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// 93 - Magic Lost 
// Story: New Endings, Old Starts 
// by David Silver 
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The strange creature did not have a first aid kit. She did have cloth, and wrapped it around the injured finger. It hurt, a lot, as she tied it tightly to bind the wound, but it was doing a far better job of keeping it all sealed, rather than the unsure grip of Comforting's other hand. "I used to do more."

"More?" Comforting sat up when her hand was freed. It still hurt! But it didn't... feel like she was a tub with the drain taken out, spilling out. "Thank you, really..." She took the time to examine her savior. She was like someone had started to become a werewolf, but didn't get all the way. Her basic shape, if one discounted the fur, was that of a human woman with a limp wolf's tail. Her hands were human, with a pale skin.

Not Caucasian, an unnatural paleness. Her face was also human. She had no hair. It occurred to Comforting just then... "You can come... all apart, can't you?"

The wolf-lady flinched back. "I'm a little mess..." she admitted with a low growl deep in her chest. "You don't seem bothered."

"We can't pick how we're made," argued Comforting. "Besides... my usual self is just as bad if we're being honest." Sure, she happened to like her mishmash of a form, but it was still a mishmash. "What happened?"

"Shouldn't you be more concerned about getting home?" The wolflady leaned in, peering with penetrating eyes. "Of escaping. Of proper care?"

"Are you from Equestria?" Comforting just went ahead and asked it. That was apparently more pressing. Not feeling like she was dying, she casually forgot all about that, for the moment. Focusing on the monster lady just felt... easier. It was so much better to think about her, rather than her own injury and its issues.

"Equestria?" She grunted in a canine way. "He made it? Damned fool... Of course... He did like getting his way..." The lady wolf turned to Comforting, looming over her. "Did his favorite take over?"

"Favorite?"

"Celestia," spoke the wolf lady in slow tones. "The Sun pony. His favorite..."

"Yes... But who is 'he'?" Comforting got up to her feet, hands behind her. "Sorry if I'm asking a lot of questions."

"You are asking a lot of questions." She snorted softly. "But you don't feel like them... Something about you is... you smell different..."

Comforting sniffed reactively. "Um... Oh. I'm not a pony."

She scowled at Comforting. "None of them would say they are ponies."

"But they are," countered Comforting. "Human ponies, but still ponies."

This caught the wolf lady by surprise. "And what are you then?"

"Fair is fair..." She had asked a lot of things. Answering a few? Sure... "I was a chaos spirit, now I'm a little girl... in a creepy house with a cut thumb..." Saying that outloud reminded her she shouldn't be very comfortable. She was still hurt. She probably still needed some real care... "Hello."

"Hello. Hm... Is that why you're not... scared of me?" She took a step closer, great wolf-paws for feet clacking their toes on the ground. "I could hurt you... badly. That little nick you got would look tame in comparison."

"You could..." That felt impossible to argue. "But  I don't think you want to. My name is Comforting Shade. What's your name?"

Uneasy quiet sank over the room. The wolflady was looking around, but saying nothing. She suddenly grabbed Comforting's arm, just to wrench the thumb into view. With a grunt, she got to changing the crude bandaging with a new strip of cloth. It was uncomfortable, but, on some levels, comforting. The terrible creature was showing it cared, and doing her best. Comforting decided she was a good creature, unsettling or not.

"Chaos spirit..." The wolf lady prodded Comforting firmly. "You are solid."

"I'm a little girl right now. Um, but I'm solid normally, so no real change there." She shrugged, thinking about that. "Um... Did you want to get back to Equestria?"

"It wasn't Equestria when I left it... I was cast out of those lands a long... long time ago." She sank into a squat, like a human trying to do a wolven haunch-sit with mixed results. "Before you, I imagine..." She hissed softly, looking away. "I... You like talking."

"I enjoy listening too," assured Comforting with a smile. "Want to tell me?"

"Talking and listening... I detest small talk." She threw her hand aside, literally, it flying through the air, hitting the ground, and scuttling off on its own mission.

Comforting flinched at the unexpected motion. "Then let's talk larger. Who is 'he'?"

"Starswirl," she growled out. "I heard he had a favorite solution. I got to learn it in person... This entire world? I think he made it. Did he mean to? No idea, but he shaped it, by what he threw away into it. He fashioned its monsters. The wizard creates its ponies. He made it all, the refuse of 'Equestria'." She bared her teeth with the last. "He got his way..."

On one level, Comforting was happy. The wolflady had started pretty quiet and unsure, but was speaking pretty animatedly. But it was also a topic she didn't like much. "Sorry, that couldn't have been fun."

"No." A flat and single word.

"Can I help? I know how to get back there." Comforting pointed out with her uninjured hand. "There are new ponies."

"Who will despise me like the old ones." She rose up to her full height, looming impossibly tall. To an adult, she would have been tall. To a small child, she was the definition of a giant. "Cracked Glass."

"Huh?" Comforting leaned in with a tilted head.

"I go by that." She directed the thumb of her remaining hand at herself. "Cracked Glass." She turned a finger on Comforting. "Comforting Shade."

"Yep!" Comforting smiled brightly, happy with the exchange of names. "Are you mean? You don't seem mean... Why would they hate you?" She squealed, something touching her leg unexpectedly. Wheeling to find it, there was Cracked's long lost hand, scurrying past her back to Cracked to rejoin her arm properly.

"You were saying? Hate. Easy." She hugged herself, arms folded under her chest. She had a human one of those, though covered in a thick pelt. "It wasn't better back there."

Thoughts of what Cracked looked like in Equestria flitted through her mind, various ideas and notions... "That name. What was it before you broke the mirror?"

"I didn't break it!" she howled out with a sudden furious intensity. "Starswirl is not... gentle... when he discards things..."

"But then... you had to be called something else... right?" Comforting rolled her intact hand as she asked. "Right?"

"Fortune is mean..." She tapped Comforting Shade on the nose. "You were Comforting Shade before you walked into a dark place to try and talk nicely to what was hiding in it. Were you Cheerful Day before then? Fortune is cruel..."

Comforting was still a moment. Huh. She had not considered that. She was living up to her name. "Are you comforted?"

Cracked sneered. "You found my broken mirror." The two had thrown their names at one another, wanted or not. "Sorry... If it wasn't broken..."

"Then what?" Comforting looked towards the stairs heading back down. It was hard to see them. The area was dim, no lights around.

"Then I would be whole." Her tail gave the barest twitch of life. "But that isn't happening... That you tried... the only reason I hesitated..."

Comforting reached towards the stairs. "Want me to get it fixed?"

"They don't fix. They replace." She threw up both of her hands. "There's... it's different. I need the glass. I need the metal. Same glass. Same metal. Not replaced. They do not fix."

Comforting tapped her chin with thought. "May I see it again?"

"You would dare? It already hurt you." Cracked scowled at Comforting. "Are you mad, foolish, or brave?"

"You just said the same word three times." Comforting started for the stairs, her steps slow and careful through the gloom. But Cracked didn't stop her, so she went down them into the part of the house she knew, relatively. Entering the living room, she could see her phone, stained and turned off. "Maybe?" It had dried, maybe it would work?

She picked it up and held down the power button. It lit up! "Cracked?" Something poked her on the leg. She was less surprised that time. "There you are." Comforting held up her phone to Cracked's hand. "It's turning on." The hand gestured. Sign language? Comforting was pretty sure it was that... "I can't talk that. I'll be right back up." She tucked the phone away, then went to the mirror. There it was, with the jagged last bit of glass that had cut her. She so very carefully picked up both, setting the glass on the mirror and holding the mirror. The edges of the mirror were way safer, being metal rimmed and not cut.

She had her prizes! More than she could have hoped for, if one is being honest. "Coming back up." Comforting looked to the door, still with no knob. "Did you do that? We can talk when I get back." She ascended the creaky stairs. "That scared me, a lot..."

"You would have run." Cracked was near the top of the stairs. "We wouldn't have talked."

"True..." But also she might have bled to death. "Is that sign language?" She pointed at Cracked's hand as it scurried towards her.

"Yes." She flexed her returned fingers. "I can hear you, but a hand doesn't have a mouth."

"A hand doesn't have ears either," noted Comforting, setting the broken mirror in front of Cracked.

Cracked backed from it with the scramble of a startled dog. "I can't look at that!"

Comforting sat in front of the broken mirror. "But you want it, I thought?"

"I do. I don't... Not while it's broken..."

Comforting looked over the mirror. "It's... less  broken."

"What?" Cracked stepped closer on unsure paws. "You must be..." But then she could see it. "It's less broken," she breathlessly agreed. All the shards Comforting had forced back into place had sealed as if it had never broken to start. Only that last piece was stubbornly out of place. "You're fixing it..."

Comforting crossed her arms, humming with thought. "That doesn't... But..." Ideas came to her. "My blood." Not what she had planned on doing... "Do you think that helped?"

"Your blood is the glue." Cracked laughed in an almost howl. "All this time... Can you... Will you...?" She pointed at the last fragment that was still unfixed to the mirror. "Comforting Shade, comfort me."

Comforting nudged the glass into place, but didn't dare try to force it down into place. That pain was still quite present in both her mind, and her thumb. "What were you doing yesterday?"

"Yesterday?" Cracked scowled in thought. "Yesterday... I was in Equestria forever ago."

That was certainly not the day before... "Do you remember when I last came?"

"You came before?" Cracked snorted softly. "That doesn't sound... No."

And yet, Comforting remembered that clearly. How could that have been missed? "I...  have an idea. I think... I think!" She pointed at the mirror in her lap. "You were broken. You were a bunch of angry parts. So, you chased people away, because you didn't know what else to do. None of the parts could talk to each other, or...do anything."

Cracked flinched at the situation being presented. "You put me together, mostly... Then I found you, bleeding and scared. You saved me. I saved you. We are even."

"Even," agreed Comforting. "But how do we get the last piece in?"

"Blood is the glue," noted Cracked as if it were obvious.

Comforting frowned at that. "You have blood too."

"I do not." Cracked casually popped her hand free, no blood created as a result. "You do." She pointed with the hand that wasn't attached to her at Comforting.