Chapter 5: Bird’s Eye
“…and then it was sixty miles uphill both ways, sometimes with the rain pouring from the clouds so hard it was impossible to see. Heehee, most of those days I came home with welts all across my body. This pretty golden coat was speckled pink by the next morning.”
Lanner groaned inwardly as Amber Grain finished yet another of her stories. She was pretty sure that at this point her hoof had become an inseparable part of her face, it had been supporting it for so long. Visions of a life filled with walking on three legs and having to watch her left elbow wherever she went filled the teenage filly’s head as she slouched further onto the limb of now-questionable purpose.
The next story of the day’s Wheel of Torture was something or other about Amber Grain’s first job and the burlesque caricatures of stallions she worked with from sunup to sundown. Squeezing her eyes, Lanner tried to block out the words, but once again, they tore down her walls and bounded across the moat surrounding her mind, filling it with their terrible boringness. Scowling, Lanner contemplated ritual suicide and went back to trying to count the splinters on the plank over her head.
While Amber Grain prattled to herself in what Lanner thought for sure were the signs of senility, both Flurry and Wrangler had abandoned her for other pursuits. Flurry had excused herself about five minutes after Hawk had left, claiming that she needed to take care of her art store (even though it was a Sunday, but Lanner was pretty sure Amber Grain didn’t know that). Wrangler followed soon after, heading out onto the fields to get back to the herd, and Lanner could still hear her whooping and hollering from the house. Wrangler’s impressively muscled brother, Combine, had come in for a brief pit stop, but after having lunch and exchanging a few savory pleasantries with Lanner, he too disappeared, leaving the old filly all alone with the ancient mare.
When the door opened at nine-thousand, six-hundred and forty-one splinters, it could not have come a minute sooner for Lanner. With a few sharp tugs at her foreleg, she was able to separate her left hoof from her cheek (sparing herself a lifetime of mockery in the progress) and spin around to face the door. Her brother stood there, the fading tinges of concern still leaving his face as he entered. With a squee, Lanner bounded out of her seat and vaulted over a couch to get by her brother’s side.
“Back already?” Amber Grain asked from her seat. Apparently she had missed the setting sun in the window behind her. “I was just getting to the more… racy parts.”
Hawk Tail blanched, and the old mare cackled at his reaction. “Kids these days, you forget that we were young too.” Shaking her head, she slowly pushed her chair back and hobbled over towards the two of them. “Don’t worry, I took good care of her for you. Why, Lanner dear, I think we should talk more often! I got to learn so much about you today.”
Lanner ignored the fact that she had barely spoken a single word in the hours that she had been held captive that day as she clutched onto Hawk Tail’s forelegs. Craning her neck, she looked up at him with glistening eyes, mouthing a silent plea for salvation. There might have been a few death threats in there as well, but she knew Hawk Tail wasn’t very good at reading lips.
Shaking his sister off of his shins, Hawk Tail nodded gratefully to the old mare. “I’m sure something can be worked out if we need someplace to put her for the time being.” The way he eyed Lanner made sure the threat stood out loud and clear. The filly squeaked and scrambled around to Hawk Tail’s side, trying to put something between herself and Amber Grain.
The aged earth pony smiled and hobbled closer towards the two of them. “I’d be more than happy to have her.” Squinting her eyes, she looked outside into the dying light. “My, is it really that late? I must have been going longer than I thought.”
If embedding her skull in the doorframe would not have been something that decent ponies would call “rude”, Lanner would have bored a sizeable hole in the wood with her face.
Instead, she put up the best fake smile she could manage and tried to say without groaning, “Oh, it’s nothing, Mrs. Grain! I’d… love to come back some other time!”
The definition of ‘love’ Lanner actually meant in that sentence was the same ‘love’ that had driven Bent Wing the Terrible to massacre thousands of Fetlock tribesponies and start three wars several centuries back.
Shepherding Lanner out of the door with his wing, Hawk Tail waved the other in departure. “Until next time!”
“So long, kiddos!” Wrangler’s grandmother called out after them.
Once their hooves touched dirt, the two pegasi spread their wings and took to the air, flying southwest. Noting their course, Lanner turned to her brother and raised an eyebrow. “What’re we going this way for?”
Hawk Tail was quiet for a few moments as he settled into a thoughtful flight pattern. “I think the mare’s woken up for good.”
Lanner pumped her wings in excitement, crossing over Hawk Tail as they flew. “Awesome! What’d she say, huh? What was her name? Where was she from? Oh! I bet she had some awesome stories to tell, like maybe she’s really a—!”
The flick of Hawk Tail’s wingtip against Lanner’s chin caused the young mare to bite down on her words. She spent the next several seconds sputtering and sliding her jaw around as she tried to shake off the pain from chomping her tongue.
“She didn’t say anything,” Hawk Tail managed to say now that his sister stopped pelting him with questions.
Lanner cocked her head. “Nothing? C’mon, she had to say something! Couldn’t get her to talk? Or, what, is she an amnesiac or something?”
“Actually, I think so.”
It took the sinking feeling of gravity in her gut for Lanner to remember to flap her wings again. “Wait, what?! You can’t be serious!”
“I’m completely serious,” Hawk Tail deadpanned at her. “I tried talking to her as best as I could. I asked her a bunch of questions, trying to figure out how we could help her, but she couldn’t answer many of them. Even the ones she could answer only left her even more confused. She was… pretty upset by the end of it.” Sighing, he looked at the setting sun in front of them. “Gods, she didn’t even know her name. I can’t… I can’t even imagine what that must be like.”
Lanner looked down at the town below, lost in thought. Saying your name when somepony asks you is almost a subconscious reaction, but to have even that stripped away…
She shuddered in flight. Looking to her older brother, her voice was slow and unsure. “What do we do, Hawk?”
Hawk Tail sighed. “I wish I knew, Lan. I really wish I did. But I don’t, and it’s frustrating, because I want to help this mare, and there’s nothing I can do.” Spitting at the ground, Hawk flapped his wings harder. “Gods! What can I do?!”
“We could take care of her,” Lanner quietly suggested. “Memory or not, don’tcha think that she needs somepony now more than ever? I mean,” she shrugged her shoulders in flight, “I don’t really know what she said to you, but I imagine it’d suck to have to go through that alone.”
Between ponderous breaths, Hawk Tail nodded. “I imagine. Whatever happens, though, we’ll just be on the lookout for her. I think it’ll be another day or two before she’s ready to get out of bed, other than to… you know… but after that, maybe we can work on getting her memory back?”
“Do you think it’ll come back on its own?”
Hawk chewed on his lip. “Maybe in time. Maybe. But what if it doesn’t? What if her past is gone from her, just whoosh, right out the window?”
Lanner waved a hoof. “Can’t we just get Dawn to do something about it? I mean, she’s pretty good with magic and that crap even if she’s a little...”
“Out there?” Hawk Tail suggested.
“Yeah. That’s a nice enough way to put it.”
“I don’t even know if she can do it,” Hawk Tail thought aloud. “I’ve certainly never heard of it being done before.”
Lanner waved a hoof. “Pfft. You’ve obviously never read Complete Recall. They do it all the time.”
Groaning, Hawk Tail slapped a hoof to his brow. “Lanner… you do realize that those are just books, right?”
Lanner rolled her eyes twice. “Duh. If it’s published in a ‘Science’ book, it’s obviously true.”
“‘Science fiction’ has the word ‘fiction’ in there for a reason.”
It was enough to make Lanner quietly fume for a few wing strokes as they redirected themselves towards their cabin.
Hawk Tail chuckled quietly, but even that ultimately that died down to a more somber note. “I hate to break it to you Lan, but life isn’t a story. I’ll try my best, but…” he apprehensively looked at his younger sister, “she might never recover.”
The truth in his words deadened Lanner’s usual chatter. She found herself looking north, following the Run until it wound into the trees and forest, out of sight. She knew that wherever it was that the mare had come from, it was farther north even than that. Beyond the forest, beyond the World’s End, beyond the desert itself… maybe. She had to be from someplace out there.
Maybe.
If the mare herself didn’t know where she was from, how could Lanner? For all she knew, it was just some freak accident where a pegasus from one of the neighboring towns got lost while camping up north. When the storm came, she probably freaked out and tried to fly to the nearest town—River’s Reach—for safety, and the winds batted her down into the ground. Common sense told her anything else was impossible.
Doubt whispered otherwise, but Lanner was too preoccupied to pay it much mind. Ahead of them was their house, and the lanterns were all lit on the first floor. Even the lights in the mare’s room were on.
“Dad knows she’s awake, I assume?” Lanner asked as she and her brother landed a short ways from their porch.
“Yeah, though I told him that she needed to rest. It’s best if we let her have time to recover first before he starts pelting her with questions, especially if she’s not likely to have an answer for them.”
Lanner shuddered. “She might get her memory back soon, though. We don’t know.”
Hawk Tail shook his head. “No, we don’t. We can only hope.” Quickly ascending the steps, he knocked once on the doorframe and opened it for Lanner to enter. She nodded at him and scurried past, wiping her hooves on the doormat before trotting into the living room.
“You’re back,” Red Tail stated from his chair. “I was wondering when you would be. I had to hear from your brother that our guest woke up while you were home.”
Lanner scuffed her hoof against the carpet. “Sorry, Dad. I just freaked out and the first pony I thought of was Hawk…”
Red Tail raised half an eyebrow, as the side directly to the right of the scar refused to budge. “You could have gotten me. I was working behind the house.” When Lanner failed to speak, he sighed and put the paper down. “It’s okay. We’ll discuss that later.” He turned to Hawk Tail. “You said that she didn’t have anything to say when you talked to her?”
Hawk Tail shook his head. “I think she lost her memory; she couldn’t even recall her own name.”
Red Tail pursed his lips. “Maybe she’ll remember something by tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m keeping an eye out.”
“Why?” Lanner asked. “What could she do to us? Why would she do anything to us after we’ve helped save her life?”
“I’m only cautious about who she is or where she came from, Lanner,” Red Tail said. “For all we know, she could be somepony dangerous.”
“She’s not a criminal, Dad,” Hawk Tail said as he walked across the room and towards the kitchen. Grabbing a loaf of bread from the pantry, he set about making three sandwiches. “And even if she was, I don’t think she’s in any state to harm us now.”
“I never said she was a criminal, Hawk,” Red Tail pointed out. “What’s dangerous is that we don’t know her past, who she is, or where she’s from. She could have been running from something—bad things, bad ponies, it doesn’t matter. We’re taking a risk by keeping her here.”
“It’s the right thing to do!” Lanner protested.
“I know it is,” Red Tail said as he lowered his eyes towards his daughter. “Which is why we’re going to take care of her. But I’m keeping my pistols and powder with me, just in case. You tell your friends to knock if they’re going to come to the house at night, you hear? I don’t want to be responsible for any accidents.”
Both Hawk Tail and Lanner agreed. Red Tail nodded and leaned back, pulling the paper between his hooves again. From where he stood, Hawk could see the polished wood of the pistols’ hoof braces at either of his flanks.
Picking up his own sandwich, Hawk trotted over to the couch and sat down. “Lanner,” he said, angling his gaze towards his sister, “take one of those in for our guest. The other’s for you; I imagine Amber Grain’s riveting stories kept you glued to your seat all afternoon.
To his right, Red Tail suppressed a chuckle with a cough and continued to read the paper. Lanner didn’t seem to notice, however, and in a trail of feathers she made her way over to the table, grabbed one sandwich, and downed it in two bites. Following a satisfied belch, she reached for the second sandwich.
“Lanner…”
The mare caught herself in the act. Her shoulders drooped as she reached for the plate underneath the sandwich and hoisted it up to rest on a wing. “Sorry, I’m just famished.”
“We’ll see how famished you are when that half-chewed sandwich gets stuck in your gut,” her father commented from behind the paper.
Lanner rolled her eyes and began to walk towards the bedroom, pausing to stick her tongue out at her father as she passed.
“Unless you’re kissing, keep it in your mouth.”
That lovely comment caused Lanner to light up in burning crimson, and she hurriedly shuffled out of the room. Behind her, she could hear Hawk struggling to contain his laughter.
“Don’t laugh just yet. You’re twenty-three and haven’t even had a chance to put it anywhere.”
The laughter died out real fast. Lanner shook her head as she knocked on the door. Her father didn’t usually dip into humor, but when he did, it was one of those things she’d rather hear about later and spare herself the mockery.
Wanting to get away from the impending argument in the living room, Lanner knocked again on the door, faster this time. When a quiet “Come in,” reached her, Lanner tried to dart into the room without making too much of a racket.
Which is to say that she slammed open the door, quickly galloped in, and cautiously shut it behind herself.
Close enough.
Turning around, Lanner’s smile of salvation fell off her face with an almost audible splat when she realized that the mare in the bed was holding the sheets in front of herself, alarmed, with her good wing open and shaking. The other was still held against her side by the bandage that Lanner herself had made for her the day she first got there.
“Ummm… hi…”
“…Hey…?”
The two mares stood there awkwardly for several moments. Eventually, Lanner ran a nervous hoof behind her short mane, toying with some of the spikes of hair that sprouted out from her scalp and neck. Glancing at the sandwich, she smiled sheepishly and hobbled forward, setting the thing on the nightstand next to the bed. “I, uh, got some food for you. Hungry?”
The smile she tried to put on her face looked more like she had just taken a sip of lantern oil from a glass that was supposed to have water in it. Not that that had ever happened before.
The colorful mare looked at the sandwich, evaluated whether or not she was hungry enough to reach for it, and ultimately leaned across the bed and grabbed the thing between her hooves. Holding it up to her muzzle, she slowly examined the components. Her ruby eyes flickered towards Lanner, and a touch of a smile caressed her lips. “Thanks.”
Lanner returned the smile. Looking around, she found the stool that her brother had sat on earlier that day and pulled it over. Crossing her legs, she waited while the rainbow mare nibbled on her sandwich. Soon enough, those nibbles became bites, and in just a few minutes, the entire sandwich was gone.
The mare put the plate back on the nightstand and leaned back against her pillows, licking her cerulean muzzle. “Mmm… thank you. That was… good.”
This time, the smile was genuine. “Thanks,” Lanner beamed back at her. “My brother made them. You met him earlier? Brown coat, short red mane?”
“Yes, I met him,” the mare answered before a flicker of something haunting flashed across her eyes. “He was asking me… questions…”
Lanner waved a hoof. “He told me about that, and you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to bother you with the same thing. I just want to… y’know, talk, maybe get to know each other a little better.”
“That would be nice,” the guest agreed. Her eyes dimmed, however, as a thought crossed her mind. “I don’t really have much to tell you about myself, though.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. We’ll help you get your memory back one way or another!”
That seemed to comfort the mare a bit, and she faintly smiled to herself. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem!” Lanner chirped. Calming herself down, she tapped a hoof to her chin. “Well… where to start. My name’s Lanner, and I live in this house with my brother and my father. That’s his bed you’re in, by the way.”
Looking uncomfortable, the mare scooted around. “Oh, um, if he needs it back, that’s totally fine with me. I just… you know… woke up here…”
“Pssh, don’t worry about it. My dad, Red Tail, let you have it. I had the guest bed already made upstairs, and then I came back and found that you were all tucked in here, and my dad was watching over you.” She glanced over her shoulder as muffled bits of conversation forced their way through the wood and rolled her eyes. “His heart’s in the right place, he’s just… I dunno, strict? Harsh? Some combination of the two?”
“He hasn’t come to see me yet,” the mare said. “I’d… like to meet him sometime. I’m sure he’s a nice stallion.”
“When he wants to be,” Lanner noted.
After a few seconds of quiet during which the mare fiddled with her hooves, she raised her head and asked, “So… what is it exactly that you all do here?” She gestured to her bandaged wing and shrugged. “Are you all doctors or something?”
“No, not at all,” Lanner said. “Though I’m about the closest thing the town has to a pegasus doctor. That is, a doctor for pegasus patients, not a doctor that is a pegasus, because we’ve got one or two of those...” She blinked and cleared her throat as she got back on topic. “Right. We take care of River’s Reach’s post office, handling the hawks and falcons that we use to send messages back and forth across the country. My brother’s the master falconer, so he takes care of the birds and makes sure that they get going to where they should be going. Myself,” she said, waggling her flank to show the mare her cutie mark, “I’m in charge of raising the fledglings from birth until they’re old enough to be trained to fly to where they need to go. See, each hawk has a specific destination it’s supposed to go to, and falcons fly even farther, which means… I’m boring you with all this bird crap, aren’t I?”
The mare giggled, the lightheartedness within making Lanner’s wings twitch in excitement. “No, not at all,” she said. “I mean, aren’t us pegasi like, half bird or something?”
Lanner furrowed her brow. Now that she mentioned it, how exactly did a pony manage to grow wings? Did they really… no, that would require some careful positioning… and it meant that her ancestors were really, really weird ponies.
She shuddered and nearly gagged on her thoughts, but luckily the rainbow mare didn’t seem to notice, as she was already in the middle of her next question. “…birds and stuff?”
Lanner shook her head. “Sorry, I was thinking. What did you say?”
“Oh,” the mare said. “I was just asking, so you guys are pretty much experts on birds and stuff like that?”
“I would think so,” Lanner said. “After all, my name is Lanner, which is another word for a female falcon. And my brother and father both take after the red-tailed hawk, so I mean… yeah, I think that’d be a safe bet.”
The sun had already disappeared beyond the western horizon at this point, and looking out the eastern window, Lanner could see the darkness of night coming upon them. Raising a hoof to her muzzle, she tried to stifle a yawn, but ultimately failed.
“Tired?” the mare in the bed asked.
Lanner lazily nodded. “Yeah… I got stuck listening to old mares’ stories all day… shoot me now.” Sighing, she turned in the stool to lean against the wall behind her. “And then tomorrow’s Monday, so I have to get up early and work on getting the birds ready for training, and I probably won’t be done until noon unless I get up at six, and then I’ve got to clean the house and… ugh.” She shook her head. “I hate chores!”
The mare laughed quietly. “I don’t know what my life was like before this, but I imagine it wasn’t any better. You only work more the older you get.”
“Right.” She stood up to walk away, but then she stopped and leaned against the doorframe. “Well, first step in getting you back to normal, we need to give you a name.”
The mare raised an eyebrow. “A… name?”
“Yeah, a name! I’m pretty sure calling you ‘the mare’ all the time is going to get boring at some point.” Lanner rolled her eyes as she air-quoted. “So… whaddaya wanna be called?”
The colorful pegasus rubbed a hoof across her temple and looked down. “Geez, I don’t know… I haven’t really thought about it...”
“Color Spray!” Lanner blurted out from the sidelines.
“No,” was the immediate response.
“Fine,” Lanner huffed. “How about something fancier? Chroma Key!”
The mare frowned. “No, that just sounds… weird.”
Lanner tapped her chin. “Ooh, I got it!” She jumped into the air slightly, fluttering her wings into a small hover. “What’s your mark look like?”
Shifting in her bed, the pegasus lowered the sheets so that Lanner could see the image on her flanks. From this position, it was upside down, so Lanner angled her head as far to the side as she could to get a better look at it. “Hmm… uhh… well, let’s see. It looks like a rainbow… kind of.”
“Yeah…” the mare agreed.
“But it looks fast. Like, lightning bolt fast. I bet you were a fast flier before you crashed.”
Lanner failed to notice the wince on her guest’s face as she thought.
“Aha!” the filly exclaimed as she clapper her hooves together. “I got it!”
“What is it?” asked the mare, leaning in closer.
With a smile, Lanner proudly proclaimed, “Spectrum Sprint!”
This time the ‘no’ was the physical smack of the mare’s hoof against her forehead.
“What?” Lanner asked. “It’s an awesome name! Are you sure that’s not it?”
“I’m pretty sure,” the mare insisted.
Lanner rolled her eyes. “Well, I’m out of ideas. I’ll come back tomorrow after a good night’s sleep on it. My brother and I will probably take you to see somepony who’s an expert at magic and that stuff.” Yawning, she pushed open the door and waved over her shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning!”
With that, she left the room and shut the door behind her. If she had looked back, she would have seen the mare clutching at her sheets, trembling, but with a sparkle in her eye.