//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5, Abandoned 
// Story: The Chronicles of Summer Rain, Vol. 12 -- Sweep of Time 
// by shysage 
//------------------------------//

It felt like a long, cold winter.  And that tune simmering in the background never left(1)...  I guess jails are not intended to be easy.  But it really did feel like we were being forgotten.  As little as they fed us, Shysage was sure we were starving or near that.  He usually let me eat everything.  He insisted he had plenty stored up, and that not eating enough would affect me first.  I think he really was just putting me first.  We both do that a lot.  Well, I am rather slight, I think is the word.  I ate everything he said I could, which was usually everything.  It still didn't seem like enough.  Getting warm was a challenge too.  Shysage usually kept me warm, but only by shivering himself.  But, I think, in our minds, we were slipping...  We couldn't go anywhere, we couldn't do anything...  We usually just cried a lot together.  I guess we just didn't know what else to do.  It was like maybe we weren't supposed to do anything else... just lay here and cry...

After a month maybe, we thought about writing a letter to Cel... er Princess Celestia, or even writing a letter to our own daughter Ariel.  We surely didn't even know what we were to recant in the Chronicles.  Maybe we were supposed to recant absolutely everything.  Maybe they were already doing that for us, I don't know.  Still, we decided to approach the guard who brought us our next 'rations' (Shysage's word).  This seemed to happen once a week, if we were lucky.  Well, the guard yelled at us when I even tried to say anything, and he quickly slammed the door shut, and galloped off at that.  Based on the complete absense of any other sound down here, I think we were the only prisoners in this jail block of forgetting...

Spring finally came.  This brought a few changes for Shysage and I.  They weren't much, but they were huge for us.  It didn't get as cold at night, and we could actually count on maybe an hour of direct sunlight, which felt absolutely amazing.  With no other changes (nothing else did change), Shysage and I actually began to feel better, well inside.  I was with my Stallion.  And, since we weren't spending all our time together huddled in a dark corner, trying to survive what Shysage called sub-zero temperatures...  And it wasn't always drab and dim in our jail cell even at noon...  Of course, I had to wonder if Princess Celestia had the Weather Works in Cloudsdale turned off for the winter, just on our account, just to make our lives...  Never mind...  Well, something was going on, we just didn't know what it was, and we evidently weren't supposed to know...

The first truly warm night, the first night it was not freezing cold, it was a beautiful full moon on a cloudless night.  I had been watching the moon, quietly, just hoping...  It had been months for me...  But it wasn't Shysage's fault, or mine either.  We both felt so beat up emotionally...  The way Cel had treated us, well it hurt monstrously...  Then being forgotten down here...  And some days it was too cold to even move...  Well, I don't know how, but we had survived that, together.  I treasure feeling like a princess, but only because I treasure Shysage giving that to me.  I was convinced he would when he could, when he could bring himself to give me that.  Still, that particular night, we slept in our corner, on our bellies, right next to each other.  I was next to the wall, and Shysage was right next to me, on my other side.  Through this nightmare, freezing winter, at least that hadn't changed.  Shysage was always at my side.

And I had to fight back tears...  Throughout our time here as real prisoners, Shysage had never even so much as snapped at me...  This was tough, horrible for both of us, but the last three months maybe; well he protected me, he cherished me, he loved me, absolutely every second of our time here.  Even in jail, Shysage was a true friend... my Stallion...

I awoke later to a breeze; Shysage was not right next to me any more.  It was probably the middle of the night.  I saw Shysage right away; he was sitting in the middle of the light of the full moon, as it bathed the floor of this jail cell.  Well, it bathed the small amount that came past the bars in the tiny window...  Shysage was sitting there, facing that small window, motionless.  His head was slightly up, and his eyes were closed.  I got up and walked slowly over and sat down right next to him, then leaned up against him.  I only then noticed that tears slowly fell from his eyes, then dropped to the floor.  I guess he had been sitting here a while.  

I thought at first that he was just sad that he could not take care of me, that he still couldn't bring himself to make me feel like his princess.  Like I said, it had been a while.  Even for the two weeks I was a lost blue pony in the Past, for Shysage to not be able to give me that, well it crushed him.

For a while, we just sat there, in the moonlight, motionless.  Well, we are both Fluttershys; I soon felt what he was, and I was quickly weeping softly too.

Abandoned...

After a while, the moon slowly shifted, and we lost our direct moonlight.  Shysage had not moved at all since I came over and sat next to him.  When we lost our moonlight, Shysage said quietly "Mare, we are done here..."  He paused briefly.  Honestly, I was not really sure what he had in mind. Shysage continued.  "Summer, we have both had enough.  This treatment is byzantine... unconscionable..."  I didn't know what this all meant, but it sounded bad.

And I didn't say anything back.  All along, we knew that, as the Phantom Alicorn, I could easily knock this back wall across the commons lawn, if it faced that direction (which it didn't).  Shysage and I, we are law abiding citizens, and we definitely respect Equestria's leadership.  We stayed in here, for maybe three terrible months, simply because we are both committed to Equestria's leadership, to Cel and Lu.  But something was wrong.  Something had changed.  And we weren't even being told what we had done wrong.  We weren't being told anything.  We couldn't even say anything, to anypony.  I think Shysage concluded we needed to at least try to see what could be done.  And we were getting nowhere, withering away, dying here in this jail cell.  Well, and honestly, I think Shysage realized his Mare had suffered enough in here, that was probably a big part of it.  I love Shysage so much...

Shysage turned into a people and stood up and faced me.  He still had his nice, new Equestria Girls clothes on, and he looked so handsome.  He held out his hand.  Of course, I changed into a people too, took his hand, and looked deep into his eyes.  We hugged tightly a few minutes.  Shysage eased me back.  "I love my Phantom Alicorn" he said gently, quietly. 

I didn't need any more coaxing, and quickly spun up my Cutie Mark.  I asked quickly "Do you know what is outside our window?"

Of course, he knew.  "20 foot drop to a short grassy field, then the rising side of the mountain..."

I thought a minute then asked  "Glide, then fly?"

He had thought this through too.  "If we aren't too out of shape, that should work, otherwise we will need to land first.  I suspect we should then fly straight up, very high, before going anywhere though."

I held my right arm straight and forward, held my hands and fingers straight up, and easily shoved maybe half of the wall on the back of our jail cell (including the part with the window) out, and it fell quietly into the grass below.  That horrible tune in the background, that had dogged us constantly for three miserable months, it stopped abruptly when the wall fell, and it was quiet.  And our moonlight was back.  Then I unspun my Cutie Mark, and changed back into my pony body.  Shysage was quickly a pony too.  As much noise as my Phantom Alicorn made, I guess we really were forgotten.  Shysage guessed it would be days before they even knew we were gone.  It was like they just didn't care.

Flying came back quickly for me, but Shysage had difficulty at first.  He really had been giving me most of our rations after all.  Once he took off, I let him set the pace.  Still we were soon climbing higher and higher at a nice rate.  I could see Cloudsdale off in the distance, glistening in the moonlight; we went higher than that by a good margin, then we curved around, away from Canterlot over the back of the stepped mountain behind it.  We were soon on our way, away from Equestria's capitol city... as fugatives...  We both knew the way easily, and we skirted the only city in our path (Ponyville...) by a huge amount.  It really was a nice warm night, and the air was so still...  Flying felt amazing to both of us, I'm sure.  We stopped at a small lake in the middle of nowhere, and drank a lot and ate a lot too.  I think we were both really hungry.  We rubbed noses briefly, and that felt amazing too.  Then we were back in the air.

I thought about asking Shysage where we were going.  I didn't bother; we both knew.  There was only one place we would, could go right now.

Our sanctuary...