//------------------------------// // Part 2: Chapter 4 ~ Only A Small Wound (V2) // Story: Lunarium // by Tramper //------------------------------// Then, there was silence. She knew she was blinking, she knew she was shaking and she knew that she was still breathing. Yet the filly could not make a sound. Moments passed like this, with nopony moving or even twitching as they all awaited Trixie’s immediate return. Lyra still couldn't believe it. Trixie, who’d seemed so furious with them, had been the one who ran and given them an opportunity to make it through this. She felt cold, and not just from the rock pressing against her back. Once more, she blinked and her eyes were fixed at the crystal walls, yet they weren’t looking at them at all. She had thought to bring joy to the other ponies and had found her magic in happy thoughts and laughter. All she’d ever wanted from Trixie was for her to smile, because, ultimately, this day would end a happy one. She had cast magic, right? Even Trixie should have found joy in that. It was something unbelievable and it had left her with a warmth in her heart. She was shaking now, sure, but the magic couldn’t be the reason. She wasn’t Twilight, she wasn’t ill or weak. But we’re both unicorns, aren’t we? They were both wizards now, and Trixie would’ve become a wizard too. No, she definitely would become one and they’d all be happy in the end. Right? Her leg still itched, there where the scissors had scraped her. Lyra considered herself lucky, because if there was a scar, it was sure to be obscured by her fur. Yet, even though it was just a small wound she had felt it ever since she regained both her identity as a unicorn and her horn. When she’d cast the orb the itching had grown stronger, too. Maybe that was the prize she needed to pay for them to achieve their goal. We’ll all laugh about it when this is over, she thought. Luckily, the pain wasn’t so bad that she’d have to cry about it, not that she really felt like whining about a scrape anyway. No, she only let out a heavy sigh and closed her eyes for a bit. Maybe that would help her regain some focus. The sound of rushing water ran past her ears and the sand felt soft beneath her rear. She let her two forelegs move in circles, imagining how she'd put fingers inside the sand. That always calmed her. The thought of digging appendages like a minotaur’s into the sand and feeling the cold of the earth. Her mind focused on that fantasy, how she would move each of the eight fingers and the thumbs, too. If you had hands, you needed them to have thumbs. Those were important. A smile formed on her face and she remembered the first question she had ever asked Trixie. “If you're a wizard, then can you give me hands?” Trixie had denied her that sweet thing, because magic had not existed. Lyra knew that, she kept saying that to herself, too. But words couldn’t make her stop to hope. She could never grow hands or walk on two legs. That hadn’t stopped her from trying once, twice. At least back then, she hadn’t known any better. Truthfully, she had managed to stand on her hind legs for quite a while. Well, she had leant against her bed, but it counted nonetheless. Walking was hard, it hurt her back and after a few steps she'd always fall over. Hugh had told her that ponies weren't meant to walk on just two legs, that's why they had four. And fingers weren't necessary for them, too. You could grab things just fine with hooves and ponies would always be fine as they are. Lyra had tried to yearn for more, but then she’d begun to understand just how foalish that was. It was the poor sort of joke nopony would ever laugh at. “Can you give me hands?” she’d asked Trixie, hoping that the pony would get the joke, that she would laugh. They would all grow up eventually, she understood, and it was best to let go of make believe until then. “She’s not coming back,” Derpy mumbled. Water was rushing to their side and Lyra wanted nothing more but to apologize. Trixie had gone because she couldn’t do magic, because Lyra had laughed at her. Once more, she’d lost something important because of her own, stupid childishness. She looked at the circles, but to her they were blocks. She heard the water, but to her it was fire. As different as this might’ve been, it was just the same dance as before. The wound was stinging, but Lyra tried to block it out, to think about something else. She came up with a warm fire and marshmallows held above it, because she loved marshmallows and anything sweet. Right, she loved sweets and they didn’t hurt. So Lyra thought of bon bons, cakes and parfaits. She thought of muffins and then of cottoncandy. She thought of shadows stalking and of a hall burnt black. She remembered the Celestial Hall with the red carpet in front of it and as they entered, the guards stared at them with grim looks on their faces. Rows and rows of seats were in front and behind them. Little Lyra, with her new, frilly dress and the bow in her mane had been so excited. Not just because she was here, but because he had come with her. They seated themselves far away from the stage and to her left had been an older lady who’d looked at her with disdain. “Ugh, Minty,” she had whispered to that friend of hers, thinking that Lyra wouldn’t hear her, “just my luck to have some pesky unicorn sitting beside me.” Her friend giggled, but Lyra frowned. Of course she would be insulted, that happened everywhere, but that didn’t mean she ever got used to it. The mare was an earth pony and she was a unicorn, so she knew it to be a normal thing. But he had helped her, had sawn her horn off so nopony would be mad at her anymore. “Well, I don’t have a horn,” she said, trying to think of something witty, “so–” “Lyra, shut up,” he told her with a nervous look on his face and then apologized to the mare. She just wanted to say something funny, but he needed to make excuses for her, again. That wasn’t how she wanted it to go. No, she wanted him to be happy again. If it wasn’t through jokes, then maybe not making a sound would help. Surely, that was the solution. There was a quiet upon them, until she spotted something moving on the side of the stage. Ponies marched onto it and took their positions, the entire orchestra, the conductor and, of course, the cellist. He was a famous figure, or so she was told, an old musician who also was the main reason the orchestra was still getting work. Lyra felt sad that they sat so far away from the stage, but as he put the bow to the cello, she learned that it didn’t matter whether one could see or not. That was the first time in a long time she’d heard music. There’s magic in it. The young child ignored the whisper, for it didn’t belong in her memory. No, she let her heart be captured by the music again, like the rest of the audience. She didn’t notice that the mare to her side had left the auditorium until the first break, not that she had ever understood it. It just wasn’t conceivable that anypony would leave such a wonderful presentation. But maybe that didn’t matter, either. Maybe everything in this room was unimportant, everything but the music. How could this cellist put that much emotion in something like marks on a paper? She had often wondered that, before meeting Tavi. He had played “The Seapalace” and the beauty must’ve come from Tavi sitting in front of him, smiling for him. Lyra knew that now, even though she had never told Tavi that she’d also been in that room on that night. It was her own little secret, that they had shared a common thing even before meeting one another. Back then, she hadn’t known many other foals, even though he had always tried so hard for her. Lyra remembered him fondly, her own guardian, Tattletale. He was a light brown stallion with a blonde mane and poisonous green eyes. When the filly thought of him, she thought of the hint of a smile she’d seen on him when he’d gotten the tickets and when he had shown her a hint of a smile when she finally behaved like a proper little filly and tried proper little dresses on. Often she wondered whether he could do more than that, if she could make him happy, make him laugh. The filly had hoped that going to the concert with him would better their relationship, but she looked at him once, when the cellist’s opening solo played, just before the bassdrums added themselves together with the thunder of the tubas and trombones. She remembered it exactly. His hair was combed over to the side, making him look as elegant as ever, and of course, his tail was also groomed. The sideburns running down his cheeks were his pride and she loved them, too. With them, he looked less like a pony and more like a lion. Not only that, but now that he wore a tuxedo, he clearly was the classiest pony there. Her Tattletale. He fiddled around with his bowtie and wore a frown on his face and gritted his teeth, impatiently kicked the air with his hooves. Lyra remembered that Tattletale didn’t like the piece and that saddened her greatly. How useless was she, when she couldn’t even make the pony laugh whom she had to thank for everything? Tattletale had always tried to look his best on any occasion, Lyra remembered. He always tried to accommodate for others. That was also the reason why they had gotten the seats farthest away from the concert, the ones where one could hardly hear anything and the ponies that had been seated before them just wouldn't stop talking. The two of them still tried to listen and soon enough, as the music reached its high and the orchestra went in full force, finally everypony started to play attention. The cellist was almost jumping on the spot as they hit another allegro. Everything before them fell quiet. Everypony was looking at the stage with sheer awe and Lyra could only imagine what the cellist saw and felt in these moments. The little seapony’s journey, they all hoped for it to have a happy ending and Lyra even more so. As the ponies leant forward to listen closer, it must’ve been like a wave running through the auditorium. A wave of the purest emotions that clashed with the music, creating a cascade of joy. Lyra thought that’s what it was and she thought that it was magical. She remembered that her smile grew so much that it hurt. Then the filly turned around. It was the finale and Tattletale just sat there, his hooves covering his face. He sobbed and tears were running down his face. The girl looked at him and then the music was drowned out as he opened his mouth. His words were only mumblings at first, growing into a whisper and then he said those same words aloud, over and over again. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. ... “ She remembered him dying in the flames when they went to listen to the orchestra’s last concert. She remembered herself being trampled by panicking ponies and she remembered him grabbing her and carrying her out. He never stopped saying those words. Poor Tattletale who had wanted to give Lyra a good home, poor Tattletale who had lost the mare he loved and everything else that had made his life good, and poor Tattletale, who had called her filth and cut off her horn. Poor Lyra, the her from back then told her, always looking for something that isn't there anymore. The seapony had struggled, the seapony had yearned. Lyra had yearned, too. For how long she didn't remember, but it was the seapony that inspired her to become proactive. When Tattletale was gone, Hugh would read her a book, filled with stories of mystical creatures that were commonly depicted by minotaurs to haunt the labyrinths at the beginning of the world. Every tale filled her with inspiration, with yearning. She couldn't read, but still she asked everypony and looked at every picture that could have hinted at the existence of these humans. Then, Lyra would draw pictures of them. How many hours did she spend thinking about how they looked and how awesome they were? Even she couldn’t really say anymore. Whatever it looked like to everypony else, it wasn’t the pictures themselves or the stories that preceded them. Neither truly managed to grasp her attention as much as the thought of humans itself did. She had no concept what a world populated with humans looked like, so she just imagined it like Equestria under the princesses, only in better. They would be ruled by the smartest men and they only cared about making everyhuman happy and they could control the weather with mighty machines. In fact, they had machines for everything. For making food, for feeding the animals, for keeping the forests in good shape. Since humans were imaginative they would even do a better job with technology than ponykind. They were so good that they probably wouldn't even know what pollution was, or racism and all the human parents loved their children, too. Nohuman was ever hurting anyhuman else, not ever. When one was in trouble, everyhuman would come and help them, so not a single one of them died. And there was a day every summer where all the families would go out. A mother with a sickenly sweet smile on one side, because life was just so good. A father on the other side, grown a bit fat because of the luxury and good food. He told his wife how much he loved her and how happy he was that she would never leave him or their child because of something like the color of their skin. A child was between them, her skin white as milk and her hair a pale blonde, wearing her finest summer dress and holding each of her parents tightly, not even thinking of letting them go. “Don't worry,” they said. “We love you. We will never leave you. Lyra. …” “Lyra!” Twilight called. The Filly was leaning over her, her hoof touched Lyra’s forehead. The aquamarine one blinked, wondering why Twilight did that. “What's wrong with you?” Twilight asked. Lyra was amazed how scared she looked. At first, she would’ve guessed it to be natural, because Trixie was gone. But then why was it that Twilight cowering over her now? She felt something on her left front leg and turned her head to look at it. A dark spot had appeared, though only faintly beneath her coat. Seeing it was hard, feeling it was easy. Twilight must’ve seen it and thought it to be bad. She was just scared for Lyra. The poor pony was afraid of losing another friend, wasn't she? “I-”, she started, but thought better of it. She wasn’t good enough with jokes for a situation like this, not yet anyway. “It's just a small wound, no biggie.” Lyra gave her best smile, “That and I'm a bit tired.” “We rested enough already. She’s not coming back and we need to get going,” Octavia said from the side. “Maybe it’s close to the source of this river, the Lunarium. Trixie ... She knows what she's doing. She's smart after all.” She looked tired, too, if not more so than how Lyra felt. The unicorn only knew that they now had one more reason to go to the Lunarium. If it would fix everything, then surely it would make Trixie better, too. She would come back and they would all go up to Canterlot. After that, laughter would come back to the world and they would all be happy. That was what needed to happen, that was what they needed to make happen. This was Lyra's resolution now. She wanted everypony to be happy and even if it meant sacrificing her own ability to smile, she would get to it. Being brave enough to do just that was what she decided to be. Slowly she rose up. “Yeah,” Lyra said and looked to Twilight. She gave her a smile, one she believed in herself. “Let’s finish this. Trixie’ll be fine and if we find the Lunarium quick enough, we might even get to help her.” That seemed enough for the little brown filly with the thin legs that could barely support her own weight. She nodded. Derpy offered Twily her help once more and their looks turned to from where the river came. Lyra already knew one thing, there was something she had gained while fighting Magia but she had lost it already. The feeling of hope, the faint magic she had felt. She knew the color of her coat was fading and the horn would soon disappear. Lyra also understood that me magic she had used was foul, for an unnatural chill rested in her bones. She understood that now, but somehow she also knew that that was just the reason to keep going. The only thing she really would have liked would be for a voice in her head to tell her where to go. As she stepped forward, something like a Wise Goat would have greatly improved her mood. And against all odds, between the sound of the rushing water, she heard a whisper in her ear, trickling through like drops of rain. Don't worry, no sacrifice will be forgotten and in the end, the laughter of the children will fill this world once more.