With the evening sun gleaming off her plumage, the phoenix soars over the countryside, and for an instant, an old farmhouse catches her eye. Just a wooden structure, nothing notable. So why does it make a spark shoot through her mind?
Old wood, and dry. It would burn nicely. But she can’t—other creatures live there, and she doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Even dragons, as long as they leave her alone. And the kinds of creatures that build farmhouses leave phoenixes alone.
Not far from the house, an isolated stand of oaks towers into the sky, and she settles into the topmost branches. It seems like a good place to nest. Up high, and she can see anything approaching from below. For an instant, she tries to recall where she built her last nest, but… wherever it was, it’s gone now. Gone from her memory. Phoenixes don’t dwell on such things.
Yesterday, she might have perched above a desert plain or a tundra, and she might have lived there a long time. Yesterday doesn’t matter—she thinks in centuries, not days. And so she roosts in her high branches in her tall oak. Hers now. For a night or for a century, hers.
The sun gone now, her feathers glow softly in the dusk, and dancing firelight escapes the small house’s windows. No sounds, though—she expected to hear ponies talking, if not laughing. Laughing… why that, and why here?
Only silence, except for the breeze rattling through the dry leaves. She could burn them, but she won’t. Instead, she digs her talons into the branch, ducks her head under her wing, and waits for morning. No nest, not yet. She can build one tomorrow, or in a decade.
The phoenix wakes with the sun, mostly because the light warms her, but also because of the sounds. Already, two ponies have come out of the house. Gray ones, and they shuffle back and forth over the large fields that extend in every direction. They must be planting something—they keep digging up rocks and shoving them together into piles. Yes, the rocks might damage their…
She can picture it in her mind: a wooden frame, flammable, with a sharp metal blade on it. She would have thought so, anyway, but these ponies want the rocks. They look through the stacks, throw some into pails, toss others back into the fields. The rocks would be in the way there if they wanted to grow something. They actually smile at some they’ve collected, but the phoenix can’t see a difference. All gray, just like the ponies.
Little by little, she descends the branches until she can see the ponies more clearly. She likes to hear them talk. It reminds her of… nothing. Her mind stays blank. Something was there, but gone now, a week ago maybe, or a year. Either way, she likes to listen.
But they’ve headed off to one of the far fields and left a small bucket of those rocks right beneath her tree. What makes them so special? For a second, she glances around, but nobody nearby, so she does what she always does when presented with something new: burn it.
Her feathers ignite, and heat ripples the air in front of her, carefully controlled, away from the wood and onto the rocks. They don’t burn, but their pail softens and sags, then the rocks glow red, and some gold and silvery bits run out onto the ground.
“Rrr?” She cranes her neck toward the cooling mass of slag and the charred dirt around it—
“Hey!”
She jolts and flutters up the tree, her talons scrabbling against the crumbling bark, to the top, where phoenixes should perch.
“You stay away from those!” the farther one says while the other delivers a powerful kick to the trunk.
The phoenix hops over to the neighboring tree. “Rawk,” she says, but they don’t understand her apology. She’ll leave their rocks alone. She doesn’t want to hurt anybody.
The ponies go about collecting their rocks again, but they don’t wander far, and they glance up at her every few seconds. She’s keeping them from doing their work. So she takes off and soars past a ridge of low hills, where she can’t see them anymore. Then she spends the day circling and watching all the animals below.
Lots of squirrels, picking fruit off the wild blueberry bushes, and a bear prowling by the stream, where he occasionally swats a fish onto the bank. She’s hungry, too, she’s decided, so she finds a patch of dried thistles with some nice, crunchy seeds and quick-burning stems.
Then back into the air again, and she lights her plumage on fire a little, just to generate her own thermals and ride them higher. Not too high, though—kind of cloudy today, and if she flew through one of them, it would take her forever to dry off.
In the distance, a column of smoke, and moving, too. Maybe another phoenix? She glides over to investigate, but it’s only a train. She must have seen one somewhere before, but she doesn’t remember. After following it for a few miles, she peels off toward her trees. The sun has almost set, and they might have finished moving their rocks around for the day.
Sure enough, she settles into her high branches above a deserted field. Some rocks still poke up through the dirt, but the ponies haven’t left any near her trees. But she can hear something. Talking, from the house, that she didn’t hear last night. They sound angry.
Normally the phoenix doesn’t count days, but the ponies interest her, and she can remember what happened each day since she arrived, and count those. So this is her third day here, in her tall oak trees.
She chose this place carefully: three dead oaks, far enough from the house and the forest that if she accidentally burned them down, the fire wouldn’t spread. Not that it would harm her, but she’d hate to set flame to the house or the woods, where ponies and animals live.
Today, she sits on a low branch again, so she can watch the ponies some more. “Shoo!” one of them says, and waves a hoof at her, but she just keeps watching. She likes to hear them talk. At least they don’t yell.
They don’t leave any rock piles near her trees, either, but she would have left them alone, anyway. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone or make them mad. So she listens to them as she preens her feathers. A downy one drifts to the ground, and she remembers that phoenix feathers are rare and beautiful. Maybe it would make up for her burning their rocks yesterday, but they don’t take it.
But the ponies drift off to different fields, far enough apart that they can’t talk to each other, and the phoenix doesn’t get to listen to them. So she gazes at the sky and waits on her stand of dead trees. If a male phoenix happens by, she could set the whole thing ablaze to catch his attention, maybe raise a nest of chicks. It wouldn’t hurt the ponies, and then they’d be rid of her. She’d hate to waste a prime nesting site like that, though. She could keep her trees and find a better place to make a display, if the ponies didn’t mind too much. If they didn’t yell at her.
The sun has gone down. How long was she thinking? A week? No, she counts the number of times she’s seen the ponies. The day she arrived, the day they yelled at her, and the day they mostly ignored her. So still the same day.
From the house, she hears talking again. Some voices sound angry and some don’t, but the loud ones gradually get softer, and she even hears a laugh. A laugh fits here, but why? She hasn’t heard one until now.
The phoenix can worry about that tomorrow. She picks at her wing and flutters up to a higher branch for the night, but when she looks at the ground, the feather she dropped earlier is gone. Did the ponies find it? Maybe they’ll like it.
The phoenix awakens to find the two gray ponies staring up at her. They’re smiling, and one spreads out some straw and old paper beneath her tree. “Chirr?” she asks, but they don’t answer, just smile. The one standing nearer prods the wad of debris forward with a hoof, and then they both back off a few paces.
She watches. She spreads her wings to retreat further up the tree like last time, but the ponies don’t move. They keep smiling. After a few minutes, she drops down one branch, then another. Still, they smile.
She blinks at the dry fuel, then ignites her feathers and sets the little pile smoldering. A thin wisp of smoke and glowing ash rises to her, and she breathes it in. It tastes good. But she hops back up a branch—she can still taste the smoke from there.
What? They… push a container of rocks toward her. It’s not a metal pail like before, but some kind of ceramic crucible. They got mad last time, but… they’re smiling. “It’s okay,” they say. So she starts up her flame, not very hot, and cocks her head. “It’s okay,” they say again, pointing at the rocks, “go on.”
She glows even brighter, and the air wavers and churns above the rocks. They turn red, and the silver and gold bits run out together, collecting in the bottom of the bowl. They don’t yell at her.
When no more of the shiny liquid comes out, they nudge another container of rocks—
“Hey!”
The phoenix jerks her wings open and flaps up near the top of her tree. They said… they said it was okay.
She sits there panting as an older stallion walks out from the house. He has her feather tucked into his hat.
“Hey! Mail came. You girls should read this letter,” he says, then he pulls an envelope out of his bag and tosses it on the ground in front of them. The smaller mare steps up, pulls the sheet of paper out, and reads.
“Dear super-duper family,
“Sorry I don’t have time to ask about all the cool rock stuff that’s going on with rocks at the rock farm, but this is really really really important. Really. If you see a new phoenix move into the area, could you please let us know? We’ve been asking all around for a week now and haven’t found her yet. Okie dokie lokie?
“Thanks a bunch!
“Love,
“Pinkie”
Pinkie. Maybe that’s why the phoenix expected to hear laughter. But why does she know that?
The two mares look at each other, then up at her.
The phoenix stretches out her wings to soak up the morning sun. The last few days haven’t changed much. In the morning, the two gray ponies come out and work the fields, then let her burn some rocks before they go inside for the night. Six days now, maybe? Not a year yet, at least she doesn’t think so, but it’s getting harder to remember something different about each day so she can count them.
And here they come from the house, late today. They usually awaken before she does. Below her tree, they stop and gaze up at her. They don’t have any rocks with them this time. Instead… another pony. A pink one. Something about her… the phoenix can’t look away.
“There,” the gray ponies say to the newcomer as they point upward, “that’s the one.”
“Awk?” the phoenix asks, but they don’t answer. They smile as usual, but the pink one doesn’t. It looks wrong.
“Can you please come down?” she says. No. Phoenixes don’t like the ground. It has ponds and streams and oceans. Dirt, too. Dirt can smother flames. She’ll come to the ground sometime when she’s ready to die, but not now.
The pink one smiles, but only on her face. “Please?”
No. The phoenix puffs out her feathers and peers down. Then the pink one points at her, too, and yet another pony arrives, this one light blue and… flying!
The phoenix sidles along her branch and retreats into the tangle of them nearer the trunk—they can’t reach her here, and she won’t have to hurt them. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone. She doesn’t want to hurt… Rainbow? Is that her name? H-how does she know that? How does she know?
Rainbow flies up to the tips of the branches, but she doesn’t come any closer. She keeps her distance. Good. The phoenix doesn’t want to hurt Rainbow. The blue pony won’t smile, though—she frowns, just like the pink one is doing now, and her ears droop.
“Please,” Rainbow says, “come home. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept bugging you.”
She says another word, and the phoenix tries to repeat it. “Cwi?” She can’t pronounce it with a beak. Something about it tugs at the edge of her memory.
“I won’t ever ask you to let me try being a griffon again. I—I promise.”
The phoenix shakes her head. The sound of that voice…
Rainbow looks away, toward the house. “I understand why it’s dangerous now. Even if you could reason with me, I might still lose myself. They’re so different from ponies—I might… I dunno, hunt down an animal and kill it, or… something else I’d regret later. I get it now.”
Her lip starts to tremble, and water gathers in her eyes. Is—is she attacking…? No. No, Rainbow doesn’t move. She doesn’t bring her water any closer.
“But you didn’t have to risk showing me, not like this. Please.” Rainbow finally creeps a little nearer and sits on the branch. The water’s running down her face now, and… the phoenix backs against the trunk, flares her feathers, concentrates the heat in front of her. She doesn’t want to hurt Rainbow. She doesn’t.
“I-I didn’t know it would take hold of you so fast—you didn’t, either, and… and I didn’t think to close the windows. I could catch you, but…” Rainbow holds up her forehooves, all wrapped in bandages, with tufts of charred hair sticking out from the edges. The phoenix dares to pry her gaze from the water, and fainter, but still visible—traces of burns up Rainbow’s forelegs, on her chest, on one cheek. Her voice cracks. “I couldn’t hold on to you.”
She… she did that? She hurt Rainbow? For the first time she can remember, the phoenix feels cold, and not from the water—it’s over there, not threatening her. She huddles against the trunk, and her body shakes. Just the sight of those ponies, Rainbow and… and Pinkie…
Rainbow wipes the water from her face. “Please.”
With the sound of Rainbow’s voice, something stirs inside the phoenix, a compulsion, a horrible realization just out of reach. One word steals her mind, one word that she must say, but why? She squeezes her eyes shut, covers her head with her wings, puts out her fire, and speaks the word out loud for all to hear, as best she can.
“Revert.”
And a purple glow surrounds her.