There remained one question in Glittershell's mind.
"Chiller?" asked Glittershell.
"Another long tale," explained Ruby. "Well, more of a song."
"I like songs!" said Glittershell in excitement. "I want to be a singer myself!"
Ruby raised an eyebrow. "Thou'rt an aspiring bard?" she asked.
"Well, we don't call it that much anymore," said Glittershell. "But yes."
Ruby looked up at the roof of the cave, as if raising her eyes to the Heavens. "It must be mine own wyrd," she said. "Really, 'tis fortunate that thou didst swear not to kiss me. It went ill the last time."
"I ... um ... I like colts ... stallions," said Glittershell. "You're beautiful -- especially when you're those glowing lines of light and flappy thing, but you're a filly. Hope you're not offended."
Ruby giggled. "No," she said, "not at all. My kiss is dangerous," she explained. "Even deadly. It's all set out in the song."
Suddenly Glittershell yawned. "Oh!" she said. "I'm sorry, Miss Ruby. You're not at all boring. I'm just ... I've been awake since the morning, and then I drank, and then your relatives chased me, and ..."
"I understand," said Ruby. She smiled, and walked over to a bathtub against one wall. "I can fetch thee some buckets of water, and I have soap and towels. I do not use them mine own self -- my Aspects re-form of their own as I do will them, free of any undesesired dirt -- but I keep them to clean my sanctum, and thou canst clean thyself." Something occurred to her. "Oh, I have but cold water, I fear. I do not have a hearth in here to warm enough water for a bath. Is that meet for thee?"
"It's okay," said Glittershell. "Thank you."
Glittershell bathed, in what had to have been the strangest bath of her life, taken in this cavern hidden in the hills near a ghost town inhabited by the spirits of the damned, with one of those spirits -- maybe, as it sort of seemed that Ruby was more of their victim, or guardian angel, or something like that -- acting as her bath attendant, pouring buckets of water over her and handing her soap and towels. It was a quick and chilly bath, and invigorating, yet when it was done she was still yawning and tired.
"I think I need to sleep," Glittershell mumbled groggily. "Can I hear the song later? Oh, and your story about how you wound up here? I'm really interested ..."
"Certes," said Ruby. "Lie down with thine friend, and I shall rest in the bed of mine own mother. Do not fear me -- I have never sought to feed upon Ponies. Chiller was by misfortune, and I did not slay him."
Glittershell felt there must be an interesting story there, but she was too tired to pay attention. She climbed into bed, glad that she no longer smelt like vomit and urine, and too tired to be more than mildly aware of the fact that Snips wasn't exactly clean. Given that she was being Glittershell, she might have been a bit nervous about the fact that she was climbing into bed with a stallion; one whom she knew and liked very much, and one whom she had moreover kissed but a few hours past -- were it not that she was now too tired to care.
She might, also, have been nervous about going to sleep in this uncanny crypt of horrors, or Teenage Filly Bedroom of the Damned, or whatever it was. But she was too tired for fear, just as she was too tired for lust or shyness.
All she wanted right now was to sleep, and as soon as she pulled the covers over herself and closed her eyes, she sank gratefully into slumber.
Silence and night filled Ruby's Sanctum, broken only by a faint golden glow from Ruby Gift, and Snips and Snails' commingled snores.
Snails woke once, in the middle of the night, to go to the bathroom.
He opened his eyes, and then winced, because even the dim golden glow in the room stabbed into his eyes like twin darning needles. His forehead throbbed. He realized he had a killer headache. He raised his right hoof and rubbed his forehead, but it did little good. His head still hurt. He closed his eyes again.
He was at first unsure where he was. The bed and the room smelled strange -- a melange of fabric odors, most of them at least partly musty. There was also an underlying burned-omelette and sickly-sweetness, as if someoone had burned some eggs and then forgotten to throw out the resultant mess, long enough for it to be ingrained into the room's whole smell. There was also the scent of a young off-cycle mare..
Strongest, though, was the very familiar scent of Snips, and he could hear the snores of his best friend and feel his warmth in the bed, sleeping right beside him. That reassured Snails. If his buddy was sleeping next to him, surely all was right with the world? Or at least, not too wrong with it?
Then again, Snips could sleep through almost anything.
Snails once again opened his eyes, slowly and cautiously. This time, he expected the pain, and so it wasn't so bad.
He got a clear look at the room. The bookcases, the wall-hangings, the crates and sacks and general feminine clutter of the place.
Memory returned to him even before he turned his head to regard the source of the golden light -- the seemingly-teenaged filly who was in fact far older than Ponyville; older than almost anything he had ever seen save for the most ancient structures and art in Canterlot, and not all that much younger even than those. Ruby Gift lay in the other bed, and as Snails turned to face her she opened her golden eyes and smiled at him.
"Dost thou waken now?" the ghost girl asked. "'Tis still night without this hill."
"Uhhh ..." Snails said brightly, his head throbbing. "Umm ... I have to go to the bathroom."
Ruby looked confused.
"But thou didst just ..." Enlightenment dawned on her. "Oh, I see! Thou must piss!"
"Um ... yeah ..." Snails was surprised that the normally-polite Ruby would use such a rude word. "Go to the bathroom."
"I had forgotten," Ruby said. "That the words for it had changed -- I remember when ye all started calling it 'making water,' though I ween it would not be such water as one would wish to drink! -- and I suppose now that ye mostly do have separate rooms for it, that has become the term. And also that ye mortals needs must perform the action. It has been long since I -- but never mind that."
"Wait, you don't --" began Snails, astonished at the realization that Ruby had left behind such a common and ordinary part of existence.
"Nay," replied Ruby. "I do something else in its stead." Then, before Snails could ask the obvious question, Ruby continued. "Alas, I have no jakes in my sanctum, as neither I nor my mother need such ... but perhaps I can find something for thee that will do for it.
With that, Ruby suddenly rose out of her bed. She did this, not by rolling from her bed onto her hooves and standing upon the floor, as might have an ordinary mortal Earth Pony or Unicorn, but rather by rising straight up from her mattress and drifting straigt up into the air, lazily sculling her hooves as if she were slowly swimming, and then letting them dangle beneath her barrel as she turned to a fully upright position.
To Snails the motion seemed strange and almost dreamlike. A Pegasus could have fluttered and hovered in the same manner as the ghost girl, but she would have had to do so with motions of her wings, and Ruby of course had no wings at all. It was a further reminder -- if Snails needed any by now -- of Ruby's unearthly spectral nature.
Ruby glanced around the room, her eye at last falling upon the object which she sought.
"There!" she said, floating down and bringing forth a large wooden bucket. She put it down about two lengths from the bed on which Snips and Snails lay. "'Tis a mop-bucket, but t'will do as a piss -- chamber pot," she declared.
Snails concurred. "Thank you, Miss Ruby," he said. He rolled to his hooves -- somewhat dismayed by the wobbliness of his legs -- and stumbled over to the bucket.
Ruby politely steped back and turned away, to give Snails some room and privacy.
Snails felt a little embarrassed. It was practically-impossible to be female when he had to aim one of the most decidedly non-female anatomical features he possessed into a bucket, to avoid making a nasty mess all over his host's bedroom floor, which would be certainly ungrateful of him. But, of course, if he were a colt, it was a bit crude to be urinating right in front of a filly.
Ruby made it easy on him, though, with her friendly, matter-of-fact attitude, and the way she automatically gave him room and avoided looking at him. She sure is nice, Snails thought, and attended to his business.
When Snails was done, he thanked Ruby again, padded back to bed and fell almost immediately back to sleep.
He woke up again, some time later, when something poked him in the shoulder. It was way too warm to be Ruby.
"Hmmph," he asked, turning to face the one who had prodded him. It was, of course, Snips.
"Snails!" his friend whispered urgently. "Snails!"
"Huh?" asked Snails. "What's going on?"
"Your girlfriend is a ghost!" Snips hissed at him. "Also, I gotta go pee."
"Ruby isn't --" Snails began.
"Yes, she is!" Snips insisted. "When we first met her, she turned into some kind of burning skeleton! And -- just LOOK at her!" He waved his right foreleg for emphasis and pointed his hoof at Ruby by way of emphasis.
Snails turned back over and did so.
Ruby was curled up cutely on her side, facing them with her eyes closed. A golden glow emanated from her gray fillyish form, dimly illuminating the chamber. Her side rose and fell, and as Snails watched, she made a delicate little snore.
Wow, she sure is pretty, Glittershell thought, even sleeping. I wish I could look like that. Well, and still be alive, I mean. She even snores beautifully! There was something wrong with what he was seeing, though -- he sensed it, but could not figure out what it was.
"What's wrong with her?" Snails asked aloud, puzzled.
"She's glowing!" Snips almost shouted -- but still in a whisper, to avoid waking up Ruby.
"And a good thing that she is," commented Snails.
"What?!" gasped Snips.
"Well, if she weren't," Snails pointed out, "then the room would be dark. And you wouldn't be able to see that bucket that Ruby left us as a chamber-pot," he added, pointing to the bucket.
A stifled snort suonded from Ruby, and both young stallions paused to gaze at her. She quickly emitted a more normal-sounding snore. Snips and Snails once again relaxed, knowing that she was still sleeping.
"If she is glowing," argued Snips, "that means that she is a ghost!"
"Well, of course she's a ghost," replied Snails.
"No, really," insisted Snips. "She's a -- wait, what did you say?"
"Miss Ruby is a ghost," stated Snails. "I know that."
Snips' eyes widened and he stared at Snails, gasping in indignation. "But -- but -- you said that Ruby wasn't a ghost!"
"No I did not," replied Snails calmly. He clarified his statement. "I said that Ruby was not my girlfriend. Which," he continued, with a prim little smile, "she is not. We are just friends."
Snips raised a hoof, clearly intending to emphasize a counterpoint, and then his eyes flitted frantically from side to side, his mind evidently attempting to work through the implications of what Snails had just said. A moment later, his jaw dropped, and all that emerged from his now widely gaping mouth was a series of incoherent gasps and whinnies, which bore little resemblance to any known Equestrian dialect.
Suddenly, a clear and tinkling giggle came from behind Snails. He rolled over rapidly to see Ruby Gift, muzzle buried in her own left foreleg shoulders shaking with mirth as she snort-laughed in a most unladylike fashion.
"Prithee pardon good Master Snips," Ruby finally said, when she had her fit of laughter finally under control, "but 'tis most amusing." She smiled at Snips. "Of course I am a ghost, and have been for one thousand and five years. And tine own dear friend Master Snails knows this, and did before ye both did come into this sanctum."
"Why'd you do that?" Snips asked Snails in horror. "She's gonna eat our brains now!"
"Nay," said Ruby. "I shall not eat your brains, nor would any of the other Wraiths of Sunny Towne."
"Whew!" said Snips. "That's a big relief!"
"Instead," Ruby explained, "they would drink your very life, leaving ye both withered undead husks, skeletal minions in thrall to she who slew ye; until ye did finally escape her clutch into the blissful peace of the True Death." She delivered this grim pronuncement was delivered in a matter-of-fact manner that was severely disturbing.
"Gah!" cried Snips, hiding behind Snails. "That's horrible!" He suddenly leaped up and trotted to the bucket, facing away from Ruby and Snails. The sound of a stream of liquid spraying into a bucket ensued, along with a faintly unpleasant ammoniacal smell in the enclosed room.
"Yes," agreed Snails, politely-ignoring Snips' action. "Miss Ruby, when you put it that way, it does sound pretty awful."
"'Tis so in truth," Ruby affirmed. "But, fear me not -- I wish neither of ye any such harm, and I shall do my best to ward ye from those of my kin who have less scruples than myself in that regard."
"She's helping us Snips," Snails said to his friend as he returned from his visit to the bucket. "She got us away from three of her relatives who wanted to kill us, and Ruby calmed down another when she lost self-control. She's letting us lay low here till full daylgiht, when she's gonna lead us out while the ones who want to kill us are sleeping. Ruby is on our side!"
Snips screwed up his short, thick muzzle and peered shrewdly at Ruby Gift.
"If that's all true, and this pal o'mine has it right," Snips said, "then you've done us a real good turn." His eyes narrowed. "But I do have to wonder why you would take our side against your own kin," he continued, "to help two Ponies you just met."
"For shame, my friend, for shame!" said Snails. "Dubting Miss Ruby's motives like that when she's been so kind to us both! You should tell her you're sorry!"
"Peace," interjected Ruby, still smiling. "Thine companion hath a good question, and it doth deserve a good answer. Were I in his place, I might mistrust the motives of the strange ghost girl who seems a benefactor." She looked down at her bed and mused for a moment, then glanced back up at Snips. "I suppose 'twould mean naught to you if I spoke of the Sacred Law of Hospitality?" Ruby asked.
"Huh?" asked Snips.
"Nay, then," said Ruby. "I shall not. Thought it meaneth much to me." She looked intently at Snips. "Hast thou considered that to slay another in order to slake one's lust for his very life force were a fell deed, and one which only an evil wight would do?"
"What?" asked Snips again, mouth opening slackly.
Ruby sighed. "Murther be bad," she explained. "I try to be good." She smiled once more, but the smile seemed a bit forced.
Snips worked over that for a long moment.
"Perhaps," he said at last. "But you'd say that too if you were bad, wouldn't you? Because bad Ponies liie."
Ruby lost her smile. Her ears went back, her eyebrows descended, and her whole form fuzzed slightly, wavering like a cloth flapping in the wind. A noticeable cold came from her.
It occurred to Snails that it was a good thing that Snips had just gone to the bathroom.
Then, her momentary wrath passed.
"Thou'rt right," she said. "Though I might point out that ye did both sleep in the same room in which I rested; slumbering for hours, during which I might have harmed ye while ye lay helpless, had I harbored any ill intent. Which I did not. Mark that ye are both alive and hale after sleeping in mine own company? I have earned some trust, I ween."
"I trust you, Miss Ruby," declared Snails. "You've been nothing but kind to me. If not for you, both Snails and me would have been goners!"
Ruby smiled warmly at Snails. "Thankee for thy trust," she said, "but I fear that this alone may not convince thine own dear friend."
"It's just that it don't make sense," said Snips. "Why would you turn on your own family to save us?"
"You should just be glad that she chose to save us!" scolded Snails.
"In truth," Ruby said, "that does need to be explained." She sighed. "Well, we have some hours afore the Sun shall reach her height, and I did promise to tell thee, Master Snails. So," she said leaning toward her two guests, "here follows ..." she paused.
Snips and Snails leaned toward her, ears aquiver with anticipation.
"... The Tragickal Tale of Sunney Towne."