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// Day Thirteen 
// Story: And He Silently Painted A Rainbow 
// by WritingSpirit 
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	"And doth the last snow of winter hath been swept to the past, as twas the spirit of Hearth's Warming as ponies resumed their daily lives after twelve days of merriment and laughter. Here we see the princess step out from her abode..."

The speakers of the small television crackled with the consistency of white noise, the radio-like voice stopping briefly only for the cheering depicted in the colorless, blotted show of Princess Celestia's welcome of spring. Slowly the curtains parted, and her respected visage was met by the thousands of ponies present.
It was nearly seventy years ago when it happened, kept as just another decomposing roll of film; another disappearing memory, though it had been since two years that he had ever saw a snippet of the documentary. He weakly reached around for the remote, clattering about his half-eaten plate of food whilst his back strained and his dry throat wheezed loudly with a croak, though another set of hooves reached it before he did, the pony giving him a weak smile.

"You shouldn't be straining your muscles, sir."

The stallion merely let out a grunt of disapproval, which escalated into a coughing fit, prompting the other pony: his trusty butler, to pour him a glass of water, to which he accepted eagerly.
Age had been twisting him and, mostly, his physical health. His black mane and tail had now became as ashen-white as his body, his white hooves were limp and lifeless, and even his pupils had became a degenerate white, for he was diagnosed with cataracts, along with stage-three lymphosarcoma: a cancer forming in his lymph nodes, as his private doctor had phrased it.
Blind, crippled, and on the verge of death. Disturbingly fitting.

"Close the blasted thing," he managed to croak. The sudden halt of cheering was enough proof of his ever-faithful butler's position. Like his master, his mane and tail were already pale with age, though his coat was a light shade of brown, with the ridges of wrinkles on his face only a little lesser than the multitude of them filling up his master's own. It was as it was so, for the butler was exactly nineteen years younger than his master, who was a whopping ninety-seven years old.
"H-hand me..." he croaked suddenly, reaching around from the confines of his red, antique sofa. His butler, despite ripe with age, was quick-witted to know what the older pony wants, and soon returned from the pantry with a newspaper.

"Do you want me to read it out for you, sir?"

"As always," came the soft reply, along with a name. His name.
"Fidus."

Clearing his throat, Fidus, as he was called, flipped through the ruffled pages of yesterday's newspaper, slightly soaked from the wintry weather that once filled the land. There were many prominent stories in the news these days, some that would even fascinate the butler himself, but his master was picky, and was never the sort to favor anypony else's words instead of his own. As eccentric as the mansion he built, it seems.
"Explorer traverses the Ghastly Gorge... Cloudsdale snow machine found disrupted..." the butler scanned through the headlines and reading them aloud. There was nothing suitable that would sate his master's plane of interest; the last captivating story he had for him was almost four months ago, and at that time his master wasn't even blind!

"Opening of the anticipated Gallery of White..."

Fidus's breath stopped the moment he saw the picture that came with it. In the center of the picture and, no doubt, the attention, was a mare, bright blue with her mane a chromatic scheme of colors, blazing bright underneath the winter sun. Her hooves were gripping another pony's, which seemed to be the direct opposite of her, what with his blanched skin and black mane, though it was his presence that struck him like a bell, the pony's name being pulled out from the tip of his head like a dagger.
"S-Sir?" he began nervously at the older pony shuffling in his sofa out of discomfort.
"You might want to hear this..."

"What is it?" his master scowled.
"Speak up! My ears aren't the sharp bastards they were!"

Slowly, Fidus read out every single line of the article before him, scrolling down the wall of the passage with his voice quivering past every word, which became more evident as he got closer to the end. The scornful frown that the other pony wore started to soften as time progresses, turning almost into a sad expression once the butler finished.
Glancing up at his master's blank expression, he could feel something - he wasn't sure what - overwhelming the veins of his heart. The news was hard for him and especially his master to sink in; it was very personal to him, after all.
"Should I call him back?"

"No," was the stern, deadpanned answer.
"He can only come back when the time is right. You know when."

"Yes," his butler answered, albeit reluctantly.
Settling the newspaper to the side with a bow, Fidus excused himself, shuffling slowly out of the room whilst carrying away the tray of plates into the kitchen. His master, however, reached around for the newspaper, satisfied only when his hoof landed on the crumpled, wrinkled surface of it.
Mustering his energy, he weakly pulled the paper towards him, his instincts guiding him as his hoof scanned through the black row of letters and past the borders of the picture, stopping only when it reached the unsure smile of Taciturn Bleach. A smile soon crept on the old pony's lips, fondling and caressing the pony as if he was really there.

"Taciturn..." he muttered weakly.
"You did well, T-Taciturn Bleach... you did well..."

"My son..."