//------------------------------//
// Don't Talk to Strangers 
// Story: Sweet Nothings 
// by Golden Tassel 
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I fell.

One moment I was soaring casually, held aloft on seemingly nothing but the warm rays of sunlight that shone down upon me. And then in an instant, the wind's tenuous embrace was broken, and I was falling. I fell toward the earth below, plucked right out the sky. I had dared to defy gravity, and it now aimed to pummel me into the ground to remind me that I had no place in the heavens above.

A snare had caught my wing, twisted it into an unnatural angle and held it pinned to my side. I gave nearly all my breath to a panicked scream as I plummeted helplessly toward the ground. The wind rushed past me with a deafening roar while I spiraled out of control, and I had to fight for each breath. Blood rushed to my head and made my vision hazy to the point that I could only distinguish sky and ground as alternating light and shadow tumbling across my field of view.

My good wing managed to bite into the air and pull me out of the dive into an awkward, utterly graceless corkscrew descent. I sucked in a deep breath, and tried desperately to keep myself stable while the world righted itself around me, and the throbbing pressure inside my head subsided. As I neared the ground, however, my wing lost purchase, and I stalled. I dropped the last few yards at a shallow slope, and I was carried forward only by my lingering momentum as I crashed into the hard-packed earth.

Clouds of dust swirled up all around me as I tumbled over and over again until I finally came to a rest, lying uncomfortably on top of my tangled wing.

With a heavy groan, I pushed myself up enough to roll onto my other side, bringing some small relief to my wing as circulation returned to it. I simply lay there, panting for a moment before I tried to free my wing, and I got my first clear look at what had snared me.

I'd been caught by a long cord with weighted spheres at either end. It had wrapped two full times around my torso, and the ends had then twisted together to hold me. Struggling against it had only tightened the ends, and I had to pull them with my teeth, constricting the cord around my chest, in order to untwist them.

"He came down over this way!" a voice called out from somewhere over one of the hills I had landed among. Not long after, the figure of a pony appeared on the hilltop. "Down here!" she called.

I finished untangling myself from the bolas and stood up as she ran down the hill to meet me. She wasn't alone, and I suddenly found myself surrounded by a half-dozen ponies. All of them looked to be in poor health, and they all carried various dangerous-looking implements with them—knives, a sledgehammer, and other things . . . the mare in front of me wore heavy-looking iron boots around her forehooves. Given the bulk in her shoulders, she looked to be very practiced at wearing them.

Among them was a unicorn, smaller and leaner than the rest. He looked to be about my own age. His coat was a pure white—or it surely would have been if not for the dirt and rust-colored stains that mottled it. A number of scars further marred his coat, mostly on his forelegs and shoulders. Strapped across his back was a sword. While the others closed in around me, he stayed behind them, stalking back and forth, while he regarded me through one eye.

"What a lousy catch, Trapper!" the mare before me shouted as she smacked the pony next to her with the back of her iron-shod hoof. He stumbled aside and rubbed gingerly where she had hit him. "He's got nothing on him but that fancy shirt," she said, referring to my uniform: a standard-issue pale blue shirt.

"It's not like I could see what he had on him that far away! I got him down in one shot though. Don't blame me if he ain't got nothing."

The mare loomed closer over me. "Hey, you was flying through our turf. You gotta pay up. So come on. What you got?"

"I don't have anything," I whimpered. "I'm sorry. I didn't know this place was yours. I'll just leave. I won't bother you again. I promise."

She and her friends laughed at that. All except the unicorn at the back. He continued pacing slowly. There was a curious elegance and rhythm to his movements, almost as if he were dancing.

"You don't seem to get it," the mare said as she put her iron hoof on my chest and pushed me back half a step. "You gotta pay with something. So think real hard about what you can come up with. If you don't have something, we're gonna have to beat it out of you."

I trembled, kneeling before her. "Please! I have nothing! I'm all alone! I don't know where I am or where to go!" 

My pleas were again met with laughter, and I looked up at the mare in front of me as she raised her hoof, preparing to bring it down on me. Then suddenly the laughter stopped, and she stood stock still. Protruding from her throat was the tip of a sword.

The sword pulled free of her neck and her lifeless body crumpled to the ground in front of me. Behind her stood the unicorn with his bloody sword hovering in his crimson magical grasp.

All around me there were sounds of movement, yells, curses, and screams. But I simply knelt there in the middle of it all. All I could see was her bloody throat, and his joyful smile.


***


Someone was shaking me. "Hey! Snap out of it!"

I blinked and pulled myself away from that gory scene. Looking up, I saw that unicorn standing next to me. His sword was back in its sheath, and he was covered in blood, though none of it was his. He smiled at me.

"There you are. Don't look so upset; I just saved your life."

He'd done it for me.

Slowly, I stood up. My legs were shaky at first, but I got them under control.

"You . . . killed her," I said breathlessly. "But wasn't she your friend?"

He shrugged. "I wouldn't go that far; I've only been running with her gang for the last few months. No, I haven't had any real friends in years—not for as long as I've been out here. But for you . . . for you, I'd lay waste to a hundred friends."

I shuddered at the thought. But he had saved me. And as I glanced back down at the lifeless body on the ground, I realized I had to help him now.

"We need to hide the body," I said.

"Hide the body?" he repeated with a laugh. "Why in the world would we need to do that?"

"So nobody can prove what happened. So you won't get in trouble for it."

He stared at me blankly for a moment, then erupted in laughter once again. "Oh, you really have no idea, do you? There's no law out here, brother. Nobody cares that she's dead, and nobody cares that I killed her—except for maybe the rest of the pack I chased off, but they're probably more upset that all of them together couldn't handle little old runty me." He did a short celebratory dance. "I chased them off for now, but when they're done licking their wounds they'll come back for us, so we should get moving."

He started walking, and I—having nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and knowing that I couldn't stay there—I followed him.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Day," I said.

"Just Day?"

"Lucky Day . . ." I mumbled reluctantly.

He chuckled. "Yeah, I'll bet you've heard all the jokes ten times over by now. My name's Rake. I've been waiting a long time to meet you, Day."


***


The sun had set, and Rake and I sat on opposite sides of the small fire he had built out of dead tree branches and ignited with a magical flame from his own horn. I watched him silently through the flickering flames while he casually poked at the fire with his sword.

He looked up, his eyes meeting mine through the orange flames that danced between us. "You've been quiet," he said. His lips drew back into a smile. "I can see it in your eyes though: you're full of thoughts, questions. You've got a spark of intelligence in you that most of the riff-raff out here lack."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. "Thanks?"

Rake laughed. "You're even polite! I miss that. We're alike, you and I; we both come from civilization. Look at you: you're still clean as a newborn foal!" He stood up and moved around to my side of the fire, and then sat down next to me. "Where are you from, my little pony?"

I leaned away from him slightly, a little unnerved. I looked down at my forehooves and fidgeted with them.

"It's a big underground shelter built inside a mountain. We just call it the stable."

"Stable . . ." he whispered the word, and his face lit up in a broad grin. "What a perfect name for a civilized society: stable. Everything's static, always stays the same, never falls apart, and every day is exactly the same as what came before. But here you are in the un-stable—the chaotic, crumbling wasteland where you don't know what tomorrow will be; you may find food and shelter, you may be attacked, or maybe you'll trip on a rock and break your neck." Rake leaned in toward me, uncomfortably close with his broad, toothy grin. "Tell me: what are you doing out here?"

I squirmed and looked away. "I . . . I was exiled."

Silence followed, and after a moment I turned back. To my surprise, Rake was looming over me, and his eyes seemed to glow with excitement. "What for?" he asked. "What did you do that was so bad as to warrant throwing out of your safe little home for?" He seemed as though he already knew the answer, and he just wanted to hear me say it.

I sighed and mumbled, "Murder."

"We really are the same," he said in a whisper of barely-restrained glee. "You come from an underground shelter; I came from an ivory tower far away from here. We had our own little pocket of civilization there—our own stable—with walls and guards to keep the rabble out, law and order to keep us in. But just because we're 'civilized'"—he gestured quotes around the word and said it with a sneer—"doesn't mean it's all sunshine and rainbows." He grinned. "I see the look on your face; you know what I'm talking about.

"For me," he said, "it was my sire. He came at me when I was just a little colt—didn't even have my cutie mark yet. I fought, I cried, I begged him to stop, but he told me to be a good boy and stay quiet. When nobody complains, everything is perfect, right? If there's a problem, it's because you're the one making noise about it. Just shut up and—"

"And get along." I didn't mean to say it out loud, but what Rake was saying was so familiar, so terrifyingly familiar, that it brought my voice out as if in some instinctive need to harmonize with him.

"Exactly! You get it! And you're here now, so I know you'll understand: I killed him. I rammed my horn right into his throat. He bled all over me. And when I went for help, they threw me out for being a troublemaker—I was clearly too dangerous to be around civilized ponies like them; if I had wanted a nice, safe home, I should have stayed quiet like daddy wanted." He laughed. "So what about you? Whom did you kill?"

"N—nobody . . ." I turned away again. I didn't want him to see me fighting back tears.

"Oh come on. You were exiled for murder, same as I. Somepony's dead now. So who is it?" He leaned in closer to me. I could feel his breath on my neck. "You can tell me. We're the same. Don't you see? We're brothers."

I wheeled around and pushed him away. "You are not my brother!" I shouted.

Rake had fallen onto his back when I shoved him. He lay there, looking up at me. He still had that eager grin on his face that he'd had ever since I'd first told him about the stable.

"Okay. I get it," he said calmly as he rolled onto his side and propped his chin on his forehoof. "It's all been a big shock. You're not ready. I was the same way when I was first born into the wasteland."

"Stop. Just stop," I said as I moved around to the opposite side of the fire from Rake and lay down there. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

Rake kept talking while I drifted off, though. "We're more alike than you want to admit," he said. "You're scared because you see in me what the wasteland will turn you into. You can try to fight it—I did at first. But the wasteland won't nurture you. And if you want to survive—and, like me, you wouldn't be out here in the first place if you didn't—you'll eventually have to accept that your old life ended the moment you set foot out here. But remember this: The worst that could happen is behind you now; you've been born—that's the most traumatic thing you'll ever go through. One moment, you're safe and secure, all warm and loved, and the next thing you know, your entire world crashes around you and forces you, kicking and screaming and covered in blood, into a new life. Whatever comes after that is nothing by comparison.

"Happy birthday," he added in a whisper.


***


Tired as I was, and despite my best efforts to fall asleep, I found myself turning over restlessly on the cold, hard ground well into the night. After some time, I rolled onto my back and simply stared up into the dark abyss that was the night sky. Cold and featureless, it loomed over me, and I imagined it reaching down with inky black tendrils to carry me up into the void where I would simply cease to exist.

But as the campfire died down, as its glare receded, and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw little points of light in the sky. They appeared gradually to me, first only the brightest ones, but slowly, as the fire went out, fainter ones began to appear until the entire night was full of them. I had never seen the stars before.

They were beautiful. And I found myself no longer imagining the sky as an empty void that would swallow me whole, but instead as a comforting blanket that had been cast over me, which I could wrap myself in for protection.

"You're shivering."

Rake's voice startled me, and I sat up to face him. It took me a moment to realize it, but he was right: I was shaking in the chilly air. He poked a hoof at the charred remains of the fire. "There isn't enough wood around here to keep a fire going all night," he said as he stood up and moved around toward me.

I edged away from him as he sat down at my side. "W—what are you doing?"

"You're cold. We should huddle together for warmth," he said with a grin. "Don't worry, I won't bite . . . not unless you want me to." He chuckled, and I forced a laugh with him, but I had the distinct feeling that he wasn't completely joking. "Shh. Just relax," he said as he leaned against my side.

He was warm, and my shivers abated briefly at his touch. Slowly, I settled back down to the ground, and Rake did the same alongside me. He wriggled a bit, rubbing his side against mine as he got comfortable, and then I felt his head nestle in against my neck.

"You smell clean," he mumbled softly. "I miss that smell."

I shifted uncomfortably at that, but there was something strangely comforting about feeling his body against mine—something beyond the simple warmth it provided. In a way, Rake felt familiar. He hadn't been completely wrong when he said I was afraid that the wasteland would turn me into him. But lying there with him, under that blanket of stars in the night sky, I found a moment of comfort, of something familiar and oh-so precious to me. And despite any misgivings I had, I wanted nothing more than to cling to that familiar comfort.

I glanced up at the stars one last time, and closed my eyes.