//------------------------------// // ... (Lost in Translation) // Story: Reward Prefers Risk // by AltruistArtist //------------------------------// The golden sphere reflected in Stygian’s pupils like a pair of small suns. They subsided into darkness as Star Swirl’s echoing voice departed with the spell. Stygian’s hooves cupped the dissipating light like a perishing soul. “Star Swirl was… like me,” he said, both an accusation and an invocation. Sunburst nodded. “I’m sorry he never told you.” Stygian turned, facing him. They were in his kitchen, at the table. The hearth glowed, filling the room with a charcoal-sweet heat. Behind the window, dusk settled in shades of murky violet. Candles burned in the sill, gummed by heavy layers of pooled wax. “In a way, I always knew. I knew without knowing. There were signs, if I looked for them.” His eyes dropped. “Sometimes, I thought I was convincing myself. Others, I was certain.” Sunburst’s hoof slid across the worn wood table, taking Stygian’s own in his grasp. “That doesn’t change the fact that your trust was broken. Now I know just how badly.” He sucked in a shuddery breath. “Every time you took responsibility for your own happiness, you were hurt. That never should have happened.” Stygian’s neck lolled, a tired smile rising on his face. “Not every time.” Sunburst gripped his hoof tighter. They enjoyed a moment of grounding quiet, holding tight to one another. The cold exposed skin under Stygian’s fetlock was warmed by Sunburst’s grasp. “You’ve brought me answers I never expected to receive,” Stygian murmured. “I cannot say I feel better. I won’t for a long time. But I feel… relief. Like something is about to start and end, all at once.” Sunburst said, “Maybe you’re seeing the story’s conclusion.” Stygian stared at him. His hoof twitched as though expecting Sunburst to let go, but he didn’t. “I'm sorry you had to hear all that,” Stygian said, swallowing roughly. Hastily, he explained, “Whatever I once felt for Star Swirl, it came from a place of desperation. I just… wanted him to stay. He was everything to me, once. I thought if I was something more to him…” He ran his unheld hoof down the bridge of his long snout. As it dropped free, so too did the final vestiges of illusion. “Nopony has ever spoken on my behalf the way you spoke to him.” A deep pool of disbelief shrouded his countenance. “Was all of that real?” So absorbed by passing along Star Swirl’s disclosure, Sunburst forgot the presence of his own voice in the preternatural recording. He smiled. “Every word.” The peaceful quiet returned. A crackling pop rose from the hearth. When Stygian did eventually let go, it was to rub the inner curve of his pastern, flexing the joint. “Trixie came by last night. She said you sent her.”  Sunburst squinted, nodding. “She’s a counselor. She knows how to make sure somepony is safe.” “She said that. ‘Do you feel safe tonight?’” Stygian continued to wear his shock openly. “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that. I was safe, though. I know my home borders the Everfree, but the animals have never posed any danger.” He paused. “Then, she asked, ‘Can you name a reason to keep living?’ That struck me. Because, again, I’d never been asked. But also — because I had an answer.  “‘Sunburst,’ I said. ‘If I wasn’t here, he would be sad. We would never finish the book.’” “And, I’d miss you.” Sunburst blinked past a sharp sting of tears. “I’d miss you a lot.” The flickering candlelight in the windowsill washed Stygian’s coat, a cast of gold on silver. His slow breaths were audible in the peaceful quiet of his kitchen. A rustling whispered below as his bobbed tail swished in thought. Miniscule flexions of muscle shifted under his hide as his posture adjusted, the chair creaking with him. His eyes were wide and searching. Sunburst could not imagine the absence of his presence, not when it drew his every sense. “Lastly, Trixie asked if I had any live coals in my hearth.” Sunburst’s heartbeats skipped. His voice was gentle when he asked, “Did you?” Stygian gave a jerking nod. “Oh, Stygian…” “I didn’t touch them,” he assured. “I made that promise to Trixie.” A deep silence dropped over them. Again, the hearth crackled. A fine cast of candlelight edged Stygian’s exhausted face. “Why do you do that to yourself?” It was pleading, the way Sunburst asked it. Stygian blinked, an earnest sadness in his eyes. “Because, from the age of five, it’s what I was told. This is how weakness is killed.” He reached to the window sill, cupping a hoof over the top of a candle flame. Sunburst gasped, until he realized Stygian wasn’t reacting, made immune by the callus of scar tissue between his heel and fetlock. He pulled his hoof away with a curling trail of smoke. “You notice things nopony else does, Sunburst. No doubt you saw the soot on my hooves the other day and sent Trixie to check up on me, believing I was a danger to myself.” A slow smile rose to his face. “Your instinct was right, just on the wrong occasion. The night after the festival, when I was feeling at my weakest, reaching for that old punishment was all I wanted to do. But I stopped myself. I sat down at my desk, and I wrote. I wrote out all of my ill feelings until the hearth stopped burning. I didn’t rest until I had scooped up all the dead coals and buried them outside.” Stygian paused, and said, “When I lit the fire last night, it was only to keep me warm.” Sunburst wasn’t aware of the stiff tension in his shoulders until those relieving words were spoken. He breathed easy again and let out a firm sigh. “I’m sorry I walked away.” At Stygian’s puzzled look, he continued. “After the festival, I didn’t want to stop being with you.” An unbidden quaver entered his voice. “All this time, I had been trying to speak your language. To communicate to you what I felt in a way that was safe. I was worried if I said anything real, then…” Stygian was shaking his head. “I’m not Star Swirl.” Sunburst started. “Of course not.” Stygian pressed his hooves firm on the table, running back and forth, scraping at the grain. “Real,” he echoed, the belief just beginning to manifest. “So that means…” “Yeah.” Sunburst let out a breathy chuckle, eyes creasing with his grin. “It does.” Stygian’s lips parted in a faint smile, his brows turned upward. He laughed without voice behind it, a rough exhale that could have been a sob if Sunburst wasn’t looking at him, seeing him clearly as he was. As though crept upon by a foul recollection, Stygian jerked and turned his gaze to the fireplace — then above it. Sunburst did, too. The black dagger hung there like a dark wound in the brick. Liquid firelight reflected off its jagged edges. “I’ve told you so much,” Stygian murmured, gazing upon it. “I wonder, when will you stop accepting it?” “I won’t. I won’t stop.” “If we’re going to finish the book, there’s one last thing you need to know.” “I want it all, Stygian. Not just for the book. When I said your truth was valuable, I meant all of it.” “Then, perhaps, this once — may I show you, rather than tell you?” He met Sunburst’s eyes, his ears low. “It will be easier on me that way.” Sunburst nodded, but said, “Don’t show me this only if you think it might push me away. If this is a strategy – a test – I won’t take it as one. I’ll just be with you.” Stygian smiled with a culpable squint. “Always clever.” An azure aura grasped the hilt of the dagger, bringing it down from its display on the mantle. The inscription of hlight foresetten plight was illuminated amber as it passed over the hearth glow. Stygian laid it on the floor, coming to stand over it, head bowed. Sunburst joined him, hooves inches from its severe edges. He hadn’t been this close to the dagger since he pulled it from its stand at the antique shop. This weapon would have become a similar, glittering mantlepiece in his own home, had he decided to keep it that day. Knowing now the hooves that made it, Sunburst paled to believe he ever thought it was crafted with love. “We need to travel to Hollow Shades. If I bring this there,” Stygian gestured to the dagger, “I can use the ambient magic to conjure a representation of… what I intend to show you.” Sunburst nodded, recalling the revenants of the Pillars that appeared when their artifacts were aligned at Ponehenge, a vivid display of the Shadow’s banishment to Limbo along with them. Stygian asked, “Can you teleport?” Sunburst shook his head. “Not really.” “Then I can bring us both.” He rocked back on his haunches, forelegs raised. “Hold out your hooves.” Sunburst did as asked, soles upturned. Stygian’s hooves were smaller than his when he laid them down. They gazed at one another, matched in their resolve. Sunburst did not look away as a brilliant blue nimbus ensconced them, his eyes still on Stygian as the interior of the kitchen blurred behind his head and the blunt-cut ends of his mane fanned in the rush, the craggy gray landscape of Hollow Shades closing in like a terrible apparition. — What remained of the cistern below the Well of Shade hunkered at the bottom of a blown crater. From the view of the cosmos, it appeared as a black star on the surface of Equus. A voidspace, emptied of light after the cleansing spectrum from the Elements of Harmony had erupted from it heavenward. Stygian approached its edge like a supplicant. He laid down the blade. Its weight sunk into the powdery dirt. Sunburst came to his side. Wordless, he bent to touch his nose to Stygian’s ear, eyes closed. A hoof rose to cup his face as Stygian breathed deep. They remained here, sheltered together, until Stygian was ready to let go. “As the Shadow continued to speak to me, I was losing my ability to ward it off,” he began. “I needed to be stronger. I needed to possess the same fortitude as my companions. I needed to be a Pillar. “I studied long in the library. And that is where I discovered a story. A legend of an old wellspring of magic at the base of Foal Mountain, where the waves of thaumaturgy were high and able to be taken hold of by a pony’s magic. Ponehenge.” There was a cut of guilt in Stygian’s expression when he turned to Sunburst and said, “You know where the story proceeds from here. I stole the Pillars’ artifacts. I believed I could harness them together — to empower my own.” He ran a hoof along the blade, brushing away granules of dirt. This revealed the murky reflection of his face, deep in its penumbral heart. “Of course they afforded me no explanation. I broke their trust; I deceived them. And when Star Swirl was the first to extend his hoof in exile, it felt deserved.” He looked at Sunburst. “But before they arrived, my spell had already been completed.” Sunburst’s ears pricked. “You did it?” His face appeared beside Stygian’s in the dagger’s reflection. “So this was…” “Imbued with a copy of their magic. My artifact.” He rose to his full, slight posture. “You might think me foolish for it, but that was only the beginning. What I did next, that was when I became a fool.” Stygian’s horn glowed; the dagger did in turn. A rivulet of magic rose and dropped over the perilous edge of the broad crater, spiraling down into whatever trace remained of the Well of Shade below. A powerful wind blew back Sunburst’s mane. He held his glasses in place as a spectral scene unfolded like an aurora, revealing the truth of the past. Stygian’s sharp shoulders rose above his head as he scraped at the earth, panting. He was crouched over the dirt-crusted center of the Well of Shade, the dagger levitating above his bent neck as he dug with furious strokes. As the rock became visible, his horn surged with a lurid blue field. Crying out, he blasted a crack in its center. An opaque sheet of blackness shot upward. It knocked Stygian to the ground and he hurried to right himself, his limbs quivering as he took hold of the dagger in his aura, brandishing it before him. “I believed if I killed it, I would return to them, triumphant,” Stygian said. His mournful eyes were locked on the scene above. “They would accept me again. They would see I was… good.” The Shadow poured upon the edge of the well. It coalesced into a series of vague shapes, stallion bodies pulsating through a contiguous sequence, no clear division between them. For a moment, it appeared as a looming thin figure, clad in pointed hat and cloak, leaning over Stygian as he trembled, beard curling wetly with dripping black. It reached out a hoof, touching Stygian’s face. Stygian swept the dagger wildly, striking nothing but air as the Shadow dodged and undulated.  “How could you hurt me now?” An eerie whisper spoke. “When I would never hurt you?” Stygian was coughing and heaving with exertion, his strikes losing force. The dagger hit the dirt as his magic flickered and expired. He fell to his belly, dragged forward by a single foreleg, all his slithering desperation laid naked in that moment. “I will be with you, always,” spoke the Shadow. “Please,” Stygian replied. A dark appendage caressed the top of his head. Another coursed into his mouth. Nausea turned in Sunburst’s gut. But he did not look away. Stygian’s back seized as his eyes ran with black ichor, the Shadow entering and enclosing him — the dagger dragged along with it. As it rose, dripping into its settled form of stallion bulk, it brandished the dagger in a dark field. Its fanged grin parted, uttering its first, wretched laugh. Skeletal wings snapped upward from its back. They beat down and it launched skyward, slicing through the clouds. The scene swept by, a blur of pallid blue. Its glow fuzzed the edges of Stygian’s features, his eyes flicking, waiting for the next event to land. “I had little control over it, once it took hold of me,” he murmured. “I was a mere thought in the back of its greater mind. All my agency, forfeited. It decided where we went next. Though, where it went was someplace it must have believed would satisfy my desires.” Sunburst pressed close to him. A little village appeared. The Shadow’s massive hooves crashed down outside a small, thatched house. And it waited. Alerted by the sound, the door swung open. A burly stallion galloped out, teeth bared in a defensive grimace. He had a dark gray coat and a black close-shorn mane, the tangle of a beard below his chin. Unclothed from the sleep he had been awoken from, his flank was visible. It bore a dark anvil mark. The Shadow spoke with Stygian’s voice, “Do you see me now?” A rope of blackness shot forth. It whipped around Anvilhorn’s throat before he could make a sound, flinging his body into a broad bricked structure beside his humble home. His smithy groaned from the impact, debris crumbling from its edifice. “You told me not to come home unless I killed a monster.” The jagged dagger descended, poised above Anvilhorn’s sinewy throat, the heavy stallion struggling to rise. “But home belongs to the worst monster I know.” A sharp infant cry split the air. The Shadow turned. In the doorway of Anvilhorn’s home, a mare clutched a foal to her chest. Her horn emanated a violent light, her terrified face in sharp relief. Doors of the surrounding homes swung open, ponies rushing to the commotion, murmuring and shrieking. “I did kill a monster that day,” Stygian whispered. “But, it wasn’t him.” The Shadow’s chest jutted outward and it screamed. Stygian’s hooves split through, prizing apart its liquid pitch hide. He broke free, skidding to the dirt and sprinting to the smithy, twin shadow trails bubbling from his black eyes. His neck jerked, attempting to gain control of the hilt with his magic. The dagger clattered to the ground, dropped by the Shadow, yet unable to be lifted as an inky coil wrapped to shut off Stygian’s access to his horn. “What are you doing?” the Shadow screeched, but went unanswered. His magic indisposed, Stygian clutched the blade with his hooves, pulling against the tendrils rushing to restrain him. He pressed it below his jaw at the jugular vein, eyes closed for the terminal stroke. Sunburst sobbed, “I can’t watch this part.” Yet, he didn’t turn away. How could he — when Stygian stared with unblinking attention, a stream of tears below his eyes. Sunburst’s pasterns folded over him in a shielding embrace, as though he could stand between the past and the present. When the flinty impact of metal in flesh slitted the air, Sunburst cried out. A dark trickle spilled from Stygian’s throat. He rattled with agonal breaths, face slick with spittle and tears, running dilute black.  And he collapsed at his father’s hooves. “It didn’t work,” Stygian rasped. His hoof rose, touching the faint scar below his jaw. “I believed if I killed the Shadow's host with a blade blessed by the Pillars' magic, that would be enough to defeat it. But when I woke, I was within the Shadow again. It must have healed me—” “Stygian!” His ears lurched upward. The Shadow was a roiling, formless cloud in the air above, its shape lost without a soul to anchor itself — but it hadn’t been the one to cry out. “Out of the way! Move!” A pony broke through the gathered crowd. It was a mare, her ash-brown braid thumping at her neck as she skidded to crouch above Stygian’s inert body. Her coat was a stark paper-colored cream, melding into the woolen shawl draping her shoulders. “Turning?” Stygian’s voice broke. With a surgical focus, Turning Page’s horn lit a pale shade of elderflower green. Her magic caressed the wound at Stygian’s throat. It sealed, just as smoothly as it opened. “Turning… Turning…” Stygian wept. He staggered closer, her image above him. His hoof rose, unable to reach through time. “Your hair grew out… your eyes, so tired. What did they do to you?” Sunburst came to his side, a hoof on his shoulder to caution him back from the edge of the crater. “That’s an incredibly powerful healing spell,” he gasped. “No ordinary unicorn apothecary could perform it! Only an expert spellcaster.” Stygian could only sob, holding onto Sunburst as they witnessed the scene’s unforeseen conclusion. Turning Page pressed her ear to Stygian’s ribs, eyes sealed. “Come back,” she whispered. “You could never be so easily defeated.” An agonizing moment stretched by. Stygian’s eyes snapped open. They were black. As he gasped in a ragged breath, he was seized by a thread of inky darkness. Turning leapt back as his body vaulted upward into the Shadow’s waiting mass. It congealed, taking its recognizable form. The Pony of Shadows boomed a spiteful laugh, ropes of black liquid spat from between its teeth. Before it could speak, it was struck by a shearing green blast. It snarled, blurring at the edges. Horn sizzling with a blinding flare, Turning Page’s eyes were alight with fury, lips pulled back from her teeth. “Let him go!” But Sunburst knew that would not happen. Affrighted by her display of power, the Shadow’s bulging white gaze swept the crowd — Anvilhorn, his second wife and child, and Turning Page, standing before them all. Like a champion. It beat its wings and shot upward, hurtling toward the Pillars’ fortress to enact the final beat of its storied history. Seen by the town, nevermore. — Stygian’s hooves were clasped over his eyes, weeping prone long after his spell winked out. Sunburst was pressed beside him, sheltering him under his star-studded robe, his chin resting on Stygian’s quivering shoulders. “She was there,” were the first words he managed. “I never saw her again. I didn’t think… It was her. She saved me. Not the Shadow — my friend!” “She won, Stygian,” Sunburst said to soothe him. “The whole town watched her defeat a monster. I'm sorry it was a monster that had you in it. But, she must have been seen as a hero.” “Did she live? Did she love?” Stygian gasped. “Would history books be able to show me that? If she ever found a mare who…?” “I don’t know,” Sunburst answered honestly. “But we can look.” When Stygian was ready to rise to his hooves, Sunburst held out a hoof to help him stand. Stygian wiped his face, his throat rasping as he gasped and sniffed. “When I brought you here, I believed I was disclosing my greatest shame. That I tried to take my own life, and failed, dooming the Pillars to the sacrifice that was mine to bear. But, instead…” “You were helped,” Sunburst concluded. “Even when you believed all you had left was the Shadow, somepony still loved you.” “That’s all I wanted!” Stygian cried, validation ripping it out of him. “A parent — a friend — a lover. It didn’t matter. I loved only those who could not love me in return!” “But you were worthy!” Sunburst said. “You were so worthy of love, and I’m sorry that wasn’t given when you needed it most.”  As his posture lifted, so too did the warmth of conviction rise in his chest. Not like a star, but the sun. And he recited, “‘Inne alt naertrin, del weorld ama prijen thouth luvji.’ Because in this age, I love you.” Sunburst wrapped him in his forehooves, holding him long and hard, like a promise. “And you are meant to live.” They remained this way, folded into one another, no clear division to indicate where one of them began and the other ended. “I want to live.” Then again, with agonized force, Stygian arched his face to the heavens and screamed, “I want to live!” A brilliant glow struck the darkness. Sunburst’s coat prickled the way it always did when magic was in the air. The pressure dropped. And a corona beamed around Stygian, shafts of light piercing the cloak concealing his flank. Stygian stumbled backward with a gasp, putting a hoof to his chest as though a bodily affliction hit him just as hard as that sudden light. Scrabbling at the loop on his cloak, he forgot the aid of his magic, loosening the knot with bare hooves and tossing it over his head. This revealed his flank, no longer vacant gray. Stygian bore the mark of an unrolled scroll and a black feather quill, his once more. It shone in the night air until the light dropped away, the image becoming as solid and real as the hairs on his coat. He stared with wet eyes, breath clouding from his lips. Helpless, he looked to Sunburst. “What does this mean?” Sunburst’s hooves danced in place before he galloped to Stygian. He swept him into another embrace, shaking in giddiness. “You discovered something yet to be known,” he gasped, his snout tickled by Stygian’s mane. “Your mark’s meaning — it’s yours again.” His heart was beating with such ferocity, he wondered if Stygian could feel it pounding where their chests pressed flush together. Sunburst certainly felt Stygian’s elated, gasping laughter, riding the edge of overwhelm. He was weightless. Sunburst, his voice still bright with joy, nodded to Stygian’s reclaimed mark and said, “You look good like this.” Stygian was beaming, a smile more effortless than Sunburst had yet to see on him. It pushed back against the deep gray below his eyes, pupils wide and shining with the soft light of the moon. He grasped both sides of Sunburst’s face and kissed him. There was a desperate, heart-pounding force behind it, the end of Sunburst’s nose wrinkling from the quick press of his muzzle. Sunburst’s eyes shot wide, then flitted closed, hooves grasping for Stygian’s shoulders as their lips formed a hasty seal. A sudden gasp and the warmth of his mouth was gone. Sunburst’s eyes opened as Stygian pulled back with vivid shock in every line of his expression, pupils shrunk to pinpricks, hooves held up as though he were a pony accused. In a flash of blue, he disappeared. Sunburst yelped as he careened forward. His chest hit the ground, his glasses knocking free. His hoof shot out, located them, and hastily affixed them to his snout. “Oh no,” he gasped, turning on a small pivot, taking in the barren landscape. “Stygian?” Rubbing his temple, Sunburst squeezed his eyes shut as his horn ignited, golden sparks of light and beads of sweat rolling down his forehead. “Come on, come on…” he breathed, mind fritzing to recall the teleportation spell he had attempted, and failed, so often long ago in school. A magical burst struck the air and Sunburst yelped again, leaping backward. Stygian jittered in front of him, hoof outstretched. “You can’t teleport!” “I was trying to follow you!” Their voices overlapped. Each of them went rigid as nerves faded and comprehension returned. And they both erupted into laughter. “Why did you do that?” Sunburst asked, gripping his shoulders. “I’m sorry. That was foolish.” Stygian shook as he chuckled, clutching Sunburst in return. “I made myself nervous, I suppose. Of your reaction.” Sunburst shook his head as his laughter subsided. “If you wanted to kiss me, you should’ve just asked.” He brushed a tousled lock of fringe behind Stygian’s ear. “I would’ve said yes.” The back of Stygian’s neck was hot under his hoof. His expression slackened, and his muzzle inclined upward. “Can… Can I kiss you again?” Sunburst felt him shivering, surely not just from excitement. “Let’s go back home first, out of the cold — and away from here,” he said gently. “Then, yes. Of course you can.” Stygian nodded. His forehooves returned to the ground and he shuffled, narrow shoulders rolling as he concentrated his magic. His horntip ignited, then waned. “Wait—!” He extended a hoof. “There’s something I have to do first.” Touching his chest, his hide ruffled under his brusque kneading as he calmed himself. “The dagger,” he breathed. “I need to get rid of it.” “Oh.”  Sunburst and Stygian turned in unison to where it remained at the edge of the yawning crater. Stygian approached, tracing a hoof over the lettering. “When I felt it resurface, it terrified me. I hated the thought of it being out there, free in the world. To think it could come into another pony’s possession, it unnerved me. And…” He paused. “To have it again was something of a comfort. Should I ever lose myself again, it would be a last bastion against… me.” Sunburst shook his head, his brows furrowed in deep regret. “I should never have given it to you. If I knew—” “You’re innocent, Sunburst.” Stygian looked over his shoulder. “If I could go back to the antique shop, I wouldn’t change anything. If you’re fearful you gave me something meant to be my end, you didn’t.” A true smile rose to his face. “Without you, I wouldn’t have been rewarded with this beginning.” With that, Stygian leaned his head down. His blunt teeth closed over the hilt, lifting the dagger in the most intimate way a pony could. Stepping to the edge of the sheer rock face, he let go. The dagger sliced downward into oblivion. As it clattered faintly at the unseeable bottom, Sunburst said, “Let’s hope it doesn’t show up in another antique shop.” “If it does,” Stygian said, turning from the dark pit to look up at him, “I won’t be there to find it.” — Stygian stumbled as he and Sunburst flashed into his kitchen. Sunburst crouched beside him, supporting Stygian’s weight on his shoulder. “Sorry, I’m a little drained,” Stygian rasped. “I haven’t used this much magic in a long time.” “That’s okay,” Sunburst said tenderly. “You should rest.” “But…” Stygian’s eyes were wide, a hazy yearning behind them. “I don’t want you to leave. Please, don’t leave.” "I won't,” Sunburst assured. “What do you want, Stygian?” “Just,” he breathed, “lay down with me?” They walked in step to his bedroom. Stygian didn’t light the candle at his bedside. He barely mustered the strength to pull his threadbare cloak over his head, donned for the briefest moment of transporting home. Sunburst unclasped his robe, hanging it on the same chair Stygian laid his own garment. He lifted his glasses from his snout, tidily setting them beside it. When Stygian rolled back the covers, Sunburst didn’t join him until Stygian’s hoof patted the mattress. Language, here, was unneeded, a hindrance for once to the subtle gestures of them adjusting into bed, side by side, the blankets safeguarding them from the chilly night outside. Stygian lay on his back, the covers over his chest rising and falling at a quick pace. Sunburst’s hoof slid across the mattress, finding Stygian’s own. He flinched, then relaxed, reciprocating the grasp. They were linked by this gentle hold for a matter of minutes, before the separation began to feel like pain. Sunburst worked closer, pulling Stygian to himself. He stroked the small of his back until he stopped shaking. Stygian’s muffled whisper rose from below Sunburst’s chin. “I’ve never slept beside…” “I know,” Sunburst said, just as softly. “It’s easy. You just sleep. But you have somepony to hold you.” He pressed his nose beneath Stygian’s horn, to the furrow between his brows, creased as though by the stroke of a sculptor. For a while, Stygian breathed fast, running hot with nervous energy, slender forelegs tucked neatly at Sunburst’s barrel. It took a stretch of time for him to gain the courage to embrace him in return. It took longer for him to fall asleep. When he did, it was with his ear pressed to Sunburst’s chest, soothed into slumber by the beating of his heart. — Sunburst woke up too early. A gray skin of pre-dawn light washed the walls. It was the hour of liminal quiet, one that so few ever heard. The emptiness of it became vast when Sunburst reached out beside him to find a space on the mattress losing warmth. Stygian wasn’t there. A dull alarm jumped in his chest. He sat up groggy with his mane in a tangle and rubbed his eyes to clear them, before realizing his sight was useless without his glasses. He didn’t have to wonder long on Stygian’s whereabouts. The hinges of the door sighed a faint squeak as the blurred figure of him trotted on featherlight hoofsteps back to bed. “Sorry, did I wake you?” His voice was creaky with fatigue. Sunburst didn’t retrieve his glasses as Stygian climbed under the covers with him, coming within his close sight. “You’re okay,” he murmured with a slow smile. “I think I just felt that you were gone.” “Sorry,” Stygian said again. “I was feeling restless. I thought about starting on breakfast for you, but, the time. It’s much too early.” He chuckled. Sunburst shook his head with a smile. “You’ve already made me a delicious meal. The next one should be my turn, right?” Time passed with a graceful steadiness as they continued to speak back and forth like this. They talked about favors to be exchanged, and future hopes, and nothing at all, really. They talked just to hear the lift and fall of one another’s voices. The serenity resolved into a question from Stygian. “What happens now?” “Well,” Sunburst chuckled, squinting, “we certainly have an ending to the book.” Stygian smiled, a press of worry in his brows. “After the book. What happens, then?” Sunburst blinked the final dregs of sleep from his eyes, present and conscious. “I keep loving you.” Stygian met his gaze. “I keep loving you, too.” A sharp pulse hammered in Sunburst’s throat. Stygian’s coat, visible from his shoulders upward above the blankets, was washed silver by the window behind him, dawn just below the horizon. His chest bobbed ever quicker, his throat flexing with a hard swallow. His eyes were earnest, pleading in their clearest blue. And Sunburst knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life waking up to this vision of him. Sunburst cupped his face and Stygian leaned into his touch, eyes falling closed. “You know,” Sunburst murmured, “you never got that second kiss.” Stygian shook his head. “I hope it’s not too late,” he breathed. Guiding him closer, Sunburst said, “It never is.” It was different this time, a careful articulation as their lips drew together. Sunburst’s hoof slid to the base of Stygian’s neck above his shoulders, the bumps of his spine under his touch. Stygian reached for him too, a tentative, clumsy grasp for Sunburst’s body, gaining familiarity with the lean muscles of his shoulders, the soft sides of his belly. A faint note hummed in his throat as he trembled to explore the feeling of another stallion beneath his hooves, long-sought and unknown — until now. The air shimmered with Sunburst’s magic as he rolled back the covers, allowing freedom in their movement. He lowered Stygian into a more comfortable position as he pulled back for a deep breath of air. “Can I keep touching you?” Sunburst asked, crouched above him. Stygian’s bobbed mane was fanned out behind his attentive ears like a halo. Sunburst’s beard tickled his chin. “I haven’t—” Stygian swallowed, hooves braced around Sunburst’s shoulders, holding steady against perceived inadequacy. “This is all new to me. I'm nervous that...” “It's okay. I'm a little nervous, too,” Sunburst whispered, a frisson leaping through his stomach. His brows furrowed with his soft smile. "Just feel. You won’t disappoint me.” A desperate gasp heaved in Stygian’s chest at that direct, accepting permission. “Then — yes,” he breathed. “A thousand times, yes! Please, Sunburst.” Their noses pressed together, melding into another kiss as Stygian allowed himself to feel. Sunburst kissed him many more times after that. He took his aching hooves and kissed the bare patches below his fetlocks. He kissed his throat that should never have been opened by a blade. And as he dipped his head, horn brushing Stygian’s chest, he kissed places left untouched for the stretch of a millennium, closing the gap between time and longing as easily as he closed the distance between lips and flesh. When his hooves rested on Stygian’s pronounced ribs, he felt the rough shudder of his breath as though he was surfacing from underwater. Stygian’s eyes were closed tight, creased at the corners, even as his lips parted with quick vocal gasps. Sunburst caressed his face, easing him to open his eyes, and Stygian caught his hoof, clutching it hard. He blinked, eyes running with tears, beholding a new and dazzling brightness, the rush of dawn rising to meet him. Stygian felt sunlight for the first time.