//------------------------------// // Chapter Eight // Story: Clipped Wings // by Desrium //------------------------------// Chapter Eight The higher one climbs, the longer the fall is. When Falcon came to again, Alana was not with him. He was not sure if he had fallen asleep or if he had another lapse in memory. All he knew was that he was lying on his back without the mare's presence beside him. He remained still like this for some time until he heard the creak of the door. He looked to the entrance, four long shadows stretching into the shack, small figures silhouetted by bright streams of light. Alana entered the room after the four Zebra fillies and closed the door. She kept her distance as the others got to work. They pulled his hood back and took off his Pipeye to lather some gel into his forehead. It was strangely cold and he didn't particularly like the sensation at the forefront of his head, but the worried looks from Alana ensured he didn't put up much resistance. Once that was finished, they introduced him to the potion they whipped up in full. It had a strong, sweet smell and was in a health potion bottle. The taste was positively bitter and its texture was slimy sliding down his throat. In no time at all he felt nauseous, as if his red pelt had been tinged green. The Zebras gathered their things and left him with Alana. She approached him tentatively, taken aback by his seemingly rapid decline in health. "Falcon...?" she asked with a small voice. "... This was not worth nearly getting eaten by a plant for," the red colt replied even as the cloud he didn't realize was there was clearing up in his head. Recovery was punctuated by a dull ache at the back of his skull, where he assumed he sustained his trauma inducing injury. Alana snorted. "Would you rather wait out your concussion then?" "I could have probably waited a month and I'd only remember a week's worth of time. And not necessarily the same week, at that," Falcon said, "with that in mind I suppose I'd rather endure zebra chemistry..." "Is it really that bad?" the caramel mare queried. "I'd rather swallow charred wood and splinters again before drinking that potion again." "... Again? What made you swallow charred wood and splinters in the first place?" she asked with a raised brow. "I don't remember," Falcon Wing said in response, then grinned when Alana's confusion turned to momentary shock. "That potion might have been bad going down, but you have to admit that it does its job fast, huh Falcon?" she said, playfully poking at his chest. "You're already getting back to your old self." Falcon put his own hoof to hers, stopping the jabs at his chest and replied, "I'll feel more comfortable saying that when I can remember the last few days." She giggled. "Then rest until you do, I'll be right here," she said. She then laid down on her side next Falcon Wing, a foreleg resting across his torso. With that, he let himself drift off to sleep, recognizing it as such rather than just another period of missing time. The memories came when he was most susceptible. "We need to get the hell out of Dodge!" Falcon Wing yelled over the sound of gunshots and the clamor of panicked ponies. He burst through the swinging half-doors and leaped over the building's porch. He ran across the sandy flat outside of the saloon where things had exploded into turmoil. Alana was close behind him. "Why did you try to hack his terminal, Falcon!?" she exclaimed. "I wasn't trying to hack anything! I was just trying to recharge my Pipeye!" Falcon shouted. The doors of the saloon flew off their hinges with a spray of sparks and the boom of buckshot seconds later. "Thar be the little red varmint, and his little wench too!" the angry barkeep proclaimed to his mob of equally enraged patrons and employees on the deck of the saloon. "I knew we couldn't trust their kind in Dodge!" another pony added, the mob voicing their agreement loudly. "Thieving, raider scum!" "They're getting away!" "Like hell they are!" That was said by a pegasus stallion. An especially adept flyer of a sunfire yellow coat. He tore across the desert town like a bolt of lightning, twisting about in the air so that he slammed into Falcon Wing with all four hooves. That was when he got injured and started losing bits of time. The last memories he had of Dodge City was Alana shooting the yellow stallion with the Peashooter and an undetermined amount of time later, being on a hoofcart, his vision fuzzy, staring at the caramel mare as she pumped the lever and powered along the rails leading out of Dodge. "Health potions aren't gonna cut it this time, I think," Falcon Wing recalled her saying, "but I know a place where they can probably make something to fix you... its going to take a few days getting everything together so just stick in here, okay mister hero...?" That must've been before they reached Glyphmark the first time. His body was numb save for the burning of the cuts on his chest. Breathing resulted in dull pangs of pain. He looked around the camp through narrowed eyes, unmoving. He looked at the four Enclave pegasi that had found him and had beaten him down to the ground where he lay. The muzzle of an assault rifle was just inches away from his snout. Game over, he was certain of it at the time. "Wait," the familiar voice of a mare commanded authoritatively, "he is a pegasus" "A Wastelander by the looks of things. A nosy, trespassing, stupid Wastelander who got his wings chopped off" a stallion spat. "That stupid Wastelander is Falcon Wing," the mare asserted. "No way, didn't he go missing weeks ago? Wasn't he a blank flank?" another stallion inquired. "It seems we found him... or rather he found us -- and his talent -- down here." "So I don't kill him, Erasure? Because you had been looking after him for a while? Do you want him to wake up to know what we're doing here? What you are doing here?" the first stallion asked. Apparently they thought he was unconscious already. "He won't know, and you won't kill him. Give him a bit of a poultice so he doesn't die here, then we leave him as he is outside of the camp. Somewhere where the creatures won't get at him. After what he went through, he won't remember how he got there... hopefully he'll get out of the swamp alive once he gets his wits about him" "That is very unlikely," the second stallion chimed in. "If he dies, then he becomes another casualty to the Enclave, like his parents. But at least we attempted to do right by sparing his life," Erasure responded coldly in a way that made the red colt wonder if the mare ever cared for him, or if taking him in was just her first attempt to "do right". When Falcon Wing woke up, Alana was sitting on her haunches, holding him in her forelegs. He had been crying in his sleep. She hadn't attempted to wake him up or question him. She only held him and gave him a shoulder to sob into. "She was the reason they didn't kill me..." he said almost breathlessly. "She got them to leave me as I was... for you to find me... and I killed her. I know I killed her... I could have talked with her one last time if I hadn't been so quick to use the gun..." The dam burst and his tears flowed freely at that, but Alana still did not ask any questions. She only tightened her hold and let him cry. It was with these recollections that Falcon Wing saw just how much Alana had done for him, having saved his life no less than three times in the last few days: from Dodge City to healing his battered body in that muddy ditch and coming to his aid at the unicorn's camp, watched over him while he was impaired and now offered herself as an emotional crutch. He didn't think himself worthy of her nickname for him... but he was sure in his heart that the caramel mare was his hero... or heroine as the case may be.