospital?” she’d asked.
“But of course.”
But of course—as though she was expected to accept that for whatever time remained, he would be under the dutiful yet coldly clinical gaze of doctors prone to prod his skin and perform an enormous number of tasks and tests just to see if one hoof would jump over the body to hold the other. No, she told the doctors. That would not be necessary. Astral could no longer stay in a hospital anymore. He had to come home, where he belonged.
That was why all this equipment had been set up, why their bedroom had been steadily converted overnight from a place of respite to a place of final rest. Why their wedding album, which used to sit in a drawer beside the bed, had been replaced with gauze strips and needles and extra catheters. Why framed photographs on the dresser had been usurped by even more pill bottles and vials. 
She heard somepony bumble up to the door. Turning her head, she saw that it was Juniper. Despite being three, his father’s condition had somehow aged him to the point where he looked, in certain lights, like an old stallion in a colt’s body, with eyes dulled by untold burdens and lips that rarely smiled. He was quiet when he came in, ambling up to his mother and raising his hooves. She understood the gesture and lifted him up to sit on her lap. He was not much of a talker—he preferred gestures over loud babbling these days—and sometimes Chamomile worried that this was the result of what was happening before him, that he was silencing himself in a freak imitation of Astral also growing quieter and quieter.
They both looked at Astral. If one could ignore the tubes and the machines, one might have thought he was almost at peace. Chamomile wondered if, in that drug-induced haze, he even dreamed, and if he did, if those dreams were good and kind to him, kinder than they were to her. 
She glanced down at her son. She wondered how he dreamed. In the nights that followed after Astral had come home, she couldn’t recall if he had any nightmares of his own. He seemed to sleep fine. A part of her—a part that only made her feel guilty and selfish—wished she could be like him in this way—seemingly unperturbed by the situation, without bags under her eyes, a slow gait to her trot, clear evidence of her spiral downward. But to do that she would have to be young, and foolish, and that was impossible.
“I’m hungry,” Juniper said.
“Are you?” Chamomile murmured into his mane. “Very well. Why don’t we eat something?”
“Can we eat here?”
Technically they were not supposed to, in case a mess was made. The body was frail at this stage and an infection or reaction to anything could yield catastrophic results, no matter how slim of a chance that was. But Chamomile saw no point in denying her son the pleasure, however limited, of spending time with his father. “Sure. Just be careful not to spill anything.” 
She looked at Astral and said, “We’ll be right back, honey, don’t you worry.” To her mind he might have nodded. But she could easily have been mistaken. 











A few times, Astral would be weaned off of the painkillers and the medicine in order to recover consciousness. During those times, he’d almost pass off as normal. He could follow a conversation, respond, even. He could nod his head or look at them. But then Chamomile would observe his body, so thin that the individual bones and joints jutted out of his sagging skin. She’d see the way his smile would strain itself against his lips, like it took every ounce of strength just to move them. He was trying to pass himself off as normal for her sake, she’d easily realized; and thus, for his sake, she’d try to act like she was grateful for it. 
“The will,” he said one evening, after Juniper had gone to bed. At first Chamomile didn’t hear him, but when he started to violently cough, she looked up in alarm. He’d removed the ventilator and was struggling to push himself up, and by doing so had caused his body to start coughing. 
“Wait, wait,” she said, getting out of the wheelchair to help him. She propped him up with a hoof while, awkwardly, she shifted the pillows around so he could sit up straight. She was always careful doing this, terribly so, because she was afraid that any touch could break a bone or rupture a tube. And Astral was extremely cold, too, despite the many layers of blankets under which he dwelt. 
“Thank you,” he wheezed. He smiled, but it was a sickly grimace, one that she could not look at for long. 
“What was that you said?” she asked.
“The will. I need to see it.” 
They’d made the will shortly after the last hospital visit, back when he was still strong enough to not need artificial means of keeping his faculties. The argument they had about it seemed a lifetime ago, and Chamomile still regretted it. If only she hadn’t been so angry with talking about a last will and testament. If only she hadn’t been so afraid to accept that it was going to happen whether she liked it or not.
She nodded. “All right. I’ll go get it for you.”
She left the room and went up to their attic to find the locked safe in which the will resided. In an empty cabinet she retrieved the key, put it into the safe’s lock, turned it, and retrieved the battered piece of paper, then went back downstairs to give it to Astral. “And a pen,” he croaked. “Could you get me some ink and a pen?”
“You want to make changes?”
“Add something,” he struggled to say. 
Chamomile frowned. “But I thought… I thought we’d finished with that.”
“We did. But I remembered something.” He looked at her, and an echo of strength came into his voice. “Have to tell you something on paper, now. It’s important.”
“If it’s so important, I’ll write it—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. The movement was so fierce, he knocked over the ventilator, and began to cough. The machine beeped angrily. Chamomile went to retrieve it while also attempting to calm his coughing. 
“No,” he repeated. “I have to do this.” He looked at her with his star-swirling eyes, the ones that had promised long ago that she was his world entire. “Please let me.”
Please let me. Had he, then, come to the conclusion that she was controlling every aspect of his life at this point? Every meal, every bedpan, every dumping of the bag connected to the catheter?
Ignore that. “Oh… okay, Astral.”
There were no pens or ink bottles in the room. She had to leave to go to Astral’s office, which was not an office so much as it was a medium-sized closet with a single desk, a couple of blank papers, and a few books, to retrieve such items. She opened a drawer and found a bottle, but discovered that all the pens were broken at the tip. When had that happened, she wondered, for it didn’t seem recently he’d been able to write.
Then she discovered the feather quill pen she’d given him for their first anniversary. It was tucked away, alone, in another drawer, perfectly preserved. She held it between her hooves. It seemed frail, frailer than she’d ever remembered, as though a single breath would disintegrate it—and so thinking, she went back to the hospice room without breathing. 
She gave both items to Astral. He looked at them, then looked at her. His face was drawn haggard with pain. “Could you give me some privacy?”
It hurt to hear. Hurt even more to nod and accept this. She had the grim thought that even though now she could not see what he was writing, later she would be able to, when he was not around to stop her. 
“Just let me know when you’re done,” she said before leaving. 
She waited a few minutes, then a half-hour, growing more and more distressed. She called out to him, and he answered, “Almost done,” but she failed to hear the scribbling of the pen upon paper. Still, she waited. 
Then finally he called her back in. His face had twisted up and darkened. She thought he was in pain, so she went to inject the medication again. His hoof stopped her. “Take this,” he said, gesturing to the will. 
She did. She was about to unroll it when his hoof grasped hers in a surprisingly taut grip. “Don’t read it,” he gasped. “Not yet. Not until…” 
“Why?” she asked.
He looked helplessly at her. “Please,” he said. His eyes conveyed a meaning wholly lost to her. His grip began to weaken, and a pained mumble escaped his chapped lips.
Against her instincts, she nodded, promising she would not until it was time. Then she retrieved the syringe, injected it into his IV tube, and watched as he drifted back to sleep. 











At the end of the month, he was dead.











Clip was still unconscious when Polar returned from his spot at the edge of the lake. Gaea and Chamomile had just finished washing and replacing Clip’s bandages, twisting and wringing the cloth out over a dry spot, and the dirty bandages had been placed in a pile to be disposed of later. When Polar came, they had just finished discussing when they ought to change the bandages next. The sight of all the bandages had reminded Chamomile of Astral.
“Do either of you have a stick I can use? Preferably one that’s dry?” Polar asked.
Initially surprised to see him, Chamomile looked at Gaea. She began to search their spare supplies for such a thing. Having no bag, she was forced to look through the components of the makeshift harness—specifically, the pockets of its tied-together belts. “I’ve got a few sticks in here,” she said, of one pocket. “I think they were spare crossties.”
She hoofed them over, and he grabbed them and sat down. From his good wing he produced something small and triangular.
“What’s that?” Chamomile asked. 
“Flint. I found a good supply of it earlier, before we found each other. I completely forgot I had it when we were busy moving Clip.”
She noticed that he would not look at Clip. It was a deliberate act of avoidance. 
“Since we’ve got no flashlights… well, here’s what I mean.” Polar placed one of the crossties on the ground. Then, with the piece of flint, he struck it hard. The scraping sound bounced off of the walls but did not do much else. He struck the crosstie again and again. Soon, a small orange flame manifested like a mystical djinn before them.
Polar let out a self-satisfied hum. “That should do it. You can turn off your magic, now—conserve your energy.” Chamomile did so, feeling the heat of the flame lick her face tepidly. Even though it was so small, she was still grateful for it.
“How long is that going to last?” Gaea asked. “It’s not going to burn through all our air, is it?”
“To the first question—probably as long as this stick is. To the second…” He grimaced. “It shouldn’t, since it’s so small. But we should still keep that in mind.” His eyes flicked to the side, dwelling on something unseen.
Chamomile waited for him to suggest that they stop resting and start moving. But instead, he simply rose, handing the burning crosstie over to Chamomile, who took it in her magic—levitation, with any luck, would not exhaust her reserves. He looked at Gaea. “How many crossties do you have in there?” 
Gaea checked. “A couple. Not enough to start a bonfire…”
“But enough to have a few torches on us.” He nodded. “Okay, that’s good. We’d better try not to burn through them all, then. Could you give me one, actually?”
After he had an extra and had made another torch, he cleared his throat. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to… return to my spot, for now. Just for the time being.”
Chamomile wordlessly nodded, while Gaea said and emoted nothing. He nodded, then turned and walked away. The flame’s light jostled in his wing and threw long shadows over the rocks and other cave features.
“Well, then,” Gaea said, a bit awkwardly. “I’m going to… check over our supplies, then.” There was no need to—they’d already checked it while Polar was away—but Chamomile suspected Gaea needed something to do.
She watched Polar for a time. He had not sat down—instead, he was pacing back and forth, looking at the lake, then away. Every now and then, he’d move in a manner that jostled his broken wing, and he’d wince, but not cry out. It was a strange thing to see, him roving around in a small circle, aimless yet not quite directionless. 
“I’m going to go talk to him,” Chamomile announced before she’d even thought it through.
Gaea stopped her inspection to look up at her. “Didn’t you already?”
“This is different. I think he needs someone to talk to.” She looked meaningfully at Gaea, who, after a moment, nodded. 
“And you think… he’d talk to you?”
“What choice does he have? Clip’s not awake. And, no offense, but you two got pretty heated there.” She glanced at Gaea, her look apologetic. “I don’t know if he’d want to talk to you just yet.”
Gaea sighed. “Yeah, that’s… fair, I suppose.”
“Trust me on this,” Chamomile murmured. “Please.”
After a moment, Gaea nodded. “All right. Give me your torch. I’ll stay here and watch over Clip. But don’t take too long talking,” she added. “As much as I hate to admit it, Polar’s right—we should move sooner rather than later.” 
After giving her the torch, Chamomile trotted to where Polar paced. He didn’t hear her coming until she was mere feet away, and flinched when he saw her. “What is it?” he asked. “Something wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong. I just…” Now it sounded silly to her, but she ignored her doubts. “I just wanted to join you for a bit, if that’s all right.”
“I… I guess it’s fine.”
Because he would not sit, she decided she wouldn’t, either. Instead, she stood, looking at the lake from this side. Polar continued to pace. 
“You don’t like being underground,” she said.
He paused for a moment. Then he chuckled bitterly. “What gave it away? The pacing?”
“We’re all nervous and scared.”
“I know.”
“If you don’t believe that—”
“No, I do, really,” he interjected with quick desperation. “I wasn’t thinking when… when I said what I said, earlier. Pegasi and cramped places don’t really mix, you know? Brings out the worst in us. I’m sorry for that.”
She nodded, accepting the apology, but now she looked at him. She was able to note what she had been unable to note before, when emotions and panic were running high. His hooves, for example, were covered in a thin layer of dirt and dust, but along the front of one leg, she saw a red smear. Traveling over it, she saw that it lined up with a small patch of red on the side of his torso, like he’d had his wing draped over something that dripped red onto his body. 
She realized, then, what had happened. “You were the one who carried Clip.”
Polar looked frightened by her observation, but said nothing. She continued: “That explains the blood pattern Gaea and I saw. He couldn’t have moved on his own, could he? He’d been unconscious… but…”
She looked directly at Polar. Her horror mounted. “If… if he’d been rendered unconscious not just by the fall, but by his horn getting cut off, and if you’d found him in that state…”
He looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it.” His good wing struck out, as though he was preparing to lift off, but he stayed put, looking at the lake. 
“Polar, do you blame yourself for what happened to Clip?” She stepped forward and laid a hoof on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. Gaea was telling me earlier about—well, about what might have caused us to fall. If water—”
“I don’t care about the fall!” Polar suddenly exclaimed, throwing her hoof off. 
His shout echoed throughout the cave, disturbing the water’s surface. Gaea looked at them, then rose, about to head over, but Chamomile waved her off.  
“I just… I just don’t…” He sank to the ground. His shoulders heaved and he covered his face in his hooves. Chamomile lowered herself next to him, but was careful not to touch him. For a time, all that could be heard was a hiccupping, stifled noise. His body convulsed. 
“He looked bad,” Polar said after a few moments. His voice was muffled behind his hooves. “He was the first of us I saw, and he looked… he looked like he was dead. I didn’t even register that his horn was missing until I pulled him out from the rubble, and when I did see that, I froze.” He brought his head up and snorted angrily. “I shouldn’t have frozen! He was bleeding, right on top of me, but I just… I just froze up. If I hadn’t, maybe I could have gotten him someplace safe, could have stopped the bleeding, could have gotten him awake, but I just panicked and—”
“But you did get him someplace safe, didn’t you?”
“Yeah? I didn’t even bother covering his head when I did. I just let him bleed and bleed while I went to follow some dumb water.” He groaned, placing his head back under his hooves. “Some recruit I was… no wonder I dropped out.” 
Chamomile’s ears perked up at this. But she chose to wait a few seconds, to let Polar recover a bit. Eventually, he brought his head back out, and looked pathetically at the lake, his eyes screwed up and his lips curled with displeasure.
Then she said, “You were a recruit?”
He stiffened, then shook his head. “Agh, you don’t really want to hear about that. Besides, I thought you were here to lecture me about what I said earlier.”
“I never said that. I never said I was going to lecture you about anything. I just said I wanted to join you.” She looked at him, then back at the lake. “Seeing a unicorn without their horn… it’s a scary thing. I think I get that more than you can even imagine. So I don’t blame you for freezing up. And as for what you said earlier…” She tilted her head towards Gaea, though without really realizing it. “Would I be incorrect to think that you were just lashing out because you were scared?”
He said nothing. Chamomile nodded anyway. 
She stood for some time, looking at the lake, saying nothing. Their reflections stared slanted at them, and Polar’s flame crackled quietly, coating the small portion of the lake that it could touch in amber. Polar seemed to be trying to scry something out of it, with how intently he peered into its surface.
Chamomile asked, “You were a recruit?”
For a moment she was afraid he didn’t want to talk, but then he said, “I was.”
Terse. But it was a start. She continued cautiously: “For what, exactly?”
“The pegasus royal guard. Back in Zephyr Heights.” 
“This was what you were doing before you joined this job?”
“Oh, no. I was a courier before I joined. No, that guard stuff… that was when I was younger.”
He slowly rose to stand beside Chamomile. “I had that dream of joining the guard back when I was a foal, actually. They were the best. Their shiny, polished armor and helmets, their impressive weapons and gear, which they used to protect us—not that there was a lot of protection needed, since even back then, the tribes were divided, and everypony was afraid—” He paused, then chuckled self-consciously. “Well, that’s how it was back when I was a teenager, at any rate.”
“You wanted to join them for the gear?” She realized only belatedly that she sounded almost accusatory. 
But Polar didn’t take offense. “That was part of it, sure—they were just that cool-looking—but I also wanted to join because I wanted  to protect the Queen and the Royal Family.”
He stopped so suddenly that Chamomile took a second to realize it. He had frozen, his lips slightly parted. He stood as one does when they involuntarily give up some secret. Before she could prompt him further, he said, “The Royal Family. I don’t suppose you know much about them?”
“Not more than anypony else, I don’t think. You have a queen, as you said.” Her mind then flashed back to what had occurred at the station all those days ago. “And a princess. Princess Zephyrina. Zipp.”
“There are actually two princesses. Princess Pipp Petals, and then Princess Zephyrina Storm. Or Zipp.” He nodded near-imperceptibly, but there was a thing in his voice when he said her name. She could not measure or weigh it by any means or factor, couldn’t even say it was something she heard, but it was unmistakably there. 
And upon feeling that was there, she found that she recognized it.
“Anyway,” Polar continued, “I joined the guard recruitment program when I was old enough to register. It was tougher than I’d imagined. They made us practice our tennis ball throwing to make sure we could land it on a unicorn’s horn in case of emergency. They taught us how to confuse earth ponies with big words and convoluted sentences. That was alongside the usual physical training, of course, which was itself brutal. Do you have any idea how many burpees a pegasus can do on end?” He laughed. “A lot more than I thought I was capable of going in, that’s for sure.”
Half of those exercises didn’t sound like training to Chamomile, but she didn’t say that. “But you kept going?”
“Of course! I had a dream. I could see myself in that armor, serving the Queen and the city and…”
He trailed off so suddenly that this time, Chamomile looked at him. His face had erupted into a terrific blush, in such a way that it made him seem like a schoolboy caught passing notes. It didn’t take long to infer what he meant, and she couldn’t help but smile at him. “And Zipp.”
Another nod.  “When you’re a kid growing up in Zephyr Heights, you get to know a lot about the princesses and the queen. Queen Haven likes to keep up a good public appearance, and Princess Pipp—well, she’s got her livestreams, and her daily vlogs. They both make it so that royalty doesn’t feel all that far away. And this was back when we thought they were the only ones who could fly. But Zipp… Zipp was different. She didn’t like the limelight as much as her mother and sister did, maybe even shied away from it. She didn’t have as many fans as Pipp, either, and didn’t like being pushed into the public’s eye. She was about as much of a princess as, well, you or me, really.”
“Did you meet any of them during training?”
“Of course! They’d come out every now and then to check on the progress of the recruits. The first time, we were doing basic tennis ball drills. And I was so nervous because—well, I mean, come on, the Queen and the princesses were watching!” He laughed at himself. “When it was my turn, I chucked that ball so hard that it crashed against the opposite wall and, on the rebound, almost struck Zipp in the face—thank the goddesses she ducked. I was mortified!”
But he said this in a cheery tone, one that caused Chamomile’s lips to twitch a little. “Did you get into a lot of trouble?”
“Oh, I might have. My drill sergeant probably would have kicked me out then and there. But Zipp, well—all she did, after she’d retrieved the ball, was walk up to me, hoof it back, and say, ‘Nice arm, recruit.’”
He was grinning, reveling in the memory. “It was then when I figured out what made her different from her mother and her sister. She had this kind of coolness about her, but it was a coolness that didn’t call attention to itself. She just… knew how to act. How to lead. Pipp might be more confident than her sister, but Zipp… Zipp isn’t afraid of anything, I don’t think. And that’s truly admirable.”
He paused, then said quietly, like he was afraid Zipp might hear, “That’s why I think that she’d be a great ruler, even if she doesn’t think she would. Sometimes, during training, I thought about telling her that, but…” He shook his head. “Well, it’s not my place to decide who should succeed Queen Haven. It’ll be Zipp, or it’ll be Pipp. Either or.”
There was a brief interlude where he seemed to have run out of things to say. Chamomile filled it with a question that was not much of one: “You liked her, didn’t you?”
He made a sound—one that escaped audible definition, but which conveyed his embarrassment, and which made her giggle. “I didn’t—I never—oh, laugh it up, then why don’t you?”
“It’s fine,” she said, still laughing. “It’s cute, really. No, don’t look at me like that—I mean it in a nice way. It’s cute!”
Gradually, her laughter infected him, and he sat down next to her, also laughing quietly. If Gaea heard them, she did not indicate it. Perhaps she was happy to hear that the conversation was going well. 
Then Polar sighed. It was a decidedly whimsical, sentimental sigh, the kind one might hear in overplayed movies. It was long and held a trace of melancholy in it, too, such that Chamomile’s laughter dried up and she looked at him in confusion. 
“Yes,” he said. “I did like her. Oh, but it’s such an old tale, isn’t it? So cliché.”
“What do you mean? What is?”
“This one. Mine. A lowly knight-in-training falling for his princess in the castle.” He looked at Chamomile, smiling sadly. “In training, the recruits had this little poll: which of the princesses do you like the most? It was a silly thing, I know—churlish, really—but, well, predictably, almost everypony preferred Pipp. They said she was cute. They said she was feisty. I never answered that poll, because it seemed wrong—like you were tallying up someone for artificial reasons—but if I had to… I would have chosen Zipp in a heartbeat.”
“And… Did you ever tell her that?”
He shook his head. “I wanted to, but I just couldn’t find the courage to. I thought it’d be inappropriate during training, at any rate, so I tried to focus on that instead, and what came after, well… I’d figure it out from there.” His brow furrowed and his voice became regretful. “But in the end, it didn’t pan out the way I wanted. I flunked out of the guard. Just couldn’t keep up with the others, I guess.” 
He paused, then said, “That was years ago, though. I’m over my dream of joining the guard. I like my courier job. Heck, I like this job! For the part I was able to do, anyway…”
“But Zipp…”
Chamomile wasn’t sure where she was going with this. Polar looked at her in confusion, and she almost apologized—but then she remembered how he acted when he was drunk, then how he’d spoken in the medbay when Chamomile went to visit him on her own. His denial of any significance to him asking Zipp if she remembered him—it all made sense. “That’s what you meant,” she realized out loud. 
“What?”
“You remembered her from training. And you thought…”
His face fell. She’d hit upon it at last, but it was clear that he didn’t want her to. Still, he let out a resigned sigh. “Man, maybe I’m getting transparent in my old age…” He shook his head. “Yeah. It’d been years since I’d seen her in pony, really. I thought that I’d put those feelings aside, but when I saw her at the station, it… It just all came rushing back. I guess I never learned how to let things lie.” 
Yes, that’s certainly one way of putting it. “But how you acted—”
“I’m not proud of it, no. But I think I know why I acted the way I did.” He raised his head, and a degree of tragic nobility entered his torch-illuminated profile. “She’d made an impact on me, so much so that I couldn’t forget what she’d done and how she’d made me feel. I guess I thought… that it’d go both ways between us.”
“Polar…”
“I know. It’s stupid. I should just move on.” He hesitated, then said, “But I just don’t know how. How do I move on from that, if it’s clear I never left it behind?”
He was looking at her for an answer, his eyes large and pleading. Suddenly she thought they resembled Juniper’s eyes and how they’d appeared during Astral’s funeral, how they’d looked at her, at once frightened and confused, wanting to know how he could understand this, how he could move past this, how anyone could put back together this world. 
She gave Polar the same answer she’d never been able to give her son, but which she knew to be true all the same: “I don’t know.”
Bile-tasting regret filled her body when she saw Polar’s weary nod. “Yeah… Yeah, I guess nopony does.”
“But you have to move on somehow,” she insisted. “You can’t be stuck in the past forever…” Her voice ceased. What was she saying? Who was she to say such things, when… when…
“I know,” Polar said. He turned away from the lake. “I know that. Consciously, I do. I just… Well, maybe…”
Then he fell silent. The flame at the end of the burning crosstie seemed to diminish ever so slightly, threatening to be put out. She thought about giving him an apology, but could not imagine how to word one. How things are—sometimes there are no apologies for it. They just are what they are. 
Just as she was about to get up and leave, he said, “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Chamomile. I… I think I needed that.”
She looked at him. “You… you did? But I didn’t do anything.”
“You talked. And you listened.” He looked back at her and smiled. “Who knows? Maybe after this, when we get out of here, I’ll tell her the truth. Might as well try to get some closure there while I can, before the job’s over.”
Chamomile said nothing, mostly because she wasn’t sure what more to say. Polar leaned over and touched her on the shoulder. “Give yourself some credit. You talked and you listened,” he repeated. “Trust me. That counts for something.”
She stared at him in shock. Then, slowly, she nodded. “… All right, Polar. I’ll try.”
Then the two of them stood silently, watching the lake and their reflections and the flame behind Polar’s wing, and Chamomile felt quite strange; she was not happy, but she was not upset. She felt herself transitioning out of some state into another. What did it mean, to feel such transience? Was it a good thing? Could she trust it?
They heard Gaea calling them: “Um, guys? I think Clip’s waking up!”