Crows scattered into the wet air as the pegasus banked low and landed upon the cliffside. Her legs were already running before her hooves touched the rocks, tunnels and grottos echoing with urgent, eager hoofbeats. She flicked in and out of caverns and fluttered around stalagmites, huffing frustration. Her chest heaved from the two-minute and thirty-acre flight, seizing gulps of thick air before dashing from the caves.
The mare tightened her legs and vaulted into the sky in a tight vertical streak. She struggled the bizarre, defiant clouds full of tumult and sun and hail and rain (always, always, rain) before she finally found him at the razor edge of the same cliff where she’d seen him last, three months ago.
The pegasus’ eyes would not be still, flitting behind and below and around her, not with caution but excitement. They flashed behind her helmet like the edge of a hungry, forge-fresh sword.
“Sir!”
The stallion sitting in the downpour did not look at her or incline his ear. Water dripped from his jawline like stalactites, little waterfalls slid down the hard edge of his bones and the crooked crevices of folded wings. The occasional rise and fall of his chest was the only sign he lived at all.
The mare fidgeted behind him, remembering to flatten her wings in respect only at the last moment. “Sir, there are strangers here. At our borders, I mean—three of them. Coming from the west.”
“Strangers,” the stallion said, “can be found everywhere. Our borders are no exception. It is not an exceptional event.”
“These strangers are stranger than most, sir.”
“In what way?”
“I…” The mare opened and closed her mouth, rustling her soaked wings. The fire in her belly shrank into embers. “I do not yet know. It is a…feeling I have.”
The other pegasus was silent.
“There are two unicorns, a mare of considerable age and a young stallion that bears a bright and noble color. The mare also appears to be a nudist. I do not believe them to be tradesponies, entertainers, emissaries, or vagabonds. I do not believe them to be lost, for they do not behave as such. Their steps are resolute, but not without caution. I observed them for some time, sir. It is my opinion that it is their intent to be here.”
The stallion either scoffed or sighed. Perhaps both. “It is never anyone’s intent to be here, girl.”
The mare’s wings fidgeted upon her armor but she did not argue.
It was ten minutes before he spoke again. “You said there were three ponies. What of the third?”
“I do not know, sir. He wore a great cloak of evergreen that concealed all of the head and body.”
“How are you aware of the gender if the pony was concealed?”
“I misspoke, sir. The subject is unused to the terrain, moreso than the others. Often slips and wobbles upon the rocks and goes very slowly. The subject’s head was lowered and shoulders sloped as I observed him. When he does not wobble upon the rocks, he slogs across them. Both unicorns tightly flanked him in a manner not unlike the way of guards. Initially, it was my belief the cloaked pony was their prisoner.”
The stallion blinked slowly. A wet eat leaned in the mare’s direction.
“However, after further observation, I believe that assessment to be incorrect. The unicorns do not behave as guards of any sort. They chaff and speak of inconsequential matters and they are unobservant. Neither of them noted my flight over them, even when I did not have the benefit of cloud cover. The shrouded pony is important, but I do not know in what way. The stallion was exceptionally careful and respectful of him.” The mare shook excess water from her mane. “It seemed unusual. It was my opinion that you ought to be informed, sir.”
The stallion in the rain slowly blinked again and turned his ear away. He readjusted himself upon the cliff, rolling his pointed shoulders as he stared out into the sky.
The mare leaned forward anxiously. The embers sparked in her chest again. “Well, sir? Shall I engage them? Interrogate them? Observe further and report?” An eager, shameful smile flickered across her face. “I am… not fully aware of the protocol for this occasion.”
“It is of no consequence to me what it is you do. Engage them if you like or leave them to fall between the crags. Either way, their intent, if there is one at all, will be clear in time.” His nose sniffed at distant thunder. “You are dismissed. I have been informed.”
The pegasus flicked her sopping tail, flexing her wings in and out as she bunched her shoulders. There was more to report, but she did not know how to arrange the words. She did not have the precise language to describe the odd well of interest surrounding these strangers. The chill in the hollow of her bones when the shrouded stranger moved in ways a pony should not move. The illogical instinct to stay and watch them for a long time. It was all very strange and she did not like it at all.
The older pony’s voice spiked. “I have been informed, girl.”
The mare sighed, inclining her wings and ears. “Yes, sir.” She shook the water from her wings and slowly lifted into the air. She flew several yards away before stopping to hover a few moments. In a quieter voice, she asked, “Will you be at dinner, father?”
“You may go,” the stallion said again.
“Yes, sir.”
He did not watch her go but knew she was gone. A frost bit at his ears and the north wind bent and shrieked along the peaks as if it had cut itself upon the sharp ledge. He slowly bent his bones and stood, hooves gripping the slivered edge between rock and sky. His wings lifted slowly and let the breeze lift and batter them.
The stallion closed his eyes and breathed deep. His ears were tall and stiff, swiveling as they followed the wind. He sat in the rain this way until the gale died down and the preemptive sun crept over the clouds.
His eyes squinted, unused to the light, as they ran over the wide, curved mouth of the Caulkins. Three figures moved through grey rain in a grey land, flinching at stones in their hooves.
General Yarak blinked. “Hm. Stranger than most, she says.” He turned and retreated into the high caves. He did not bother to shake off the rainwater.
It rained the afternoon they arrived.
It rained every afternoon in those mountains. It rained every evening and morning and midnight, too. It rained in unbroken, steady downpours and violent thunderstorms and feral cloudbursts and sheets of drizzle so thin it could be mistaken for mist.
On tepid summer nights, clouds pelted the peaks with sheets of sleet and hail clattered upon the roof tiles. Winter was prone to drought, with clammy fog and heatbursts. Dust storms rolled across all times of year, dragging along lightning-laden clouds and firestorms behind them like petulant children. In spring, landspouts sprouted like daisies, and come autumn, everypony boarded up their windows for hurricanes. None of the mountain ponies had ever seen snowfall, though there was a small, unmelting pile of snow just behind the farrier’s house and nopony knew how it got there. Still, through firestorm and fog and fair sunny skies, there was rain.
The range composed of five great peaks curving inwards to face each other like spiteful in-laws at a deadlocked dinner table. The outermost mountains lay upon opposite ends, squat and wide and smooth as upturned bowls. Twisted, naked trees lined themselves out alongside modest little cottages in odd, random patterns. Ribbons of tan road wrapped around the sides and wound to make way for frothing, unbridled brooks.
At their side, twin spires shot into the sky in cruel jags arced inwards in dramatic swoops to resemble the tip of a manticore’s tail. Waterfalls slid through the crevices like dead hair. Slick, glassy patches of frost or mud waited for clumsy hooves or careless foals as little canyons pockmarked with potholes and shards of ragged stone yawned to catch them. Clumps of dirt and dust scattered about the rock face in some half-hearted imitation of a road running under the mouths of hungry caves. Dusty earth ponies rotated in and out of the caverns, the saddlebags and baskets hanging on their sides full of various rocks. Others pulled great carts spilling over with shovels, nails, metals, coals, candle wax, pickaxes, and blankets. The ponies went along steadily, calmly moving aside for the usual rock slides. Some were shadowed by spindly foals carrying lamps or lunchpails in their mouths. A belch of dark smoke drifted into the sky from parts unknown.
All four mountains lay in the shadow of the great monolith in the center. Sill was easily larger than the others put together and could be seen as far away as Conemara on a clear day, a slab of angled rock breaking up the symmetry of the horizon. The top could not be seen from the ground or sky, obscured as it was by great cauliflower clouds. The size, however, was the only remarkable thing about it. It was neither jagged nor smooth, bearing few landmarks save for an unusually green patch near the bottom that was only visible if one squinted very hard and angled their head at the right time. It was composed of flat ridges, easy hoof-holds, and sheer cliffs good for climbing and even better for landing, miles of empty tunnel running through the heart of it. Shrikes and hawks nested in the cliffs and snakes coiled deep in the rocks to sleep through winter as goats traversed the high rocks. The base spread and stretched, softly curving to hug the acres of flatland below, filmed with yellowing grass. Homes and taverns and other little buildings trailed down the middle of Sill, fanning down to spread into a slate-roofed village.
From above, the five mountains resembled a great cloud-studded horseshoe hung by the wrong end; a luckless place for luckless ponies resolved to a quiet, grey, grassless life under smith smoke and rain-thick clouds.
Fifty years ago, three griffon clans met each other at the needle tip of Sill. For ten days and ten nights they spilled blood, burned bridges, and rolled out all their generational grudges and debts; they slashed at one another with beak and talon and sword and broken bottles and biting implications of patriarch impotence for their own clan’s right to nest in the peaks and give the mountain range its name. Thirty-five years ago, after two and a half seconds of thought, the little ponies glanced at the nails in their shoes, shrugged, and named it Caulkin.
The brown earth pony saw none of it. His half-lidded eyes stuck to the ground, watching for sharp pebbles and slicks of mud. The new legs still wobbled when they tried to move too quickly and could not find stable footing in terrain that constantly conspired to trip him. The soaked oilskin stuck fast to his sides and dragged behind him like a dragon tail. The stallion went along in the manner of sleepwalkers, unconscious of the world as the body acted of its own accord as concerned acquaintances gathered near, wondering if it was dangerous to wake him.
The only clear thought that passed over him was the occasional bitter memory of boots. His boots would have had no trouble at all. But thinking of boots made a path to thoughts he preferred to ignore. The pony refocused on putting one hoof in front of the other.
Heartstrings grumbled beside him, pausing every few minutes to shake the rain off. She went along only a little easier than the earth pony, flinching at sharp stones and tripping over lemming holes. “How anypony can manage to live in this rotten place I’ll never know.” The mare balanced on three legs to examine the ruddy underside of her forehoof. “I’ll be havin’ naught but bloody little stumps when this is all over.”
Star Swirl’s voice perked from behind her. “You may have a better time of it if you gave heed to where you placed your hooves.” They were the first words he’d spoken to anypony in two days. Since he passed under the shadows of the ruined city, the stargazer had become unnaturally quiet. He trailed a few paces behind his companions, hanging in the back while Heartstrings engaged fellow travelers on the road for directions or conversation. When he did speak, it was in hushed, jumbled murmurs meant only for himself.
Early that morning, as they came under the shadow of Sill, for a small moment a part of himself came back to him. The sheer scope of the peaks and the odd shape of the range brought up his head and his ears twitched eagerly as the breeze rubbed against them. As he craned his neck, a colony of homeward bound fruit bats shot over their heads and Star Swirl exclaimed at the shine of their soft strawberry skins and stubby kiwi tails. The bats made a swift rainbow arc into the stone heart of Sill, Star Swirl trotting under them, ready to scale the whole mountain right then and there. Then the brown earth pony lightly glanced at him from under his hood and the unicorn fell back and became quiet again.
Heartstrings made a grand show of rolling her eyes. “It’s not a matter of seein’ the rocks, Star Swirl. Seein’ em don’t keep ‘em from pokin’ into my hoof.”
Star Swirl rolled his eyes back. “Have you tried simply stepping over the rocks instead?”
“I canna step around the sharp rocks when all the ground’s made of wee, sharp rocks.” She rolled her shoulders and groaned. “And all this rain doesn’t agree with my joints either.”
“Anyway, the locals likely wear shoes. If we’re to stay here—and stay we will for at least the better part of winter; I can’t imagine a hoard of cached humans are an easy find—we ought to get some shoes ourselves.” Star Swirl tapped the ground with one of his own nickel shoes, a rusty leftover from his days pulling carnival carriages. “I’m astounded my own haven’t torn themselves off yet.”
The earth pony glanced down at his own hooves, sore but uninjured in spite of walking the same spiky terrain as Heartstrings.
The mare looked as well, sighing to herself, “Oh, if only for young earth pony legs.”
“Even those tough earth hooves won’t last long here,” said Star Swirl. “‘Tis either a shoe or a bloody stump.”
Heartstrings’ face screwed up into a maze of wrinkles and gritted teeth. “Nails stabbed into me foot or rocks scarin’ up me foot. Might as well ask which eye I want the knife stuck in.”
The earth pony stiffened, pulling a forehoof to his chest. “Nails?”
The unicorns turned as one, unused to the sound of his voice.
“Shoeing’s, not at all an awful ordeal, though our far Heartstrings seems to disagree. The shoe is nailed in, yes, but you hardly feel it at all. ‘Tis no worse than wearing a heavy yoke or getting a manecut.”
Heartstrings squirmed, running her hoof through her mane, a long mess of damp curls, tangled by the wind. “Oh aye, that makes it sound so much better. Ye know, if ponies were meant t’walk on rocky ground we’d have been born with tougher hooves. As I told ye, tis not a place fit for ponies.” She stepped away from the earth pony and shook rainwater from her coat.
“Is there anything you know about it?” the brown stallion asked.
“Nothing ye canna see for yourself already. A harsh place with hard rains but little grass or smilin’. There was rumor of a dustup in this part of the world between the earth ponies and pegasi a few years back, but who knows if it were these mountains, presumin’ there’s any truth to it at all. Ponies of the earth don’t have bad blood with ponies of the air the way they do with unicorns.”
“The farther a land is from the Kingdom, the hazier accounts become. Especially when it concerns lands we don’t trade with.” Star Swirl looked up at a violet mare herding a mass of banded ore down a cliff. A trio of foals scrambled ahead of her, rolling stray deposits back into place and watching the areas above and below. One caught Star Swirl looking at her and stuck out her little red tongue.
Heartstrings twitched her ears. “Seein’ the mountains now, it seems we ought to. We’ve walked the thick of the Caulkins but an hour and already it is plain there’s much to be had here. Especially concernin’ what a skinflint old Mohs has become the past few years.” She paused as a bright shape flicked in the sky, just outside her line of sight. “I suppose the terrain’s too much trouble.”
“The king’s not interested in coals and ores. Not during peacetime. Besides, the Nation’s other, more hospitable stone refineries besides this one, I’m sure. Our lot favors gems over metals these days.” Star Swirl followed Heartstring’s eye upwards, where a shadowy silhouette flicked over the clouds. “Still, tis something of an oddity.”
A shadow passed over the earth pony’s head. His lean muzzle poked out of the hood as he angled his neck.
Heartstrings smirked. “Don’t look now, lads but we’ve eyes upon us.”
A pegasus lurked in the low clouds just above their heads. From the sharp, rounded muzzle and slender legs, it appeared to be a mare. She was clad from throat to gaskin in armor the murky, thin white of diluted milk, the croupiere flaring out in the shape of a lily; a style thirty years out of date. The emblem of a viceroy was inscribed upon the peytral and it heaved with the soft movements of her chest. The barding hung on her shoulders and flanks like a shrunken secondhand scarf, at once too big and too small. Only the helmet fit correctly. The mare’s coat was the lonely, bold yellow of a cloudy sunrise and her short tail a mess of frizz, windswept and sea-green. She lounged like a leopard, slowly rising from the wet grey fluff when the ponies looked up at her.
Star Swirl raised his pink eyebrows.
The pegasus flicked her tail.
Heartstrings waved.
The pegasus glowered.
The brown earth pony stretched his neck. He lowered his hood to get a better look, squinting at the bits of gold and green in the roll of white and grey.
The pegasus pricked her ears, then slammed them against her head before slowly bringing them up again. She squared her shoulders and stooped over the edge of the cloud, wings spread wide to show steel blades glinting at the edge of her primary feathers. The earth pony’s eye caught her own and her glower deepened.
The stallion in the oilskin slowly blinked his flat, dark eyes and tilted his head slightly. He smiled, no more intimidated than a cat among crickets, observing the mare with the mild interest he gave to squirrels skirting across telephone wires.
It was the pegasus who looked away first. She turned from them with a toss of her head, gobs of cloud fluff flying from her shoulders. Her wings flexed at her sides as if to take flight, but held fast to her sides. The feather blades hissed against her armor. The glare simmered as she sank deeper into the cloud, out of their sight but not hers.
The earth pony flicked an ear. “So. That is a pegasus pony?”
“Oh, yes.” Star Swirl lashed his bright tail. His eyes set upon the flat sprawl of grey swallowing the cloud. “With such rankled airs? ‘Tis no doubt of it.”
“Hm. I thought they would be bigger.” He shrugged off the eyes in the cloud and pulled up his hood.
“Most of their sort runs small.”
“Aye, lithe and light. Much like their arrows.” Heartstrings spared another glance for her bleeding hoof before she set it moving again. “But in me younger years, I’ve seen a fair share of pegasus warriors match the size of your earth ploughers. Fellows ‘bout a head or two taller than yourself with a big fuss of feathers at the ends of their legs. Draft ponies they called themselves, on account of the shivers they’d give the enemy.” She smiled to herself. “Met a company of ‘em when I was a filly. Got us a great bushel of oats in exchange for me kin gettin’ him out of the woods. Nice fellows.”
“How do they fly if they’re so big?”
“Pure bullheadedness, I expect.” Heartstrings glanced towards the clouds and laughed. “You try tellin’ a pegasus what he can and cannae do. I’ll be glad to mend your stitches.”
The rain petered into a misty drizzle as the afternoon eased into early evening. The sky would not let the sun in. Hazy, wounded reds and oranges seeped through a gauze of clouds to cast the land in a murky light.
The earth pony’s shoulders squirmed. Eyes itched at his back, mild sunburn compared to the searing gaze of the White Roc, but bothersome nonetheless. The cloud was not the only place he felt it. As the three of them came into the full bend of the Caulkins, where homes and taverns and smithies sulked in Sill’s jagged shadow. Silhouettes skittered behind flickering curtains and foals stuck closer to their fathers’ legs. Thick-boned stallions looked up in their yokes as the blushing lushes peered bleary-eyed and sullen from their hiding holes. The new earth pony fidgeted under his cloak; it felt like baby spiders crawling over his eartips.
A brindle long-faced mongrel loped several paces behind them, wagging its tail as it chuffed or growled or whined under its breath. It skittered forward when the earth pony looked back at it, only to yap and back away a moment later. The dog paced back and forth, never coming another pace closer or farther, even when a stick was tossed at it. The stallion nickered. On instinct, his hoof rummaged in the cloak for his knives or staff. The hoof shook when it came away empty. The earth pony swallowed hard. He pressed against Heartstrings until he felt the mare’s ribs dig into his.
A sharp whistle sounded from one of the houses. The mongrel brought up its ears. The whistle shrieked again, harsher this time. With one last mewling bark at the travelers, the dog turned and rambled into an open doorway where a soot-freckled foal caught it. Heartstrings smiled her thanks as the brown stallion leaned against her with a sigh. The sooty filly stuck her tongue out at them.
“Rude.” Heartstrings flicked her tail. “I’d suggest asking directions for lodging, but the way some of these ponies are eyeballing us, I expect we’d fetch a rock peltin’ instead.” She took a careful look around and lowered her voice. “Star Swirl, ye don’t suppose that maybe…” her eye flicked on and over the earth pony. “That maybe they can tell? About him?”
Star Swirl kept his neck straight and his eyes humble, never lingering on anypony for more than a moment. “Possible. Certainly, the brindle hound could tell, dogs have a way with him. But I expect ‘tis another sort of pony the locals have their eye on.”
“This place isn't the pick of the litter for vacationing unicorns I expect.”
“Nor tradesponies. I can’t imagine the nightmare of lugging carts around these cliffs.”
Something puffed softly above them. Then again. Puff-piff-puff-puff-ploff. The sound of hooves upon a cloud, then hooves kicking off from one. The unicorns looked up. The earth pony kept his head where it was.
The armored mare hovered a foot or three above them, close enough to see the green bite of her pinched eyes. She hummed with a youthful hummingbird buzz instead of the strong, steady wingstrokes expected of a grown pegasus. The steeled feathers slid and chattered against each other like teeth.
The earth pony’s hood slogged over his head as he looked behind, still on watch for the brindle dog. He may as well have not seen her at all, though he surely knew she was there for all the racket of her wings.
The pegasus snorted and pawed at the air.
For a long, awkward moment the three of them just stared at each other like toads on a log. Heartstrings felt the seconds roll over her like tumbleweeds. Finally, she stamped the ground. “Well? D’ye have a reason for coming down or are ye just plannin’ to goggle at us like an oil painting all night?”
The pegasus began speaking a moment before the old mare finished. “What is your business here? Why have you breached our borders?” Her voice was airy and smooth, sparking from the scarred, creaking armor like grass shoots in snow. “What will be the extent of your stay?”
Star Swirl turned over the answer in his head for several seconds, dusting off the protocol for inter-tribal arrangements kept in the back of his head (due northeast of yew recipes, next to the crude limericks). He glanced at his companions, then back to the armored mare. “Upon whose authority do you ask?”
“I represent the commander of these mountains, General Yarak.” She thought a small moment before pointing out, “The Caulkin Mountains fall under the wings of the Empire.”
Heartstrings’ head popped over Star Swirl’s shoulder. “They’re an Empire now? Since when?” Star Swirl whispered back in a voice too loud to be a whisper, “You’ve got me. Last I heard, the tribe was fiercely isolationist.”
“We have expanded.” The pegasus dipped low, the tip of her tail brushing Star Swirl’s horn. “These mountains were rightfully wrenched from the claws of the griffon emperor. The pegasus tribe commands the range, in addition to the highlands north of the Earth Pony Nation and south of the Frostlands, jus ad bellum.”
Heartstrings cocked a white eyebrow and tilted her head towards the earth ponies mulling across the mountains. “Ye’d think a pegasus territory to have more pegasi. Those ponies stick to each other like honey on cake, I cannae imagine less than a score of them in one place.” She tapped her chin in thought. “Of course, the rest of them could just be lurkin’ about in the clouds o’er our heads. They’re pegasi after all.”
The armored mare snorted. “Do not change the subject. None of you have answered or addressed my question.”
“And why would we?” Star Swirl stroked his beard casually, a low, clever light in his eye. He inclined his horn to the mare’s armor. “You’ve no official notches in your plates, no marks of rank, nothing to assure us that you are indeed who you say you are. Why, for all we know, you’re just some renegade in purloined armor. Our business is not with you. If you come on behalf of General Yarak, we will answer to the general himself.”
The mare hung in the sky, the edge of her mouth twitching uncertainly. She took a slow look at the arching mountain behind her. The drizzle plinked and tinked on the armor like a foal’s tin drum. “General Yarak is on Mount Sill. If you wish to meet him then you will scale the mountain and meet him.”
Star Swirl followed her line of sight. Sill arched for miles and miles upwards and across. She may as well have said he’d meet them in a dry part of the Arabian desert. “Uh. Meet us where?”
The mare smirked. “Where he pleases. I suggest you begin the trek now. Darkness falls in three hours and footing is hazardous in the dark. Especially for the elderly.” She pointedly looked at the oilskin hood. “As well as those in cumbersome clothing.”
With this, the pegasus dipped and zipped back into the sky and soon all that could be seen of her was the gold flash of her coat against the grey rainclouds.
“Mount Sill in three hours.” Star Swirl shrugged, ignoring the dirty looks his companions gave him. “Could be worse, I suppose.”
The earth pony stayed Heartstrings’ hoof before she threw another rock.
They expected the mountain air to thin and chill and icy teeth of the wind stabbing their skin. With all this rain, they expected the sheets of frost over the rocks and snow dusting the sides. But here, upon the crags almost at Sill’s midpoint where the dripping sun reddened their backs, it was not that way at all. The air was thick and warm and weighed on them like a juice press.
The brown little earth pony let the hood fall to his shoulders. Sweat dripped from his mane. He sat back on his haunches and gasped for breath. His coat boiled under the oilskin. When he breathed it felt as if a hot, soggy towel was draped over his muzzle.
At least he didn’t stumble anymore. His legs only wobbled from weariness of the climb, no more frail tremblings from unuse. His hands had almost become used to being hooves, though they still slipped and poked at stones, fumbling to get a grip with fingers that were not there. He still felt his knuckles and carpal bones and the delicate webwork of nerves laying dormant under the hoof. All there but unreachable, almost as if his hands had fallen asleep.
The slick rocks shimmered beside his mud-caked hooves. Here, at Sill’s midpoint, the houses, the carts, the goats, even the voles and weasels thinned away. Orange lamplights dotted below them like piles of embers at the base of Sill, but he did not trust himself to look down at them without losing his nerve. Heartstrings walked among those lights, using all her skill in song and sweet grace to scout out a place for them to spend the night. It was the sensible decision. A full day of walking the Caulkins was more than enough for the unicorn and had she come, she’d have slowed them down with precious little daylight already.
The earth pony sighed. Even so, he wished Heartstrings had come up with them. He missed her complaints and idle humming. A gulf of silence spread between the stallions where Heartstrings’ voice used to be. The steady clop of light unicorn hooves echoed behind him, a crisp chime of bells with each step. Every so often a flash of pink or blue or black drifted into the earth pony’s line of sight, then drifted out again. Sometimes the hooves behind him stopped or slowed and the earth pony waited for the stargazer to catch up. When he heard the flutter of a cape, he trudged on without a glance behind him.
The earth pony wondered how much farther they had to go. He looked up at the slab of unbroken rock jutting above his head. The sheets of grey languid cloud seemed close enough to touch. He felt his stomach crawl into his throat. He pushed it back down and shook himself. They are only clouds. Common as any rock or crow feather. They are only clouds. A skinny crow landed a few feet away, troubling the pebbles at its claws. The pony nickered, shifting on his hooves and twitching his nose.
There was a chilled undercurrent lurking somewhere in the muggy air, as if someone cut a hole in the sky and let in the breeze. There was a quiet rumbling, humming sound in the air—not quite thunder and not quite wind. The earth pony stopped walking and swiveled his ears to catch the sound, but it was long gone.
Star Swirl came up on his left shoulder and met his eye in a wary, knowing blink. He’d heard it too. When the earth pony did not shake him off or move away, the stargazer crept closer, their tense shoulders a hair's breadth of each other.
There was a stir of movement in the rock. No, it was the rock itself that moved.
The rocks that were not rocks at all rose from the mountain and the pegasus came into sharp and sudden focus. There was no telling how long he had been there, waiting in plain sight. If not for Star Swirl nearly stepping on him they'd have passed him by entirely. Even now, it was difficult to mark the pegasus as a pegasus and not a rock formation in the shape of one.
He was gaunt and sharp at all edges, scimitar ribbed and citadel skulled, his backbone a line of turrets. Wrinkles fanned along his face like the many, many lines of a map. A cataract gray mane spiked down his neck, flayed out at the shoulders and dripping rainwater. He was not the shade of the mountain. The mountain was the shade of him. If the stallion had lived for five score and eight years, Star Swirl would have been amazed he was so young.
The earth pony glanced him over, watching the flex of his wings. For a moment he saw a bare patch in the ragged feathers, in the crook of his right wing. A series of round little scars. The brown stallion edged in for a closer look, but the wind nipped his ear and pulled his attention away.
Star Swirl cleared his throat. “Greetings. We come seeking General Yarak, keeper of these mountains.”
“You have found him.” The words crawled in a jagged, subterranean rumble. “Who seeks him?”
A streak of yellow flashed through grey clouds. The armored mare swooped low to perch upon a cliff ledge a few feet above their heads. She tucked in her wings and lightly inclined her head.
“You have met Sunshower already,” the general added.
“I...” The stargazer flicked a hesitant ear. He’d prepared a speech for when the time for this encounter came, carefully molded to politely fit customs and to sidestep suspicion. Meeting the general now, the bottom fell out, the words were lost to him, and the truth was all he had left. “I am Star Swirl, of House Galaxy, first son of Stardazzle the second and Crescent Curve. Just a misplaced scholar seeking his fortune in the world. And this…” Star Swirl glanced back and paused to give the stallion room to introduce himself.
The brown stallion, still distracted, only shrugged.
“This is my traveling companion, Cinquefoil. A Mustangian from the far south.”
The earth pony looked over his shoulder and swirled his ears at the sound of his name, as if turning over the sound of it in them. He gently mouthed the word to himself, then looked out into the distance. He looked almost amused.
Star Swirl continued, “The third of our party, the dear and lovely Heartstrings, waits for us at the foot of Sill, seeking a place for us to sleep. She was quite spent from the long journey here. All of us are. O’er dell and glen and dappled wildwood the three of us have traveled in search of these unique lands.”
The tattered feathering at Yarak’s fetlocks drifted in the wind. “You sought out the Caulkins?”
“Oh, yes. I am a scholar of unusual fauna and when a fellow traveler brought the unusual weather in this area to my attention, it caught my interest. It was my theory that a location with such a unique biome must surely…”
Star Swirl’s voice faded into the background as he regaled details of the odyssey to Sill. Sunshower was the only pony listening to him. Yarak kept his brass eyes fixed in the unicorn’s direction as he spoke, but looked beyond him at the earth pony.
Cinquefoil blinked back with half-lidded interest. Then he shifted his shoulders turned away to break the stare, moving in quiet languor. He curled his hooves under him and settled upon the cliff to watch the clouded sunset.
The general’s wings tensed. There were archers in his eyes.
Cinquefoil angled his neck towards the clouds. He twitched his nose as a raindrop plopped upon it.
Yarak fixed his whetted gaze on Star Swirl’s.
There was a hiss of rustling bells as the unicorn flinched. “Sir?” The word was not said out of respect, it simply leapt out of his mouth in self-defense.
“The earth pony tribe despise the company of unicorns. The Mustangians do not even consort with ponies of the Nation outside of spring. Yet this one drags beside you. Tell me why.”
“A reasonable question, sir. We discovered Cinquefoil in the beginnings of our trek across the Nation. We discovered a snarled wreck in a flat field just at the bleeding edge of the Unicorn Kingdom—a long train of carts awash in flames and smoke, nary a splinter left, t’was a terrible sight—and came upon him wandering in the wreckage.”
Sunshower prowled across the rocks above, watching Star Swirl closely. Her ears were keen on his voice, but every so often the mare’s eye wandered to the earth pony sitting off to the side all by himself.
“Sadly, his herd was nowhere to be found. It was the opinion of Heartstrings they all perished or else abducted by the diamond dogs, for they’d surely not leave him out on his own if they could help it. Poor fellow hardly speaks; he’s a touch traumatized, sir. We felt for his situation and our destination was in the heart of the Nation anyway, so we took him along with us in hope of finding another band of nomads he might attach to. In the meantime, he aids in my research.” Star Swirl shrugged with an embarrassed smile. “We’ve become a little attached to each other. Heartstrings practically considers him a nephew.”
General Yarak’s expression was unchanged. “I see.”
Star Swirl glanced towards Sunshower, who now paced from one end of the ledge to another. She sat and stood and sat again before she began another round of pacing.
“We intend to stay,” said Star Swirl, “So long as the research requires. I do not know how long that will be, but I doubt it will be any later than the end of winter. Late spring at the most. We’ll be no trouble at all, I assure you.”
Sunshower shook the water from her coat. She drifted down soundlessly, without even the clink of armor on rock, and approached the ledge where the earth pony sat. A brush of wind sent ripples through his green cloak. At this close distance, she could see the odd, angled sprawl of his hind legs. They crossed over each other, tensed at the ankles and bent at the hock, not dissimilar to the way a minotaur sits. His forelegs were tense from holding him up. His expression was calm as he watched the horizon, soft ears angled to follow the wind when it brushed by. The pegasus followed his gaze out beyond the shade of the Caulkins to the green and gold patchwork of fields, scattered with green clots of forest and shiny ovals of water.
Star Swirl and Yarak’s voices faded into the rain. All Sunshower could hear was the pat of rain bouncing off oilskin and the wet shuffle of mane in the wind. The sound looped around her neck and pulled until Sunshower was two hoofsteps from touching him. She smelled the tang of iron and wood and another uneasy scent she did not recognize at all.
Sensing someone behind him, the stallion angled his head towards her.
The movement snapped the still moment in half and Sunshower returned to herself. “Just what are you doing?” Her voice was softer than she intended. “What is it you are looking at?”
The earth pony called Cinquefoil turned and brought up his eyes to look at her directly. Sunshower flinched and looked away. Her wings banged against the armor, as if trying to fly away without her. She dug her hooves into the rocks against the strange and sudden urge to bolt.
The dark eyes contradicted the rest of him. They were the same make and shape as any other pony’s, but lacked the contentment of a fixated life. It was the wild gaze of an unmarked and impatient foal, ready to remake themselves in an instant, but the thousand-yard stare was too old for a foal’s. When he blinked, the light skipped across them like the sun on water. Bright and fierce and alive, Cinquefoil burned in her belly like liquor.
“Nothing in particular,” he quietly said. “Just the sky and the view.” The wild look was gone as quick as it had come.
“What?”
“You asked what I was looking at. I was looking at the scenery.” Cinquefoil shrugged. “I thought I could find my river, but I can’t tell it apart from any other river. It may be too small to see from here.”
The edge returned to Sunshower’s voice. “What is the matter with your eyes?”
A soft distance away, Yarak pricked his ears and turned his head. Star Swirl paled.
Cinquefoil frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand you.”
“What is there to understand? They are… unusual. That is not the gaze of a normal pony.”
The earth pony wrinkled his brow and tilted his head. The expression was infuriatingly innocent.
Sunshower tossed her head, pawing fiercely at the cliff. “Do not attempt to confound me, earth pony! I am young but I have lived in these peaks since foalhood and I have seen earth ponies, so I know. I know what shades a pony’s eyes; there are rocks and moss and songs and memories of other ponies, sparks of a Talent, old dreams lying down and new ones waking up. It is in the farrier’s face, as it is in your unicorn friend’s and in my own. Not in yours. I see nothing but yourself in yours.” She glared at the flat glass of his eye. “What are you, the last of the crystal-eye ponies?”
The annoying confusion in Cinquefoil’s face grew. “What’s a crystal-eye po—”
Sunshower swung away from him. “You avoid the question.” She shot into the air to round on Star Swirl, who jumped and backed away from her. “Who is he? What is the matter with him? Is he ill? Mad? Both?”
Yarak rumbled low in his throat and scowled. “Daughter.”
At the first word, Sunshower froze, wings in mid-flap.
“Be still. Such passion does not befit a member of the pegasus tribe.”
Sunshower sank to the ground. She glared at the earth pony and lashed her tail, a counterargument simmering in her mouth.
Yarak blinked slowly. “It is of no consequence to you. Be still.”
Star Swirl cleared his throat again. “It is as I said earlier, Cinquefoil is not an earth pony of the Nation. The Mustangians, the Brumbinos, the Chincoteagal islanders off the mainland, they’re all a different sort of pony, but ponies nonetheless.”
Cinquefoil himself watched and remained silent, if not a little unsettled.
The general limply inclined a wing. “Regardless, you are here now. I will not disallow you to stay. It is no matter to me what you do, so long as it does not disrupt the rock farmers.” He turned his brass eyes to Sunshower, then to Cinquefoil. His broken feathers curled in the breeze. “The Caulkins can be dangerous shelter for a pony.” For a ghastly moment, it seemed as if Yarak was about to smile. “Things are prone to erosion here.”
“We noticed the slick rocks and signs of a rockslide on our way up.” Star Swirl kept his tone polite and casual as he nudged Cinquefoil’s shoulder to leave. “Of course, we will have the utmost caution on our way back down. We are grateful for your hospitality, sir.”
“I would expect no less.”
Sunshower watched the newcomer ponies as they became green and blue smudges in the gloam. When she could see no more of them, she turned to Yarak. Her face was frail and wan. “You have not called me your daughter since the day I got my mark.”
The general’s breath clouded in the air. “Oh? I remember calling you that the day after you learned to fly.”
“True, sir. But that incident happened two years before I was marked. Do you not recall?”
Yarak only rumbled in his throat.
“Sir?”
“That display earlier was unseemly. There is a time and there is a place for emotional expression.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember to keep yours in check.”
Sunshower wrapped her tail around her shuffling hooves. “I will, sir.”
“Very good.” Yarak popped and stretched his wings and went inside.
Hours later, Sunshower found herself at the edge of Sill. She found a gentle curve in the cliff face where the rain would not touch her and put her basket down. The wind brushed against her unarmored coat. The farriers and farmers were in for the night but the wind still carried their signature scent of smoke and metal. Not unlike the wet smell of iron caught in oilskin.
Silhouettes drifted across lit windows at the foot of the mountain. It was impossible to tell one shadow from another. Sunshower wondered how she never realized how many lights were down there, never realized how far away they really were. From far away they looked like embers or stars. Sunshower nosed open the small basket of fruit and roasted mushrooms, long grown cold. She sat still and watched the amber lights as she slowly ate dinner by herself.