First Fruits

by the dobermans


Hope

Wild Carnation smirked, leaning back in her chair and tapping her front hooves together. Outside, the sun had risen high enough to filter through the curtains in the adjacent dining room, which was furnished more like a museum than as a place to accommodate guests. A group of ponies was talking in the street beyond the papered walls, happy to bandy the day’s news and marketplace deals.

“Ah I see,” she said. “All in, now that there’s the prospect of a little glory. Gotta say, surprised but not surprised.”

Bellows shrugged. “Maybe. It’s more the prospect of my baby sister flanks up in bog water that settled it.” He folded his hooves behind his head and waited.

“I am not a baby,” Wild snarled. “And I’m two years older than you.”

“Whatever,” said Bellows. His smile crinkled as he tried to suppress it. “So Frogmire wetlands is a big place. Happen to know where to look for the town, if one can call it that?”

“I have a general idea,” Wild answered, glaring from under her bangs. “We can ask the locals.”

Bellows stood up and stretched. “Sounds great.” He brought his dishes to the sink and started running the faucet. “Good plan. We’re going to need some … persuasion … in case the natives aren’t keen on cooperating. You having any more, bud?”

First had been looking back and forth at his hosts during their exchange. “No, sir,” he answered.

Bellows nodded and grabbed a stack of cheese slices. He tossed them into his mouth and spoke as he chewed. “Plus, if Baal-Kaas really is tracking you, there’s a decent enough chance he’ll find you. I can bring along one of my pointier pieces. A lance? No, we’re going to need to do some chopping. A glaive! Best of both worlds. That’s the ticket.”

“‘Persuasion’? ‘Do some chopping’?” Wild laughed. “What are you of all ponies going to do? You don’t know how to fight!”

“I don’t have to know, my skeptical sister. I just have to look like I know. I mean”—he extracted a heavy mezzaluna blade from a wall hook and flexed—“would you mess with me in a dark alley?”

Wild shook her head and stood to clean up her own dishes. “All that anvil pounding has knocked your brain loose.” She grinned at First as he gave her his plates, only to frown as the sight of him distracted her from her train of thought. “First, I’m afraid I’ve been entirely selfish. I forgot to ask you whether you even wanted to come with us.”

Bellows stopped scraping unfinished egg and bread crusts into the trash can and turned.

First had, he realized, been assuming he would be traveling with them, so caught up was he in the tale Wild had woven. But nowhere in her plan was the resolution of his journey; the defeat of whatever monsters awaited him at what was to be his sanctuary. Now that she had asked the question, he found himself at odds with his own destiny.

“I … uh …” he stuttered.

Wild swept her mane out of her face, waiting for his reply. First remembered how miserable she had looked standing above the Greywater, covered in blood, enduring the touch of Baal-Kaas’s hideous creation. He remembered how she hadn’t hesitated to bring him, a complete stranger, to the safety of her brother’s forge. He couldn’t accept the thought of her trekking off into danger with no real protection.

“I’d be happy to travel with you, ma’am. I’ll do what I can against whatever the foe might send our way, at least as far as Frogmire.”

Bellows patted him on the back. “Never had a doubt, First. Wild, about how far is it? Thirty miles, give or take if I recall. Is that right?”

“Yeah, about that,” Wild answered. “The main road is likely underwater this time of year, so we might have to circle around a bit”. The dishes clanked as she dumped the frying pan into the sink. When the countertop had been cleared to her satisfaction, she turned and pushed her chair in.

“’Circle around a bit’,” Bellows echoed, eyebrow raised. “Tell you what. Let’s spend a day here, make sure we have everything we need for the road. Thirty miles can seem a lot longer if you forgot your waterskin. Besides, I want to have a look at our Caretaker’s shears. They could use some touching up. OK if I give them the treatment?”

First had never thought about how his tools looked, let alone whether the layer of rust and decayed matter that had collected on them over the years interfered with their function. “Yes, sir,” he replied.

Wild gave his shoulders a quick squeeze with her foreleg. “First, let’s go into town to buy what we need for the trip. That’ll give Captain of the Guard here enough time to work his magic. Then we can all leave tomorrow morning after a night’s rest.”

“Sounds good, ma’am,” said First, trying to blot the scent of peaches out of his mind.

***

Wild and First spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon wending their way through the disorderly grid of wagons, carts and tents that comprised the Lowlands Market, and select shops that vended from the stone-and-wood lower floors of the town’s modest office buildings. Wild led them to the stands that sold hardier fruits and vegetables that would keep in the late springtime heat, and oats and nuts to provide energy over the miles to and from their destination. Cantaloupe, apples, sweet potatoes, red peppers, and small burlap sacks went into Wild’s oversized saddlebags. From the indoor shops she picked out insect repellent, waterskins, three tents, matches, and a length of rope. “To pull Bellows out of the bogwater when he falls in,” she explained to First about the final item.

After a late lunch of fruit salad and biscuits under the umbrellas of Wild’s favorite café, they returned to the forge. As they rounded the corner, they caught sight of Bellows leaning out of the shop window. He waved them onward with a long, wiry foreleg.

“Come on in,” he called, grinning. “Want to get your opinion on something. Both of you.”

Wild made a sawing motion across her neck to silence him. Checking the corners of the street, she beckoned First to follow her into the alley they had used to enter the shop in secret.

Inside, Bellows was fondling something like one would an infant. An arc of metal was cradled in the crook of his foreleg, brilliant to blinding in the sunlight that shone through the window above the hay bed. “First,” he called, petting the luminous curve as if it were a favorite puppy. “Come on over and take a look. Let me know what you think.”

First went to him and stood at an angle to avoid the intense gleams the object threw off. As Bellows held it lower for him to inspect, he discovered that it was a blade, but one unlike any he had ever seen. The mirror-like surface was a pale blue, like moonlight on snow. The apex of its curve was engraved on one side with nine stars encompassing a crescent moon, and on the other, the same moon embraced by trees, flowers, and animals at play. As hard and First looked, he couldn’t make out individual lines in the images, so fine was the patterning.

The dull spine of the blade was grooved and bored through in the center, but to what purpose, he couldn’t fathom.

Wild caught up to them and gasped when she saw it. “Bellows, is that … was that what was hiding under all that filth? This … First, your shears are artifacts of the rarest kind! I can hardly believe it.” She ran a hooftip over the pictures captured in the metal. “The Nine Stars! There are only five known artifacts left that depict them: most were rigorously sought out and destroyed or defaced. Let me see the other side.”

Bellows let her turn it in his grasp. “It’s the Garden!” she cried. “First, did you know these were here?”

“No, ma’am. My da told me they were just sickle blades that had the handles broke off. Never saw underneath the rust and stuff.”

Wild laughed. “Well I can tell you that these are worth a hundred thousand sickle blades to the right Lorekeeper. No, more than that. These were forged in the High Sanctuary at the zenith of its power, judging by the tint of the steel. Before the schism.”

“I see you’ve been paying attention to my lessons on alloys,” said Bellows. “Go on. You know who wielded these.”

Wild nodded. “They are the holy tools of a Caretaker who completed the journey from new to full: one who was granted Lunation. Not that anyone really knows what that meant. But the images signify something more: they may be didactic. Quaint, I would say, but there is only gravity where the Night Princess is concerned.”

“What does ‘didactic’ mean?” asked First.

“It means whoever made them was trying to teach us something,” Wild replied. She peered at the perfect illustrations a while longer. “Do the others have more of these pictures?”

“Sure do,” said Bellows, still beaming. “Though they’re different. Different scenes.”

“Incredible. First, do you mind if I take these back to my house tonight so I can reference them against the lore? If I can find even one passage that mentions them conclusively, it may bridge several gaps in our understanding of the first years following the Fall. It may even solve the Mystery!”

First looked to Bellows, who shrugged. “I don’t see anything wrong with that, ma’am,” he said. “Maybe you’ll find out somethin’ important.”

“Thank you!” said Wild. She stepped forward to hug him, but remembering her promise, stopped herself and backed away. Bellows coughed to hide a chuckle and gave her the blade.

Wild gathered the others and added them to her saddlebags. “I’ll see you two tomorrow. Wish me luck!”

“Don’t stay up too late!” Bellows called as she went back out into the alley. “I’m not carrying you if you pass out on the trail.” As the door closed he turned to First. “Guess you get an upgrade at Hotel Bellows, bud. Guest room is yours. Hope my sister didn’t trash it.”

“I don’t think she’d do that, sir. She’s a good mare.”

Bellows laughed. “I’ll let that slide since she isn’t here. By the way,” he said with a wink, “I wouldn’t have let you two go by yourselves. I just can’t help riling her up.”

***

First’s nightly dream of his sojourn in the malignant forest felt different to him this time. The tangled limbs of the trees were as foreboding as ever, and the dark sky pressed just as heavily on the mist that enshrouded the muddy litter of leaves and fungus-eaten woodfall. Angry whispers cut through the miasma at every rub of twig against branch, mingling with the sharp patter of water falling from the oily leaves above, like icy tears shed by giants. He wandered as always amongst the abominations that kept guard, searching in vain for a prize the nature of which teased him from the rim of his memories. And as always, the timbre of the insinuated voices turned one by one to despair, building up their single-noted crescendo as the great eye appeared in the brilliant moon.

Joyous

But there was an undertone to the howl this time; an inhalation of flowers in the noxious breath of the swamp, or an upturn in one or two of the voices that played at something long disbelieved. There was a word for it, he was sure.

He stopped and stared up through the curtain of diamonds falling from the trees. For the first time in his life the eye turned to him, and he realized that this dream might not be his own.