“Seriously! How hard was it to figure out what the buck to do?” moaned Westwind as he paced back and forth. I watched as he slowly wound a rut into the grass. Tall, and strongly built, Westwind was a paragon of the word stallion. A regulation cropped black mane covered the top of his head and a little bit of his neck, which was a chestnut brown. “All they had to do was find the path, and come on down. I’m getting seriously bored.”
“Me too. And when I get bored, pushups sound like great fun.” The second voice came from down by my hooves. Silvertongue was lying on his back in the grass, the dew soaking his fatigues and coat. I looked down at my little brother with a smile. Ok, little is probably a misnomer. He is taller than me, by maybe a quarter-hoof, and weighs exactly what I do. I consider that an accomplishment on my part; pegasi are always lighter than their earth pony and unicorn counterparts. And more dignified. I’d told him time and time again that rolling around in the grass was for little colts, not stallions going into the military, but he’d insisted. Something about how his big brother and roommate wouldn’t give a buck, and it didn’t change how he behaved in public.
His pale gray coat was getting dirty, and his long blue tail was getting grass and leaves mixed up in it. No such trouble for his mane though; he’d buzzed it all off, leaving his horn jutting out all alone.
“Well Silver, that’s exactly why I brought you along. And you might want to get up, they’re here now.”
The frenzied clopping of hooves on the running trail echoed over the storm-ball field, and Silvertongue hurriedly stood up. For my part, I nabbed a bit of the turf, and flew it a few dozen lengths up into the night sky. Nestling into the cloud, I got ready to watch.
“On your faces!” Pale Whisper got loud when he was pissed. I couldn’t really blame him. He had been playing ‘wounded soldier’ the whole time, and had to sit and wait in the cold for three hours alone. By the time the trainees had found him, the training op was over, and they all had to hoof it back to the field. The turf had been enchanted so ponies of species could walk on it, or in this case, plant their sorry muzzles in it. Pale Withers dropped into a pushup spread, and lowered himself down in front of the trainees. “We’re gonna stay right here until I figure out what the hell happened tonight. Don’t keep me waiting!”
“We didn’t work well as a team!” The scratchy, hissing voice came from Husk, the one changeling in the group. Some ponies got all antsy about changelings, but I didn’t have any problems with them. After all, our nations were at peace. And if a changeling wanted to get tougher and more disciplined, I was happy to oblige.
“Damn right you didn’t. I heard you arguing with your team the entire time before I decided to catch you,” spat Silvertongue. He walked over until he was standing right over Husk. “Perhaps you can explain to me how teamwork is supposed to go?”
The prodding went on for a while. It was meant to hurt, but it was also to make them think. Teamwork. Chain of Command. Three-sixty degree security. Though, like me, they’re probably gonna take a darn long time to learn such things. Still being smoked, the trainees hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t there screaming at them too. The old regulation issue EBU’s came in several patterns, including cloud. Problem was, I was wearing the woodland pattern, and they stuck out sorely against my background. If they hadn’t noticed where I was yet, there was no chance they would without a little help.
A small whumph sounded as I landed just behind Husk. There was an almost perceptible droop in his back as the sound reached his ears. One step at a time, I slowly paced around them until I stood next to Pale Whisper, waiting.
“Well?!” demanded Whisper. “What the hell did you just forget to do? Your commander just walked up and I didn’t hear a thing!”
“Good evening, sir!” chorused the trainees. It sounded tired, but it was there. Not wanting to dwell on the formality, I cut to the chase.
“You’ve all listed off a lot of good things, but honestly, you know where you went wrong in my book?” After a moment without any answer forthcoming, I gave it for them. “You split up on the way up, or so you told me. That’s great, but only if you know exactly when and where to meet up again.
“Yes, sir!”
“Hmm...well I’m not convinced. Sergeant? Make sure they get a good workout.”
“You got it.” Whisper grinned at the trainees, and popped his leg joints. “Tonight is going to be just as long as all of you made it on me.”
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The struggle after a long evening out running around in the mountains was simple, but never went away. Stay sitting at my desk, still soaked in sweat and in a dirty uniform, or actually get up to take a shower? Eventually, the second would have to happen, but I could put it off for hours, especially if something came up on the comms. When the phone buzzed, I leapt at it, delighted to be avoiding the indecision. It was Page, an old buddy from back when I’d started school.
“Sage, you there?”
“Well, who else would it be?”
“So anyways! I was wondering if you were busy tomorrow?”
“Uh...no. Why?”
“Well I wanted to go on a hike! Does Rocky Mesa sound good?”
The window immediately to the left provided a nice view of the giant rock I’d spent all my night running around. Meh.
“Yeah, sure.”
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The sky had long since grown dark by the time my hooves found their way to my front door. One meeting had gone an hour over, then a surprise group project came up, and I still had a paper to write before I could go on that hike I’d promised. As soon as I put my least beat up quill into the inkwell, the door banged open, and Page’s voice climbed the stairs.
“Oh Sa-age!” I got about two seconds before the energetic zony (zebricorn? zonycorn? heck if I know) thundered up the stairs and started tickling my sides.
“Ah! Pa-ah! Page! Page Gemwright! Get your damned hooves off me!”
“Aww, but what’s the fun in that?” Despite his whine, he let go. “You deserved it. I thought we agreed on the afternoon, not almost midnight.”
“Life happened, Page. We can still go hiking if you want.”
“In the dark?”
“Whyever not?”
“Uh...because it’s dark?”
“Oh, stop being a little filly. Give it five minutes and your eyes will adjust, and then everything will be really neat.”
Page cocked one eyebrow, and then grinned and shrugged. “Ah, what the hay. Let’s do this.”
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Midnight had come and gone by the time we left the crest of the mesa, but by mutual desire to avoid walking back to town and the realities of life, we decided to follow the trail further back out onto the flat top of its mass. It was like walking through a field of grass, except that there was a several hundred foot drop-off about a mile out in all directions. Everything was covered in the deep gray-blue of starlight, though the yellow and oranges of city lights over the far edge of the mesa seemingly left us on a stage that was dark, and the audience alight.
“...the thing about progress it in this case, it will be inevitable. Sometimes you just have to demand it, like: ‘I’m going to force you to stop holding onto and hoarding all these things that other ponies need and share. Water talismans are more useful saving lives instead of collecting dust in a crate.’”
“But how does that become an item of corruption?”
“Well, when you get fed up enough--”
Something rustled in the grass up and to the left. Stopping in my tracks, I held out one foreleg to stop Page. He bumped into it, stopped, and turned toward me looking confused.
“What is it?”
“Do you hear that?”
Seconds rolled by, and the noise grew louder. Something was definitely walking through the grass. Multiple somethings. Then a doe ran past us, followed by two more. I exhaled a sigh of relief.
“Damn, Sage. How did you hear that?”
“Dunno. Guess I just did.”
“Well...neat!”
That’s one word for it.
For a moment I just let the adrenaline simmer down, as the deer finished galloping out of sight into the dark. Once they were gone, I turned my attention back to the path. Perhaps it was poor form to look right down at my hooves instead of at the path ahead, but honestly, there wasn’t much I could see other than the faint outlines of bushes, and the sheer number of rocks on the trail made for treacherous hoofwork. Page did the same, and in that manner we pressed on.
Another hundred lengths down the trail, a small rise forced us to exert ourselves just a little more, but the view was worth every step. The flat expanse of the mesa proper stretched out before us, cloaked in the vast gray, black, and blue. Slightly darker spots pointed toward large rocks and plants, but save for those little irregularities, it was all one plain until the edge several hundred yards back, or at least a mile to the other end. Stepping down off the ridge, Page continued.
“I don’t know how you hear things like that. That’s just plain strange. All I could think about was what I was going to say next, and I never would have heard it.”
“Well...I just suppose it sounded very different from you talking, and stood out to me. That’s all.”
“Huh. Well, still that’s something I wouldn’t have heard, and when I stop to think about it, I...”
Page kept on talking, and while I heard and noted each word he said, they were no longer my focus. There are times where I’ve wondered if was being watched, and then I’d look around and realize I was alone. But the feeling as if hot water was dripping down the inside of my throat and chest, and chilling toward my hooves made me know I was being watched, and this time I couldn’t see more than a few lengths in front of my face. In that murk, somewhere a dozen lengths ahead and to my right, something inhaled.
Low in pitch, and just long enough to sound deliberate, the sound cause the blood to freeze in my veins. I halted as my adrenaline spiked once again, and this time, Page stopped too.
“Sage…? Did you hear that?
Thoughts raced through my mind, a mile a minute, and I took one deep breath before summing them up to him. The words came out with a sort trembling that at any other time I would have been ashamed for him to hear, but right then, it was too important to wait.
“Y-y-yes. I did. Page, listen to me. Face it, and back away slowly. If you’ve got a light spell handy, now is the time.”
Following my own instructions, I backed up the trail, slowly letting each leg down to avoid falling over the rocks. After two paces, I spread my wings wide, hoping to look a lot bigger than I actually was. My heart was pounding in my chest, and each breath was hard and labored. If that thing was breathing still, I couldn’t hear it.
Light blossomed beside me, and Page strained to keep up the light to a radius larger than just himself. For being so gifted at manipulating metal, it sure took a toll on his other schools of magic. Still, even that faint illumination gave me confidence, and a way to avoid tripping on the random rocks in the trail. There was only one thing missing to really make sure that whatever it was knew that we were not prey animals.
“So, just keep backing up slow, you’re doing good.” Each word was projected loudly, so that while I wasn’t yelling, the words did give just a little echo off the nearby landscape. Catching my drift, Page joined in, just as noisily.
“So, what do you think that was?”
“Honestly? Probably a mountain lion. They normally don’t come this far out of the mountains, but I can’t think of anything else that sounds like that and could manage to hide in the open.”
At that moment, the gradient behind me changed to slope downwards, and I turned tail to begin to walk slowly down the ridge. Still, I couldn’t quite help but look back over my shoulder every two or three seconds. Just keep showing confidence, and keep walking slow, but check to make sure…
“Oh hey, neat!” cheered Page. “If it comes over the hill, it’s gonna be silhouetted nicely for us.”
The ambient light from the city beyond was more than enough to light up the sky beyond the ridge, and sure enough, anything walking over it would appear as a figure of black. “Yeah, no doubt. That’s a blessing.”
As the trail wound around back to the edge of the mesa, the banter bounced back and forth between our lips, to the rocks, to the skies above, the sound making a mess along with the rough noise of our hooves clopping against the rough dirt trail. The faint light of his spell went away as we stepped onto the trail leading down the west face, and felt safe that it hadn’t followed. All the way down though, we still kept talking, and once or twice I felt like I was being watched again, though I didn’t share that feeling with Page. At the bottom, with our hooves safely on the asphalt again, we shared a good laugh over it.
“Well dayum, Sage. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. I’m pretty sure if you weren’t there, I would have turned and ran. You?”
“And that might have been the last thing you did. They only chase if you turn tail and run. And you don’t have the benefit of flying off like I do. If it were just me, I wouldn’t have run,” I answered honestly. “But, I would have been more scared than a little filly in a house full of clowns. You being there was the only reason I wasn’t sweating and shaking the whole time.”
He hoofed me in the foreleg. It was honestly good just to feel that touch of reality. “Yeah, but we made it out ok. Let’s go back to your place and have some beer to celebrate, ok?”
“Yeah. That sounds like a good plan.”