//------------------------------// // Chapter 31 // Story: H A Z E // by Bandy //------------------------------// While Blue recovered, Red went back to work. Al Bathaa was all too happy to give her stage time. The demand for labor hadn’t declined since their failed assassination attempt. As far as she could tell, news of the plot hadn’t even gotten out to the public. As she danced, she kept an eye peeled for Serene Dream. No one, not even the notoriously nosy Al Bathaa, knew where she was. Red had seen her walking with Giesu that fateful morning, which means that Blue had attacked her to make sure she stayed out of the way. But that didn’t automatically mean she was dead. She’d seen ponies survive much worse. Heck, she’d just helped Blue survive worse. And Hypha—well, she didn’t know for sure or not if he was dead. She’d watched him go down with that spear through his leg. But it didn’t look like a killing blow. But she knew better than to hold out hope for hopeless causes. Deep down, she knew he was gone. Giesu wouldn’t let him live. It was as simple as that. Giesu was in control, and he wouldn’t let him live. “He’s gone,” she snapped to nopony in particular. “It’s over.” “What was that?” a stallion asked. Red blinked. A few of the ponies reclining in the nearby baths looked up at her curiously. She smiled balefully. “Nothing.” Thank goodness the color of her fur hid blushes. That evening at the hideaway, Blue nosed through Red’s saddlebags while Red changed Blue’s bandages. “No dinner tonight,” Red said. “Gotta save up for more healing ointment.” Blue understood, but the sunken look in her eyes made Red feel miserable. It had been years since they last had to go to bed for dinner. It was a demolishing feeling. In a moment of desperation, Red considered eating a hooffull of mushrooms just to have something in her belly. She pushed the thought away and distracted herself by shimmying her bedroll next to Blue’s. “Lemme hold you,” she said. She realized she sounded desperate, but she tried to put it out of her mind. These were desperate times, after all. A few minutes later they were both snoring quietly. That night, while the city slept, a detail of city guards gathered for a raid on one of the buildings near Red and Blue’s hideaway. The mares weren’t the target, but that hardly mattered when the familiar cadence of clattering armor and truncheons on flesh echoed through the night. The fear was the same. “Time to go,” Red said, already out of her bedroll and stuffing her belongings into her saddlebag. Blue followed suit, albeit slower. Red threw her bags over her back and moved to the trash bin. Out came one large saddlebag, two heavy coats, their coin purse, a roll-up bag of knives, two dried fig bars she was saving for Blue’s birthday, and one canvas bag filled to the brim with mother sky mushrooms. She wasn’t sure how Blue would feel about the mushrooms. But now was not the time to hash it out. She stuffed them in the bottom of the saddlebag and covered them with the rest of her supplies. She glanced over her shoulder to see if she’d been spotted. In the process of rolling up her bag, Blue had torn part of her wound open. She struggled to tie up her bag with one hoof and her teeth. The other foreleg dangled limply at her side. Dark blood dripped down her fur. The first thing that came to Red’s mind was relief. Then shame slapped her hard across the face. She ripped a bandage from her pack and set to packing Blue’s wound. Moving through shadows with a leaky chest wound seemed like a bad idea, so Blue and Red limped their way out the back of the alley instead. The sound of screams rang out behind them. They found a new place to hide a few blocks down. It was half the size of their last spot and offered no natural light thanks to a precarious balcony overhang above them, but it was safe for the moment, which made it better than most other places in the city. Neither slept. When it came time for Red to go to work the next day, she bailed and went to the market to pick up more ointment for Blue’s wounds instead. She returned to find Blue had unpacked the travel bag and set up their tarps and tent and bedrolls. She’d also pulled out the bag of mushrooms. “Rats,” Red muttered under her breath as she squeezed through the entryway. “Hey, do you want some apples? They’re selling them up the street.” Blue just sat there. Staring. A bead of sweat rolled down Red’s brow. “Y’know they use mostly earth pony manure for hydroponics up here? It’s cheaper than importing animal manure from the surface, and most of the hydrofarmers are earth ponies. It’s kinda like karma for how they get treated. Making everyone else eat their manure. Heh.” Blue pointed to the bag of mushrooms. Red set down her bag with a huff. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let me see your bandages.” Blue pulled away. “I’m serious, I don’t want it getting infected. Lemme see it.” Blue pointed to the bag. Red sighed. “I know. I wanna put this ointment on you first though. Then we should eat something. Then we can talk about it. Okay?” Blue shook her head. Before Red could stop her, she picked up a mushroom and chucked it down the narrow entryway. Red scrambled to pick it up. “Don’t play with those,” she hissed. “I couldn’t help him. End of story.” Blue’s look took on a sharp edge, like the point of a spear. “He was pinned to the ground. What was I supposed to do? I had to get you out. I made a difficult choice, and I don’t regret it.” Blue scooted away from her. “Are you mad I saved your life?” Hot blood rushed to her cheeks. “Sorry I chose you over him. No—I chose you over neither of you. Cuz there was no way I could drag both of you out. Do you have any idea how hard it was just getting you out of there?” Her voice cracked. “Do you know how scared I was? We got stopped by guards, and I had to fight them, and then I had to pull that thing out of you, and, and—” Blue wiped her eyes. Red snapped her mouth shut. Idiot. She feels horrible too. Force of habit urged her to talk her way out of Blue’s crosshairs, but she held herself back. She’d been speaking on Blue’s behalf for so long she’d grown used to dominating conversations. That was just the way it had always been. Which one of them was supposed to apologize here? Red picked up the bag of mushrooms and gave it a tentative sniff. “He’s... not alive anymore. We have to figure this out ourselves.” She picked up a dried cap and rolled it between her hooves. Hypha said they were both monks. But that was back when he was still around. He was the real monk. Red was an imposter. “He said we could use them.” Blue snorted. “Right. Sorry. Partake.” Red put the mushroom back in the bag. “I don’t know anything about the order other than the meditation stuff and the mushrooms. Do you?” Blue shook her head. “Great.” Red sighed. “We could burn them. Or toss them off the edge of the city.” Blue shook her head. She was right—they couldn’t just walk away. But their connection to mother sky had always been facilitated by Hypha. He had all the knowledge. He was the conduit. Red noticed something buried in all the mushrooms, something inorganic. She reached in and pulled out a slim spiral-bound book with a dark blue cover. Inside were lines of incomprehensible magical theory and detailed drawings of magical runes. She recognized one right away as Hypha’s light spell. She turned back to the first page. There, written in smudgy pencil, were the words, feel it, receive it, let it go. All the guilt and catharsis of survival welled up inside Red. They’d all failed in one way or another, slid down an ever-steepening slope until they were moving too fast to arrest their fall. They’d passed the point of no return a long time ago. But how large was the gap between the point of no return and the bottom? If there was no bridge leading back to safety, could she build one? Red played with the clouds underneath her for a minute, lost in thought. Then she reached into the bag and popped a mushroom into her mouth. Blue followed suit. The mushrooms brought back a pleasant memory from Red’s childhood. She and Blue had been running with each other for two years, though it hadn’t blossomed into anything more than that just yet. They were in one of Derecho’s many public parks, enjoying a little open space and sunlight, sitting on a stolen blanket, eating stolen food out of a stolen satchel. Just two lost kids enjoying the nice weather. Unnoticed. Unsupervised. Utterly content. Red said, “Y’know what would be cool? If today were my birthday.” Blue shrugged. She picked up a juice box she’d pilfered from the market and pried the top open with her teeth. Bright pink juice dribbled down her chin as she drank. “Y’know what? Yeah. Today is my birthday.” Red looked around. “What day is it?” Blue finished the first juice box and reached for a second. It didn’t take words to articulate that she had no interest in finding a calendar. Red hopped over to the nearest non-threatening looking mare and asked her, “What day is today?” “Uh,” the mare replied. “Twelfth of April.” Red smiled and sang a quick thank you and skipped off before the mare could ask her where her parents were. She got that question a lot. It was better to get out of earshot before it could even be asked. Saved everyone a lot of awkwardness and trouble. When she got back to Blue, she announced in her most official voice, “Today is April twelfth, and it’s my birthday.” Blue nodded, then went back to gnawing at the top of her juice box. Red kicked Blue’s hoof playfully. “We have to celebrate.” Blue wormed away from her. “That’s what you’re supposed to do on birthdays. C’mon.” She pulled Blue to her hooves. Blue wasn’t expecting to be lifted off the ground so quickly and tipped over. The two went tumbling in the soft clouds. Pink fruit juice flew everywhere. They eventually came to a stop with Red directly on top of Blue. Their noses touched. They were frozen. Something Red had never felt before welled up in her stomach—like nausea, except she didn’t want it to end. She was once again grateful her fur came in a color that covered her blush. The memory began to dissolve. Outlines of buildings morphed into towering thunderheads. Vulturewolves hovered high above them. Faint growls of some big cat sounded in the distance. Blue wasn’t moving. Her rear end was wedged in the clouds. The harder Red pulled, the more stuck Blue became. “Stand up!” Red shrieked happily, not seeing the pain in Blue’s eyes. “C’mon! It’s my birthday!” Bright pink fruit juice bubbled up from the ground. The clouds dissolved into a pink ocean. All the pain and tiredness of the material world flattened out into a singular feeling of warmth. It spread through Red’s whole body until she was floating in it, a tranquil sea of trauma extending beyond every horizon. She watched as Blue disappeared beneath the waves. She wanted to go after her, but it felt so good to just float there. A bubble broke the surface where Blue had been. Blip. Then a few more. Blip, blip, blip. The noise lulled Red deeper into stasis. Then the bubbles stopped. It was the silence that spurred Red to act. She flipped over and dove after Blue, but the water stung her eyes, and Blue was already so far away. The harder she pushed, the more the water solidified around her. Her air ran out. She breathed in and tasted fruit. The light dimmed. A final bubble drifted up from the darkness. It kissed her snout and rolled softly up her face. Red awoke to find Blue standing over her. The last bit hadn’t been a hallucination—Blue was wiping tears off Red’s face and planting soft kisses on her cheeks. Red ran a hoof over Blue’s close-cropped mane. Blue batted her hoof away and wrapped her up in a crushing hug. “I love you,” Red whispered. Blue nodded back. So much still needed to be done. But this was a good place to start.