Six Months Later...
Crystal Tearoom bartender Oak Branch stood silently behind the bar, polishing the cleaned glasses one by one and racking them up for service tomorrow. Closing time was fast approaching, and by now, only one patron remained; every other unicorn had gone home before the rain began.
Oak occasionally glanced over at his Head Cook Alphabittle Blossomforth as he silently sat at the center stool at the bar, a half-empty glass of apple whiskey in between his front hooves on the counter. He was on his fourth glass of the evening after his shift, but the heavyset stallion was nowhere close to drunk; due to his size, he'd have to down over half the bottle before he was even considered tipsy. He'd never come close to that, and some would say that was commendable, given the circumstances.
There was no need for the bartender to comment; he knew what the stallion had been through, not just over the past few months after his two year-old daughter vanished without a trace, but also before that, when his wife had died giving birth to her. It was entirely too much tragedy for somepony who was barely thirty, and Oak was amazed that Alphabittle had the tenacity and willpower to continue coming into work.
Oak remembered the night well; it was a downpour, much worse than the one currently passing over them. Alphabittle had come back into the main part of the village in an absolute panic, screaming for help. Oak had been the first one outside into the rain to see what was happening, and had helped gather up nearly half the town to head into the northern forest to cover as much ground as possible. After four hours, and nearly everypony soaking wet, cold, and coughing, they called off the search.
Alphabittle didn't sleep at all that night. Oak wouldn't have been surprised if the stallion stayed out in the downpour, gotten lost, and collapsed of exhaustion before he gave up, but luckily he had a better head than that. He was the last one back, and had gotten himself sick the next morning, sleeping in short bursts, usually waking up from nightmares, but he persevered, somehow. Search parties went out day after day, but after two weeks, after finding absolutely no trace, the search for Misty Blossomforth was officially called off.
After that two weeks, Oak approached an inconsolable Alphabittle and told him, 'take all the time you need. Your spot will still be here when you're ready.'
Nopony in the village had the gall to accuse Alphabittle of endangerment, not that they needed to; he immediately accepted full responsibility for the quarter of an hour that he had left his daughter alone to go get groceries.
Oak Branch had turned 50 this year, and was now considered a Village Elder; unicorns considered old enough to dispense sage advice and wisdom when it was asked of them. The voices and opinions of Elders usually carried more weight than those of the younger Bridlewood villagers, but he still wanted to be very careful of what he said to one of his best workers. Alphabittle eventually came back to work, and the quality of his labor hadn't dropped a bit since.
Still, Oak could tell just from Alphabittle's eyes that he was a long way from forgiving himself for what had happened. If a couple drinks after work gave him a few moments of uneasy peace, then that's what Oak would offer him, because he couldn't imagine anything else being able to.
With a quiet sigh, Alphabittle lifted the glass to his lips one last time, and finished off the last of the ice-cold whiskey.
"Thanks, Oak. I'll get out of your mane and let you finish closing. See you on Monday," Alphabittle softly told him, not raising his eyes to meet his boss' gaze, but left a 5-bit coin as tip on the bar top before heading for the door.
"Be strong, Alph," Oak told him in response, to which Alphabittle offered no reply before stepping outside into the rain, closing the door behind him.
Alphabittle was fairly certain that there was nothing closer to feeling dead inside. The rest of Bridlewood called it a hurting heart, and he would honestly trade it for all the jinxies in the world. He'd do the ritual dance for days if he could simply stop feeling like there was a gaping hole in his chest.
The lunch and dinner shifts at the Crystal Tearoom offered something of a reprieve; staying busy kept the pain away, and the drinks Oak Branch offered him as they closed up continued to keep it dulled during the walks home; if he was lucky, he'd be asleep for a few precious hours of peace before a nightmare woke him up; it was rare that he didn't dream of his daughter and wife. He had always preferred his solitude, but this...
...This was too alone. Every time he got home after leaving the Tearoom, he immediately yearned to be back; it was his one reprieve.
Tonight's rain wasn't as heavy as the downpour that Misty had vanished into, but he would undoubtedly have to dry off once he got home. The sun had gone beyond the horizon already, and the late night lights came from where they always did; the moon, were it not currently obscured by rain clouds, and the many crystals protruding out from the forest floor.
The unicorn's ears immediately perked up when a tolling bell pierced through the sound of steady rainfall, and he paused in his gait down the muddying dirt road. The tolling continued, echoing through the trees roughly every two seconds.
"The Elder Bell..." Alphabittle whispered to himself. He knew that his residence was the closest to it; had anypony else heard it over the rain?
The Elder Bell was one of the oldest structures on the outskirts of the village. He wasn't quite sure what purpose it served; but he knew that maintaining it and making sure it remained serviceable was a task that frequently fell to the Village Elders, thus the name that the rest of Bridlewood had given it. The only other thing he knew about it was that when it rang out, somepony, usually an elder again, went to it. Every other time he had heard, the ringing had been during gusty winds, but even then, the tolling was always investigated, and this was far too steady for it to be the wind.
His curiosity having now gotten the better of him, and not particularly eager to get home, Alphabittle increased his gait to a full gallop, past his home towards the north edge of the forest. As he got closer, the steady ringing became louder. The rain wasn't so heavy that he risked slipping and falling in the mud, so he maintained his gallop through the trees, coming to the clearing before the mountains. He skidded to a halt as soon as he cleared the trees.
There at the towering post with the bell, stood a pony wearing a hooded cloak, pulling on the long rope attached to the bell.
Alphabittle couldn't make out any features other than the bottoms of their legs, and they had been looking up and down the treeline to the south, as if they were expecting the tolling of the bell to be investigated. Their glancing to the left and right paused, along with their rope-pulling, as they spotted the imposing unicorn at the treeline. Their front hooves left the rope attached to the bell, descending to all fours, and the hooded figure appeared to give a slow and steady nod towards him, shortly before they turned and galloped away towards the barely visible mountains.
Alphabittle wasn't sure what to do at first, but then he heard a sound that immediately pierced his heart as it overtook the softening tones from the bell; the distressed cries of a newborn foal. Hearing those, he instinctually broke into a gallop towards the bell post, and the small, simple wooden container that had been built around it, and the cluster of glowing crystals around it provided ample lighting in the late evening.
The stallion once again skidded to a halt in front of the bell post, the hooded figure having vanished against the darkness and rainfall.
The shelter on the ground could be mistaken for a fallen birdhouse, if your average birdhouse-dwelling avian was three times the average size. It had a slanted roof, and a simple hinged door on the front. Alphabittle had always assumed it was an offering shrine of sorts, perhaps for one of Bridlewood's countless superstitions. But that assumption crumbled as he knelt down in the wet grass, opened the door, and there, wrapped in a blanket and laying securely tucked into a wicker bassinet was a unicorn foal.
Taking steady breaths, Alphabittle continued to inspect the bassinet as he slowly pulled it out of the shelter, and set it down in the grass. Now in the glowing ambience of the crystals, Alphabittle saw the newborn's lilac coat, and a short white horn poking out through the blanket and cerulean mane.
Just as he was about to pick the bassinet up and head back into the forest, he saw a piece of rolled parchment tucked into the folds of the blanket. Sheltering the bassinet from the rainfall with his body as best he could, he took the parchment, unfurled it, and read next to the glowing light from the crystals:
I pray the arrangement from olden times is still honored.
She is five days old as of the ringing of the bell, and completely healthy.
Please love her as one of your own.
-Haven, of Zephyr Heights
Alphabittle knew of Zephyr Heights; it was the pegasus settlement up in the highest mountains to the northeast. How in blazes did a unicorn foal get all the way up there?
He needed answers, the crying foal beneath him needed warmth, and he knew where he could get both, as he rolled up the scroll, tucked it in between the foal and the side of the bassinet, and picked it up.
"Shhh, there there," Alphabittle said, using as much of his head as he could to keep the rain off of the newborn, who had begun to settle down slightly from the subtle rocking as the stallion began to head back towards the trees. "Let's get you inside out of the rain."