//------------------------------//
// Yellow Flashes 
// Story: Hearing Calming Voices 
// by HeartTortoisePigeonDog 
//------------------------------//

		My dear Symphony,

Thank you very much for your letter and the enclosed 200 bits.
I think myself that Guildina was alittle out of sorts with the good town of Alreins, the little yellow house where we work, and especially with me.
As a matter of fact, there are bound to be grave difficulties to overcome here, for her and well as me.
But these difficulties are more within ourselves than outside.
Altogether I think that either she will definitely go, or else definitely stay. I told her to think it over and make her calculations over again before doing anything.
Guildina is a very powerful, strongly creative griffon, but just because of that she must have peace. Will she find it anywhere if she does not find it here?
I am waiting for her to make a decision with absolute serenity.



A good sisterly hug,

Cherry Garden





What's that I hear from Guildina's Room? I drop my pen, splattering some ink, and slowly fall onto my bed and press my ear to the wall. She's talking while she writes, again. I think she's writing to Symphony concerning me, but it's difficult to hear her clearly over the heavy rain outside.

"I.... convinced..... insanity..."

Curse her!

"I....on edge.... afraid.... violent outbursts.... attacks..."

Hearth Warming Eve, and we're stuck inside, and she's writing complaints about me to my own younger sister intsead of coming directly to me about it all!

She would do far better to talk it over with me than go through the messy business of involving poor, kind, innocent Symphony.

"Graditute..... mine... paintings..... selling..... Cherry Garden..... hopeless.... mad...."

Mad? I offer her a chance at starting an artist utopia here in the south, paint her a bright and cheery series of sunflowers to welcome her when she arrives months after my being here--and she calls my art hopeless and me mad!

What's this? Her chair creaks. She must be getting up to get something. I'll meet her in the hall.

I roll off the bed and glide to stand before the door. Mustn't have it seem I'm going out just for her. 

There's the mark: I hear her claws grasp the knob. I open my own door the same time she opens hers.

"Oh," she looks pleasently surprised, her feathers rustling pleasantly as she turns to me. "There you are, Cherry Garden."

She stares back like I have a look of malice painted on me instead of one of friendly curiosity.

"My friend, you don't look well. Did you sleep at all?"

"It's noon," I retort.

"Yes, but it is a rainy day: one is likely to sleep in on such days."

She gives me the warmest of smiles. I turned my head so my sea-green hair would cover my eyes.

"I heard something about my little sis selling your paintings. Did she write you about it? Was there any mention of my own?"

"I'm sorry, sweetie, but she hasn't sold a single one of yours." Of course she hasn't. She's just not putting them in the right shows or frames. If she only did that, she'd see, there will bound to be sales. "However, she did mention that Princess Luna showed some intrest in your 'Red Vineyards;' it's very possible, she said, that the Princess will buy it soon. She offered her 100 bits for it."

Only 100 bits!

"Luna or Symphony offered the hundred?"

"Symphony. The Princess agreed it was a fair price."

I look back up at her with a very sad look. She only backs away, as though I were going to attack her, though she is larger and stronger than me.

"I'm glad I've made a sale!" I was sincerely happy, but it burned that it could only sell for a mere 100 bits. I knew that Guildina's were selling for 2,000, 5,000, 10,000 bits a piece, so that I felt tears stream over my smile. That smile on Guidina's face was mocking! What could she know? But, yet, what she did know! She is a sharp griffon.

"I, uh..." Guildina said, rustling her feathers, "Shall we lunch? I'll make you some excellent eggs and soup? How's that? And some coffee as well?"

I follow her down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"Sit, sit. No need to trouble yourself, please. I'll take care of it all, myself," she sings, smiling all the while. 

She was almost never like this. But only just as I was going to let her pleasure me with this treat, she starts on one of those subjects that most certainly always ignites into our usual electrified arguments.

"Cherry Garden--what's this on the soup ladle?" She holds the thing up to me like a master taking up the dog, and shoving its face into its own droppings to shame it. "How many times do I have to tell you: if you can't find any of your mixing knives, don't go improvising: ask me!" She spat.

"I'm sorry," I said calmly, but she responds as though my words were offending.

"If I've told you once, dear." She turns around, as though preparing to continue to make our lunch, taking out the fresh eggs from the fridge and setting them on the counter with an air of indifference.

"Hey! Remember how I've told you I just don't want to bother you!" I rise. "You always go on about your 'painting from memory' and how you need your time alone to think while you paint. That's why! That's why Guildina--that's why I leave you be: because I understand."

She vehemently throws the ladle into the empty pot, producing a loud, threatening crash. She seems about to shout at me, but thinks better of it, and turns back around to light the stove.

A few moments of silence pass between us before she breaks it.

"How do you want your eggs?"

She's made eggs countless time for me before--and she's an excellent cook--and she asks me how I'd like my eggs with a look like that!

"Same as always, my dear friend," I stress a friendly tone on the last two words, but I'm afraid I may have let slip a bit of... an annoyance that was not quite that, but more of anguish. 

We've been cooped up in our little yellow house we've rented--the same house I painted inside different colors for each room--mostly a cerulean blue--to cheer us up and make the whole space a very livable place. But it has, of late, been anything but convivial. We've had our moments of peace, discussing art, going out and painting together, laughing, drinking, going out and experiencing the nightlife, inspiring each other; but, more and more, we've not done much else other than get on our nerves, complaining, criticizing, violent quarrels that have been very electric; and then prevented from going out and painting for days because of the rain and wind, trapped; and, I fear mostly I, our passions are contained, and like a corked champagne bottle that has been shaken, we each are near to bursting in our confined little place, so our quarrels are more often and more violent, and very unpleasant. It is because of this I felt full of dread.

She breaks the eggs, and throws the yokes into the pan.

She clicked her beak. "Sunny-side it is." And she starts the coffee while the eggs cook.

I think I note an irony in her voice.

"Have you been painting lately, old friend?"

"Oh, here we go again," she sighs heavily. "Another one of your arguments--"

Suddenly the wind blew violently, beating loudly at the windows. When it settle down somewhat, I began:

"No, no, nothing like that: I only want to know how you get along now. For days both of us have been locked up in our respective rooms, one doing nothing but painting and the other, more reasonable, doing nothing but reading."

"And what is that to mean, eh?"

"Nothing. Only I wish to see some of your work."

She starts the soup, cutting up the vegetables and heating the water. She might be thinking, saying nothing, but focusing entirely on the task before her. For some reason her form, wings slightly spread, reminds me of the ancient tale of the earth pony who wished to be a pegasus and made wax wings to fly... everypony knows that when he flew too close to the sun his wings melted and he fell to his death. It was an very over-used reference, put nearly to death of its meaning from over-use. And then I caught myself in my musings, and realized how much my thoughts followed some old archetype, and inwardly berated myself on my unoriginality and not being true to myself; but again I am musing cliched old musings, and I hated myself all the more. These stupid thoughts of mine, not products of myself, but of other ponies invading my head--I despised it. And it came up now because of Guidina playing with that cooking stuff in silence. If she had only replied, kept me in that mechanical process of communication, I wouldn't've fallen into this un-true to life mess I am sinking in!

"I can show you after lunch, if you like," with forced kindness.

"Tu ne sait pas. Qu'est-ce que tu fait? Tu fait (You don't know. What do you do? You do) nothing," I mock, driving away this depressing feeling, knowing she can't understand me when I speak "fancy."

"Yes, yes," she says, without turning around to face me, pretending knowledge, "I know you mean nothing by your outbursts; it just gets very straining having to put up with it, you know. You're a very nice and kind mare, but--"

"I'm going for a walk to the 'Stallion's Ropes.'" I stand and start to head upstairs.

"Capital idea," she sighs.

I grab my straw hat and raincoat and begin to make my way down stairs, when I notice Guildina's room door is slightly ajar. No harm taking a peek, methinks. So I slowly open her door and take a step or two inside, careful not to make much noise on the floor. Several stretched painted canvases lay propped up against the walls. Then I spot the painting she was apparently working on. It was so against what we had discussed about art, I flew out of the room, repulsed at the very presence of the wicked thing. I stop just above the stairs and quickly turn back to put the letter I had written for my sister in an envelope, seal it, and shove it in the inside of my coat before gliding down the stairs.

"Quite like a phantom," Guildina remarks when I jump down from the stairs a few steps from the bottom. "What took you, sweetie? Your eggs and coffee are done," she adds, motioning to the table with her one of her wings. Again the thought, and even the image, of the melting wings comes to my mind. "Might as well have a bite before 'exercising' your muscles, eh?"

I say nothing, and sit down before the expertly cooked eggs.

"So, what took you?"

"A letter. A letter to my sister: I was just finishing up and sealing it. Here!" I take the envelope out to validate my words.

"It's not addressed."

"Oh, well, let me--"

"Let me! Allow me, please." She snatches the letter out of my mouth. "Eat: you'll feel better." And she plucks one of her feathers, dips it in an inkwell on the counter, and starts to write out the address in disgusting flourishes.

Bending over to start eating, I notice something small and white, like rice, just on the edge of my eggs, wriggling. It's a maggot. Pulling my head back, I notice several more moving throughout the dish.

Getting up, I steal the envelope from Guildina, and, before storming out the door, throw the dish across the kitchen, and it crashes against a wall. Guildina follows me out shouting wicked abuse.

"You trying to kill me with those dirty little maggots on my plate!" I yell back, and walk down the street, away from her, at a frightening pace.

The streets are empty; the rain falls heavily and the winds blow strongly, making the rain feel more like sharp, heavy pebbles being thrown at me. I make my way along the streets to the "Stallion's Ropes," but soon find myself at the post. Despite the apparent cleaning from the rain, the post-office's white walls and green-yellow light within, made the place look all the more filthy. I shake off my hat and coat under the eves and step inside with strange confidence. When the mailmare asks my name, I quickly mumble it as though I were ashamed of something. I repeat it several times before she finally catches it well enough to understand. She wrote it down and I left, head hung low.

The rain is falling even heavier than before, though the wind has died somewhat. I could hardly understand what she had said to me when I left the building; it's no wonder she didn't understand me when I gave her my name: this rain is relentless. A cold chill passes over me and I merely dismiss it as adjusting to the difference in temperature from inside to outside.

Where am I? Blast these yellow flashes in my eye! Which street do I turn down to get to the "Stallion's Ropes?" I hate these yellow flashes; where they are, the gears are soon to follow. It always happens just like that: the yellow flashes will start for a time, sometimes longer and sometimes for shorter spaces of time, and then translucent cogwheels will begin to obscure my vision until half my field is taken up by them, all spinning; sometimes the yellow flashes will become superimposed upon the gears as they spin faster and faster--these are particularly frightening because sometimes the yellow will reach such a pitch that I can't see clearly at all for quite some time, as though I were terribly near-sighted. And then the cogwheels, and the yellow flashes will vanish leaving behind an agonizing headache.

With the anticipation of another headache, I want to get inside somewhere I can sit and rest until this all passes. I can't find the "Stallion's Ropes," so I think I should head back.

I stagger slightly along the empty roads, the yellow flashes beginning to vanish and the gears beginning to appear, back toward the cafe, above which is where Guildina and I are staying together--but I doubt she'll come down here, certainly not: she comes down to make appearances, but she does not like the food. Not enough meat, I suspect.

Ah, there's the awning in front. The chairs and tables are not there. No doubt they must have taken them inside so as not to ruin them in the wind and rain. Their sign says open, despite nopony sane going out in this weather. My heart gladdens.

The wind suddenly picks up as I press myself against the door. I fling open wide the door and the wind grabs hold of it and slams it shut again on my plot.

"Damn!"

Some hoofsteps trot up to me. "Oh, it's you Cherry." 

No honorifics? Ha, it's best that way anyhow.

"Cherry, Miss Guildina was just here looking for you." This cafe owner's artificial politeness has long since irritated me. I feel the headache coming on and just want to be alone.

"That's fine. Leave her. Don't call. Absinthe, please," I add, not smiling with my eyes.

"Cherry?"

"I'm not feeling well. Absinthe and water--and bread."

"The bits?"

Damn him. He knows I haven't money. And the money I do get is from my sister for paints and brushes and canvas and cleaner and food--not much for alcohol.

"Guildina's tab." I throw my soaked coat and hat off onto an empty chair, and fall into another at the same table.

I want to cry the pain of the headache is so bad; a large heavy rock rolling across my head--the tears would allow some release of pressure. But there is another reason: the thought of money awoke again to me my position and condition: one of absolute depravity. 

For about eight long years I have lived off the little money me sister loans me as allowance--a deal we made together all those years ago: that she would give me money and I would give her my pictures for her to sell and take a share of the profits from. This, we planned, would continue until my work could sell well enough that I could pay her back, with interest, for all her help. But she also would have to help promote them: displaying them up as a small show at those places she played her music. But that hasn't been going well. It is my thought she is either not showing them, or not showing them right. She also has, of late, helped promote Guildina's art, and Guidina has sold quite a number of paintings thanks to her; but I haven't even sold one in all my eight years painting and drawing with my heart. Guildina plans her pieces like she were doing math, and paints in big flat plains. Truly I do admire her work, but, at the same time, her work is so untrue to life, I--

"Here it is. Your absinthe, water, and bread. I'll put it on Miss Guidina's tab: six bits?"

I answer affirmatively, and take a swing of the absinthe. With that pleasurable warmth running down, I began to feel a little more relaxed and to forget my troubles. The cool water is refreshing, and my headache soon begins to subside. I breathe in deeply the musty air of the empty cafe. I look out the one large window at the pouring rain and the great gusts of wind beating the trees. I lose myself looking out the window, and I hardly realized when I've finished my meager meal and walk briskly upstairs into our little house.

I hear some rummaging in Guildina's room as I am just about to open my own, so I turn around and slip into the bathroom. Bracing myself on the sink, the face stares back through the mirror. The face is morose, sinewy, and the skull is visible through the coat of fur and the skin. In this skull of mine is a mad mind; a mind that has been half-foundered by suffering and travail. Those eyes stare wide, like headlights, with the anxiousness of a frightened hawk and the wildness of a demon. 

There is some rummaging in the hall, and then a loud crash against the bathroom door. My ears ring loudly.

"What are you doing out there Guildina!" I shout over the sharp ring in my ear. Did she say anything? This damn ringing! "Why did you make that sound! My ears--I suddenly can't hear a damn thing!" 

I open the door. Guidina is in the hall, closing the room of her door.

"What are you talking about, Cherry Garden?" She pleas innocence.

"What was that crash?" I shout over the receding ringing.

"Friend, what crash?"

"Don't play that card with me! I know its tricks!"

"The card I play is no trick, but this crash may be." She's playing her quick wits against mine. She's avoiding something, but what is it?

"There's no use lying--look, here's a dent on the door." I close the door so she can see where I think whatever crashed may have struck, but a rolled up canvas falls instead, apparently having been propped up on the wall behind the door when it opened out, but my closing it again somehow had caused it to slip.

"What's this?" I kick it unrolled. It's one of Guidina's paintings. It is a painting of earth ponies, in some tropical land to which she had only been once, digging holes to plant coconut trees in. "What. Is. This!"

"Just a... new painting." I hear a quiver in her voice.

"First of all, the positions of these ponies are all wrong!" Why is that the first thing that I say and accuse her of? "Maybe it's because you are not an earth pony--or a pony at all, and can't understand, but no pony would be digging like this!" I show her the painting, holding the top in my mouth. When the tops corners curve in, I throw it on the ground and then use my own hooves and head position to mimic how a real earth pony digs with a shovel. "Like this! Like this! See how I move my hooves? The power comes from the back legs being firmly set, not the strength in the forelegs!" Then I move up and down the small hall, displaying myself from a myriad of angles for her to see how an earth pony digs. I stop just in front of her, and impress the lesson on her with a stare. She stares straight back at mine, unwavering and resolute. Her eyes made an almost unnoticeable glace for the stairs, and one claw moved to the side, as though just about to allow the other to open the door to her room behind her. I knew her intentions.

"You want to leave?"

She simply nods.

Might as well let her. She's been nothing but frustrating.

"Fine!" I step aside and buck open my door with a sidelong kick of my hoof, without taking my eyes off her. "Go then! There--you know where the door is!"

"I have to finish packing," she says calmly, with a mocking smile, and makes to touch me on the back, but I pull back sharply.

"Go! Leave! I'm gunna nap. I don't expect to see you again." She seems to have more to say, but what's the use of talking about something that is already barreling down hill? I take my leave into my room, slamming the door, scream an insult or two at her to get back at her from earlier, throw my wet clothes on the floor, and off into bed with me. The rummaging across the hall, and the sound of claws scratching the floor, irritates me and keeps me awake, inclining me to grind my teeth and drive-in my sheets. But by and by, I do fall into a peaceful sleep, where no noise, no foreign voices, instill any mode into me, most times....

When I awake it's already dark out, and our little yellow house is silent. The rain has stopped. Everything is mute and calm. I open the door of my room. Guildina's door is ajar. There is a familiar click of the front door closing. I walk back into my room and look out the window. Below me, in the wet cobbled street, all alone, is Guildina, the bronze light playing on her slender form. She is walking at a brisk pace with a large bag around her, which is locking her wings. Without grabbing any sort of covering, I bolt outside. 

In the street, the bright lights throw out long streaks on the wet stone and blind me, making the darkness even darker. I think she was headed toward the train station. 

I have to convince her to return! We can have a second start on our Artist Utopia over again, get Brown Stroke to come out here with us. It will be merry. She can't leave on Hearth Warming Eve!

I follow the path I think she has taken for sometime, until I realize I'm lost. I turn a corner around a tall building with a sharp spire at the top, and run up an alley that takes me into another street with high stone buildings on either side. The wreathes with their lights and glass orbs and fancy ornaments, strung along the buildings and over the streets betwixt the buildings, reminds me of the branches of the majestic redwoods; but the artificiality of the decorations fill me with a strange dread. As I continue along this stretch of road, I begin to notice more that the decorations are broken and torn. The wind and rain had pulled at these bright, cheery, warm, frightening things, and now many of them hang limp like the sinewy legs of dead ponies spread on their death-beds. They appear to be falling bodies. Frightened, I turn down another side-street and soon come out on a familiar park. I am elated to see Guildina crossing the empty paths through the trees. I stop when she, like an owl, turn her head round and glares at me.

"You are leaving?" I ask. Her eyes said it all: I could not convince her if she did not want to come back with me.

"Cherry Garden, my friend. What are you doing here?" The rest of her turns to face me, presenting a formidable and intimidating presence. 

"You are leaving?" I ask.

"You look wild! What is the matter? What is that in the corner of your mouth?" Her eyes glisten. "Please, I--"

"You are leaving?" I step closer. I am sure my form is mostly hidden in the darkness. Hers is half hidden, a lamp's light just gently caressing her rear legs, and reflecting up along her face. She can't see me well.

"Cherry Garden. Wh-what are you doing?" She's gunna run! I have to stop her and make her listen!

"Are you leaving?"

"Yes." That's it! "Please, come wi--"

I sprint straight for her, intending to hug her and cry in her arms, and beg her not to leave, like a small filly would, but, as I jump up, she raises her claw and brings it down across my face, sending me into the dirt. 

I cry out and beg her to stay. A great wave of agonizing fear grips my throat and it's painful to breathe. Am I so despised? I lost one of my closest friends! I run into her arms and she smites me down! Oh cruel fate!

The cold, moist air only makes my cheeks and eyes burn. She towers over me. She clasps my neck in her vice-gripping claw and stares at me in such a terrifying way that only a griffon could, meaning me harm.

I struggle to get up and run away! I sprint back to the yellow house, away from her! The walls of the buildings, instead of their festive air, with their merry tidings and kind ponies within, were more like the walls of a prison.

I finally relax a bit as I make my way up the stairs to the front door. She won't come back. The fear still racing through me, I am shaking all over and my head is light. I feel dizzy and nauseous. The right side of my head feels hot.

Those wicked yellow flashes again! I make my way to the bathroom, avoiding looking in the mirror. I collapse, hurting my shoulder against the sink. There's blood on the floor. I follow the stream to my right ear. The mirror impels me. I look and see my ear, half of it nearly clean off. It doesn't even hurt. My face is sallow and sunken. The cheek bones are prominent like a corpse's. 

I am repulsed, and walk into my room to find something to wrap up my wound. The gears star up, the yellow superimposed on them. Voices begin to chatter and mumble. 

Dread rushes in. What have you done, Cherry Garden?

What have I done? Had I really meant to kill Guildina if she refused to come back with me? 

"Yes," she keeps repeating in my mind. I begin to relive everything I have done to her, and to my sister, and to others; and all the painful loneliness in my life. I begin to shake in fright, shutting my eyes and swaying my head in an attempt to shake these memories out of it. And for a moment I manage to free my self, but in their place the yellow flashes and spinning gears appear, and voices all saying the same thing: "You did away with her--now do away with yourself." And I close my eyes and shake my head, but I only hear these voices, and I open my eyes and only see swirling, terrifying yellow.

Suddenly the yellow and gears vanish, and the long suffering headache begins, and the voices talk incessantly. Remembering having written to Symphony about taking one's ear and listening to the calming voices of angel-ponies, I take up a knife from the kitchen. The pain in my head is so great, I struggle to steady the blade between my hooves on the table.

I can finish this, and I can, even in the storms, hear peace. I bring my head down on the knife, but only just grazed my ear. I go again and the blade gets stuck and I have to tear it off the blade and try again. Once more it gets stuck, but, biting hard on my shoulder, I force it though with a pleasurable release. I feel no new pain over the agony of my headache.

I wrap up my wound and the ear. I need to find an angel-pony.... I can't leave this here. I take a small box and put the half of my ear I cut inside, kiss it tenderly, and take it outside with me. I'm surprised at myself as I open the box and nuzzle it as I walk slowly toward the "Stallion's Ropes." I close my eyes, and when I open them I am at there.

I have the box in one hoof, so I hit the door with my head until somepony opens it. I tell them I am looking for somepony. They ask for whom. I say Guildina. They seem to recognize me as say she is not in, so I ask for hers and mine favorite: that charming stallion with an angelic voice: Raeclop, and that I can't come inside, and to give the sweet colt this box as a gift. 

With that I leave I for home and, feeling dizzy, fall asleep--