The fingers of the fire flickered into the air, reaching for the night sky as their heat warmed the weary body of the samurai that sat before its light. While the samurai rested by the fire, he ran a whetstone across his blade to keep its magical edge sharpened. The smell of a small rabbit roasting over the flames caused his stomach to rumble, yet he ignored the food to focus on his closest ally.
Yet, as he glanced down at the sword and then to the rock that he was holding with his hoof, he found himself unable to contain the smile that spread across his face. 'Despite not having been here long, I already feel closer than I ever have before,' Jack smiled as he looked at the roasted rabbit with hungry eyes. 'And with no Aku here to pester my every step, I find myself...smiling more.'
Jack then reached out for the rabbit and grabbed hold of the stick that it was on, taking a moment to thank it for its sacrifice before he began to eat. After a few bites he looked up at the stars in all their glory, able to see every one of them with no difficulty. 'I must wonder...is this what my world would have become without Aku? A place of peace, instead of where the stars are too obstructed by the lights of man?'
He cast those thoughts aside while he focused on his food, making sure to savor every bite as he ate. Yet the samurai's peace was shattered when he heard a sound moving in the bushes beyond the ring of trees that surrounded him, putting Jack instantly on alert as he reached down for his sword. With narrowed eyes and sharp ears he awaited for the source of the disturbance to reveal itself, every fiber of his being ready for a fight.
He felt his guard slightly lower when an old mare covered in rags hobbled out of the forest, wrinkles covering her face as she blinked twice because the bright light from the fire struck her. Jack lowered his blade slightly at her appearance, yet he kept a grip on his sword just to be safe. He had been fooled by appearances before.
"Greetings. It is very late in the night to be walking around the woods," Jack pointed out, keeping a wary eye on the old mare who looked afraid to approach him. He noticed that she was keeping her own eye on his sword, so Jack sheathed it and motioned for the pony to sit across from him. "You must be tired from being out so late. Please, sit with me and rest for a while."
"Oh...thank you," she said in an old voice while she hobbled over to Jack, who slightly recoiled when he saw that her face was hideous. Yet he quickly masked his disgust and moved a small bowl beside him to the mare, who glanced inside to see some carrots within. "Oh...I couldn't."
"Please, you must be hungry and I have more than enough," Jack insisted, the mare nodding before she took one of the carrots and ate it. Jack sat up straight, expecting the mare to start talking at any moment, yet for over an hour she remained quiet. During that time, Jack had felt himself nodding off at times, yet before he could completely fall asleep he would be awakened by what sounded like shouting in the woods, and his eyes would snap open again.
Upon hearing it for a third time, he glanced into the darkness of the trees, barely able to make out a faint light in the distance. Yet as the light did not get any closer, he felt no need to chase after it. What did draw his full attention was that every time there was shouting, the mare would glance in the direction with fear upon her face.
"Is something bothering you?" Jack eventually asked, getting the old mare to start when she glanced over at Jack with fearful eyes. "Do not worry, nothing will hurt you here. You have my word."
"You are kind," the mare responded with a sigh while she rested her head on the ground, yet her eyes remained on Jack and the weird way he was sitting. Jack did not push any further into what was bothering the mare, instead finishing his food before he went back to sharpening his sword. For another hour the two remained like this, before the mare finally had to courage to ask Jack a question.
"You see me as ugly, don't you?" she asked Jack point blank, who looked up from sharpening his sword to see that the mare was staring at him with knowing eyes.
"I will admit that your...features did catch me off guard, but no, I do not see you as ugly," Jack disagreed, getting a small look of confusion out of the mare. "I no longer judge those whom I come across by their features. Instead I try to discover the person, or pony, that they are before I decide if they are ugly or beautiful."
"So then...what do you think of me?" the mare asked Jack, who placed his sword down beside him as he gave the mare his full attention.
"I do not know enough about you. All I know is that something is concerning you...and that you lack the mark that the other ponies have." The mare's eyes widened in shock before she glanced down at her blank flank, a small chuckle slipping past her lips while she looked back at the samurai.
"I could say the same for you warrior. You too have the air of a troubled being and you are missing your cutie mark as well," she pointed out in return.
"You are correct about me. I am troubled. And I am looking for magic, a wish...something that will help me to finally be freed of that trouble," Jack admitted before moving his kimono slightly to look at his own blank flank. "But I must thank you for informing me of what those strange symbols were called. They are cutie marks, if what you say is true."
"A pony that doesn't know what a cutie mark is? I'm surprised," the mare muttered.
"There are many strange things in this land that I know little of. Would you mind explaining to me what these marks are and why every pony besides us has them?" Jack asked.
"A cutie mark is what a pony gets when it discovers its special talent or its destiny," the mare began, getting a confused head tilt from Jack and forcing her to further clarify. "The marks you see, such as a guitar, show what that pony is good at. If a pony is good at baseball, then most likely their mark will have to do with baseball. It's a way for them to know for certain what their future is."
"Yet the future is not absolute," Jack retorted with a cold defiance in his voice, something that the mare picked up on almost immediately. Then the samurai remembered what the mage had told him about fitting in, so with a sigh he pushed those feelings away. "How does one go about acquiring a cutie mark? Do I have to complete a task or...?"
"A cutie mark is not something that you can make appear. It only comes to you when you discover what you are good at, what you enjoy and what you would be alright with spending the rest of your life doing," the mare said with a sigh as she stared up at the stars. "At least, that's what I've been told."
"Then, I am confused as to why I do not have my mark. I am an expert warrior trained in many fields who has fought great evils and saved many lives. Wouldn't my mark have something to do with my skills there?" Jack asked the pony, who could only shake her head in response.
"Maybe, but what you must ask yourself is, "Is this me? Does this mark represent the core of who I am"?" The mare then looked at Jack with eyes that did not match what she had said a moment before, slightly worrying the samurai. "Are you the warrior who fights great evils and saves lives? Is that who you are? Or did somepony else make you that; did occurrences force you to become that pony? Who is the pony under the kimono?"
Jack opened his mouth to cast away any doubts about who he was, that he knew the person that he was. But then something flickered in the back of his mind, a thought that he had not allowed himself to think while he was battling with Aku. What would he have been like had Aku not stolen his home from him? Would he still be the wandering samurai who fought evil at every turn? Or would he be different? Would he be some one else?
"It seems that this is a question that you yourself do not know the answer to," the mare said with a sad sigh as Jack's face answered for him. "And until you can learn who you truly are, your flank will be as blank as mine."
"Perhaps I do not know the 'me' that could have been, but I know the 'me' I am now and I am content with that person," Jack said a moment later with acceptance in his voice, getting the mare to nod her head with interest. "But now I must ask you a similar question. Why do you not have the mark upon your side?"
Jack felt tension fill the air when he asked this question, completely aware that the old mare's demeanor had just changed and she now gazed at Jack with uncertain eyes. "I mean you no offense. If you do not wish to tell me, then I shall be content with your silence. I am simply curious.",
The mare stared at Jack with suspicious eyes for a moment longer before she let out a sigh and glanced up at the stars, almost like she was surrendering her fate to them. "I am a blank flank, because I forgot to add a mark to myself when I escaped from the town not to far from here."
Jack's eyes widened in surprise at this sudden revelation of information, yet before his very eyes the mare slowly began to change. The wrinkles faded away and were replaced with black armor, and eyes that seemed far older than Jack were replaced with blue, pupiless eyes. Jack couldn't hide his shock as the once old mare slowly changed into something that looked like a large insect with hooves and silverfish hair, who gazed over at Jack a moment later with scared eyes.
"You are a shape shifter," Jack spat out without thinking, getting a nod from the insect.
"The correct term for one like me is a Changeling, but yes, I am a shape shifter," she admitted to Jack. "And the reason I am out here, is because the village where I have spent the past fifty years of my life, discovered that I am a Changeling. And so they cast me out."
"How could they do that? To have known you for so long only to-"
"The 'me' they knew was a lie, a face I put on in order to blend in...in order to be accepted as one of them," the Changeling cut Jack off with scorn in her voice, as well as pain. "Despite being accepted as one of them for so long, the moment they found out the truth of what I really was...they turned against me."
Unbeknownst to the Changeling, Jack's heart slowly began to fall as she told him her story--the story of a being disguised as a pony that was once accepted, but then turned on by those once called friends. And as Jack looked down at his own hoof, the cold realization that his story was similar to hers dawned on him. He then forced himself to glance back up at the Changeling, who was giving Jack the same blank expression.
"Why reveal this to me? Why show me your true form when you had me fooled?" Jack asked the changeling.
"Because I am tired of running, both from the ponies that chase me and from whom I really am. I only planned to stay here until I had recovered my strength, but after hearing you talk, I felt...like you knew my pain," the Changeling dared to say with hints of hope in her voice. "So if you wish to turn me in, I will not stop you."
"No. You have done nothing wrong aside from not being true to yourself," Jack decided within seconds, smiling when he saw disbelief in the Changeling's eyes. "And I will not condemn you because you wished to be happy. I...have done many things in the pursuit of my own dreams, some of which I am not proud."
"And you are right in another regard. I do know how you feel," Jack nodded before looking around to make sure that there was no one else listening. "Because I am not a pony either. I come from a land far different than this one."
"Then why-?"
"Because to achieve my dream, my wish, I must learn what it means to be a pony. Only then will the magic that I seek be able to return me to my true home." Jack and the Changeling then both turned their heads when they heard the sounds of yelling and screaming coming their way, accompanied by dozens of torches that burned like the sun in the darkness of the night. Jack and the Changeling both rose to their hooves before glancing at each other, Jack bowing to the Changeling to say farewell.
A moment later hundreds of ponies burst from the trees and into the clearing, yet to their disappointment, they found a fire that had recently been extinguished and the bones of a small mammal that had been eaten. Yet despite their numbers, none of the ponies found either of the beings pretending to be ponies, that had vanished into the night.