“Unnngh--Aaaaagh!” Bellesmith shot up in bed, but instantly regretted it. She winced, clutching her shoulders and writhing in waves of pain. As she inhaled, the pain doubled, and she found herself nervously clutching the edges of her muzzle. She instantly winced, feeling fresh welts along her face. It was difficult to see out her left eye, though there wasn’t much to see. Everything was pitch black dark. “Am… am I still sequencing…?” She winced, fidgeting with the soft quilt and bedsheets rolled up to her body. “Imre?”
“You are awake, darling…”
Belle gasped, her body jolting. She pressed herself against a wooden wall. As her hooves felt along the structure, she could sense the creaking bulkheads and jostling motion of an entire airship around her. “The Steel Wing…”
Before her, like a comet being born, a single candle lit. Shell’s tear-stained face appeared, gazing longingly at her from afar. He lit a second candle, a third, and cast a dim glow over the middle of the cabin.
“At last, after all th-these cold, punishing nights, I’ve found you, my beloved.”
Belle breathed… breathed… breathed… and froze, squinting oddly at him.
“I knew that you had not forgotten about m-me,” Shell said, his voice breathy and horrifically vulnerable. He bore a smile, and it chilled Belle more than any expression he had seen on the stallion’s weathered face. “She brought you back. I… I was wrong for doubting that she would. I… I’ve been s-so very wrong, Imre…” His muzzle grimaced, and he collapsed over the edge of the table, causing the candlelight to dance over his suddenly weeping figure. “About everything… all that I could have given you… all th-that I should give you…” He brought two hooves to his face and wept into his forelimbs, his shoulders shaking and quaking.
Belle bit her lip. She tried to stand up, but winced once more from the pain throbbing through her body. “Nnnngh… Sp-Spark…” She looked down at her forelimbs. Two huge bruises stretched across her coat. With a foggy head, she slurred, “Enforcer Shell… I… I-I think that you’re mistaken--”
He was suddenly lurching at the bedside. “Did it h-hurt, Imre?!”
Belle jerked back with a shriek, tilting her head as far back as she could from the stallion. There was no stopping the gentle caress of his once-broken hoof as it ran across her thin forest of chestnut mane hair.
“Did it hurt you coming back to the surface?” Shell’s one good eye glistened as he smiled bitterly. “C-coming back to the light?” He gulped. “To me?”
The mare clenched her teeth. Her eyes swam across the ceiling, then found the faint silhouette of a door beyond. Starlight swam across a slight crack in the entrance to Shell’s cabin. The Steel Wing was moving.
“Where…” Belle gulped, fumbled for words, and murmured, “Where are you t-taking us…?” She nearly vomited. “...f-father?”
“Far… far away…” Shell smiled, sniffled, and smiled softer. His hoof was now caressing her cheek. “Somewhere far away from this…” His venomous returned in a brief, curt hiss. “Away from Ledo! Away from death!” With a wheezing exhalation, he stumbled back onto his haunches and stammered, “A place where we can begin a move. And… and though your mother won’t be there…” He clenched his teeth and shook his head repeatedly. The next words came out in a pitiful squeak. “We can begin again. I know, it Imre.” He ran a hoof across his quietly weeping face. “I know it. I know it I know it I know it I know it…”
Belle stared nervously at him, her lips pursed in awe.
“So much… s-so much that I could have given you, dear Imre…” Shell’s voice droned, muffled against his forelimbs. “Nothing that I-I could have won… in bullets and bloodshed.” He stared up at her, one eye brimming with tears. “But now I know that I had given you enough.” His lips curved. “You remember the days… the warm days we had… you and I… and your mother…” His teeth shone as white as a sailing kite in some far off dream. “We can have that again. I’ll bring the warm days back again.”
“I…” Belle shuffled nervously. “Father, I-I think…”
“What is it, Imre?” Shell knelt at the bedside, grasping the mare’s hooves in his own. “What is it that you desire? Let me provide it for you!”
“Pr-provide it… for me…?”
“It’s alright…” Shell’s smile wavered between fear and sincerity. “We’re alone now. The Doctor’s vanished. The enemies and betrayers of our Confederacy are far away. It’s just you, me, the heavens, and the future…” He leaned forward. “I can take you there! I can take you anywhere! All you need to do is ask, Imre. Just… ask…”
“I don’t think that… that…” Belle winced. Just then, her tail twitched, and she felt the unmistakable weight of the sound stone lodged in her hairs. Gulping, she looked towards Shell and put on the most tender smile she could muster. “Actually… f-father, there is something.” She took a deep breath “Something that would mean the entire world to me.”
Shell leaned forward, eye bright as a moon. “Yes…?”