Hey! Let’s tell a story! Without names! Or with names! I don’t know! Let’s say that there is a hero! Or wait! Even better! A Heroine. And her name is Octavia! Ha! It was so spontaneous! But now it just has to be. So, Octavia! And her special talent is... you know right? As she told me when I first met her, her special talent is... window cleaning! Ha! You knew that was coming! It’s a dangerous job. But don’t worry, there is not many high buildings in... oh I have to remember the location... hmm... It was... Right!. Rust River Town! It’s a great place! Maybe not because the weather. But I liked it somehow. All set and ready! We have a heroine, Octavia the Window Cleaner of Rust River Town! But there is not a single window to clean! Oh no! Why is there not even a single window in Rust River Town to clean?! Because in the land of Seabeertopia, rules an Eternal Winter! And citizens don’t have windows, to better avoid looking at the gray, icy, snowy, windy landscape of the Rust River Town, which not even a hundred years ago was an iron miner’s village. Now no one needs iron. Because iron is cold! And people have had enough of cold things!
So... What does our Heroine Octavia The Window Cleaner do for a living? She fights dragons! The dragons who now live in the abandoned mines. There are a lot of them. Some storytellers (like me for example) in taverns, say that under the Rust River Town is a whole City of dragons! That there are more dragons underground than all the other creatures on and over the ground! And sometimes dragons can be seen outside their domain. But bad for them. 'Cause they find themselves in Octavia The Window Cleaner's domain! And she just hates dragons!
“So Octavia, my dear.” - I, Chris The Storyteller said - “That’s all your story I know so far”.
“I see.” - Octavia said shortly. But after a brief moment of deep thought she added. “Well. There's not much more I could say about myself.”
“Oh, just the opposite I would say.” I answered, slightly lowering my head and moving a little forward on the small, round tavern chair. “You could, for example, tell me why a pony leaves, in comparison, paradise like Equestria, to fight dragons in this frozen land.”
Octavia just looked at me, thinking of how to answer my direct, and I'm sure, unexpected question. I don’t yet know where in her past her thoughts took her, but after a longer while she answered me.
“A lot has happened...” - I can’t deny that I expected an answer like this. So I tried to push it a little.
“So tell me instead” - I started, the barman came to our table and put two mugs of hot beer on it. I nodded with gratitude in his direction, showing him that we wouldn't need anything else right now. I placed my right hoof on the table and continued my question.
“So tell me then. Why the lie about your occupation?” - I gave her some time to process the confusion I had just caused.
“W-what do you mean?” - She asked as if she didn't know what I was talking about. But the young dragon fighter couldn’t hide the slightly stressful tone of her voice, which only made me sure of my observations.
“Oh please, Octavia, my dear.” - I stretched my back with a wide smile on my face. “These people here may be blind,” - The One-Eyed Barman gave me a short look from behind the bar, still polishing a mug. He was the only pony besides us in tavern then. - “but I'm a traveler, I’ve been in many taverns in my life; and as a storyteller, I have good ears, and my eyes aren’t even a slight bit worse.”
I grabbed my beer with telekinesis and took a big haust of it. Octavia remained silent, obviously interested in what I was going to say.
“Those,” - I pointed to her hooves. She looked at them too. “Are hooves of a musician”.
I put my beer back on the table. I looked at Octavia, waiting for an answer. But I already knew how this conversation would continue.
“So...” - She said after a while, still looking at her hooves, now with sentiment in her eyes. - “That’s what betrayed me in the first place?”
“No.” - I answered shortly, which caused her to look at me with a little surprise in her eyes. “What betrayed you, was much more subtle.” - I leaned over the table in her direction and she did the same in mine, so we could be in the whisper range. And then I half whispered to her. - “Who in tartarus comes as a window cleaner to a town where there is not even a single window!?”
She was looking at me with a stupid frown on her face when I, with a smile on mine, came back to a normal position, crossed both hooves on the table, and triumphantly took a sip from my beer.
Octavia sighed once she was sitting again on her chair. Then she took a hoof to her forehead and answered with a shadow of smile on her face.
“You’re impossible, you know?” - After that, she also grabbed her mug, and took a sip from it.
“For sure I am.” - I answered smiling a little as well. Then I took a breath in and continued. - “After all, I didn’t come here to tease you.”
“Ha! That’s funny. Because since we talk, it's exactly what you've been doing.” - She said, a little irritated
I didn’t mean to make her angry. Maybe sometimes anger is an effective way to get some answers, but not this time. So I just had to straighten it out.
“Don’t get my intentions wrong.” - I laughed a little. - “Showing irony is only a little part of my personality. Most of all, I'm a storyteller. But to be a good storyteller, you have to also be a good story listener.” I said with my hoof raised. I lowered it, and drank some of my beer. I took another deep breath and continued my explanation.
“So... By the string of stories, and thanks to the kindness of a certain caravan, once a year passing by that middle of nowhere, with this town in center of it. I found myself here, in this windowless small tavern. And the main reason for that, is that I want to hear your story.” - Then I leaned slightly forward and looked her in the eyes. - “And my first question is, why a pony like you leaves Equestria, and fights dragons in this land of ice?”
She lowered her look a little and answered.
“As I said.” - She looked away and added -”A lot has happened”.
Then she stood up and took her mug, which was still almost full, and drank it with one big haust. Oh man! Such a shame You couldn’t have seen that!
She put down her now empty mug on the table.
“Thanks for the beer” - She said, moving to go towards the tavern’s door, I just stood next to the table in the position she left me, cursing myself for my failure. I rarely commit them so easily.
“I'd better go gather some wood. Another cold and dark night awaits us.” - The mare said with a little sigh, which was probably caused more by the thought of daily routine, rather than by the conversation from a while ago.
She was quite lucky that she wasn’t going a little faster. Because as she was almost next to the door, they opened inward with quite a force and speed, missing Octavia’s nose by just about half an inch. What left her unamused, by the way.
“Dragon!” - Yelled the gray earth pony stallion who had just run through the door, with real panic in his eyes. After him, in no better state, galloped in a yellow pegasus, followed by cold, winter wind.
Octavia just sighed at the sight, and said. - “I think that I will have to make a little detour first.” - After that she just left the tavern.
“Hey!” - The yellow pegasus yelled after her - “There's a dragon! Don’t go there, miss Octavia!”
“Better worry about yourself, or me at least!” - The gray pony said to his friend. - “She’s the luckiest pony I know. She’s always outside when there’s a dragon. And somehow, none of them have eaten her yet!”
“Calm down you two!” - Yelled the One-Eyed barman, which calmed them down in an instant. Even I was dragged out from my storm of thoughts and looked at him. - “You can hide in my basement again.”
“Oh! Thank you Mr. Light Saber!”
“Yes! Thank You!”
The two stallions said as they trotted behind the bar.
But I was having other plans. I was going outside. Because I was just reminded of a very valuable lesson. “When you can’t get information by asking questions, try to get it by observing”. And, as much as I wanted to know that mare’s story, I also wanted to see a pony fighting dragons.
I went outside, but I've apparently lost Octavia already. Her hoof prints were already covered by a fresh layer of snow, and due to the snowstorm (which luckily was getting weaker) the range of my view was really short. Where in tartarus did she go?!
“ROARRRR!” - Oh right... the dragon. I started to run to the southern edge of the town. Rust River Town wasn’t big. As an old miner's settlement, it was now only empty miner’s houses, a smith’s workshop, and a tavern standing in the center of the town. The windowless buildings had doors almost the same color as the walls, giving the impression of some big rocks sticking out from the snow; if you had to traveled there at night, it is very possible that you wouldn't have even noticed that you had passed through any civilized location . From the tavern I had only around two hundred meters to every edge of the town, so I was there pretty quickly.
Due to the unpredictable mountain weather (though you can always predict that it will be freezing cold and windy), the snow stopped falling for a while.
And then, when I had passed one of the bigger rocks, I saw it. With the height of a hundred ponies, width like fifty, razor sharp teeth and claws, and eyes, which were burning with red fire in them. Those were the first things my mind understood, and immediately they indicated to me that I should turn around and run, even if behind me was the edge of hell itself. Then I noticed that the dragon was green... I'm really afraid of dragons. OK!?
It wasn’t easy. But I eventually looked away from that terrifying sight. And saw that a couple of meters before that overgrown lizard, so vicious that even tartarus couldn’t bear it's presence, stood Octavia. I wanted to scream after her, to make her go back somehow. But my voice just stuck in my throat, my mind had turned off everything besides my legs. But I couldn’t run. I just looked at her terrified. I fell on my knees and hugged a rock next to me. Scared even more than... What?
Then something, that I definitely didn’t expect happened. She started to glow. I thought that maybe it was just fear messing with my mind. But there was, like an orb of white, a delicate light around her body. And then with a little explosion, her mane and tail caught fire! How?! The dragon hadn’t yet chance to do anything! So what th... No... Her mane and tail became fire! Pure white fire! There were so many thoughts that my mind couldn’t even process it. I was in overwhelming awe, but at the same time it was so beautiful, that I was unable to describe it in any language known to me.
And then she shot herself into the air, right into the dragon’s direction. The sight of that caused me to fall backwards. But I just couldn’t stop looking at it. She collided with the giant lizard like a comet or a star, and the next thing I knew it was falling in the opposite direction, like a motionless doll or a bag of sand, which only imitated the terrifying beast I was so scared of seconds ago. And it just laid there. Just like it fell. Was it dead? Killed by a single strike?
My thoughts were interrupted by the comet now starting to fly in my direction. And I was now more scared of it than I was of the dragon. I started to pray to every god I had ever heard about, that I will be a good pony now! That I will make a charity for filly pegasi with wing cancer! I’ll write back for all my mom’s letters! Just don’t let me die here!
I just closed my eyes, and kept them closed tightly. In the end I was a coward, I couldn’t even look dead in the eyes. I felt something landing next to me. So I waited. And waited... And then…
“Were you lying here the whole time?” - I heard Octavia’s voice.
“Don’t kill me, please.” - Was all I could say back then. And it didn’t even matter how high my voice was.
I opened one eye a little; she was again her normal self.
“Eh...” - She sighed, and said. - “Come... It seems that this time I’ll be the one who buys you a beer.”