Chapter 3: Sight
“That’ll be fifteen cyrs, Hawk.”
Hawk Tail nodded and deposited the fifteen gold coins on the merchant’s stall. The merchant, a middle-aged unicorn mare, smiled at him and collected the cyrs with her magic, dropping them in a small pouch along her flank. In return, she passed back a new hawk cage, complete with a perch and a hood for the young bird. Grabbing the top of the cage with his teeth, Hawk Tail twisted his neck around and deposited it on his back.
“Thanks, Miss Sweetpenny. What with the storm that passed through a few days ago, we need new cages for some of the hawks. I’m just glad that they all survived it.”
Miss Sweetpenny tilted her head and gave a kind and motherly smile. “That is good news indeed. I wouldn’t trust their care with anypony else but you, Hawk Tail. You’ve done such a remarkable job since your father’s wing got hurt all those years ago.”
“I lost our only falcon to Mymis two days ago,” Hawk grumbled. “It was Lanner’s first day on the job. I should’ve warned her, but...”
“I sense a connection,” the merchant mused. “Still, that was some storm. They say it was the worst one in fifty seasons, but it’s more like fifty years. The last time the winds howled that hard, I was a little filly living in a tiny farmhouse on a windswept hilltop. I thank the gods every day that I have a nice business set up in town where there are other buildings to protect my own from the storms, but sometimes I still miss that little shack of a house.” Sad nostalgia over distant memories washed across her face, and Hawk Tail slightly smiled with her. Life was tough around his house, but the view and the seclusion was something he wouldn’t give up for anything.
“I wouldn’t know,” Hawk tail admitted, shrugging his shoulders. “I just know that when the storm came, I sat inside with my eye to the skies to make sure there weren’t any tornadoes.” He paused. “You know, it’s odd…”
Miss Sweetpenny blinked. “What is it, dearie?”
Hawk Tail shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just thinking about the storm’s timing is all. Anyhow,” he stated as he tilted his head toward Miss Sweetpenny, “I should be going. I need to get this cage back to the post office. Lyudmila and Erin aren’t going to be too happy if they have to share a cage for much longer.”
The merchant smiled sweetly as he turned to go. “I’m sure, I’m sure. Take care!”
“You too!” Hawk Tail called over his shoulder.
Miss Sweetpenny’s attention soon turned to other customers, and Hawk Tail’s idle mind began to wander to the stalls around him as he made his way towards a bridge. The markets of River’s Reach were placed on an island where there used to be a steep horseshoe bend in the Glittering Run many thousands of years ago. Time and water had eaten through that bank and carved out an oblong block of dirt about a hundred yards long and not even half as wide. When it stormed, the island often became cut off from the rest of the town, and even now the streets were still damp and waterlogged from the storm a few days ago. Still, the slab of dirt, sand, and cobblestone was the economic heart of River’s Reach, and the area had come to be called Cyr Island.
Walking across the stone bridge connecting Cyr Island to the river bank, Hawk Tail found himself in the tiny industrial sector of town, although ‘industrial’ was probably a gross hyperbole for what the district actually was. Blacksmiths, glassblowers, carpenters, and all sorts of craftsponies worked their trades in the streets or under the shade of their stone residences above them, churning out all sorts of fine goods for the island to sell. He quickly moved past these and trotted out beyond, where lowlier shops and residences filled the gaps until River’s Reach petered out about a quarter of a mile from the river.
“Hey, Hawk Tail! How’s it going!?”
Hawk Tail smiled and looked towards his right, where a mostly white mare with a touch of icy blue in her mane and tail dropped alongside him. Her wings fluttered against her side as she arranged the flight feathers, letting the frost-colored primaries stand against her sides where their blue tips faded into the white of her wings. She smiled and leaned close to Hawk Tail, rubbing her cheek against his even as he blushed and ducked away. When she opened her eyes, they were a bright and joyous blue, like a sparkling pool of water under the winter sky.
“Hi, Flurry,” Hawk Tail replied. “It’s been going pretty good. I had to get some more supplies for the post office. It’s been a busy few days for me and Lanner.”
Flurry giggled and walked close enough to Hawk Tail so that their wings were nearly brushing. “I can imagine, with the storm and everything. How did Lanner do on her first day?”
“Well… I mean, good enough.”
Flurry giggled. “How many did she let loose?”
“One,” Hawk Tail laughed, “but our most important one, too.”
“So that counts for like, six or seven hawks, right?”
“It will be if we’ve got anything we need to send to Mymis,” Hawk Tail said. He yawned and stretched a wing before him to examine some of his primaries.“I need to fly there and get our falcon back sometime soon.”
“Oooh,” Flurry purred. “Sounds like fun! I’d love to see Mymis someday. I just need somepony to bring me along…”
Hawk Tail chuckled and shook his head. “I’d be more than happy to take you along if it wasn’t for business. I just need to fly there, find Ricky, and fly back. When Lanner’s actually trained enough to take care of the office by herself, then I’ll consider going for fun.” He raised his head and tasted the air, letting his wings make the day’s weather predictions. “Until then, I’ve got to keep River Reach’s postal service running.”
“Alright,” Flurry pouted. “At least bring me back something cool, ‘kay?”
“Of course,” Hawk Tail replied. “I always look out for my friends.”
Flurry pursed her lips at the last word, but if Hawk Tail noticed, he didn’t say anything.
They walked on for a little bit more, talking about what they thought of the storm, what they purchased from Cyr Island, and how their personal endeavors were going. Flurry was an artist who worked primarily with, not surprisingly, snow and ice. Although she owned a house along the waterfront, she also owned a small residence high up in the clouds. She made ice sculptures in amazing detail, using snow she collected from cirrus clouds and troughs of water she hauled up herself to freeze at high altitude. She often did commissions and other charitable works for not even a single cyrlen for the less fortunate ponies in River’s Reach, but when she did sell her works, they sold for amazing prices. Needless to say, her two residences were well within her income, an impressive feat for an artist living on her own.
“Sometimes I get lonely when I’m waiting for the water to freeze over,” she was saying. “Ever since The Fire, it’s just…”
“I know how you feel,” Hawk Tail said.
“Yeah, but you’ve still got your father, not to mention Lanner.” Flurry sighed, and tried to shake the worry out of her wings. “It really sucks being an only child.”
Hawk Tail draped a friendly wing over Flurry’s shoulder. “Wanna buy a sister? I’ll sell ya Lanner for cheap!”
Flurry rolled her eyes. “As much as I love her, you couldn’t pay me enough to take care of... that... for more than a day.”
“What’s not to like?” Hawk asked, playfully raising an eyebrow.
“Well, let’s see,” Flurry mused. “I make my money off of selling ice sculptures.”
Hawk chuckled to himself, knowing all too well where that line of thought was going.
“You might want to try your hoof at stone then,” he suggested, smiling.
Flurry lightly punched him with a hoof. “Stone’s just as easy to break as ice is, dummy. It’s just a matter of hitting it the right way—which I’m sure Lanner will manage to figure out somehow.”
“I could always give her training wheels or something.”
“Yeah, that’s absolutely perfect,” Flurry sarcastically replied. “She’ll be even wilder then. Like Wheelie Bopper, that foal’s toy, you know?”
Hawk Tail chuckled. “Good point. Yeah, on second thought I take that back. Lanner on wheels sounds terrifying.”
They laughed a bit at that and moved on, meandering down one of the northbound roads and away from the center of town.
The sound of music thrummed off of the stone walls of the buildings around them, and the two pegasi soon passed by a unicorn street performer holding a guitar aloft with his magic. His magic formed ghostly green fingers that plucked at the strings of the guitar while simultaneously holding a hat filled with coins in the air. Both Flurry and Hawk Tail joined a small crowd of ponies to applaud the performer when he was finished, and Flurry moved forward to deposit a few copper cyrlens into his hat. The stallion bowed gratefully to her before launching into his next song, at which point Hawk Tail and Flurry continued on their way.
“So,” Flurry lilted as they passed under a stone arch at the edge of town. “Lanner said that you found a pony from beyond the mountains?”
Hawk Tail sighed. “What did she say?”
“She said you spotted her pretty quick when you two were out flying the other day; she didn’t mention that she had let the falcon loose, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Hawk Tail agreed.
“She also said that she looked like the lovechild of a pegasus and a rainbow—”
“Ooooookay! She’s colorful, I’ll give her that much.” The stallion sighed and shook his head. “Who the hay Lanner’s hanging out with that she’s picking up all this slang…”
Flurry smiled. “What are you so worried about her for? She’s sixteen, you know. She’s old enough to handle herself.”
“So you would think. If she could focus on something for more than five minutes at a time…”
“Give her a break, Hawk. She’s a teen. You were once that young too. When you’re sixteen, there’s no time to stop and smell the roses. It’s just go go go, always something to do, something to see, somewhere to be.”
Hawk Tail shrugged. “I suppose. Though sometimes I just wish she’d take things seriously. Like the incident at the post office, that could have been avoided if she was paying more attention to the cages as she cleaned them.”
“True, but if she had been, you would never have found this mysterious mare by the lake. Who knows what would have happened to her if you didn’t chase a falcon for several miles across the countryside.”
“Yeah,” Hawk assented. Then, shouldering the cage, he looked to a hill in the east. “Do you think Wrangler’s busy?”
Flurry shook her head. “I think she’s tending to the cattle, but other than that, not really.”
“Cool. I need her help to repair the office. If she could bring along her brother too, that’d be great.”
The mare hummed her agreement, and together the two turned down a side road and began to walk out of town to the farmhouse on the hill. Like many of the hills surrounding River’s Reach, it was gently sloping but impressively sized, covered with rolling green prairie grasses and firm, healthy soil. The prevalence of these hills at least meant there was hardly a pony in River’s Reach that was out of shape.
“So what else do you know about this mare?” Flurry asked as they walked up the hill.
Hawk Tail shrugged again. “Not much else. All I know is that she’s about our age, colorful, and she crash landed near the Run a ways north of here. I don’t even know her name or where she’s from.”
“You thought she was from beyond the mountains though?”
“It’s the only explanation I could come up with,” Hawk Tail said. “There’s nothing north of River’s Reach other than the World’s Teeth. You remember when we flew up there, what was it, three or four years ago?”
Flurry bobbed her head.
“Yeah. There was nothing out there, just badlands and desert for as far as the eye can see. How a pony could survive past the mountains is beyond me, let alone a pony so colorful. I can’t imagine anypony wanting to live there.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to,” Flurry suggested. “Who knows what happened that brought her here?” She shrugged at her own question. “It could’ve been anything.”
Hawk Tail grunted in thought. “You may be right. I wish I could ask her myself, but she’s still unconscious. She’s been passed out for the past three days, and maybe longer. I don’t know how long she was by the lake when I found her.”
Flurry touched Hawk Tail with a wing. “If there’s anypony who can make her better, it’s you, Hawk. I wouldn’t trust her care to any other pony.”
“Geez, no pressure, right?”
“Hush,” Flurry giggled. “But you have to admit, it’s far too much of a coincidence that your falcon burst from his cage and led you all the way to her. The gods wanted you to find her.”
“Then let’s pray that I don’t mess this up,” Hawk Tail sardonically replied.
Flurry rolled her eyes. “Oh come on, Hawk, you’ll be fine. Remember that time Lanner got feather flu?”
“She’s had feather flu two or three times,” Hawk answered, looking away.
“You know which one I mean, Hawk,” Flurry sighed. “That time when she was sick sick.”
Hawk Tail chewed on his lip, but otherwise said nothing.
Flurry stopped him with a hoof. “Hawk, she was on the brink of death. It was bad that winter. You didn’t leave her side for a whole week. We all thought you had caught it as well. Tartarus, you did catch it too by the end of it. But you saved her. I know you did.”
“I didn’t do anything other than bring her food and water,” Hawk insisted. “I’m no doctor.”
“Just the fact that you were there helped her, Hawk. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. You were only fifteen at the time; that’s an incredibly kind thing for a fifteen year old to do.” With that, she smacked him behind the ears, causing him to wince. “So stop being so sour,” she scolded.
“I’ll try,” he answered, rubbing the back of his head. When they started walking again, he occasionally trotted a few steps on three hooves to touch the spot where Flurry hit him. For such a small mare, she could strike hard.
They finally came to the top of the hill where the dirt path split into several dusty trails going to the various buildings crowning the earth. An old barn, its red paint faded and peeling, stood to the left. Its doors were wide open, and a few cattle stalls could be seen inside. All of them were empty; Wrangler must have taken them out to the pastures some time ago. A few piles of hay with an errant pitchfork in one of them completed the scene.
To the right of the barn was a simple two-story farmhouse. All in all it was a stout, squarish building with an old shingle roof and white paneling along its walls, and several windows were opened against the early summer heat. A simple porch jutted out from the front of the house, supported by squeaky wooden flooring soaked with cider and alcohol from many a night spent outside. A heavy nail placed above the doorframe supported a single, unlit lamp, which would undoubtedly be lit later that night.
It was towards the latter of these two buildings that Hawk Tail and Flurry gravitated. Flicking the sweat off of their wings, the two pegasi climbed the wooden steps and knocked on the frame of the screen door.
“Eh? Who is it?” a squeaky old mare’s voice asked.
“Hello, Mrs. Amber Grain!” Hawk Tail answered. “Flurry and I came over to see if Wrangler was around! Do you mind if we come in?”
“Oh, of course! Come on in, you two!” Amber Grain exclaimed as she slowly hobbled towards the door. “And for the last time, I told you kids you can drop the whole formalities thing. I’m just an old mare, not some noble from Mymis.”
Chuckling, Hawk Tail opened the door and gestured for Flurry to enter with a wing. The young mare smiled at him and stepped inside, where she immediately wrapped her wings around Amber Grain in greeting. The two exchanged a few pleasantries as Hawk Tail entered, supporting the spring-loaded door with a hind leg so it didn’t slam against the frame as it closed.
“It’s good to see you again,” Grain was saying to Flurry as they separated. “Wrangler’s always so busy with work that I’m glad she has friends like you to drag her out of it from time to time.”
“Even still, I feel like I hardly see enough of her,” Flurry said. “We’ve all been busy lately. It doesn’t help that the town wants me to make the centerpiece for the Jubilee Day festival.”
“Really?” Amber Grain asked, incredulous. “Wow. That’s a grand deal, ain’t it? I bet that pays a lot.”
Flurry nodded. “Five thousand cyrs, though I talked them down from the ten they were going to give me.” Rubbing an embarrassed hoof behind her mane, she said, “I’ve been stressing day and night over whether or not what I’m making will be good enough.”
“What are you making?” Hawk Tail asked.
“I can’t tell you yet,” Flurry smiled. “You’ve got to wait until Jubilee Day like the rest of the town.”
Hawk Tail feigned a pouty face, to which Flurry giggled. As Flurry stepped aside he entered, and setting the cage down just inside the door, stepped forward to give Amber Grain a hug.
The mare, true to her name, had a coat of goldenrod and a white mane that supposedly once was wheat brown. The color had faded from her fur just as her shoulders drooped and her knees became knotted with age. She had deeply faded blue, almost gray eyes, which were bright within the wrinkles around her wizened face. Her hooves were chipped and scraped from years and years of use, and her legs trembled to hold her thin and light body up. Nopony really knew how old Amber Grain was, and she’d only smile at them when they asked. Regardless, the general consensus was that she had outlasted a century.
“Hawk Tail, so nice to see you,” she sweetly cooed. “How’s the office?”
“It’s been better,” Hawk said as he stepped away. “The storm took off the roof though, and we happened to lose a falcon. We came to see if Wrangler would be around to help fix it.”
“You mean you came to see. I just stuck along because I’ve got nothing better to do,” Flurry pointed out, the faintest hint of a teasing smile on her lips.
Hawk Tail rolled his eyes. “Right. Anyway, when do you suppose Wrangler will be back?”
“Can’t say I know that one for certain,” Amber Grain said. Hobbling to the kitchen, she shook her head. “Whooee my grandchildren are hard workers. Wrangler and Combine have been up since before daybreak, tending to the fields and the cattle. I reckon they’ll be back soon enough for lunch.”
“I suppose we can wait for them.”
While Hawk Tail sat down at the table, Flurry cantered over to the small larder in the kitchen and stuck her head in. “Got anything for us to drink, Mrs. Grain?”
Amber Grain rolled her eyes at the title while she sat down at the head of the table. “Yes, Flurry, there’s some lemonade and some cider in there. It’ll be a little warmer than you pegasi are used to; us earth ponies don’t have the luxury of using searo-whoozit clouds to refrigerate things.”
“Cirrus clouds,” Hawk Tail corrected, chuckling slightly.
The elderly mare brushed his correction away with a hoof. “It’s all the same when you’re as old as I am. Never really did understand the appeal of living over a mile above the hard ground, just a wing cramp away from certain death.”
“You can glide with a wing cramp, and there’s usually plenty of clouds around to land on,” Flurry said from the counter. Carefully grabbing a pitcher with her teeth, she poured two glasses of lemonade, which she hooked her wings around to carry them back to the table.
“Humph. I’d still keep my four hooves on the ground any day,” Amber Grain muttered as she accepted the lemonade Flurry offered her.
Hawk Tail stared at the white mare when she sat down and began to drink from her own glass. “What, nothing for me?”
Flurry smiled cruelly at him.
“Gods, you are a wicked mare,” he said as he reluctantly stood up and went to get his own drink. “It’s too hot to be stabbing each other in the back like this!”
“Natural selection favors the strong,” Flurry mused.
“Strong, eh? Just wait until Wrangler gets back. Mare’s got a wicked foreleg.” Hawk subconsciously rolled his right shoulder. “I’m never hoofwrestling her again.”
“Did somepony say hoofwrestling?”
The three present in the kitchen turned to see the mare walking in through the door. Wrangler had a beige coat and an auburn mane that she let drape across her shoulders, the strands of hair splaying in every which direction along her back. A simple brown bandana that accented her brown eyes was tied in place across her forehead, keeping her long hair out of her face. Dirt and sweat covered her hooves and body, especially her hooves, and partially obscured the icon of a lasso on her flanks. She also carried the real thing against her side, held in place by a simple hook on an exceptionally simple work belt.
Hawk Tail smiled and trotted up to her, bumping hooves. “I was talking about the last time we faced off,” he said.
A competitive grin plastered itself across the mare’s face. “Oh? Looking for a rematch? You know that you don’t stand a chance.”
“Uh…not particularly. I’d very much like to be able to feel my foreleg when I start working on the office tomorrow.” Wrangler grunted her acknowledgement, and Hawk Tail gave her and Flurry time to exchange hoof-bumps and a few small words.
“Glad you realize that,” Wrangler drawled as she walked around the table and gave her grandmother a nuzzle. “Paw’s still sleeping?”
“No, he went out for a walk to town a whiles back,” Amber Grain answered her. “Said he was going to get the seeds for the autumn harvest.”
“Gods be kind, it ain’t even two weeks into summer and he’s already thinking to winter.” Turning to the pitcher of lemonade left out on the counter, Wrangler quickly poured herself a glass and downed the whole thing in a matter of seconds. Filling a second, she turned back to Hawk Tail and Flurry. After a few more seconds of silence filled by little more than Wrangler’s parched gulps, she set aside the half-empty glass and leaned back against the countertop. “Where were we?”
“The post office,” Hawk Tail reminded her.
“Oh yeah, that’s right. How’re you doing with that? Heard Lanner was at fault for something with it.”
Hawk shook his head. “Not the office itself, the storm did all that damage. Lanner just let a falcon loose when she wasn’t supposed to.”
“Destiny and fate…” Flurry sung as she took another drink from her lemonade.
“So it’s Lanner’s destiny to single-hoofedly destroy the post office?” Wrangler asked, her eyes smiling over her own glass. “I keep telling you you need to put that filly somewhere she won’t break something.”
“And I’m inclined to agree with you,” Hawk Tail said. “But what Flurry here is sing-songing about is the mare I found upstream of the Run.”
Wrangler nodded enthusiastically. “Right! Heard about that while down at Cyr Island the other day. Lanner’s been buzzing her lips faster than a bumblebee, I’d reckon. The whole town seems to know about it. Her mouth’s gonna get the gal in trouble one of these days.”
“Luckily they’ve been giving us the space we need. The last thing we need is a hundred different ponies trying to get a look at this rainbow pegasus.”
“Hmm,” Wrangler hummed thoughtfully. “Well, if you need anything, you know I’ll be happy to help.”
“Thanks,” Hawk Tail nodded. “Speaking of which, the reason I came,” he emphasized, glaring at Flurry, who simply smirked back at him, “was because I needed your help in fixing the office.”
Wrangler’s eyes lit up. “Well why didn’t you say so? You know I’m always up for a little construction project! Just let me know what time, and I’ll be there.”
Hawk Tail smiled. “I knew you’d be up for it. I’d like to get started in a few days; I just need to gather the lumber and supplies first. We have to replace the entire roof. Do you think you can get Combine to come as well?”
“You don’t have to worry about that, I’m sure he’d love to help out,” Wrangler assured him. “Once he comes back from the fields, I’ll—”
Just then, the door to the house slammed open. All four ponies present stopped what they were doing and turned to see Lanner standing in the doorway. Her wings were held by her sides and dripping sweat, and the young mare was bent over, panting heavily. “There you are… I’ve been… looking for you… everywhere!”
Hawk Tail stood up. “Lanner? What are you doing here? What happened?”
Lanner took a few more deep breaths and looked straight at Hawk Tail. “Hawk… she’s awake!”