//------------------------------// // Chapter One - Broken Butterflies // Story: Wish Upon a Star // by The Daughter of the Moon //------------------------------// Blue Fire laid down on the field outside his house after he had eaten lunch. He looked up at the clear, blue sky, watching the clouds slowly make their way across it. Blue Fire sighed. "Couldn't we just have a month of doing nothing?" he thought. "No events, no trials, no executions, nothing. Just one month where we could recover..." Blue Fire felt a short soreness in his chest. "…Yeah, that's probably not going to happen anytime soon, huh?" Blue Fire sat up. "Huh? You want me to--" Suddenly, Blue Fire was picked up by an invisible force. "This is new." Blue Fire snickered, kicking his hooves, which were floating off the ground. "I guess we're going here-- wait, now we're going over there-- okay now we're going back…" commentated Blue Fire as he was being dragged left, right, and around the field. Blue Fire finally settled under a giant cherry tree that was on the side of his house. The breeze carried dozens of cherry blossoms past Blue Fire and into the wind. Blue Fire caught one of the blossoms in his hooves. "Cherry blossoms..?" Blue Fire looked up at the sun. He shielded his eyes with his hoof. There seemed to be something falling towards him. "What is that..?" Before he knew it, a figure of light crashed into Blue Fire's hooves and sent them both flying into the ground with a loud crash. "What the…" Blue Fire mumbled, shaking the dirt out of his mane. He looked down and gasped. Ensconced in his hooves was a little pegasus filly with a white coat and a mint mane. "Oh my gosh." Blue Fire whispered. His mind was swimming with a million questions. "Who was she? Why was she here? What happened to her? Why did she look like…" Blue Fire suddenly dropped the filly and the ground and backed away. Aurora came racing out into the field towards Blue Fire with a giant paintbrush beside her. "Blue Fire!" she yelled as she approached them. "Blue Fire, what ha… oh my gosh..." Aurora joined Blue Fire in staring at the mysterious little pegasus, who seemed to be peacefully sleeping in the grass. "She looks so much like Tia and Caeda…" whispered Aurora. "But she's a pegasus, not an alicorn or a unicorn…" "Well, we'll know when she summons her Treasure." Blue Fire replied. "If she's Tia, it'll be a sword, and if she's Caeda, it'll be a scythe. And if she's neither, it'll be something else." "But how do we know she can even summon her Treasure? Caeda took at least a year before she could summon hers, but Tia found hers…" "Remember, we can't treat her like Tia or Caeda. We can't make the same mistake twice." "…Yeah." The little filly shifted in the grass. She fluffed her wings, then opened her big, pink eyes at Blue Fire and Aurora. "Hey there, little fella." Aurora said quietly. The filly didn't respond; she just continued to stare at Aurora. "Ha, um… can you tell us your name..?" The filly blinked. "No…? Okay then… Blue Fire, help me!"Aurora said through her teeth. Blue Fire summoned a piece of parchment and a quill. "Can you write you name?" Blue Fire asked the filly. The little pegasus nodded. She took the quill in her mouth and wrote her name on the parchment. "Let's see what it is." Blue Fire said as he took the parchment from the filly when she was done. When he read it, his eyes widened and he dropped it on the ground. "W-what?! What was it?!" Aurora asked Blue Fire. Aurora looked down at the piece of parchment her brother dropped. It read "Tia." Aurora stared looked at the filly, then at Blue Fire, who was lost in thought, and back to the filly. She shook her head. "Tia's what we called Clementia, but it wasn't her actual name. The filly's actual name is Tia so they're different… I think." "But the resemblance is uncanny." Blue Fire remarked. "A-are you sure that "Tia" is your name, sweetie?" asked Aurora, turning to the filly. The filly nodded. "Do you have any friends of family that you remember right now?" The filly shook her head. "Do you remember anything before you fell?" The filly shook her head again. "Do you have anyplace you can go?" Tia shook her head once again. Blue Fire turned to Aurora. She nodded. 'Well then," said Aurora, picking up Tia and putting her on her back. "Let's take your new home." Blue Fire watched Tia from inside the house as Aurora excitedly prepared a room for her. He stared blankly at the little filly from a window as she was observing a butterfly outside. "I wonder what her Wish looks like…" Blue Fire thought curiously. "I wonder…" He looked around to make sure no one was watching. Blue Fires suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest. He cried out, then abruptly covered his mouth. Tia glanced at Blue Fire through the window, then returned to playing with the butterfly. "W-what was that for?!" Blue Fire clutched his chest. "You're gonna get us caught!" He sighed as the pain melted away. "Yes, yes, I know. But just this once. I have to know…" Blue Fire took a deep breath. A large scythe covered in a sort of black ink suddenly appeared in his hooves. It glowed with a colorful, yet dull phosphorescence. Blue Fire readied the scythe, then sliced the air in front of him. Although the scythe seemed to cut through nothing, it made a large tear in the thin air before Blue Fire. A warm, blue, mystical light glowed softly through the tear in space. Blue Fire dropped to his knees, breathing heavily. "Ha… we… did it… Easier… than last… time..." Blue Fire said in between breaths. "Heh… at… least we got… a good… exercise… I… think we… needed that..." After Blue Fire had recollected his breath, he stood up and walked toward the tear he had made in space. He frowned. "No, I'm not saying you need to work out. Why would you need to? You're just little wisp of fire after all..." Blue Fire argued as he passed through the tear into another dimension, the tear closing itself once he had stepped inside. Blue Fire was floating in a sort of magical plane. There was no floor for miles. Blue Fire looked around the blue dimension. He spotted something a few meters away. "There it is." Blue Fire flew eagerly towards the thing he had spotted. His mind was racing. "I'll finally know what all this is about." Blue Fire thought excitedly. Blue Fire slowed down when he was a couple feet away from the object. He floated gingerly toward it. When Blue Fire was close enough where he could see it clearly, he heart skipped a beat. "No way…" Floating in front of Blue Fire was a half of a purple butterfly. It was fluttering its wings gently, as if it was longing for something. "It's other half." Blue Fire conjured up an image of a half of a red butterfly. He compared it to the purple butterfly. "Caeda's Wish is an exact mirror of Tia's…" Blue Fire realized. "What if…" Blue Fire adjoined the picture of the red half-butterfly to Tia's Wish. A perfect match, except there was a minuscule star-shaped hole in the middle of the butterfly's thorax. There was still once piece missing. "What could it-- gah!" Blue Fire suddenly became dizzy. His vision became blurry. He started falling down the infinite abyss of the plane. His whole body felt weak. All he saw was a small blob of white and mint before his vision blacked-out.