//------------------------------//
// Respite 
// Story: Mare Doloris 
// by TinCan 
//------------------------------//

Nightmare Moon dropped me unceremoniously to the floor as soon as the outer airlock door shut behind us.

My suit told me that the air she'd brought back had already pressurized the chamber and was not still too hot nor yet too cold to breathe. I wasted no time removing my helmet and taking a huge gulp of the fresher air.

I instantly regretted it. The flash-heating it had received from my weapon had left the oxygen in the form of ozone. My lungs felt like they were on fire.

The exiled princess smirked to see the shoe on the other foot and nonchalantly stepped inside, leaving me coughing and convulsing at the threshold. She withdrew even more of my water and gave herself a second ablution, once again dropping the mud in the airlock, splattering me.

After I had regained my breath and crawled into the habitat proper, I saw she was peering through the window of one of the hydroponic vats.

"Ah!" she exclaimed. "So this is where you keep the food."

Before I could do anything, she wrenched the lid off the vat and stuck her head within. Chomping and tearing noises accompanied by small grunts of pleasure soon followed.

I spluttered and insisted that my garden wasn't food. Most of those plants were meant to supplement the atmosphere and provide for my psychological well-being. A few produced edible fruit, but none should be eaten leaf, stem and root!

She raised her head from the vat and laughed, trailing torn greenery. "My garden, Pangolin. If you didn't want me to eat these, you should have brought something less delicious." She resumed grazing. "Maybe it's that I haven't had a bite to eat in nearly a millennium, but these blue fern things are wonderful!"

The effects of alien plants on creatures with different biochemistry were unpredictable, I cautioned. It could be poisonous to her.

Nightmare Moon suddenly sobered. She chewed thoughtfully and looked at me through narrowed eyes. "No, I don't think that's the case," she said.

Petulantly, I asked how she could be so certain.

"Because if these were poison, you'd want me to eat them all up."

The conversation's turn caught me completely by surprise.

"Do you think I'm stupid, Pangolin? Do you think I'm a fool because I didn't have all these shiny toys when I found you?"

I asked for clarification, trying my best to feign innocence.

She seemed to enjoy the chance to air her suspicions. "You don't want me to return from exile. You've sided with the usurper and the rest of those ingrates against me. Anypony can see that," she declared, rising from the vat and pacing back and forth across the little habitat. "And yet, when you mentioned that crooked little wand, you were so excited, hunting around in the valley for it until it nearly killed you."

Of course. Of course she'd see through my ruse. If I could scheme and lie convincingly, I wouldn't be here in the first place, now would I? My eyes wandered over to the memento mori sitting on the shelf. At the moment, it seemed somewhat redundant.

"And it failed. And you were so disappointed... but, what a failure! You see, it just occurred to me, if I were a mere monster like you or the ordinary puny sort of pony, that wand of yours would have reduced me to a spot of ash. Wouldn't that have been just terrible?" She stuck out her lower lip in a show of feigned dismay, but broke into an uncharacteristic burst of giggles after a couple seconds.

Trying to allay her suspicion, I reminded her about the ship. I was providing her a means of escape, just as she wished!

"Of course you are," she said with a snort. "But when the wand failed and I was so discouraged that I couldn't keep... ahem. You waited until your life was in danger and you needed to create a distraction to mention that little tidbit. Would you have told me otherwise, or did you hope to sneak away when I wasn't looking?"

Nightmare Moon paused in her pacing and allowed a grin to split her face. "I suppose I should be thankful; that's the first time that sad sack's done anything helpful." She hiccoughed, then giggled again.

I tried to make another excuse, but she cut me off.

"Oh come off it," she sighed. "You thought you could kill me with that thing. Well, you're wasting your time. You can't. It just doesn't work."

The prisoner looked askance. "I should know. She's—hee hee!—she's tried enough times."

"No matter what you intended, you are here for the fulfillment of the prophecy," she continued, louder. "I did the ciphering myself just now. The longest day of the thousandth year is coming up in, oh, about five months, when you claim your friends will swoop in and pluck you out. So, o pawn of—" Her head swung back and forth. "Where in Tartarus is that buzzing noise coming from?"

She grimaced and flicked at her ears. I heard nothing out of the ordinary. What was making her so twitchy?

"...So, o pawn of fate, here are my terms. Give up your pointless attempt to harm me and, if you obey me and prove your worth, I'll let you remain as my vassal. Keep trying stall my destined return, and I'll use you as practice for what I'm going to do to those ponies. Am I perfectly clear?"

I should have seen this coming. Often I had prayed for suitably ironic punishments to befall killers and deceivers, and now my prayers were answered. I had tried my claws at murder, so I would either lose my mind watching a world perish or my intended victim would torment me to death. I nodded to her.

The huge pony blinked at me. "That's it? You expect me to believe you're just going to give up that easily? Surely you have, I don't know, some horrible organ-liquefying wand or something ready to spring on me." Another hiccough followed the statement.

The sarcasm I used to keep society at arm's-length re-emerged. I told her I must have left it in my other scales.

Nightmare Moon burst into roaring gales of laughter, stamping a dent into the floor with one armored foot. Maybe some jokes are better in translation? "I... I don't... that really wasn't as funny as all—" she choked out before breaking down in mirth again. "What is (hic) what's wrong with me?"

She was certainly mad, but if this sort of behavior was new to her too...

Hope, that weed of the anima, sprouted anew from the barren soil. Perhaps her hide was invulnerable armor, but say she took some harmful substance and placed it into her own bloodstream...

She came to the same conclusion. "It's those plants!" she gasped. "Poison! you villain, you knew I couldn't resist!" She continued, still shaking with laughter and hiccoughs. 

I distinctly remembered telling her not to gobble up my garden, and reminded her as much.

"Just, ha ha, just a trick of reverse psychology. It won't work! I have the nature of the unicorn; I can instantly—" Her horn flared with blue light for a split-second, but it fizzled and dissipated.

"Blasted noise! Can't focus," she groaned. "You cruel monster. Just burning me up would at least have been di—(hic) dignified."

I simply sat and watched her struggle against the toxins. If there was such a thing as destiny in the universe, surely this was it! She was right; it looked like an awful way to die. I was glad I hadn't poisoned her intentionally, but nonetheless glad it was happening. It wasn't as if I had the ability to save her even if I wished to. Everything was sorting itself out after all, and I didn't have to so much as lift a claw! All I had to do was keep away from her until she succumbed.

She tried to take a step toward me but stumbled and fell. I edged away, easily staying out of her reach. Still weakly laughing, she blinked and squinted at me, struggling to focus. "I don' deserve this," she said, her speech beginning to slur. "Th' world hazzit in for me. I juss wanna get my (hic) licks in. Izz hopeless, I know." She tried to stand and failed. "You unnerstand, right? They hurt you too. You said... you said you came here to... get away..."

Her head sank to the ground, her eyes slid shut, and she heaved a weary sigh. Even her hair ceased its rolling motion and drifted to the floor, partially covering her face. I waited a couple minutes. She was completely still.

Good riddance.

Were it not disrespectful to the dead, I felt as if I could dance around my cell, so great was my relief. I no longer had to fear the wrath of Nightmare Moon! It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my scales. Already I had begun thinking of this interlude of terror, desperation and attempted murder as an adventure. It was as perfect as a fable; I'd stood fast and proven myself against adversity, while my foe had, sadly, encompassed her own destruction through lack of prudence. This lesson would surely aid my pursuit of purification in solitude.

...No. This wasn't right.

The universe is full of evil and injustice. The strong take what they can, the weak suffer what they must, but no one is strong enough to escape unscathed. I was weak, so I fled to the wilderness. She thought herself strong, so she yearned to fight back against whoever wronged her. Whatever she did and whatever she deserved, this had been a miserable, forlorn creature who had met her demise unprepared, friendless and unmourned. Even if it was necessary for the greater good, her death was still a tragedy. I spoke the traditional prayer for the dead over her remains and swore to give them a proper burial.

After all, the corpse would start to stink before long. For now, it would have to do just to cover the thing until I could repair one of my suits and rig up some way to carry the carcass outside.

From one of my supply chests, I withdrew the largest covering I had: an emergency tent designed to hold an insulated atmosphere in the event my shelter was breached. I unfolded it and dragged the heavy fabric over her.

When I reached her head, I stopped short and stared. An azure star twinkled at the tip of her spike. Every so often, a spark would crawl down the spike and disappear into her body.

I licked the pad of my suddenly-trembling claw and held it before her nostrils.

She was breathing. It was so slow and faint I couldn't even see her side rise and fall, but it was there.

I let go of the tent and fell back on my haunches, my new-found peace and well-being crashing down around me. I should have known a real ending could never be so pat. What could I do now? Force failed. Poison failed. She had lived a thousand years in alternately freezing or irradiated vacuum. What else was there that could stop her?

I cast my eyes about the room. There, against the far wall stood my little shelf. The memento mori repeated its wordless warning of the futility of looking for peace in schemes and tools. The polished eyes of the icon regarded me with gentle reproach. Bookended between them was my library.

I was already bone-weary, but the night was, after all, still young. I removed the library's tablet from its cradle and began my research.