Even when fraught with worries and hounded by strife, one can always take comfort in a warm fire and the company of those with generous hearts—or so Lyra’s mother had always told her.
But the mountain pass she found herself in was filled with howling gales, willing to snuff out any such fire or warmth. Though autumn had just begun, the reaches of the trail she travelled took her near the very peak of the mountains. It was the harshest, but most direct route through the pass.
As for the company of those with generous hearts, she was alone. Although she had once enjoyed the company of a mare who meant more to her than convention could describe, a pony whose plain smile and simple laugh were more than enough to make her forget the worst of problems, and it was this pony who she sought to reunite with.
Ponyville lay a long way off, but it would be a short journey to see her again.
For now, she travelled the mountain path, cloak and hood covering her, and thought of song as she muttered lyrics:
I set my traps and lay in wait,
The sly white fox took no bait,
He left his prints upon the snow,
A powder trail of where to go,
I grabbed my—
A low rumbling came from someplace in the mountains ahead. She cut short her song and froze, listening, until a moment later when the rumbling stopped. There was a faint, almost indiscernible sound which followed the tail end of it: a sound like somepony shouting. If it indeed really was, Lyra couldn’t make out any words.
It was only once. Then a silence followed.
Resuming her hike, she travelled up the road for nearly half an hour before she reached a proper vantage point from which she could see the rest of the mountains—a cliff that the trail passed along.
Lyra walked to the edge of the cliff and gazed out at the valley.
A gibbous moon hung above with not a cloud in its sky. Below it lay silver mountain peaks and a small woods nested in the cradle of the valley. The trees of the woods were barren of greenery, and through the gaps of their spindly branches Lyra could see an unnatural void of darkness hiding the forest floor, the dark having no doubt gathered in the shade of the mountains. There it twisted and turned, writhing under the brightness of the moonlight.
Around the mountain bend and further down the path, she spotted the site of what looked to be a rockslide. Beside it sat a pale-colored pony who was staring at the devastation the rockslide had caused to the path. It didn’t look like they had noticed Lyra yet.
Lyra leaned over the cliff, looking up and down the side of the mountain to see if anypony else was nearby—and possibly watching her. Once she was satisfied she and the other pony were alone, she sat on her haunches, cupped her hooves to her mouth, and called out to the stranger.
“Hey!”
The pony’s head raised and they glanced around, looking for the source of the voice.
Lyra called out once more. “Hey! I’m over here!”
The other pony spotted her. Turning around, the stranger faced the way back up the path.
“Who are you?” they shouted back in a feminine voice.
“A traveller!” Lyra shouted. “Just passing through!”
“How do I know you’re alone?”
Lyra paused. She looked around herself, thinking. Eventually, she sighed. “You don’t! But I really am alone!”
The other pony didn’t respond or move, merely staring at Lyra for several seconds. But after those seconds, she glanced behind herself at the rockslide, and called out, “Okay!”
“Do you want to come to me, or should I come down to you?” Lyra shouted.
The mare waited for a few moments before answering. “You slowly come down to me!”
Lyra stood and tugged the edges of her cloak out from under her saddlebags. The other mare looked like an earth pony, but she couldn’t be sure, and she would have to be ready to run if this all turned out to be a trap. Life in these lands was hard. Desperation has a way of bringing out the worst in somepony.
She did her best not to let her apprehension show and to maintain a slow-but-steady pace down the path towards the other mare. Even with the possibility of it being a trap, she could not leave a stranger. After all, she had said the words and sworn the oath.
As Lyra drew near the other pony, she saw that stranger was in fact an earth pony. Her coat was a pale yellow green, and the curls of her mane a silver shade of purple. Her stance seemed to be favoring one side, and on the other side, her front hoof was scraped and lightly bleeding.
“That’s close enough!” the mare shouted. She eyed Lyra from head to hoof. “Who are you?”
Lyra placed a hoof across her chest and bowed. “The title given to me was Lyra of Lyre. But you can just call me Lyra if you’d prefer.”
“Of Lyre? A Bardspony?” the mare asked.
Lyra nodded. She eyed the other mare’s injury. “My master taught how to treat a wound, if you wouldn’t mind me helping.”
The mare shot a panicked look down at her hoof, then hid it behind her good leg and took a step back. “Why are you in these mountains? Where is your sign?”
Lyra looked down at the copper pin on the front of her cloak and gestured to it with a hoof. It was a rather modest design: a simple lyre set on a circular rim.
“H-how do I know you didn’t take that from its owner?”
Shrugging her shoulders, Lyra smiled in a disarming manner and responded humorously, “I could show you one of three ways: by singing you a ballad of woeful tragedy and passion, by telling you a tale of great cunning and heroism… or by taking a look at your hoof and dressing your wound.”
The other mare stiffened. Then she brought out her injured hoof, looked at it, and let out a sigh.
“I suppose if you noticed that and still haven’t tried anything, you aren’t out to rob me.”
Lyra raised an eyebrow. The other mare wore a cloak, but besides that didn’t seem to have anything with her. “Even if that were the case, it doesn’t look like there would be much to rob.”
“My husband, Briar, had my saddlebags with him when this part of the mountain collapsed,” the mare said, ears drooping as she gave the pile of rubble behind her a sidelong glance. “He threw me out of the way and then I watched as a river of stones carried him down the mountain, until I could no longer see where they took him.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just realized I hadn’t given you my name. I’m Thistle.”
Lyra smiled. “I’m Lyra,” she said, taking her saddlebag off and then rummaging through it. “Once again. Just in case you forgot or maybe hit your head during the accident.”
“I don’t believe I did,” Thistle said, tilting her head and giving Lyra an odd look.
“Ah, nevermind. That was just a bad joke. My friend always told me I have a poor sense of humor. She’s the reason why I’m here in these mountains.” Lyra had found what she needed: an herbal oil and some cloth. “You asked earlier and I didn’t reply, but I’m passing through to meet her on the other side.”
“I see…”
“So is it alright if I take a look at your hoof?”
Thistle gave a hesitant nod.
Lyra approached slowly with the oil and bandage so as not to spook her, leaving her saddlebags on the ground where she had taken them off. She came face to face with Thistle, took a seat, and gestured. “Your hoof?”
Thistle offered it to her, wincing when Lyra lifted it slightly for better inspection.
Lyra looked at the mix of blood, dust, and dirt covering her hoof, then met Thistle’s eyes.
“This might be a bit weird, but…” Lyra said. Without further warning, she licked Thistle’s wounded hoof. Twice in one quick motion. She dragged her tongue along the blood, dust, and dirt and then spat them on the ground.
Thistle shifted on her hooves, blushing.
“Sorry,” Lyra said. “I needed to clean it and I didn’t want to use my drinking water.”
“I understand,” Thistle replied, but continued to blush.
Carefully holding Thistle’s hoof horizontal and still, Lyra began placing drops of the herbal oil in the places where blood still showed. Once that was done, she took the cloth she had and wrapped the wounded hoof.
Thistle winced as Lyra tightened off the wrapping. Once it was done, she took her hoof back and viewed the dressing.
Lyra gathered her saddlebags and put them on. “We should probably start backtracking. I saw a path leading down into the forest not too far back.” She turned to Thistle. “Let’s just go at a slow pace while you keep your hoof up off the ground, alright? It should be reasonably healed in a couple hours, but if we encounter any trouble, you might wind up having to use it before then.”
Thistle nodded, and the two of them began their hike back along the trail.
Lyra sat around a table with Bon Bon at the Smiling Horseshoe Inn. The mugs of cider before them were the second round of that night, and both of them were coming up on empty as an entertainer took the inn’s stage.
She was an ash-coat mare, maybe Lyra’s age, maybe older, and she carried a gigantic oddly shaped case with her to the space that had been cleared on one side of the inn’s floor.
“What on earth could be in that thing?” Bon Bon asked, rosy-cheeked off the cider.
Lyra grinned. “Maybe she’s keeping another smaller pony inside it.”
“It looks like an instrument.”
“Or maybe she’s keeping her juggling materials in it,” Lyra chimed in.
Bon Bon continued, ignoring her. “But I’ve never in my life seen an instrument that shape or size.”
Lyra chuckled in anticipation of speaking. “Or it could be a case full of swords and she’s a sword-swallower!”
Bon Bon snorted and shook her head, smiling. “I’ll never understand where you get these ideas from.”
The ash-coat mare placed the giant case on the ground. That was when Lyra for the first time noticed a pin amid the mare’s black mane. The pin had a round frame and was made of copper.
Lyra blinked. “A bard?” she muttered under her breath, causing Bon Bon to look at her.
“Hm? What did you say?” Bon Bon asked.
The ash-coat mare finally reached down and opened the case. From it, she brought out a massive stringed instrument made of wood, taller from base to head than even herself raised on her hind legs.
“Wow,” Bon Bon said, “how does she carry that thing around?”
Lyra watched, transfixed, as the mare picked up what looked like a much larger version of a violin’s bow and held it against the instrument’s strings. The normally rowdy inn fell to a silence. Everypony had turned to the still mare and her instrument, as if commanded by a spell.
Then, with all eyes resting on her, the ash-coat mare started to play.
Lyra and Thistle had made their way back around the winding mountain pass at a slow pace and had taken a trail leading down into the forest nested between the mountains. The lower they went, the more the grass and dirt filled in the sides of the path.
A shriek pierced the air.
Thistle’s ears flicked about, and she looked in the direction from where the sound came. A frown creased her lips.
“What was that? Do you know what made that sound?”
“It sounded like a bird,” Lyra answered. “Maybe an owl, but that’s just a guess.” She tried to offer Thistle a smile. “It’s unnerving when everything is silent and then suddenly it’s not.”
Thistle gave a nod, but the poor mare still seemed to be glancing every which direction in a worried way.
Lyra shifted a step closer, walking right alongside her. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Close your eyes, right now, and take a deep breath.”
Thistle looked at her, then did as she said, and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.
“Good, and let it out.”
She let it out.
Lyra smiled at her. “Now, instead of worrying about what might or might not have happened, start thinking about what we’re going to do. In situations like this you want to think carefully, impartially, and quickly.”
Thistle’s lips tightened to form a thin line as she nodded. “I’ll try.”
“Trying is enough,” Lyra said. “Now where do you think he’s most likely to be?”
“Near the base of the mountain where the rockslide happened.”
Lyra dipped her head slowly. “Riiight, but that would only be if he got either stuck or badly injured. What if he’s not injured? Or what if he’s injured but not completely immobile?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m asking you because I don’t exactly know him. After noise from a rockslide like that, it would attract darkened animals and ponies if there are any nearby. Do you think he’d realize this? Can you think of where he would go?”
“He…” Thistle began to say, but paused and thought a moment. “If I were to guess, he would wait for me to come find him, since I would no doubt come looking. If he left we might just miss each other completely. However, if he can move, I think he would try to find someplace safe nearby the rockslide so he could spot me while I search for him.”
“Given that we’re near mountains, there’s a good chance that might be a cave or a high cliff,” Lyra added. “Of course, he might be trapped, injured, or unconscious, in which case he’ll be wherever the rockslide left him. Still, it’s good to have a plan B.”
Thistle smiled, letting out a sigh.
“It puts your mind at ease a bit when you have a proper plan, huh?” Lyra asked with a grin.
“Really it does,” Thistle said. “Did the master you studied under teach you how to approach things in such a way?”
Lyra smirked and snorted. “She was a real jerk, but I guess you could say that.”
The ash-coat mare was in the process of putting away her massive violin instrument, when Lyra finally approached her. She had played until closing, and Lyra had waited.
Bon Bon had waited as well, until the cycle grew late, but eventually she had to excuse herself and go home before she fell asleep on one of the inn tables.
So Lyra finally stood before the mare alone, her eyes bright and wide despite the lateness of the hour.
“That was amazing!” Lyra exclaimed, a broad smile stretching from cheek to cheek. “The way you rocked back and forth with each stroke of your… your instrument, um…”
“Cello,” the mare said, carefully laying the instrument down into its padded case.
“I’ve never seen or heard anything like it,” Lyra said, still gushing. “It fills the air with such deep resounding notes.”
The ash-coat mare nodded stiffly.
Lyra felt her smile falter slightly. “Sooo…”
A slot lay beside the Cello in the case, where the ash-coat mare laid the instrument’s bow, her eyes never once looking up at Lyra.
“My name is Lyra Heartstrings. Over the past two years I’ve taught myself how to play the lyre, and I want to keep getting better.” Taking a seat on the floor of the inn, she placed her hooves together in a pleading gesture. “Could you please teach me and take me on as your student? I know this seems sudden and brash, but I’ve been looking to learn from somepony like you for a while now. I know all about the bards, and I want to train in order to become one.”
For the first time, the ash-coat mare looked up at her.
“No,” she answered.
Lyra winced at the bluntness of her reply, but it wasn’t as though she hadn’t expected it. “Well, what would I have to do to make you say yes?”
The ash-coat mare’s brow furrowed as she closed and latched the lid of her case. “First you’d ask me what is my name.”
“Oh, right. What is—”
“Octavia,” the mare answered briskly, then continued on. “Second you would tell me why you want to become a bard.”
“Um, that’s…” Lyra blushed, knowing what she planned to say next would sound childish. “There’s somepony I care a lot about, and when I play music it always cheers her up. I want to see her smile, and I also know about everything else bards learn and I want to protect her as well as help others.”
“Why?” Octavia asked.
“Because I was alone,” Lyra answered after a brief hesitation. “And terrified. And no one helped me until she did, so I need her.”
Octavia shook her head. “Naive. Vain. In some ways selfish.”
Lyra looked down at the floor, her legs shaking. The other mare’s words carried such a severe authority to them. Even though the ash-coat mare barely looked any older than her, she felt like a kid being scolded.
“But most reasons are,” Octavia added, after a moment.
Lyra’s legs stopped shaking, and she looked, eyes wide. For the first time she realized the inn had become deserted. Not even the owners were around to be seen.
“Third,” Octavia continued, ignoring Lyra’s reaction. “I’m sworn by my oath to pass on the teachings of my master to a fitful student. However, I really couldn’t care less to. Therefore I’m going to simply say you lack resolve. Tomorrow when I leave, I’ll be allowed to carry on as I have.”
“Please take me on as a disciple! I swear I’ll do whatever you ask, whether it’s to stay quiet or work—anything—if you agree to actually teach me.”
“I can’t see your resolve from your words, so you’ll have to show me.” Octavia left her case and stood, turning to face Lyra properly for the first time since their conversation began. “Every time you ask me to teach you, I will strike you. If you wish to show me your resolve, simply don’t stop asking.”
“What?” Lyra asked. For a moment she reconsidered, wondering if the mare was actually insane.
But to some extent so was she for having asked any of this in the first place. There was no other bard to teach her.
“Teach me!” Lyra said, and immediately received a sharp blow across her cheek. She stumbled and fell to the side, forced onto her forward right knee.
She sat there for a moment, reeling from the blow. Her cheek had immediately gone fuzzy and numb, and when she swallowed she tasted blood. It suddenly made her think about how the mare had come into the inn carrying the ridiculously oversized instrument on her back.
Now Lyra had felt firsthoof how heavy that instrument truly was.
Once she had again managed to stand, she coughed, cleared her throat, and raised her voice. “Please teach me!”
The next strike Octavia dealt sent her to the floor.
They followed the cliffs which contained the forest—her and Thistle—searching their way back to where the rockslide had happened. Lyra paused, and so too did Thistle, as Lyra fished a waterskin out of her bag to take a drink. Upon having it, she offered the waterskin to Thistle.
Thistle took it and fidgeted with the threads near its spout.
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share more with me about this mare you’re planning to meet,” she said, before taking a drink.
“Wouldn’t mind to at all,” Lyra replied, and took the waterskin back once Thistle finished drinking and passed it back to her. “What are you curious about?”
“I was just wondering how well you two know each other and how long you’ve been apart.”
“Well, we weren’t finishing each other’s sentences, but she’s my best friend. These past few years I’ve spent without her around it has sort of felt like… like a part of me is missing, I guess. That sounds kinda stupid, but when you spend enough time around someone and then suddenly they’re gone, you realize how much you were used to having them around. It was something like that.”
“Attached at the hip?” Thistle supplied.
Lyra laughed. “Probably even more attached than that. We were like one of those two-headed ogres from the eastern badlands, the ones with one eye each and half a brain between them.”
Thistle stifled a giggle, blushing. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”
“Why not? It was a joke,” Lyra said with a shrug. “And to tell you the truth, I’m pretty sure the half a brain we had between us was hers.”
“So was the reason you left because of you being a bard?”
Lyra clicked her tongue. “Got it in one.” She reached up and touched the copper pendant on her cloak. “Recently graduated and swore my oath.”
“Then now you’re finally heading back to be with her.”
Lyra smiled. “I certainly hope I am.”
The forest around them suddenly fell under shadow. Lyra stopped and looked up to see a cloud had passed in front of the moon and cut off its light. A blanket of increasingly darker clouds followed behind it, the underside of which formed a rolling bed of storm-drenched turbulence.
“It’s about to rain,” Lyra stated. She looked back down at Thistle, smiled, and nodded. “That means if your husband found a cave or overhang, he’ll probably return to it soon. We should keep following this wall.”
Thistle’s eyebrows furrowed. “And what if he’s trapped in the rockslide?”
Lyra’s smile diminished somewhat. “Then it may have just become more difficult to find him. At least if that’s the case, the rain should bring him water and help—”
“Thistle?” a male voice asked.
Thistle and Lyra both spun their heads around to their sides to see a dark green stallion who was visibly bruised, standing on three of his legs while he nursed the other.
“Briar!” Thistle immediately shouted, running to him despite her limp. She threw her forehooves around him and pressed her cheek against the center of his chest, wetting his coat with tears.
The stallion, Briar, smiled at her through clenched teeth. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you’re safe, but could we save the hugs for later? I’m pretty banged up right now.”
“Oh! Sorry!” Thistle said, immediately pulling away from him. Then, re-approaching him, she tenderly inspected his wounds. “My gosh, there’s so much bruising… is your leg alright?”
“Yours doesn’t look so good itself,” Briar said, staring at her with a frown.
“It’s just a sprain from when you pushed me out of the way of those rocks.”
“In that case, I guess I am worse off,” Briar said, hissing as he brought up his injured leg to look at it. “I’m fairly certain it’s broken.”
“What about the rest of you? You have so many spots you could pass as a leopard.”
“It’s a lot of bruising. I don’t know if any of it’s serious. The rocks beat me up a bit during the fall, but I was lucky enough that they tossed me aside.”
“I could look at your wounds and make sure none of your internal bleeding is serious,” Lyra offered.
Briar paused, for the first time turning his attention to Lyra. “I take it you’re a stranger who was generous enough to help Thistle.” He bowed his head. “Thank you.”
“She’s a bard,” Thistle said, lightly touching his shoulder. “She looked at my wound earlier; you should let her look at yours.”
Lyra stepped towards him. “I don’t have anything in the way of supplies, but I can look you over and tell you how long you ought to rest and what parts you shouldn’t move.”
“Please, by all means then,” Briar said, gesturing to himself. “And thank you, again.”
“Well, I swore an oath,” Lyra told him with a smile as she began to properly inspect his injuries.
Lyra stumbled into her home, her face swollen and her side badly bruised. The inside was dark, and grew darker still as she closed the door behind her.
She had officially become Octavia’s disciple. The mare had struck her again and again, but Lyra had not quieted back. Not when her thoughts had become a muddled mess and not when she could barely stand. When Octavia had kicked her leg limp, she had stood with the other three. Then, after a great deal of pain on her part, Octavia had stopped for the night, and told her they would leave town tomorrow.
Tomorrow. The reality of that still hadn’t sunken in yet. Octavia hadn’t taken any pleasure from beating Lyra to the verge of consciousness, but it had been clear there was no sympathy either. Now she was going to spend the next few years studying under her. What on earth kind of choice had she made?
Light caught the corner of Lyra’s eye. In Bon Bon’s room a candle had been lit, and it was soon followed by hoofsteps.
The door to Bon Bon’s bedroom opened and there she stood, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Why are you back so late?” Bon Bon asked through a yawn. She paused, holding the candle out a little ways towards Lyra. She saw her condition and gasped. “By the moon… what in the blazing dark happened to you?”
“It was a test,” Lyra said, forcing a smile. The action made her entire face hurt. “I asked that bard at the inn if she would take me on as an apprentice and she said yes.”
“She did this to you?!” Bon Bon asked, raising her voice. “Lyra this is insane. She… I can’t believe that…”
Lyra walked over and sat, placing her one good hoof on Bon Bon’s shoulder. “I told you it was just a test. She wanted to test my conviction and I could have had her stop at any time, but I didn’t want to.”
Bon Bon shook her head. “Psychotic,” she said, pointing at Lyra. “That’s what this is. You, her, me. I can’t even think straight while looking at you in this state. Is that blood?”
Lyra touched her face then looked at her hoof; on it was a small spot of blood. “Maybe,” she answered.
Bon Bon sat and folded her hooves in front of her chest. “And you want to study under this mare.”
“I do,” Lyra said, letting out a sigh. “Bon. She’s leaving town tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Bon Bon raised her eyebrows. Then, when realization sunk in, she pulled away from Lyra. “You’re planning on leaving here with her tomorrow?”
Lyra’s ears drooped. Looking at the ground, she nodded.
“How long?” Bon Bon asked, her eyes growing misty.
“A few years.”
Bon Bon turned away from Lyra, hiding her face, though Lyra could hear her sniffle. “This was always something you wanted,” Bon Bon said, “to be a bard.”
Lyra again nodded. “Back then, back when you first met me, music was the only thing keeping me sane. But more than that, after you helped me, I wanted to be able to help other ponies in the same way.”
“I’m not a bard and despite that, I still helped you,” Bon Bon said, still turned away.
“And you’re the best pony I’ll ever know,” Lyra replied. “But more than just helping other ponies, I want to learn how to protect them. I want to learn how to protect you. I don’t think I could handle it if what happened…”
Lyra paused and closed her eyes. She swallowed, her throat dry, then continued, “I don’t think I could handle it if what happened before happened to me again. And when Octavia hit me, there wasn’t any anger or regret in her actions. I think she’s a lot like how I once was, and I want to help her the same way you helped me.”
Bon Bon turned back around, rubbing her eyes. She let out a resigned sigh. “It is what you’ve said you’ve always wanted.”
“Yeah.”
“A few years then…” Bon Bon looked at Lyra and put on a smile for her sake. “Send me letters whenever you visit an inn.”
“Of course,” Lyra immediately replied.
“And when you send me your last letter, we’ll meet again in Ponyville. I’ll reply and in my letter set a date, and on that date we’ll meet again by the oak tree at the crossroads out of town. Do you remember the one?”
“I’d never in a hundred years forget it.”
“No matter what,” Bon Bon said, her eyes beginning to shimmer once more. “No matter what, you be there, alright?”
Lyra placed her good hoof over her heart and so she vowed, “I will.”
“I still don’t want you to go.”
“I know.”
Bon Bon jumped forward and hugged her friend, wrapping her hooves around Lyra fiercely. “I’m going to make every moment while you’re still here count.”
“I’d like that,” Lyra replied, returning the hug.
Lyra sat by a dwindling fire in a cave not far from where they had found Thistle’s husband. Briar and Thistle lay opposite the fire, fast asleep in one another’s hooves. Briar’s leg had broken. They would have to wait—possibly weeks—until it healed to continue their journey.
But that information hadn’t fazed either of them in the slightest when she had said it. The two had been ecstatic to have survived their accident and found one another again. Even now as they slept, they held on to one another tightly.
Moving quietly, Lyra stood and lifted her saddlebags, slinging them over her back.
She didn’t feel tired, and she was never one for farewells. The two had found each other. Now it was time for her to part ways.
As she left the small cave they’d found, she stumbled into the moon’s light. The rain clouds had passed, and now the near-full moon was left to cast its pale glow across the forest and mountains.
She lowered her cloak’s hood, continued on her journey, and resumed her interrupted song.
The sly white fox so he ran,
Fur feet fast as he can,
Across the snow toward his den,
And he ran back home again.