Chapter 5: Risen
Celestia’s sun touched the horizon casting a golden hue across Equestria. For almost a thousand years the serene alicorn princess had granted harmony to her little ponies. Peaceful nights, warm days. She cared for all her subjects as if they were her own children it was said, and the ponies of Equestria revered her for that.
The golden light of the sunset shimmered off the long green grass of the mountain-backed valley. Watched by golden eyes that cared not one flick of the owner’s rainbow colored tail of Princess Celestia’s charity, compassion, devotion, integrity, and optimistic leadership. The princess of the sun was dead to him, as was the whole damned 从猴子的屁股废话 Cóng hóuzi de pìgu fèihuà (1) world.
In the slow deepening glow of sunset, as the color of the dying light moved from gold to the flickering tint of orange fire across the valley floor, the lone stallion’s eyes were drawn to a spot in the sea of grass that seemed to devour the light. Charred and black, the living lushness of the surrounding meadow seemed to shun the area. Well it should, death had touched the ground there, death and fire.
A tear slipped from the corner of the pegasus’s eye, following the trail left by its predecessors down the violet tinted blue cheek to fall away into the cloud below. She’d been so beautiful, even as she lay there in death, upon a bier of incendiary white cloud over wood. She had been bedecked in white cloth and golden armor woven of treated straw, as the old traditions she revered were observed. She had looked so peaceful as he had approached her and gently slipped the woven golden bridle around her muzzle and kissed her one last time.
Then he had touched a small white wrapped bundle secreted away beneath her left wing, unknown to most, with the tip of his. Their daughter, dead before living, Firefly had followed the lost foal into Elysium over the bridge of a moonlight rainbow.
She doesn’t belong where she’s going yet. I have to show her the way.
Those were last words he’d heard her say, though she had not spoken them. He had heard them with his soul as she left this world for another. He had turned back and walked to where a small solar mirror had been placed, covered in a white cloth. He’d drawn off the cloth and let the flame take root in the torch in the old ways, from the sky.
Firefly had believed that the Pegasi had come here from far away. Children of a great winged horse created by long forgotten beings in a place called Olympia. Cast into the heavens, and finally coming here where they established their first kingdoms among the clouds.
Her beliefs would be honored as he picked up the burning torch and approached the bier one last time, before placing it down in a ring of rainbow colored feathers collected from family and community. As the wreath began to burn, he brought his own good wing forward and drew his longest primary from it adding it to the flame. As he walked back he could hear the flames expanding, even as the assembled pegasi began to lead the other gathered ponies in the traditional pegasi funeral song ‘Wind Beneath my Wings.’
As the flames and chorus grew, the stallion’s heart had shattered and fell as he collapsed to the ground. Silently he recalled begging any and all powers that he could think of, finally cursing them all down that they might see fit slay him now. Kill him in that moment, that his body might be cast onto his wife’s pyre and he be permitted to fly along side her and their daughter in Elysium.
His pleas and vitriol went unanswered. He lived, and silently cursed them all round again for their uselessness.
As he laid there tear-soaked and hurting something reached out and touched him. He felt the cold brittle shards of his dying soul being wrapped up in a sensation of warmth. As he opened a bleary golden eye he saw a young pegasus filly, not much more than a year old resting her head against his fetlock and looking at him with sea blue eyes, on the verge of tears herself. From within those eyes something reached out with preternatural kindness, holding his soul together until he could take it back.
It was then the pyre caught full with a tremendous rush and roar of flame soaring heavenward. The little yellow filly spooked and ran back into the gathered host, pink tail streaming behind her.
That had been eight days ago.
Bifrost closed off the memories. Each beat of his heart still felt like a pouch of crushed glass inside him, but his heart kept its rhythm. It had been eight days since the funeral, eleven since the storm and the moonlight rainbow. He’d spent the first two days after that in Ponyville General before being released in time for the funeral. His eyes watched the light fade from the valley. Like it had faded from his life. His life had ended that day in the flames of the pyre, with his wife and daughter in the fire, in the valley of Serenity, the valley of death.
With a tired sigh he lifted a forehoof up examining the knot work before him. It was perfect, thirteen knots held the loop of the noose. What gods and immortals would not deign to do perhaps mortal hooves could. A moment longer he held his self made gateway from this life. Then he stretched out his hoof and let it slip over the edge of the cloud. Originally he meant for his neck to be within the loop and the other end secured up high, neither was done.
There was a moment when he had thought an eternity looking up at his wife and daughter from the wastes of Tartarus was desirable. It was the thought of his wife and daughter looking back at him from Elysium for eternity, their souls weighted with sorrow for his folly that had stayed his hoof. His wife believed in Loyalty, in choices, in Life, he had promised her and himself the night she and their daughter departed this world he would not let that Loyalty die, Ever.
He had made his decision. He would serve his torment here among the living. Until the being his wife had called Bellerophon would come for him, and slip a golden bridle around his muzzle and lead him to Elysium. Lead him back to his wife and daughter.
A rumble of thunder beckoned his attention from his misery. Once more a storm was brewing over the Everfree Forest. Loathing welled up inside him as he watched the thunderheads swell into the sky.
His career was made in storms, formation, control, and response. He had been reading about the very conditions that formed the storm that took his family just before he and Firefly had winged off on that fateful flight. He hated himself more for failing to see the monster that had been looming before them. He failed. They had died.
As the grieving stallion sneered foully at the storm-front the thunderclouds kept blooming high over the Everfree. As they bloomed, images seemed to take form from them, the light from the setting sun dyed them in whites, golds, soft blues and most prominently, hot pinks.
Bifrost’s blood chilled then boiled as one particular shape formed high over the Everfree. The image of a pegasus rearing above the storm, wings up as if to take flight. The angle of the dropping sun cast the cloud-formed pegasus in a brilliant pink while shadow left the mane and tail in a cold morbid blue. It looked like Firefly as a flash of lightning forked past the flank of the cloud, completing the illusion.
Within the blink of an eye, the pegasus stallion’s blood first froze then boiled and the tears streamed hot from his eyes as the thunder rolled past him. It was taunting him; the Tartarus spawned storm was taunting him with his wife’s death.
“Damn You!” Bifrost screamed as the sun slipped below the horizon, as he leaned over the edge of the balcony of the upper floor’s master bedroom. His fore hooves perched on the cloudy railing, the lone pegasus let loose a torrent of blasphemies of a most unintelligible nature comprising half strangled sobs and cries choked by anguish. The beast only laughed back in thunder, as the monster that was the storm sundered the image of his wife smashing her back into the darkness of the heavy rain clouds as lighting crackled like sparklers at a Wonderbolts show.
It was too much, something beyond rage shot through his body like electricity, and he screamed at the storm. Screamed like he’d never screamed before. Screamed as if he meant to to silence the thunder with his will and voice alone. But it wasn’t him alone. He could feel the heartbeats in his chest, his, hers, and another’s. Their daughter’s! He could feel her heart beating furiously as he screamed at the storm.
“DAMN YOU! GIVE HER BACK!”
His eyes were clenched shut as he screamed his life out into the black. He saw nothing. He didn’t see the tiny white cloud emerge from the charcoal shaded clutter over the Everfree Forest. He didn’t see it loose its lightning in the same spot, not once, nor twice, but thrice, and not in succession either, in pure synchronicity. Ruby, gold and sapphire bolts that may very well have been more magic than lightning sheared through the heart of the storm and into ruins long forgotten as a shockwave shot forward from the horizon.
Bifrost never saw the wave of near solid thunder coming. He felt it though, as it crashed into him, flinging him back against the wall of the cloud tower. Pain lanced through his still tender left wing where the separation and torn muscles were still healing. The tower shook in its meteorological foundations as the pressure wave passed through it.
Yet even as the shockwave battered him into the wall he heard something, voices.
Oh Yeah! A youthful voice called out in triumph.
Impossible! Growled another one, deeper, in sincere displeasure and disbelief.
Fly Dashie! Fly! Called a third. He knew that one. It was Firefly’s.
Staggering to his feet Bifrost’s vision cleared slowly as with the ringing in his ears. In some ways, aside from the prickling of pain freshly radiating from his left wing, he felt like he’d been doused in high proof alcohol and flashed like a flambé.
Walking unsteadily into the master suite of the tower he saw the wave of force that had hit him had shaken the tower as well, enough to knock over some things most notably pictures and a light on the bedside table. Picking up and straightening the disturbed items he made his way into the hall.
The nursery for what use it would be was in a similar state of clutter as he passed by. Either way the contents would just be getting boxed up later. Maybe somepony else could use the stuff. He certainly wouldn’t need it. He remembered Firefly telling him about a pegasus here in Ponyville, who had just given birth to twin daughters, he couldn’t remember the names, Flit and Cloud-something. Maybe they’d have use for it.
Drearily the emotionally drained stallion continued down to the main floor of the tower. As expected some things had fallen here and there, but nothing serious of note until he looked into the family room. Numerous books had fallen from shelves and a few mementos from wall hooks. Most of the pictures on the one wall were canted oddly. But what struck him deepest was the bareness of the mantel.
Bifrost’s heart, what little left there was of it now, cringed in cracked glass agony as he saw the picture of his wife laying on the floor, the glass broken. Disturbing to him though that was it was nothing compared to what lay beside it. The sky-silver funerary urn that held the ashes of Firefly and their unnamed daughter lay nearby, the ashes spread out before it on the floor. More tears of grief and frustration found their way from with in Bifrost’s grinding tattered heart to again grace his golden eyes as he approached the nigh impossible scene.
Nigh impossible as the funerary urn had been sealed completely by an electro-arc technique by a pegasus silversmith after Bifrost had filled the vessel with the gray-white powdery remains of his wife and daughter. The technique drew on the innate electro-kinetic ability of some pegasi to channel electrical charge through their wings.
In aerial displays the technique was used to perform the ‘Buccaneer Blaze’ in which a flying pegasus generated an electrical flash across their wings like a strobe light. The technique took years to perfect, even for Firefly who had been among the youngest ever to train in the maneuver and she’d just perfected it before she got pregnant.
As he made his way down the steps of the sunken family room something in the fan of the spread ashes drew his attention. Something glowing. As he approached the spot the object revealed itself more to the pegasus stallion's keen vision, a tiny hoof print, glowing orange-gold in the gray-white of the ash bed.
Bifrost reached towards it with his right fore-hoof over the glowing mark … and jerked it back immediately ash he felt the searing heat against the soft underside behind the hoof proper.
“What happened here?” Bifrost wondered aloud to the emptiness of the room. Only to be answered by a muffled squeak somewhere to his right.
Something was odd in the room. He could smell it in the air as uneasy adrenaline unclouded grief dulled senses. There was ash, ozone, smoke, and something else.
His eyes scanned the floor before him, there was the fading hoof print in the ashes, no, there were four, the others already faded near cold. They opened towards where the ashes spilled from the urn, heading away from it. His eyes scanned across the to the fallen picture of his fallen wife, the glass cracked and a shard broken free of the frame. Beside it the book she had been reading that last evening. It had been placed on the mantel by some relative and never returned to the shelves. It had fallen, opening out in the process to where Firefly’s pink silk bookmark held her last place. The broken shard of glass lay across a passage; magnifying part the words below … from ashes they … of will alone … like the Phoenix.
A movement in the pile of Firefly’s comforter drew his attention. The pink blanket, like the bookmark, was embroidered with his wife’s cutie mark of twin thunderbolts in an electric blue. It too, like the book had been picked up after Firefly’s death. It had, as of earlier that morning, still been lying, neatly folded, atop the cushion Firefly had last lay upon.
Yet now it was piled haphazardly, twisted and coiled atop the cushion …
Something caught his eye derailing his thought. From beneath the cloth of the blanket a few stray hairs of the most vivid blue trailed out.
Again the cloth-covered mound shifted slightly as Bifrost, golden eyes wide, reached for the pink pile and slowly lifted the edge from the pillow.
Strands of violet and green joined those of blue, with yellow, orange, and red following. The tiny filly lay curled in her own mane and tail, swathed in rainbow, her coat as blue as the midsummer sky. Deprived of the warmth of her covering the tiny pegasus pony stretched her wings and forelegs as an immense yawn split her tiny muzzle.
Bifrost’s rump hit the floor and so would his jaw, had it not been attached to his head, at the sight of the sleeping foal. Speachless, he kept staring at her.
She’s ours, Firefly’s voice whispered in his mind. I’ve done all I can for her. Now it’s your turn. Teach her well, but know that her life is her own. She’s special beyond anypony’s dreams.
Bifrost looked at the sleeping foal as his wife’s voice faded from his mind. As the last echoes faded the filly lifted her head and turned directly to him and opened her eyes. The room was flooded with an unsurpassed light for a moment, as tears of joy rolled freely from golden eyes.
She had her mother’s eyes.