Ghost Lights
Chapter 28
For the next few weeks, we alternated days between long-distance flights and intense running. Flying wasn't too bad, since Azure had already been steadily working up her flight endurance times even before we began deliberately training. She was able to mostly keep up with me for a full twelve hour day of patrol flying, although of course that included breaks here and there. I tried to take progressively fewer of them in order to push her limits.
The runs were actually much harder, but conversely, they also didn't last as long. They only really needed to be maybe a couple hours at a good pace. The point wasn't to run for a long time, just to do it strenuously enough to build up cardiovascular endurance.
Day one hundred and thirty four was a running day, but also a report day, so we held off on the workout until later in the afternoon, giving Azure the morning to compose and send her message to Canterlot. It was as boring as ever, the standard mix of confirmation that nothing had changed with some weather data and "we're still alive" status thrown in. There was never any mention in those reports of our intentions or the training activities we did, but then, they weren't meant to track and record our actions, only our observations about the area, so as luck would have it, this was never an issue.
I suspect that this limitation on the amount of information we were meant to send back was actually very intentionally designed. After months out here alone, it would be easy for isolated ponies to drift into writing ever longer reports crammed with too much personal detail, viewing it as their only voice back to the civilization they became more and more desperate to see again. Allowing ponies to turn to writing rambling disjointed narratives like that and then send them off to strangers in their loneliness was probably both unhealthy for them and at least a little unsettling for whoever had to read and process those reports back in Canterlot, hence it was best to have a strictly structured format of only the specific information wanted.
In contrast to that sparing and exact nature of the reports, however, some things here were largely superfluous, such as our chainmail coats. As required at a military posting, we'd carried them out here (which added no small amount of weight to our bags on the hike), but without any particular enemies around to create a need for armor, we'd never actually worn them. I'd doubted we would and I assumed they'd just collect dust for the whole tour, until that day when inspiration struck. I decided I would push things up to the final notch of intensity on our run by finally making them, or at least their weight, useful.
Azure had finished writing and sending off her report. "Hey, heads up," I said. When she turned to look at me, I tossed one of the coats in her direction.
Her eyes widened with surprise when the garment of little metal rings thumped into her chest. It wrapped around her like a steel towel for a moment, with the weight nearly bowling her backward a little. She instinctively raised one foreleg to catch it before it fell to the floor.
"What's with this?" she asked. She looked at it, and then me, strangely for a moment while she was holding it up draped over her leg.
"Put it on," I said. I was already working on my own coat, pulling it down over my head like a sweater and feeling around for the small openings in the sides my wings were supposed to fit through. It didn't take me more than a few seconds, after all the years of practice I've had putting on armor as a palace guard. The weight and the slightly cold feel of the metal had an old comforting familiarity. It hit me briefly how I actually sort of missed it.
"Expecting trouble?" Azure asked.
"No, just expecting a good workout," I said.
Azure groaned. "They made us run in armor during the Dawn's Hammer basic training," she complained, but compliantly started pulling the chain shirt on. She fumbled a little bit with it. "It sucked really bad."
"This won't be as bad as plate," I reassured her. "It breathes a lot better. Notice how it's full of little holes?"
"Yeah, yeah, we'll see. I just hope it doesn't chafe." After some struggling, she managed to finish getting the coat situated over herself and wear it properly.
I led her outside and after a little bit of stretching out and warming up, we started. For the most part I avoided flat areas where I could, favoring uphill and downhill running. The pace I kept up was quick. I knew that if it wasn't hard enough to tire me out, then it wasn't really doing us any good. The more we would sweat in training, the better we'd do when it was time for the real deal.
Stainless steel is great, it can be washed in anything without having to worry about whether it's going to rust and become a tetanus trap. Somepony long ago realized how convenient that would be for maintaining armor, fortunately, so a high-strength stainless alloy is what our chainmail shirts were made out of. They'd stay perpetually shiny and new-looking forever. Cleaning them was easy, we just wore them while we showered in the waterfall after our workout.
It was almost sunset by the time we were done. We were hanging around on the beach after bathing, walking slowly back and forth and air-drying in the sea breeze blowing in out of the west.
There was something particular about a gap in the clouds out over the ocean, and it caught my attention. Something rare was about to happen, I could feel it.
I stopped pacing and held still. "The sun's about to come out," I told Azure.
"What? The sun never comes out here," Azure said. "Are you sure? I don't see anything." She studied the western sky.
"No, really, it is." I pointed a hoof at the spot in the clouds. "Just give it a minute."
We both waited. The sun kept moving down its track in the sky, sinking, and sure enough, it soon spilled through the hole in the cloudcover to bathe the entire beach in brilliant light. The sand glittered and sparkled with particles of quartz crystal in a way that it never did under the hazy overcast sky. The light was rippling and shining on the water, reflecting off the suddenly much more intense blue in pure white dazzling sparks. While it lasted, that beach was like a whole new place.
The sun was low on the horizon, though, and within minutes the light began deepening into the warm oranges and reds of sunset as it prepared to vanish. That last burst of fire was even more spectacular, flooding the whole beach in a final celestial sendoff of heavenly brilliance. It reflected off the chainmail coats we were wearing and illuminated them, and us, with a brilliant flaming radiance. The two of us would have been quite a sight, if anypony else had been around to see it, imposing and grandiose in such shining armor by the last light of day. It was one of those rare moments in life, I suppose, when I truly felt picturesque. We both stayed there and watched until it was gone, the sun completely below the far edge of the distant sea and leaving only the dimming rainbow afterglow that faded into an indigo night sky.
"I think that might be the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen," Azure finally said in a small voice.
"Same here," I told her. We both stood watching in silence for a while as the final glow faded and the darkness of night took hold completely.
"If we'd gone inside just a minute or two earlier, it would have been blocked from view behind the wall and we wouldn't have noticed. We'd have completely missed it," Azure said. "How did you know the sun would come out?"
"Not sure." I shook my head. "I just... did. I've just always been able to tell."
I wished there had been more to see, but that was it. With the show over and everything rapidly growing black, I headed back over the wall and inside the barracks for the night.
When we got there, Azure lit up the interior of the barracks building with a cozy glow from a conjured magical orb that hovered near the ceiling. We finished removing and putting away our chainmail shirts. I didn't pack mine up, just hung it off one of the posts of the crudely-made wooden bed frame on my side of the room. We'd be needing them again for future training.
"That's what your cutie mark is for, isn't it?" Azure asked me, considering the stylized pale yellow image of the sun and its rays.
"For being able to find the sun? Yeah." I nodded. "I used to do it all the time for my mom. I got a lot of practice at clearing out the sky to get more light to help her garden grow. I always knew where it would be."
"More than just that, though." Azure stared off at nothing in particular and pondered. "You see things. Things about ponies that are hidden just like the sun hides behind clouds. Sometimes you do when even the pony hiding it can't see it themselves."
"I don't know about that." I wasn't sure what exactly to make of what she was saying.
"It's how you knew about Princess Twilight and Captain Dash, years ago. It's why you knew they were suffering in loneliness for each other when even they didn't, and why you knew something had to happen," Azure said.
"That was stuff anypony could have seen." I shrugged. "The signs were there. It was inevitable, really, just a matter of paying attention."
"Yes, sure, anypony could have watched," Azure said, "but you knew how to put together the story underneath. You knew what it meant. There's always been something special about that."
This sort of left me at a loss. I'd never thought of myself as having any special insight. I saw what I saw, and the obvious reality it pointed to made sense. That was all. There was never any special trick, no particular talent. All I ever did for Princess Twilight and Captain Dash was pay attention closely enough to realize what was happening and then finally overcome my fear long enough to take a chance when the time came.
"Cutie marks have layered nuances of meaning, you know," Azure said. "It's not just one thing."
"Maybe," I said. It was sort of hard to disagree with that. Maybe she had a point, but I still wasn't sure one way or another.
Azure paced over to a window and rested her chin on the sill, peering out into the dark world that surrounded us. "Sometimes only that most obvious one thing is all ponies care about, though," she said. "Sometimes they don't see anything else."
"Well, it's hard to see all of who a pony is," I said. "They're very complicated things."
"It's especially hard when they assume they already know who a pony is." Azure kept staring out the window. "When that pony is too much of a coward to just tell them and maybe too much of one to even see it herself."
"Are we talking about somepony in particular?" I asked.
"I guess not really one more than another," Azure replied. She turned away from the window and sat down on the edge of her bed. "I've never told anypony. But then, I'm not sure if I really understood. They all think it's just for magic."
"Your cutie mark?" I asked.
"Yes." Azure nodded. "And they're not wrong, because it is for that, of course. Magic is just a means that can lead to many different end purposes, though. When I earned this mark, it was for using magic to break apart an amethyst crystal, then put it back together again into one piece. It wasn't quite the same afterward, though. When I merged all the shards back into a single crystal, I didn't reassemble it exactly the way it had been. It was... rearranged. It looked the same, it was all fused back together without a flaw, but it was transformed into something new. I don't think anypony noticed. They all thought nothing was different. I knew it was. I knew that was part of what this mark means. But it was like the thing with the codebreaking puzzle. I just never told Princess Twilight. Something just... stopped me. Resentment, I guess."
"Transforming things as a talent? That's why you were able to figure out how to transform yourself into a pegasus?" I asked.
"Yes, I'm fairly sure it is," Azure said. "I'm also sure there's a reason this was given to me, but I don't really know why. What if being out here is my only chance to find out? While we were watching that sunset, I thought about... what if it's like that? What if it's just that short little opening when the sun finally comes out, right before it disappears for good?"
"If that's how it is, then it's like when we were up on the clouds: enjoy the sun while you can," I told her.
"Exactly." Azure nodded. "That's why I know what I have to do now. For the last couple weeks, like you said to, I've been thinking about whether or not I should even try that flight. Having a lot of conflicted feelings, it's been hard to make the decision of whether it's worth it or if it's just a dumb risk and this is really about something else. But when I saw the sun come out and then how fast it set and it was over, I realized I knew. Making that flight is the last thing... the last big piece. After that I've learned as much as I need to about flying to know how I really feel. That's something that has to happen before we leave here, because I don't think I get another chance later. One way or another, it's done after we go home, and once the sun sets, it doesn't come out again. I can't just let that happen and not finish what I need to first. I don't want to live the rest of my life not knowing because I didn't try."
"And what if you don't make it?" I asked. "Is that worth it? That's really the question, you know. That's what you'd better be sure of: does the possibility of living the rest of your life not knowing outweigh the possibility, however small it is, of not getting the rest of your life at all?"
"It's true, I guess, I could just back down and... cooperate. Be what everypony expects me to be, without risking it." Azure shrugged. "My career's in the bag. I'm good at what I do with my horn. After I finish working with Twilight and go off on my own, I'll probably be a great mage, ensconced in some research tower somewhere. I'll stay up all night and sleep all day and discover all kinds of new magic spells before I slowly go totally crazy from locking myself away studying for so long. I could be the next Starswirl the Bearded... err, maybe without the beard. I could be remembered forever, and I'd be immortal that way. But..."
"But what?"
Azure looked at me, with something sharply serious in her eyes. "But sometimes it comes down to a choice: you can be immortal like that, or you can be happy during the time you have. Pick one."