Three Weeks Earlier
The deep gray Pegasus at the counter listened placidly to the customer in front of him, writing down their order in shorthand. He nodded as the Earth pony in front rambled about the specifics of the cake she was ordering; it was killing him to listen. He took a deep yawn in, closing his forest green eye.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the Earth pony scoffed snobbishly. “Am I boring you?”
Sunset looked up from his notepad and giggled. He hadn’t been writing anything for the past four minutes. Instead, he drew himself hanging from a tree by a noose. He held up the picture and the Earth pony scoffed once again.
“Just get my order done!” They turned their tails to the gray Pegasus and headed for the door.
“I’ll make sure to put lots of arsenic in it for you!” he called out. There was no response, but he still chuckled a bit.
There was a long waiting period before a blue mare and a coffee-creamer colored stallion came through the back offices wearing their usual chef’s attire. The mare, a plump filly, pushed the stallion with her hips gently and whispered something to him.
“I swear I didn’t do it this time!” the gray Pegasus started with a playfully serious tone. “Whatever you’ve heard, I didn’t sneeze into the Apple-family’s order! I did sneeze into Mayor Mare’s, but sweet Celestia, I didn’t do it into the Apple’s!” I stomped his hoof for extra effect.
The married couple rolled their eyes in unison. They had grown accustomed to the Pegasus’s snarky remarks and jokes.
“Oh, calm down! We know all about the ‘sneeze’ ordeal.” The blue mare went up to the Pegasus and continued: “Carrot Cake and I wish to close up shop early tonight, Sunset.”
“Really?” Sunset replied curiously. He was both surprised—they rarely closed early—and eager—he really wanted to go home and finish reading his book and start on the next one. “Why?”
“Well, two reasons come to mind,” Carrot cake stated in his usual Northern accent. He nuzzled his wife lovingly. “We have a new protégé that I have to go pick up from a rock farm tomorrow and I’m going to need my rest for the long ride there.”
“And the other reason?”
The Cakes looked at one another, unsure if they should spoil the surprise.
“Well,” Cup Cake, the blue mare, started while looking at her husband for reassurance. He nodded. “We’re going to try and have a child.”
“And I’m going home,” Sunset said not wanting to hear any of it.
“We weren’t going to tell you the specifics!” Cup Cake called to Sunset as he walked out.
“I know but this exit is funny!” he replied in a slightly whiny scoff. He shut the door behind him and shuddered in the cool wintery breeze. Winter had come a bit earlier, but Sunset had no quarrels with the weather ponies. He was supposed to be one, but refused. As a result, whenever the weather became horrid, he’d simply ignore its attempts to irritate him.
The snow lay upon the ground, road, and sidewalk in a flat layer. There were few, if any, hoofprints on the sidewalks, but not a single imprint from anypony, object, or natural entity elsewhere. The streets of Ponyville were cold and quiet and dead, but peacefully dead all the same.
The Pegasus began a short trek, not wanting to open his wings and expose his sides to the bitter elements of winter, through the shallow layer of snow, leaving behind the one of three other sets of hoofprints. The lamps hanging from metal posts littering the street had died and spears of ice dangled from one edge, shifting the weights and leaning the lamps sideways. But there was light being cast down from above. The night sky cast down its cosmic rays to light Sunset’s way home. The moon slanted its blue light to the world below.
Sunset walked through the snow, shivering violently. It wasn’t supposed to be that cold that night, so he hadn’t dressed appropriately before leaving for work. He wore nothing, as was customary, but he regretted not taking even a scarf.
His home came into view. It was a small duplex that was cut down the middle. The left half had a loggia porch, swinging front screen door, and was painted a sickly green, but Sunset remembered how it used to be a nice shade before it had been left unattended over the two years since the occupant left. Sunset knew very little of the occupant except that he traveled a lot; even the landowner knew little to nothing. The occupant’s name was a mystery as well, which confused Sunset, but not enough to seek more answers. The right side was a cream-tan color with an identical layout as the left side except it was kept in good condition.
The gray Pegasus climbed the small step to the loggia porch and to the front door. It was locked, but Sunset had a key under the placemat. He grabbed it and unlocked the door. He pushed the door open and entered.
Sunset felt the warm embrace of the well-insulated building immediately make him light-headed, but the entire experience was still much desired. The cold no longer bothered him, and Sunset was free to sit down and relax. It had been a rather boring day at the bakery. He didn’t like, nor knew how, to cook, so it was a good thing that the Cakes hadn’t made him an aid in the kitchen. He most likely would’ve burnt down the bakery.
The Cakes were kind-hearted people. They saw how much Sunset had been struggling to find work by his over-enthusiastic tone when he came in for an interview only a few months prior. They hired him as an order-taker. Not the most entertaining of occupations, but Sunset didn’t mind. He needed the work.
Sunset threw himself onto his small, charcoal colored couch. It smelled of cigarettes, but Sunset didn’t smoke. There were also small, charred holes along the headrest where the previous owner had stuffed their rolled, burning tobacco. It was opposite of a shut fireplace that remained shut at all times. Sunset never found much use for lighting a fire in his house. Especially with the house mostly made of wood.
He stared up at the dilute-white ceiling, waiting for the warmth to fully envelope him before he would start reading the book at his bedside. His intentions to finish his reading soon became vain as he, unknowingly, drifted into sleep, the warm blanket of his home covering him.
The world faded into reality, creating Sunset’s lucid memory. He and a smaller colt that was just a tad lighter in color than he was trotted side-by-side towards a stream. It rushed with water that vibrantly echoed the high sun. The two colts took in deep breaths and dunked their heads under the crystal water. They opened their eyes, feeling the cool water press against their eyes as they faced the current. They pulled their heads up from the water and took gasps of air; Sunset began giggling not even a few seconds later.
“I told you it wouldn’t work!” the larger of the two stated. His high-pitched voice indicating he was fairly young.
“Yes it will!” the smaller yelped angrily and naïvely. He dunked his head back into the water and looked up current.
Sunset curled a hoof around the smaller’s waist, pulled him out, and tossed him away from the stream and into the fields of grass behind them. He had been worried that his brother might not give up and drown himself.
“Stop it!” the smaller screamed angrily. “You’ll see it if you just look!”
“There’s nothing there!”
“You’re not looking then!”
The two went back and forth until the smaller became too enraged to just stay put. He lunged forward towards Sunset, who stepped aside instinctively, only to fly past him with sputtering wings, weak and pathetic. He screamed with fright as he threw himself into the rushing stream that now looked more like a monstrous river with teeth, ready to devour the smaller.
Sunset watched terror-stricken as the smaller drifted down the river splashing.
“Help!” the smaller screamed in agony as he swallowed gulps of water into his stomach and lungs. Sunset leaped towards the drowning smaller, but something had caught him in mid-air. It was horrifying; a presence had surrounded Sunset and it prevented him from saving the smaller.
The memory now took on a nightmarish impression. The sun became blotted out but ghostly clouds as black as decay, the grass died and turned to a sickly brown and black, and then the water turned red…
Blood red.
“Powder!” Sunset screamed.
“Powder!” the gray Pegasus echoed through his house. His vision, cleared from the horror of his dream, was blurred and foggy. He sweated profusely, wetting the couch he slept on slightly. He looked all around him to find a form, but found none. It disappointed him greatly.
The Pegasus sighed and let himself calm down with time. It was just a dream; he couldn’t do anything about it. He wiped his forehead and subsequently the sweat.
Sunset rolled out of the indent he made in his couch and stretched his body, cracking and popping his ligaments and joints. The sudden release in pressure sent a surge of agony through the Pegasus. He yelped for a bit and reeled his neck and head back with the pain as though he had smelled something rancid.
Then the sound of a grandmaster piano echoed through the entire house. Both halves. Sunset didn’t own a piano so where could the noise be coming from? No, it wasn’t just noise. It was beautiful, heart-grabbing musical charm. Even through the concrete and wooden slab that separated the two homes in the walls, Sunset could hear the music of a master pianist behind the wall. He pressed his head and ear against the wall and listened to its lullaby beat and tune.
Tap. Tap. Tappity-tap. Tap. Tap. Tappity-tap.
The gray Pegasus tapped his left front hoof to the soft beat while he hummed the beat of the heavier, more stricken tones.
Tap Tap Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap Tap Tap.
It was like he had heard it before, but Sunset knew he hadn’t.
Then why was it so familiar?
The Pegasus’s curiosity began to take hold over him, and he trotted out the front door and into the cold, unforgiving winter. He curled around the front of the house and found the loggia porch, identical to his own. The front door was still closed and hadn’t moved from its previous place. Was there another entrance? The backdoor, of course.
Sunset felt strangely stupid not having remembered the backdoor; he had used that entrance numerous times when he left his keys inside. The Pegasus flew over the house, noticing the stack of black smoke coming from the twin chimney. The pianist had lit a fire. Sunset’s imagination began formulating a scene in his mind: a somber form with nimble foreleg playing skillfully at the keys of a massive grandmaster piano with no light but a fire that glowed illuminated the darkness around the shadowy form at the seat. The fire only revealing an even much darker form at the stand: blood red coat and streamline wings that looked sharp enough to kill.
Sunset shook away the image in his mind and descended to the back of the house. At the backdoor, he turned the doorknob but was unsuccessful in opening it. The backdoor wasn’t locked though; it was simply stuck on something heavy. The gray Pegasus slammed his body into the side of the door, astonished that it still didn’t budge.
The piano stopped and the crescent moon’s light glowered down upon Sunset ominously. It’s blue light cast around Sunset as though he were nothing but a target.
The gray Pegasus heard something moving from the inside of the house and realized it was the heavy object in front of the door.
“Why did I put this here?” a voice whispered to itself from behind the door. They grunted and a loud scraping and sputtering sound came from the heavy object. The door shot open, startling the gray Pegasus slightly, but not as much as the coincidental look of the voice. It was a blood red Pegasus—though much taller and stronger looking than most Pegasi, looking almost more like an Earth pony—with the strangest ocean eyes Sunset had ever seen. His wings were folded to his side, but Sunset could see the streamlined look they carried. The Pegasus stood proudly, something that Sunset was unused to, and smiled kindly, something else he wasn’t used to. The smile suddenly turned to a look of confusion when the Pegasus at the door looked upon Sunset for a moment.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” Sunset started after finally convincing himself that his vision was simply an unlucky coincidence. “But I heard you playing the piano.”
“I’m terribly sorry for my disturbance then,” the Pegasus said, still scowling with confusion. “You’re my neighbor right? Dark Sunset?”
Sunset nodded. “Call me Sunset. I’d prefer not to be called by my father’s name. It usually confuses people.” In truth, Sunset just didn’t want to be acknowledged like his father because he didn’t like his father.
The Pegasus straightened up immediately. “Oh good! So you’re not your father!”
Sunset rolled his eyes.
“I sincerely believed you to be him. Well...aside from the fact that he's dead.”
“So you knew the old man?”
“Knew him? We worked together for years!”
Sunset shook his head. “Another one of my father’s ‘friends’.”
Sunset turned to head to his home, but was stopped by the Pegasus.
“I think there might be a bit of confusion right now,” he stated frankly. “I think it best if we have a cup of tea or water or whatever people drink in this generation. We should get to know each other. I’m going to be here for some time.”
The gray Pegasus shook his head and continued back to his home.
“Please? I’d really like to meet my rescuer’s son,” the red Pegasus pleaded.
Sunset stopped in his tracks, leaving a deeper indent in the snow than the others. Did the Pegasus just say that his father had saved him? His father was nothing more than a crook and a thief who wouldn’t even stay in one place to raise his own sons.
“My father…”
“…would want you to know the truth,” the Pegasus finished, face stern and serious, but not critically so. Sunset looked over the Pegasus’s expression, not sure what to make of it. It was earnest and serious, but at the same time foreboding and giving the impression of something dark…
Loneliness.
It was emanating from the Pegasus like an invisible aura. It was infecting Sunset with guilt and depression. All he wanted was to talk and how could he just say no? It was just a friendly conversation with his neighbor. He might as well get to know him.
“Fine. Let’s hear what lies the old man had this time…”
+++
When Dark Sunset was growing up, he did not see his father much. His father was always away on "work" yet would never tell his sons, Dark Sunset and Powder Kicker. They were left in the care of their eccentric, if not half-insane, mother. Sunset and his younger brother were left to raise themselves with no true caregiver. Every few months, Sunset's father would return with somepony who always stood on the front porch or was not there at all. But the one thing about the pony, the only thing that Sunset could remember was his hat. A fedora with a black ribbon around the cap with a much darker cap. Sunset loathed the pony for years until he realized that there was no point in hating the stranger.
But as long as his father was doing what he loved to do; it was a mercy that Sunset was willing to allow, and he never regretted it. Until he began trotting into his duplex-neighbor's half of the house under the assumption he was going to hear another one of his father's lies as to why he was never around, noticing the black fedora upon the grandmaster piano's keys. Thoughts of his father abandoning him as a child began unraveling through the Pegasus's mind. Was this simply another lie devised by his father to protect whatever doubt or honor left in Sunset's mind? Or perhaps this was a sincere gesture from the stranger to shed some light on the truth behind Sunset's father's constant departure and non-existence from his and his brother's life.
Sunset truly hoped the latter was true, to find out that his father actually loved him and his brother. To believe that his father was always away because he knew that he couldn't be the father they needed or deserved. Yet Sunset's consciousness knew that his heart was wrong; that his father was nothing more than a selfish stallion who was off having his life, leaving behind his family. Sunset did not blame his father much, though. Who would want to have the legacy of two sons with one that is mentally unstable and the other without a special talent?
Sunset, looking at his bare flank, whispered, "What do you know of the lech?"
The blood red pony hobbled carefully to the seat at the piano, pushed aside the hat, and began playing the song where he left off. It partially irritated the gray Pegasus, but he did not get bent out of shape over it. He simply listened to the keys hitting softly against its respective wooden stoppers and metal hammers. Listened to the hammers slam away at the stretched metal wires lining the insides of the piano like organs with the heart being the author of the musical grace. Listened to the sounds pedals dipping and hooking from the pressure of the red Pegasus's hooves.
Sunset looked over the Pegasus in front of him and around the room. It was the living room. The paint was peeling, the walls were cracked, and the fireplace was lit violently behind a glass shutter with its warmth trapped inside and light spreading throughout the entire room, illuminating it all gloomily. Yet, even with the warmth trapped behind glass, the entire home was toasty and pleasant against Sunset's senses. The aroma of potpourri and the melody of music transported the gray Pegasus to a distant place.
There were metal spires with lights. The lights of all colors with a few blinking on with others blinking off, revealing a scattered rainbow of luminescence along the black sky with the only natural light originating from the blue moon above. There was a long set of tracks along the distant side of the mountainous form of spires and light. There was one leading to the dark, yet madly lit, form in the distance above Sunset. The sounds of piano keys and stings were replaced by the sounds of whimpering and the clinking of metal machines. Sunset noticed that he was being held up by something warm and loving. He could see anything around him but the form in the distance; just a complete void surrounded him.
Something began to unsettle the Pegasus. He could sense that he had no control over himself. Sunset looked around sporadically, despite not seeing much, as though fear-stricken and filled with terror. He felt a hoof graze across his mane, noticing the soft, yet half-sane, touch as his mother's. It soothed him slightly, but not as much as some inaudible words that came from somewhere Sunset could not arrange.
"We're okay, now," the words said. Sunset felt himself drop to the floor carefully and yawned. Sunset smiled at the sight of a small gray Pegasus curled up in a dark corner. He walked over to him and nudged him awake. The Pegasus was no older than a foal.
"We're okay, Powder," Sunset whispered lovingly. "We're okay."
Kaboom!
The entire carriage shook and Sunset felt everything drop below him. He screamed in fear, but his screams were deafened by the shrieks of the nearby foal. Everything was in free-fall...
Sunset reached for the filly with his hoof and pulled him close.
"We're okay..."
Sunset's eyes opened at the final stroke of the piano. The pony turned away from the piano and saw Sunset reeling from his vision.
"What...what was that?" Sunset whispered, watching the pony take soft steps towards him.
"It's called 'Mozart's Requiem', an old piece of music. Really old actually; older than me. Few ponies know of it. It was playing the day I met your father and his family. At the time, it consisted of you, your brother, his wife, and his parents."
Sunset listened attentively. Something about the pony's voice made him want to listen. It felt honest and compassionate.
"I will admit I wasn't aware of your father's tragic passing until a few days ago, so I am dreadfully late."
"But...he died three years ago? I think late might be a bit underselling it."
"I don't stay in the same place for long. I go from place to place, never settling down. Mail doesn't get to me conventionally."
Sunset thought over what the Pegasus had said; he must have had so many experiences and adventures going from place to place...but Sunset noticed that they were the only two in the house. Was he alone?
"You said that my dad saved you. What did you mean?" Sunset sat on the hard floor, shuddering at the coolness of the wood.
"Well...it's not the same kind of saving that I had done for him, but he saved me."
"That's not helping my confusion..."
"I know, but simply telling you what he had done won't be enough. Plus, I some time to spare while my ship is recharging off of the solar winds! Why don't you and I get together tomorrow evening when I'm not tired. Immortal bones still need rest!" His last line sounded more like a mantra than just words spewing from his mouth.
"But..."
"No buts!" He waved his red hoof at Sunset, to his dismay. "I really wish that I could talk more, but I'm not kidding. These bones need to sleep. I haven't slept since..." The red Pegasus squinted his eyes but looked up to the ceiling; he scratched his chin in thought. "I think it's been five weeks since I last slept? I don't remember, but now is a prime moment to do so. Now if you don't mind me going to sleep?"
Five weeks? He almost said it aloud. Instead he stood up and headed for the door. The sound of the red Pegasus behind him walking towards the bedroom adjacent to the living room echoed gloomily. "Wait. I don't think I got your name?"
"I've been called many things, Sunset, good sir. I've been called Dutchman, the Traveler, and the Tormentor of Evil. But the name your father and all of my closest friends over the years have always called me simply..." The Pegasus spoke demented and with a slightly demonic undertone. Sunset thought there was a small growl hidden in the voice. He turned around to see the pony looking to the floor, slumped and ominously shaded by the fire and black mane becoming a greater black on the dis-illuminated half of his body. A black mane that made pitch look like sunlight. Black as evil.
The dramatic build up to the answer to Sunset's curious question left his heart beating quickly. What name could could possibly be replacing the titles told to Sunset?
"I've only accepted one name, one title."
Sunset's nervousness got the better of him. "What?"
The pony smiled, showing a set of pearly, straight teeth. His posture straightened immediately in a somewhat comical fashion and the pony said with the single most, un-godly amount of enthusiasm Sunset had ever witnessed:
"The name's Jesiah. I'm the Immortal Pegasus..."