Half Note only noticed now that there were tears running down her face, dripping off her chin. She sniffled, and rubbed her face. She wanted to see Firelock, or Tornado, but she couldn't look. She felt them next to her, and that was enough.
She let herself think. About everything that had been missing, while they were here. No grass, no flowers, not even a hint of color in the dirt. The stiff air, the lifeless sky. She didn't know how it all tied together, but...but without it, everything was wrong, and she knew that.
It hurt her, a bit, to see the pieces and know that they were part of the same whole, but she couldn't make them fit together. There were...gaps, between the pieces, and she could almost see the shape of the whole, but...not quite.
But she felt herself leaning over the edge, reaching out to close the gap, felt the edge of her foundation start to give and - she stopped. Firelock was there. Tornado was there. It made sense enough.
She sighed. "I-I think I do. At least....maybe not all the way, but...some of it." The Young Mother nodded, and suddenly Half Note could turn away but it didn't matter because her friends were there, together, burying their faces into her mane and they trembled together for a time, before Eostre spoke again.
"It is very rare for a soul to fully understand Magic of any kind, even the most skilled. But you feel it, don't you?" The Young Mother smiled, and Half Note nodded. "Your soul understands. Perhaps, one day, your body and mind will follow, and you'll be the first to truly Walk the Earth. But you need not - you only need to live - that is miracle enough." The Spirit sighed, and Half Note felt her friends supportive presence, and she could have stayed there for a very long time, but Eostre continued. "But that brings us to the problem. You should not be here. More importantly, you should not stay." She looked around. "There is life here, but only at your behest. This place isn't real, not in the way you are. It might be possible to stay, but it would take much of you."
Half Note and Tornado sniffled and coughed, and Firelock burbled. "Can you get us home?"
Eostre frowned. "I...don't know. You being here is...not normal. I can place you...back, in a place that is...better suited for you, in the same way Laccarentia wrenched you here, but..." She looked away. "Time and place are...not the same, to me, or this place, as they are to you. Here, they mean nothing, are nothing. But your home...they are everything. I can take you through, but the time, the place...I can't be what you want."
Firelock blanched, Half Note was stunned, and Tornado barely managed a whisper. "You can't...we can't go home?"
Eostre grimaced. "I will try - I will look to what you are, and seek to place you where you fit, but...I cannot know the world as you do, and I cannot change once it is done. But I believe it is all I can do, unless you wish to stay here, where all of life is only what you can make of it, and no more."
Firelock was shaking. "But...Mom...I didnt...I didn't think we couldn't go home..."
Eostre said nothing.
Tornado was sitting down, looking at her hooves. She opened her mouth, but only a croak came out.
Eostre said nothing.
Half Note was staring at the spirit, struggling. She felt cold, frozen stiff to the spot. It took a moment, Firelocks sniffles turning to sobs and sniffles again, before the Earth Pony was able to speak.
"So...that's it, then? That's really the only option, isn't it." Tornado and Firelock snapped their attention to her, and she continued. "We stay here, and...it's just us, and whatever we make of it, forever, or...until that runs out. And maybe...maybe we could make something, and maybe we'd learn more and understand it all, and may e that would be amazing. But..." and she trembled, and when her voice broke it was the smallest voice of a filly, lost and lonely and tired and broken. "...but it's not home. It'll never be home. I want to go home, and if...if we can't get there, then I want to get as close as possible. If I'm with my friends, then...then we'll make wherever we go home." She looked to her friends. Firelock nodded, timidly, and Tornado, stiffly.
Half Note turned to Eostre. "We want to go home. You promise to...to get us as close as you can?"
Eostre nodded. "My promise is as the dawn."
And then there was a true wind, and the petals and leaves on the ground were in the air once more. Three fillies held each other closely and thought of home - what home meant, and what made it home and what they wanted and what they feared and what they needed -
And the sun rose over the backs of three fillies in a field, on the first day of spring.