//------------------------------// // The Blind Bat // Story: Cyclosa // by NorrisThePony //------------------------------// i I didn’t really want to have to spend our little remaining bits, but Luna’s health was a matter of much greater importance than keeping our wallet full. If it came to it, I could always steal a couple more bits or supplies. Even with the storm rumbling above, I wanted nothing more than to board the Damask Rose and leave Pillory and eventually Erisia behind. But I doubt her owner’s felt the same, and if I wanted to steer clear of prying questions then I would have to avoid any and all confrontations with them. “Keep you eyes open for an inn, Luna,” I said to her as she walked behind me. Save for her occasional cough, the only other sound was our hooves sloshed through deep puddles of freezing rainwater. The maze-like streets of the city didn’t quite help matters, since they were all angled to allow the water to fall into wide storm drains and into the wide sewers below. As a result, it was almost like we were constantly traveling against the force of a river of sludgy water.   I spotted the hanging sign bearing the miracle promise of shelter, complete with the words ‘Inn’ stenciled in proud red capitals underneath a crude silhouette depiction of a bat hanging from a branch with it’s wings unfurled. Lanterns and firelight bloomed from the windows and was reflected by the rushing water we were trodding through, promising warmth and comfort at a price. ‘The Blind Bat’ was as disgusting and filthy as the rest of the city of Pillory, but even if it was a dingy dive, it was a dingy dive with food and a roaring fire, which was a vast improvement to the freezing, rainy city streets outside. Luna’s was now shivering madly, and her cough was at times so violent that I was afraid she would attract the attention of the city’s guards. The rain continued falling in a torrential downpour outside when Luna and I stumbled into the Blind Bat Inn. A dozen gruff looking stallion’s eyes sitting with their muzzles half engulfed by large mugs of liquor followed us as I lead the way to the front bar where a mare was polishing glasses that would be filthy no matter how hard she tried. “One room, and a meal,” I said. Luna already had our wallet drawn and dropped it down on the counter. It sagged significantly, undoubtedly quite used to holding many more bits than what Luna and I currently possessed.     She rose an eyebrow, probably wondering why mares as young as ourselves were alone in such a dangerous world, but if she had any suspicion beyond that then she did not show it. The guards had been one thing, but the last thing I needed was for somepony else to recognize us from the crude alicorn depictions the posters had warned of. “That’ll be a dozen bits, and an extra five for the meals.” Luna was digging through the wallet in a moment, but before she even withdrew a single bit she turned to me with a panicked expression. “We only have ten bits left,” she whispered. “Please…” I began, floating the wallet across the desk towards the mare, “We...we don’t have enough bits. It would really mean a lot if—” “I’m sorry,” she shook her head, pushing the wallet back, “I’m not running a charity here, darling. No bits, no room.” “But it’s freezing out there!” I protested, motioning outside. As I did, I caught the judging stares of the many intimidating looking ponies sitting around us, but I ignored them and pressed on. “And I think something is wrong with my sister. I realize this is your business, but she might be in danger! Is that really worth any bits to you?!” I felt the hairs on the back of my neck bristle as she shook her head again and turned her attention back to the glass that she apparently deemed more important than us. There was a long period of silence, broken only by a single cough from Luna, while the innkeeper moved her attention from the cup to the counter. It was pretty clear that this was a battle I wasn’t going to win without attracting a bit of attention. “Fine!” I said sharply, “Just something to eat for both of us then. And a mug of whatever the hell you have here to drink.” I withdrew five bits from the wallet, and turned from the mare before my irritation ended up getting me and Luna kicked from the inn entirely. I’d have loved to show that wench how much I cared about her putrid little inn which I think would be a comfortable home to indeed a blind bat alone. Luna and I sat down at a table close to the fire, as far from the prying eyes of the other customers and the innkeeper counting our bits to make sure I’d given her enough. Luna began removing her soaked hood and cloak, but I shook my head. “They’re all looking at us right now, Luna,” I said in a hushed whisper, “I’m not sure, but they might recognize us from those posters that Discord’s guards are putting up.” “When does our airship leave?” she cast a few nervous glances behind her. “First thing tomorrow.” I gave her an enthusiastic smile. “We’re almost out of this, sis.” “Do you think they know what we are?” “The Earth ponies? Maybe...but they got our bits, I can’t imagine why they would care.” Luna nodded, but still the obvious traces of uncertainty lingered in her expression as she idly scratched the tarnished table. “Here, scoot over,” I said, digging out our tattered, dust-filled map and unfurling it across the table. We'd found it someways down the path after the dust storm, and while it was greatly damaged it was still legible. I rolled out of my spot across from her and instead sat on the same side of the table, so we were both looking at the map from the same angle. “We’ll be traveling as far as Oppidium,” I pointed at the settlement with a hoof. It was a point further north than I’d have ever imagined traveling, but it was still only part of our pilgrimage out of Erisia. It was as close as I ever dared to get to the heart of Erisia, where Discord was fabled to rule. “In Oppidium…” I continued, “We’ll find another airship that’ll take us as far north as possible, but I imagine we’ll have to walk many miles after that.” “What about this city?” Luna asked, pointing to a large and harshly drawn star a hundred or so miles north of Canterlot Mountain. “Stormsbor—” “No!” I said loudly, slamming a hoof down on the table. “We steer clear of Stormsborough at all costs!” “Why?” Luna meekly inquired. “That’s where Discord is said to rule. It’s the biggest city in Erisia, but it’s also the most dangerous. For two alicorns, it’s nothing short of suicide. We avoid Stormsborough no matter what, understood?” “I’m sorry...I didn’t know.” “It’s alright,” I sighed. Luna let out a wide yawn and leaned her head against me while I continued contemplating the map in front of us. “How’s your horn?” “It’s fine. It feels a little tingly, but it doesn’t hurt too much anymore.”     “That’s good,” I said. “It seems to be coming in fast, like my wings. You’ll be casting spells in no time.”     Luna giggled and brought a hoof to her forehead, feeling where the bump of her horn would soon start growing. Making contact with the still sensitive area made her grimace slightly, but I was relieved to see that it wasn’t nearly as violently as before, as if it simply felt a tad uncomfortable as opposed to downright painful. It seemed the pain came and went as it pleased. The innkeeper brought us our food before long, along with a bottle of mead which I didn’t really want but needed to clear my mind if I was going to be able to make it until the morning. Alcohol was something my parents could never have afforded, and I'd always wanted to try it.     While Luna drained her stained glass of murky water and devoured her meal as swiftly as possible, I lightly prodded mine and took cautious sips of mead, choosing to stay more focused on making sure we weren’t being watched than on the meal in front of me.     Finally, I looked down at my plate and was shocked to see an odd food I had never seen before. I poked it cautiously with a hoof, looked over at Luna’s plate, and found that she, too, had left it alone out of uncertainty.     “Luna…” I said, “This...this red stuff they gave us. I think it’s venison.”       "Venison?”     “It’s deer, Luna.”     With horror, she looked down at the untouched meat, eying it as if it was a volatile substance about to explode. She extended a shaking hoof and pushed the plate away from her and across the table.     “I came so close to trying it…”     “You didn’t know any better, sis,” I assured. “I thought this city had run out of ways of making me sick. They serve it like it’s not even a big deal.”     Luna sighed in disgust, yawned, and did not touch her food again. Between quick swigs of mead, I listened to her breathing gradually change pitch as she slowly fell asleep. Even close to the fire, her fur was still damp and cool, but it didn’t seem to be enough to hinder her tired eyes from shutting on the world and her mind to settle on a much calmer, happier world in her dreams. We may have been denied a room, but I wasn’t about to leave the inn any time soon.     For nearly an hour we sat in total silence, Luna fast asleep  as I slowly worked my way through the sizable bottle of mead.     Just as I was reaching to grab a baked potato Luna had left abandoned on her plate, I felt a biting pain in my long-grown in wings, and moments later the pain was echoed through my horn and then into my hooves. As Luna slept, I saw her shudder without waking, as if affected by the same sensation as me. Following the pain, I felt a lump hit my stomach and then crawl up my throat, and before I even knew what I doing I was stumbling to my feet and out the door into the rainy streets of Pillory. I shakily navigated my way to the alley closest to the inn, ignoring the ponies keeping warm beside bonfires watching as I collapsed to the cobblestone. I felt as if I was going to be sick, and sure enough the lump in my throat changed to a tingling and I realized that I was sick. I squeezed my eyes shut and simply listened to the unsteady pattering of liquid joining the drone of the rain. I think the ponies outside the alley that had been watching may have started laughing and making snide remarks as I was sick, but I found my head felt heavy and it was difficult to focus on anything but emptying my stomach. When I was finally finished, I felt dizzy and the dull light of the moon beyond the storming clouds was too bright and forced me to squeeze my eyes shut tight. When I next opened them, the alley was gone and I was standing on a bridge seemingly made of starlight, surrounded by the same small stars as well as a milky stream flowing through the sky like the aurora borealis, but all the same greyish white. It was a majestic plain of white and blue and black, and as I beheld it the pain in my hoof, wings, and in my head faded away. “CELESTIA, YOUNG MARE OF CYCLOSA.” A loud voice rang out suddenly. I whipped frantically around, trying and failing to find a source. It had no discernible gender, it sounded more akin to the low rumble of thunder than it did a ponies voice. “YOU ARE NOT ORDINARY.” As I had expected, it had no source. It seemed to be booming out from the sky itself, and from the space below the starry bridge I was standing on. “YOU ARE NO UNICORN. YOU ARE NO EARTH PONY. YOU ARE NO PEGASUS. THERE ARE NONE LIKE YOU.” The colossal voice paused for a short while, before continuing. “YET YOU ARE NOT ALONE.” “What are you?” I finally said. I was hardly aware of the celestial sky around me, nor confused as to how I had appeared there.  It was stating information I needed not hear, but doing so in a voice bordering on threatening.     “I swear, if you want trouble, I’d be happy to—”     “YOU ARE HOPE. YOUR SISTER IS HOPE.”     “Hope for what?” I chortled, growing tired with this delusion and simply wishing I was back in the rainy streets of Pillory. “I’m not hope. I’m just trying to keep myself and Luna alive. I never wanted these wings.” “YOU HAVE NOT YET RISEN. THE WINGS ON YOUR BACK AND EVEN THE HORN ON YOUR HEAD MEAN NOTHING YET. BUT THEY SHALL.” “What are you talking about?” I screamed. The moment the words left my mouth, my head resumed it’s throbbing as the pain in my horn and wings and in my head once again resumed. As simple as with a single blink, the world of the starry celestial plain disappeared, and I was lying drenched in the middle of a dingy alley beside the Blind Bat Inn. For several minutes, I simply sat on the cobblestone street, listening to the rain’s song and trying to piece together what I had just heard. I’d heard of ponies becoming delirious or having their perceptions affected by the consumption of alcohol, but I did not think for even a moment what I had just experienced had anything to do with it. It felt as though I had just borne witness to some foreboding prophecy, and even my bitter attitude towards superstition and fate could not deny that there was definitely something unnatural about the dream I had just had. “Celestia!” I heard Luna exclaim, and groggily I rose to face her as she ran up to me, weighed down only slightly by both of our saddlebags. Her enthusiastic, boisterous run managed to garner a few chuckles from the ponies who had been watching me earlier. “Luna? What are you doing out here?” “I woke up and you were gone. I got scared and went looking for you.” Luna paused, as if contemplating saying something else.   “I...I had a weird nightmare, sis,” she began. With obvious hesitation, Luna shakily recounted  with frightening similarity her dream, which was almost exactly the same as what I had dreamt, right down to the specific details of the celestial plain we had both been standing on. Luna broke off again as she saw my evident uneasiness, but I nodded for her to continue anyways. “It didn’t feel like a dream, though. It felt more like...” “A prophecy?” I finished. “Yeah! Like a prophecy!” “I had the exact same dream, Luna.” It would seem it wasn’t the mead after all. “Really?!” she cried. “Luna, please stop shouting. But yes, I did. Come on, let’s go back inside where it’s warm.” “But what about the dream—” “Luna, it was just a dream,” I lied, and started walking back towards the entrance to the inn. I didn’t believe even for a moment that it indeed was just a dream, but that did not stop me from carrying a firm disapproval of the words it had spoken. Hope? Not Luna, and certainly not myself. Hope against what? We weren’t saving Erisia from anything nor anyone. As far as I was concerned, me and Luna were just flying north. Somewhere there, before the tundra in the lush forests by the Crystal Mountains, we would live in secret and silence, so that my younger sister might still have a chance to live in the first place. It would be difficult getting there, miles upon miles of grueling road and treacherous skies, city after city of curious ponies and Erisian guards. I’d never asked for the life thrust at us, in my case by the wings on my back and in Luna’s case by the horn forming on her head. But regardless of what we were, I carried the obligation of survival for myself and my sister, and no voice in a dream was about to shift me into something more than I was. I pushed the Blind Bat's doors open and we once again entered the filthy inn. Thankfully, our spot by the fire had remained vacant after Luna had left it, but it had since been cleared and unskillfully wiped clean. We resumed sitting where it was warm  as we waited for the night to pass. Luna brought the dream up once again when we sat down, and I simply let her talk while giving off simple one word answers of my own. She was enthusiastic and excited about the prophetic dream, and while I did not like it, the thought of crushing her boisterous attitude was hardly a welcoming one. Her life was too hopeless for me to justify destroying the tiny glimmers that occasionally made it through the dark to make it look as though we were anything more than victims under Discord’s fearsome rule. So instead of stopping her, I let her speak and I simply listened. Her wild fantasies and predictions were sweet and innocent like those of a young filly should be, full of adventures and happy endings, as if Erisia was less a bleak dystopia and more akin to a fairy tale kingdom from the books I used to read to her back in Cyclosa. She was right in the middle of offering her interpretation of what heroic deeds we were expected to do, when the ringing of a bell perched above the inn door announced somepony’s entrance into the building. I peered over Luna’s shoulder to see who, and felt my blood curdle as I beheld the pegasus ponies striding purposefully up to the innkeeper.          “Luna,” I cut her off sharply, the word half hissed, half whispered. “Don’t look now, but two Erisian Guards just entered the tavern.” Instantly she fell silent and tensed in her chair, but did not turn around and instead looked to me with wide and terrified eyes. “What do we do?” she whispered, but I didn’t answer right away and she did not ask again. As inconspicuously as possible I watched them traverse the inn, some ponies turning to watch them but many choosing to mind their own business, for unlike us they had no trouble with Discord nor his guard. Like the guards in Cyclosa (and, all of Erisia I would later find out) they wore helmets with the same sharpened black horns like tree limbs. My worst fears were confirmed when the leftmost guard withdrew one of the posters of me and Luna and showed it to the innkeeper with a curious expression. “Shit,” I said as she looked at the picture, and then raised a hoof to point us out. For a split second our eyes locked, and I think the terrified, wide eyed look of horror given by Erisia’s two greatest alicorn foes caught even the guards by surprise. Whatever they had been told about us, I doubt any of it was true. I didn’t see their immediate reactions, however, because in a moment we had risen and bolted through the door from the warmth of the inn into the streets of Pillory. We instantly both broke into a canter simultaneously, turning wildly and randomly through alley after alley until we were nearly lost into the heart of the city’s slums. “H...how…” I panted angrily as we ran. “How in Tartarus do they know we’re here?!” Luna didn’t have an answer for me, but her huffed sigh lead me to believe she shared in my frustration. As quietly as we had been slipping from the inn and into the night, our saddlebags made quite the racket at our fastest speed, so once I deemed us far enough from the inn I slowed to a nervous walk. “Alright, so they’re looking for us. Let’s get on that airship and get out of this city right now.” I asserted firmly. “But it’s not leaving until morning.” Luna pointed out. “I don’t care. For ninety bits, they’d better be a little more accommodating anyways. I’ll steal their ship if I have to, but those guards can’t be far behind us, so we need to move fast.” In the stillness of night, Pillory’s back alleys were no more than wooden shacks, and the only sound was the rain falling and our own hooves as we ran. Only once did we have to hide in the shadows when the sound of pegasi wingbeats rung out overhead, and the guard flew by us without so much as noticing our presence. We made it to Pillory’s airship berths without incident. I motioned for Luna to lead ahead and look for the Damask Rose while I branched off and watched our surroundings for signs of life. Many of the ships had windows which were illuminated, and even in the dead of night the sound of maintenance machinery rung out every once in awhile in the distance. For the most part, though, the huge envelopes of the airships stood still like great black balloons overhead, eerily silent in the midnight rain. Suddenly, I heard voices, and crawled underneath a dirigible hovering several feet off the ground to watch. I saw torchlight and if I focused I could hear fragments of their conversation as they walked. “...from a dump like Cyclosa? It’s no wonder Discord didn’t see them coming.” “Silence, you fool! That’s the Lord of Chaos you’re talking about!” “So what? It’s not like he’s here to do anything.” “Look, let’s just find those fillies so we can go home, alright? I’m freezing out here.” "Did you see the look on the blue one's face?" A shiver of fury erupted down my spine as the guard chuckled. "They looked a little too cowardly to be the great threat they're supposed to be." "You'd be too, if the entire population of Erisia wanted you dead. Instead of just me." Their conversation continued as they moved further on into the maze of airships, their words quickly fading into the sound of the rain. I crawled out from underneath the dirigible and broke out into the fastest trot I could afford while still moving as silent as possible. A whispered hiss of my name rung out from behind me as I did, and whipping around I saw Luna crawl from underneath a pile of scrap metal and discarded materials. “Guards, sis. Two of them.” “I heard. But I found our ship, Tia.” “You did?” I felt like screaming with joy and hugging her, but I restrained myself and settled for a loving nuzzle instead. “Great work, Luna.” “Thanks. It’s over here, come on.” She led the way on the tip of her hooves, creeping as silently as possible between dirigibles and airships. The whole while I watched the dancing of the guard’s torchlight as they stalked the berths. Before long, she stopped in front of a boxy, hideous looking gondola, connected to a yellow balloon that was imploding in several places where tears in the fabric had been haphazardly sewn back together. It was a dirigible style airship, with the gondola bolted directly onto the balloon. In addition to the bridge and living quarters of the airship’s envelope, another shoddily constructed mass of wood hung below the sternmost half of the ship like a wooden parasite, perhaps a room added to the ship as an after thought.  I was almost disappointed to see the name Damask Rose painted across the hull of this piece of junk and scrap metal, but with the guards coming ever closer to our location, I had very little time to care. There were lights on in the cabin, so I grabbed a stone and threw it at the glass pane while praying the noise it made wasn’t loud enough that the guards heard. It hit, made a light tapping sound, and I heard shocked and then hushed whispers from within the ship. After one long, unbearable minute, a window cracked open and the earth pony stallion poked his head out to look at us. “Evening girls! You’re quite earl—” “Shh!” I hissed, doing my best to project my voice upwards at the hovering dirigible instead of across the berth to where the guards were. “Keep your voice down! Look, we need to leave Pillory now, alright?” If he looked reluctant, I didn’t see it in his apathetic expression. He nodded slowly, turned around to speak with his wife, and was gone for but a shadow of a moment before the gangplank of was dropped and only hardly stopped by me before it hit the ground with a loud thud. I struggled a little as a I grasped the heavy wooden plank and eased it down onto the dirt as slowly as possible. Quickly we both dashed up the board and into the gondola, shaking ourselves free of the water in our soaked manes. “Here’s a couple of towels for you girls,” Mrs. Rose said warmly, and me and Luna wordlessly lunged for them and began drying ourselves off. I discreetly motioned for Luna to keep on her hood, and I too kept my cloak safely concealing my wings. “We...I’m sorry...we really have to get out of Pillory,”  I began. “I’ll give you the rest of our bits as compensation, but I’m afraid the rest of our bits isn’t much.” “That won’t be necessary Miss Solana,” Mr. Rose called from the front of the gondola, which I turned to face for the first time and saw was covered from the plank floor to the low hanging roof in buttons and switches and various improvised bits of machinery undoubtedly designed with an initially different purpose. Nearly everything in the Damask Rose had been something else at one point, even the gondola itself was more than likely a small fishing boat in it’s past life. “We’re not cleared to take off until the morning,” Rose explained, idly tapping a hoof against the control panel while taking a sip of some steaming beverage in the other. “But you two are welcome to stay onboard until we do.” Well, it wasn’t exactly what I had wanted, but ultimately it would suffice. I couldn’t see the torchlight of the guards through the musty, wide window at the front of the gondola, but I knew they were out there. A ship departing early would raise suspicion immediately, and I doubt the Damask Rose was equipped to survive an assault from an Erisian scoutship if it escalated to that.   Still, they had seen us in the Blind Bat, which meant our presence in Pillory would be common knowledge amongst the guards by morning. Even if we had escaped, we had still been seen and so it mattered not. It was a distinct possibility that all ships would be stopped from leaving the next morning, perhaps even inspected by the guards like our home had been back in Cyclosa. My panicked thoughts were interrupted by a sudden question said loudly from behind. “Solana, dear? I asked, did you two want anything to eat?” Luna looked at me with eyes that told me she did, so I nodded. “That would be very much appreciated, Mrs. Rose.” She smiled and headed off towards the back of the gondola. The entire gondola was one room, with the control panel, wheel, and speed throttle which was divided into the familiar speeds from full ahead to full astern. Presently it was sitting comfortably at ‘stop’ and locked in place. If one pressed their snout to the glass, they could just barely see the twin propellers on opposite sides of the dirigible jutting out. Behind the control panel was the now raised gangplank rising against the wall, with a coat rack next to it. Directly in the middle of the ship was a ladder leading up into the balloon. Behind where we were standing was the living area of the ship, no more than a few cupboards and wardrobes half-heartedly organized close to one bed which I assumed the Rose’s shared. Two stained rococo-styled couches that may once have been expensive were bolted to the floor next to the ship’s lone stern window. Mrs. Rose was preparing what looked like soup over-top a simple wooden stove sitting just within the living quarters of the ship. Me and Luna was instantly enticed by the smell, but politely made our way to the couches to sit and wait in silence. I watched the rain streak down the window and tried to catch a glimpse of the guards, but I saw nothing. Luna was smiling ever so slightly, the way she did when she found somepony to be exceedingly kind or generous. The way I hadn’t seen for quite some time. It was a smile not necessarily expressive of joy, but more satisfaction. Satisfaction perhaps at the exposition that the world wasn’t as cruel as it looked on the exterior, and good existed without fail. With the wood-stove burning warmly and the scent of the soup wafting through the air, I couldn’t help but smile, too. I leaned forward and looked into Luna’s bright blue eyes.          “We’re almost out of this.” I said for the second time that night. “Tia...what do you really think those dreams meant?” “I don’t know, sis, and that’s the truth. Sometimes dreams are just dreams.” “They said we were different,” Luna recalled, apparently not hearing me. “But, they said it in a good way. Not like the guards or, like…” She stopped herself before she said the two names on her mind, but I knew exactly what she was going to say anyways and nodded. “We don’t need them, Selena," I said. I doubt the Roses could have heard us, but I wasn't taking chances. "We’ve got each other. We’ve left Cyclosa behind.” Mrs. Rose arrived with two steaming bowls of soup and me and Luna took them gratefully and both muttered our thanks, before digging into the delicious meal without any further hesitation. It was a mushroom soup, perhaps not the greatest in the world but to two near-starved fillies it could have been our last meal and we would have been satisfied. Luna finished before me and politely asked Mrs. Rose for more, and the pink earth pony gladly complied and returned our bowls once again filled to the brim with soup. "So, what exactly are two young fillies like yourselves doing all by yourselves, if you don't mind my prying?" she asked, instead of immediately leaving. It didn't sound as though she had asked it with any ulterior motives in mind, she simply sounded genuinely curious, so I held back any cold, biting reply or assertion that it was no business of hers. "Ah, well, it's probably pretty obvious, but we're sisters," I said between sips of my soup. Most untruthful tales are easier to spin with the threads of truth. "Orphans, actually. I just turned eighteen, and they were quick to show me the door, but I didn't want to leave my little sister all by herself. So she ran away to travel with me, and we decided we would high-tail it from this dump." She nodded at my story. I was actually somewhat impressed how truthful it really was. We practically could have been orphans and the circumstances of our upbringing would most likely fail to shift in the slightest, and it wasn't a lie that I was being forcefully exiled from my home nor that Luna had chosen to run away with me. In fact, all I had truly done was recount our circumstances without any mention of the fact that we were both alicorns and presently refuges being pursued by every guard under Discord's rule. "So, where did you two have in mind to "high tail it" to?" she asked. This wasn't a detail I was going to share. If they turned out to be untrustworthy, then my destination would be a secret worth keeping. "Nowhere, really. I was aiming to just...travel. Maybe find work with an airshipping convoy. I have a little experience with repairing airships, I was kinda hoping it would come in handy." I'd seen such ponies in the scrapyards before. I'd even seen one young filly who had been traveling with her mother. I remembered vividly the several seconds when I had locked eyes with this young mare of about Luna's age, looking at me—a pathetic, soot stained white unicorn standing in the middle of a mountain of jagged scrap and garbage—with what almost seemed like pity. And I had looked back at her and felt an emotion that quite matched it, for she had the whole world below her and I had poverty and ever-hanging smog in the air I breathed. "Well, good luck, Solana," Mrs. Rose said earnestly, pulling my thoughts back to the present. "I'll go get you mares some water to drink." She returned in a moment with the clear liquid. It was easily the cleanest water I had ever seen. She gave us two tall glasses, but before I could even lift mine to drink it a strange sensation of vertigo came and left. Shaking my head clear, I experimented with my magic and tried my best to move the glass towards me. I managed to lift it off the ground and to my lips, but it came at the cost of a great multitude of lost water. Luna giggled at my theatrics but said nothing. She herself had drained her glass the moment she had received it. I'd never tasted water as pure as what we drank then, but even as I gratefully chugged back the clear liquid something about its taste felt odd. It tasted not dissimilar to the mead I'd had earlier, but much, much richer. In a moment my head was throbbing further, the vertigo sensation back in full force. My muscles felt stiff, my eyelids unnaturally heavy. I let out a wide, involuntary yawn and nearly collapsed into unconsciousness right then and there. My yawn was so loud that it seemed even the Rose couple heard from the bow of the ship. “Clear the moorings, honey,” Mr. Rose said, and as if in a trance I watched him unlock the speed column and gently ease it slightly towards the front glass. Outside the propellers sputtered to life. Too unnaturally calm to be panicked, I groggily turned to Luna, only to see that she had lost consciousness and was laying half on the floor and half on the couch. In mere moments, I too was closing my eyes even as I fought to stay awake. The last sight I saw before I lost consciousness was the pathetic outlines of the buildings of Pillory descending into the earth as the Damask Rose dropped ballast and ascended into the sky.