//------------------------------// // Ashes // Story: The Phoenix Foal // by Sir Barton //------------------------------// Chapter 3: Ashes Bifrost watched his wife’s pink face contort in discomfort. She was lying on her belly on the large cushion near the hearth in the family room of their cloud tower reading. A warm pink blanket matching her coat was wrapped around her, embroidered in one corner with the twin thunderbolts that comprised her cutie mark in the same brilliant electric blue as her mane. “Are you okay ‘Fly?” Bifrost put forth his concerns. Firefly’s face relaxed as the pain faded and she regarded her husband and foal-sire with her brilliant pigeon’s blood ruby eyes. “If this colt of yours gets any more active I’ll be bruising through my coat.” “You’re so sure that it’s a colt?” The rainbow maned stallion replied calmly glancing again from his own reading to look upon the love of his life. “Yes, no filly could be this aggressively energetic.” Firefly winced again as another volley of kicks resounded within her. “Really?” Bifrost cocked the brow above one golden eye as he waited for the internal assault on his wife to abate. “I seem to remember somepony’s mother mentioning one little filly bucking her so hard while inside her that she had bruises …” “My mother’s coat was so dark she wouldn’t be able to tell a bruise from the rest of her hide. Ahh-ow!” Firefly cut off her husband’s smart-flanked response, only to be painfully reminded that internal bruising was quite a real thing by yet another burst of motion from the foal inside her. Bifrost scrunched his muzzle in concern to suppress a grin that would surely have had him sleeping down stairs if ‘Fly saw it plastered across his face as his unborn foal seemed to take his side of the argument. “I swear to all that’s right in this world that they’re going to have to bar the windows in the foaling wing at Ponyville Medical and be holding a snare-net instead of a foaling blanket when your son arrives.” The hot pink dam-to-be happily proclaimed to her foal’s sire. Bifrost let his snout relax and just grinned at his expectant wife. She had also sworn up and down once foal inside her had gotten big enough for the movements to be felt, that she should probably give birth to their son at the Wonderbolt’s facility atop Mt. Richthofen, given it seemed the little one was bound and determined to be one even before birth. Firefly had even gone so far as to joke that their foal might just be born with a bright blue coat and gold markings matching the Wonderbolt’s flight suits. “Alright!” declared the pink pegasus as she lurched to her hooves. The blanket she had been wrapped in sloughed to the floor revealing the bulging mid-section of the once trim young mare. “I’ve had enough. If this foal is going to calm down, I’m going to need to get some air.” “Air?” Bifrost quipped, cocking a brow at his wife as he spoke. “Yes, air.” Firefly shot back as she trotted up from the sunken family room into the kitchen area bound for the back veranda. “And I don’t want to hear any more about me not flying during the last month of my pregnancy.” “No such words from this pony’s mouth.” Bifrost replied closing the book he’d been reading as he got up and followed his wife’s still shapely flank out through the kitchen. The book he had been reading was about unnatural interactions of atmospheric anomalies and the Everfree Forest, quite good actually, written by a pegasus by the name of Fujita. Just because he’d been a top-flight athlete in weather school hadn’t stopped him from attaining an advanced degree in meteorology, egghead his flank. He was a storm formation specialist with the equestrian weather office. Ponyville it seemed was wonderfully situated roughly equidistant from both the capital at Canterlot and the main weather services offices in Cloudsdale. It had made for a win-win when he’d married Firefly, as they’d been able to take up residence in her family’s ancestral cloud tower above the Serenity Valley just outside of town. Firefly would still be able to see her friends on a regular basis while acting as the town’s weather manager. He could easily commute to and from Canterlot or Cloudsdale as needed, though his job often had him flying all over Equestria consulting on storm formation systems or assisting in breaking up ones that had gone out of control. Right now though he had just begun a paternity leave for three months, as Firefly entered the final stages of brooding before she foaled. It gave him at the moment, with his wife’s vehement desire to exercise her independence, time to start work on his latest thesis. But he figured that any progress might be short lived as Fly’s foaling date drew closer. Then after would come the joys of chasing an energetic flitting little colt or filly about the tower for the next two months of his leave. The evening air that greeted the two pegasi as they reached the back cloud deck of their floating home was cooling slightly, but still heavy and warm. Bifrost took in a big lung full of the heavenly valley air, as his wife did likewise beside him. The scent of the valley meadow and late spring flowers perfumed the air with a sense of breathing life itself. It was glorious, but not so much as the look of his beautiful bulging wife, ripe with foal beside him. Firefly looked back at him meeting his golden hued eyes with her brilliant pigeon’s blood ruby ones, glittering in the evening light full of life and passion for it. As he stood admiring his wife’s face, as if he hadn’t already committed every detail to memory, he saw the smile spreading. With a wink and a lunge she was off, plummeting over the edge of the cloud. Bifrost’s gut leapt with her, his body following a moment behind. As he caught sight of her winging out across the valley his insides unwound themselves and he soared after her. The pair largely glided for a few lazy circuits spiraling out form the tower, the warm air buoying them, easing the need to actually exert effort in flying. “How’s the little one doing?” Bifrost asked, passing below his wife in a lateral slide. “Settling down.” Came Firefly’s warm reply. “I don’t know why, but the little guy prefers it when I’m airborne. It’s as if he knows I’ve been on my hooves too long, and he starts getting really restless.” Bifrost gave a flap of his wings adding a touch of altitude before shifting back past his wife this time passing above the pregnant mare, calling to her as he did. “You figure another couple of laps and ‘he’ will let you get some rest?” “Hmm,” Firefly mused over her response aloud. She was seriously enjoying just being in open air right now her, body being caressed by the warmth of rising thermals, the stallion of her dreams on her wing, “maybe a quick jaunt out to the edge of Sweet Apple Acres? The trees are just finishing blooming and smell so divine.” The rainbow maned stallion chuckled; usually it was the fall cider that she considered ‘divine’ about the expansive orchards of the Apple family. He could still remember the first time he and Firefly had stayed over at the tower that would eventually become their home. His future wife had insisted on taking a weekend, a very specific weekend, in the early fall to come and visit her grandmother in Ponyville. Why? She just said it would be a surprise, and it had been. That first morning after their arrival, Firefly had crept into the guest room he was sleeping in. Firefly’s family had some very strong feelings regarding what was ‘out of bounds’ in a relationship and ‘sleeping together’ and other related activities were, in the lingo of his family, ‘verboten’. Verboten so much if fact that Firefly’s family took oaths on the subject, oaths that were not disregarded lightly he was informed. So for her to be in his room in the tower that morning in the barest of the pre-dawn twilight nuzzling him awake, and telling him to not make a sound and follow her, he thought surely he was going to be in Tartarus by sunrise. Instead dawn had found them curled up against each other, dosing by the orchard gate of Sweet Apple Acres waiting for the opening day of ‘Cider Season’. “If you feel up to it.” Bifrost answered as he again slid in below his wife, this time holding formation beneath her and trailing slightly. “You know the last time you were aloft too long you said it felt like you were hauling an overloaded mail satchel by the time we got back.” “Well, I feel quite good right now.” The pink mare replied with a bubbly confidence. “And speaking of mail ponies, maybe if your son has settled down enough when we get back I might be inclined to accept a ‘special delivery’ from your ‘post’ in my ‘slot’.” Firefly punctuated the innuendo by pulling ahead of her mate slightly giving him a good view and a playful flick in the nose with her electric blue tail. Bifrost grinned like a school colt who had just gotten his fist glimpse of ‘the heavenly gate’. Cranking his wings he rolled up over Firefly inverted and replied back. “Neither rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night shall keep me from seeing you breathless and satisfied.” The pair continued to jest like the pair of young lovers they were as they flew over and through the expanse of apple trees. The rising warm air carried the scent of apple blooms to the happy couple. Yet in all something began to feel wrong to Bifrost as he kept a watchful eye on his pink and blue pony of passion, something … electric, yet cold. A torrent of cold air dumped itself over Bifrost like a bucket of icy water, hauling him from his merry lover’s chase. Cold! The thought burned in his mid as he braked hard in mid-air, ending in a full hover. Their weaving chase had brought them to the far edge of the orchard, and as he cast a glance to the horizon above the Everfree Forest, and his merriment fell away like so many fall leaves. Thunderstorm! There, ever further smearing itself across the sky like some nightmare belched forth out of Tartarus was the storm front. In his focus on Firefly he hadn’t seen the black clouds drifting in over the Everfree. Now though, as the first jagged fingers of lightning stabbed forth into the green forest below and the cracking growl of thunder tumbled through the sky, now was not the time to scold himself on what should have been, now he had to deal with what was here, now. “’Fly! Storm! Fly!” The off-purple-blue pegasus stallion watched as his mate pulled up at either his call or the roll of the thunder, and caught sight of the rising darkness above, its leading edge now curling under like a blanket being rolled upside down. “’Frost! Storm!” came the mare’s realization as she made for her egress from the path of the vanguard edge with all the speed her pregnancy-laden body could muster. Behind her the storm’s vanguard edge tilted unsteadily, wobbling like a wave in the air, and then broke. The rolling front turned vertical as a swirling tower of dark moisture and wind took shape. Bifrost’s gut sank as he saw the tornado begin to tear into the far edge of the orchard behind his wife. His knowledge of storms was advanced enough to see that from the outset this was no pegasus controlled system that he might be able to buck his way into some control of and buy his wife time to escape. No this was what he had been reading about just a short while before, a monstrous rogue storm off the Everfree. A completely unnatural conjuration spawned of waves of hot and cold air and low and high moisture swirling together in an uncontrolled environment. If the monitoring stations in Cloudsdale or Canterlot had spotted this beast forming a weather control detail would be enroute and on site in an hour or so. An hour or so though did Firefly no good at all from where they were now, the swirling column of cyclonic destruction was nearly on her, its wind shear pulling at her trying to draw her into it. And then it stopped, vanishing as abruptly as it had begun. As if Bifrost could not believe his eyes as his heart leapt in elation, he watched the writhing tower simply dissolve into thin air freeing Firefly from its grappling wind shear, and rendering the air almost totally still. “Frosty, let’s get out of here please.” The spectrum tailed stallion nodded eager agreement as he formed up along side his wife. “That was close, how are you holding up?” the concern of a worried parent and spouse stressing his words. “Little one’s probably curled up inside me as far up as he can go, but fine. I’m really thinking I spent too much of myself.” Tears of distress and exertion were welling in the edges of her eyes as she spoke. “Clamp my tail and I’ll kite you.” He pumped his wings a couple of times and then swung in front of his wife allowing her to catch hold of the end of his tail in her teeth. The form was a common pegasus rescue position for situations of exhaustion. The kite-tail pony only had to assume the basic low effort ‘glide’ position and let the rescuer do the wing work. Slowed by the additional drag of his gravid beloved, Bifrost pumped his wings harder to hold pace. He was totally certain he could get them both safely to the tower soon as he winged away from the still surging weather front now raining heavily on the earth pony orchard. A growl sounded above him drawing his attention to the cumulus ceiling overhead Oh Buck! Above the paired pegasi the storm churned angrily, Firefly let an alarmed ‘meep’ escape from between her lips but kept her teeth firmly clamped to the end of her husbands tail. For Bifrost realization came as well. Dreadfully he now knew why the first twister had suddenly vanished. The storm cell above him was back building, the tornado was an erratic stuttering starter, a ‘jumper’ that formed, dissipated and reformed at erratic intervals until it either broke down or stabilized. His realization no more than complete, a dark form plunged down at the couple, like the cruel finger of some malevolent divinity. “Hold tight Hon!” Bifrost shouted, “Work with me, I know you can. We’ve got to get to calm air above the cloud deck! Fly! Fly!” The pair surged upwards. He was a great athlete and had logged quite a bit of time in simulated and genuine storm situations, still kiting a heavily pregnant mare while evading a twisting plunging funnel cloud was not routine by any measure. Firefly was even better in the maneuvering game, she had agility and stamina like few ponies could boast, but that was less the weight of her current burden of their unborn foal. Even with what reserves Firefly had left to help it was a fight to get around the churning vortex. If Firefly hadn’t been pregnant the two might have opted to try and ride the twister, cycling up through the eye and out the top. Now it was simply a weaving dash to get above the storm, nothing fancy, just a raw power climb. Once they got above the level of possible debris they were home free. Something slapped his flank hard. There was a tearing sensation from his tail. Most horribly there was the scream from Firefly, a scream only possible with her mouth wide open, not clamped hard to his tail. He didn’t blink, he didn’t pause, he didn’t think. He just went with his gut, snapped his wings to his body pitched over hard and dove after the sound of his wife’s voice. The tornado had pulled her in within moments of them being separated, and he charged into its grasp willingly. The winds and water drops formed a circular moving wall, a wall that he was beaten against repeatedly. Water drops pounded painfully into his eyes along with grit and ice crystals, he could barely see, and though the buffeting of the wind in his ears drowned all sound, he could hear Firefly through it all. He just had to reach her. It was then that the claws of the beast took firm hold of him. Claws made of wind, and water, and ice flung him about like a foal’s toy. The claws of the storm wrenched his left wing from its socket, and all he could do is scream his wife’s name. All that mattered was that he get to Firefly and their foal, the storm could crawl back to Tartarus dragging him bucking, broken, and screaming so long as he made sure that the only ponies in the world that mattered were safe. And then it let him go. Like a foal bored of its plaything the spiraling beast cast him aside and left. Biting his lower lip in pain Bifrost glided out as best he could searching the area for any sign of his beloved Firefly. Anxious moments in the falling rain seemed like torturous, tedious hours as he slowly spiraled towards the ground. He couldn’t keep himself aloft on one good wing. He couldn’t even prolong his decent very well. Finally though, he spotted a glimpse of brilliant pink and shimmering blue near the end of where the tornado’s track had torn a gaping wound into the Everfree. The landing was hardly his best. He stumbled in the debris strewn clearing, his injured wing sagging to the ground. Even the dragging of the feathers against the uneven ground was enough to send waves of pain washing through him that nearly sent him to his knees as he approached Firefly. He bit down on his lower lip hard and kept his hooves under him. “Firefly?” he called as he moved towards her position, “Firefly are you okay?” “I’m … here.” His wife’s voice returned sounding strained. “I can’t … get up.” Bifrost caught sight of the pony who was the center of his existence as he rounded the crown of an uprooted tree. She was lying beneath another tree that had snapped near its base and now lay across her like some abstraction of a mother guarding her foal. “Are you okay?” Bifrost queried of his fallen mate as he lowered himself beside her, offering the shelter of his good wing. “Heh …” she began, trying to keep her lightning wit to the fore, “if foaling hurts half this much …” she sucked a hard breath in through clenched teeth, “your not getting me pregnant ever again, you hear me.” “What ever you want my beautiful mare.” Firefly laid her head against his neck, rubbing against it with a nod, as he spoke. The storm lasted for another hour or two, until finally spent the rain abated. As the clouds began to break up, Bifrost cast an eye skyward looking for any sign of pegasi weather operators but saw none. Procedure for this kind of event was to largely attempt to contain the storm to the boundaries of the Everfree Forest. He reasoned that Firefly and he might be too far inside the forest to be spotted by one of the containment or damage assessment teams that were probably seeing to tasks on the other side of the ‘Green Line’, as the members of the weather service referred to the border of the Everfree Forest. Through a gap in the breaking cloud silver-white moonlight spilled down into the forest, and splintered through water drops in a spider’s web, casting a rainbow of color across the two downed ponies. The two lovers looked at each other and smiled lovingly at one another, basking in a rare moonlight rainbow. “Bifrost?” “I’m here.” The stallion wrapped his neck over his wife’s as he spoke, nuzzling her electric blue mane. “I … I can see her.” The pregnant mare spoke haltingly; eyes fixed into the light of the rainbow, taking on a glittering kaleidoscope of color overtop her pigeon’s blood red. “Her?” Bifrost asked confused, he hadn’t seen any other ponies. “Our daughter, she’s beautiful.” “Daughter?” “Yes. She’s in the rainbow. She’s blue like the sky and has your tail and mane. She’s beautiful.” Bifrost was dumbstruck, for months Firefly had been calling their foal ‘him’, certain it was a colt, now … this? He was still staring at his wife when she turned her head slightly to look at him. “But she’s alone and scared, she needs help. I’m sorry my love, I’m the only one who can reach her now. I have to help her. I have to.” Bifrost felt something as he watched as Firefly’s brilliant ruby eyes grow dull. He felt her stand, even as her neck sagged against him. He felt her step forward, through him, into the rainbow light. He could feel her heart beating next to his, and then another, smaller, beating with a furious rate. She doesn’t belong where she’s going yet. I have to show her the way. Bifrost knew he had heard Firefly’s voice, and then a giggle of a small filly sounded from the stillness. He turned and looked into the spectrum of light, and saw Firefly trotting up the rainbow towards a brilliant light where a pegasus filly flitted doing back flips in the air. And then they were gone. Bifrost blinked in the stillness of the dark what had he just seen, what had just happened? He looked back at where Firefly’s body lay next to him, her eyes open, but the life gone. He knew, deep down, he knew. Tenderly he kissed his wife on the forehead, gently closing her eyes as he did before struggling to his hooves. He swallowed hard, his sorrow, his grief; there would be time to mourn later. Now he had one last duty to stand to. He drew in a great breath his separated wing and torn muscles shuddering in pain. He flared his good wing and screamed. He screamed, screamed as only a stallion could. Not in grief, not in pain, but in dire warning to all that could hear it, that so long as there was breath in his body and blood in his veins no creature of this world, or the next, would lay fang nor claw upon his wife or daughter. Firefly had once told him: Loyalty did not define the choices one made. It was defined by the choices one made, the promises one kept, and that true loyalty, like love could only live or die by one’s choices not on its own. So here now, alone, in the darkness of the Everfree Forest, Bifrost stood the last watch. His wife and child may have died here, but it was his choice that his love for them, his Loyalty to them would not. So long as he lived that Loyalty Would Not Die EVER.