//------------------------------//
// Ch.18: Din, Dark and Dreary (v.1) 
// Story: In The Company of The Sun 
// by PlumBuckeredOut 
//------------------------------//

	A fierce caw stirred me from my lingering memory. It was from the phoenix. Its glowing claws scraped at the pit's embers, trying to reignite bits of charred wood. As I moved in my cot my muscles were eager to stretch as far as they could. Such peasantry pleasure felt divine in that moment. To feel my legs filled with vigor, and my senses renewed. I didn't believe he could, but maybe the wizard had healed me. My mind bitter-sweetly chimed Star Swirl's warning to me, and I gave a lackluster sigh. He had not cured me, he and Mora had only entrapped the curse. My hooves slid the gauze strips from my eyes, and I fell further into an uneasy gloom. Thick cloth bands with woven crystals and ancient symbols had been sown snugly to each of my legs. Under each band were damp wrappings that smelled of a hot summer's rain, with a hint of earth. No doubt the ointment.  I laid my head back down. With a quick breath in, and a slow exhale I forced myself to focus. Where were the facts, the purpose... the reasons for the past few days? Typically I started a bit too far back.

I was a Goat, a rare breed of goat from a land once part of The Ashlands. Father always cautioned that the sea was calmer than the soil growing up. The ponies, more specifically; Lord Baritone, King Din and their father, Emperor Carillon fought against the evil that had cursed The Ashlands, and allied the inland goat nomads to colonize Parnce. When the ponies left the nomads fought over who deserved the throne. This fighting lasted until the ponies came back, and chose who should be the king as well as providing my grandfather with a modified version of their Tenets of Harmony. 

King Baritone stayed in Parnce to assist my grandfather. In this time my Uncle had defected from the tenets and practiced dark magic. I say practiced but there are tomes that pre-date the first dragon war that claim the nomadic tribes used "dark magic". That's about 100 years before a Pony set hoof onto The Ashlands. My father had witnessed this dark magic in use, and pleaded with him to follow the new tenets. But my uncle was anything if not stubborn. There wasn't a time I could recall when my father spoke of my Uncle without malice or forewarning. With little choice my grandfather was forced to choose my father as king, and subsequently banish my Uncle. 

The darkest time for Parnce in both literal and figurative aspects would soon follow. Uncle had called upon the remaining dragons for aid, asking for them to sleep in the nearby caverns. Their soot-ridden breath left the inland inhabitable and forced Parnce to migrate closer to the ocean. Unknowingly My uncle had helped my parents find each other. Mother was part of another nomadic goat tribe. Her name was Girgentana, and she and my father battled my uncle various times for the right of the throne. It was in the last battle when King Baritone revealed that he had aided my Uncle and crafted him a special bell made of crystal. My uncle had devised a way to use the bell without King Baritone's voice and promised to imprison any doubter's into another dimension. Of course my father stopped him, and my mother was beside him. 

However just because he was defeated, didn't mean he was any less dangerous. To be out-shined by his younger brother left a lingering magic. My uncle's last words,was  a curse filled with all the bitterness and jealousy he had harbored since his youth. He wished with all the magic he had that my father's features reflect any inharmonious desire. A faint breeze brushed past me as I forced myself to remember. The facts where becoming hazy, as if covered in a mountain's fog. Have you ever tried to remember a moment you knew was important, yet you couldn't remember exactly why? My heart was set on the severity yet my mind seemed less concerned. I didn't know if it was from the curse, the ointment, or just my own stubbornness. 

He cast the curse straight at my father... but the spell missed. I remember being told that the curse ricocheted off his crystal bell, and my mother was cursed instead. In mourning my uncle renounced his dark magic, and offered his services to making my mother's remaining hours as comfortable as possible. I do not know if was because of me, or because my uncle also loved my mother. The murkiness in these details bothered more-so than ever before.

Though that  at doesn't help you how I ended up here. My mother closed herself off from Parnce, and this left her tribe worried, and her new subjects isolated. My father assured them it was merely an act of motherly protection, but even after my birth she was resistant to go outside, or socialize with anyone. One night, concerned and a little bitter he asked her why she had become so shy. She told him she had been honing her magic through meditation. This magic wasn't "dark" in nature, it merely enhanced her memories. She explained that this magic was passed down from elder to elder. This served in two sacred ideals to her tribe; to honor their ancestors, and to continue to learn from them.

Relieved that she wasn't deathly-ill my father asked her to teach him this magic. Girgentana unaware of my father's sincerity chuckled at the notion. Her tribe had special curved horns that helped tune into this magic, while my father had a single horn. Yet this didn't deter her from honoring his wishes, and she tried to teach him the best that she could. In the end she was unable to share her memories to him, and they both where convinced that it was impossible for my father's tribe to use such magic... until I was born.

The first lie my father told was that I was a single-horn, or ali-horned goat just like my father, and all his fathers before him. I had two horns. In my youth I'm sure it was hard to discern my father's type when my mother's light blue horn twisted like bittersweet around the other budding horn. It became more obvious in my kidhood when my magic seemed heightened in comparison to my father's.

I remember I spent hours wandering through my mother's memories. Watching her first word, first spell, first dream, even the moment when she met my father. But she was very protective over the memories with my uncle. She reasoned that the curse had lingered on his memories as well, and remembering him made her ill. She was always amused when we would talk of arcane or spiritual things. I took a capricious stance on either accounts. I just couldn't fathom the arcane like she could, and I had similar trouble when father spoke of the spirit. She lamented on how ' I had all the skill of a painter, yet no bearings on how to make the paint'.

Time with her seemed ever fleeting, there just wasn't enough hours of sunlight to be with her. In the coming hours if my crowning I pleaded with her to see the sacred tree, believing that it could somehow mystically cure her. How could anyone as pure as she fall to such a selfish curse? She tried to calm me as best she could, saying that I always had her memories. Some days after her passing my father had signs of the curse. I noticed that he was becoming secretive with me, and once I witnessed him trading strange ingredients with griffons and shimmering ponies. Now I knew it was to make these ointment bands... for me. The revelation pierced slowly into me. There was no controlling the stream of tears.

I had killed my parents.