Sweet Nothings

by Golden Tassel

Look Both Ways before Crossing the Street

Rake and I continued walking in the morning. I had no idea where we were going, and I doubted if Rake had anywhere in particular in mind; he strolled along as I might have while going for a walk around the stable's atrium.

Every so often, I'd hear the loud, faroff crack of a gunshot. The sound seemed to come from all around us, and distant echoes lingered in the air as ghostly reminders of that initial sound that had lasted only a fraction of a second.

I had tried looking around for the source of the gunshots, but I couldn't even tell what direction they were coming from. When I looked to Rake though, I saw that he was simply continuing his leisurely stroll. So I tried to not worry about it—he had to know better than I would if we were in any danger.

After some time had passed, when I had started to tune out those gunshots, Rake came to a stop and said, "We're being followed."

"Where?" I asked as I glanced over my shoulder nervously.

"Sniper. Somewhere out on the horizon. She's been stalking me for weeks."

"How can you tell she's after you?"

"Because," he said as he turned to face me, "that last shot clipped my ear."

My eyes went wide as I saw: the tip of his right ear was missing, and blood ran from the jagged edge down the side of his face and dripped off his neck.

Another crack thundered through the air, and I dropped to the ground, covering my head with my forehooves. Rake laughed down at me.

"Relax. She's not gunning for you. And if she wanted me dead already, I wouldn't be standing here talking about it. There's no use cowering like that—the shot would hit you before you heard it." He put a hoof to his bleeding ear and flinched. "I know that for a fact."

Cautiously, I stood up and started looking around the horizon. I still didn't have any clue what to look for. It was a futile effort, and I knew it, but I couldn't simply stand there as Rake was. "You know who it is?" I asked.

"I know what she is," he answered. "She's not a pony. She's a reaper—Death's own agent, here to remind me that my days are numbered. Death comes for everypony eventually. He's the only thing that you can count on out here or anywhere else."

"But how do you even know it's a she? I mean, have you seen her?"

Rake shook his head. "I don't have to. And she's smarter than that—I'd kill her first if I could see her. It would have to be a she, though. Lots of ponies have tried to kill me, but they all made the same mistake: they let me get close." His horn lit up and he floated out his sword to make a few slashes and stabs through the air at imaginary—perhaps remembered—adversaries. "No. The only one who could ever kill me would have to do it from far away—the complete opposite of how I fight: I'm fast. I feel my heart racing. I get blood on my hooves. And they all see me coming." He returned his sword to its sheath. "The one who kills me will take her time. It will be cold, calculated. She'll hold her breath and slow her heart when she kills me. And she won't dirty her hooves with my mess. It'll happen when I least expect it. It would have to be a she—everything else about her is my exact opposite, so that must be too."

I stared at him. "Rake . . . I . . . can't you do something to stop her?"

He took his hoof away from his ear and looked down at his bloody hoof. "I'll die eventually. And I'll be powerless to stop it when it happens. It'll probably be painful. If I'm lucky, it'll be quick." Rake closed his eyes and leaned his head back as he took a deep breath in, and let it out in a calm, relaxed sigh. He smiled. "Until then, I'm alive."

Rake began laughing loudly as he danced around me in a circle, adding little bounding leaps and twirls. "I'm alive! I'm alive!" he kept shouting. "And I have you to thank for reminding me!" he called out to the horizons. "My sweet little angel of death! My one true love! Oh, how I long for your kiss!"

"Rake! Stop it! Y—you're scaring me!" My ears drooped, and my wings bristled as I backed away from him slowly.

He took another slow breath and smiled at me. "Death can come at any time. We've only got the here-and-now we can know for sure that we'll be alive for. So let's enjoy it while it's here: I'm alive! You're alive! This is the best time of our lives because it's now! Don't you feel alive?"

While Rake delighted in knowing that his death was coming but not yet here, I was left feeling as though mine had missed me; my reaper had passed over me and left me to roam the wasteland in a state of limbo. Only an innate sense of basic survival kept me going.

"I feel more hungry than alive right now," I said.

As if on cue, Rake's stomach groaned in agreement with me. He shrugged and started walking again. "Well, we'd better keep moving then. Food isn't going to come find us."

***

We kept walking for most of the day. Those far-off gunshots rang out every so often, but increasingly rarely as we continued, until I could almost forget about them—maybe it was just a stray shot that clipped Rake's ear, and we weren't really being stalked. It was easy to convince myself of that.

I had to stop frequently to rest; my hooves were beginning to crack. And though I was clearly slowing Rake down, he didn't seem to mind. He knew exactly what I was going through, he told me; it would take time, but I would learn to live again in the harsh outside world.

I could have taken flight to take the strain off my hooves, but Rake told me to conserve my energy, and he had a point. Flying took a lot of energy, and I was exhausted, hungry, and thirsty in a way I had never felt before; I had heard the expression—and had even used it myself on occasion—"dying of thirst," but after at least a full day since my exile without anything to drink, I realized what it actually meant, and I dreaded to think what would happen if we didn't find some water soon.

So it came as no small relief when we reached the crest of a hill and came to a stop as we looked out at what lay ahead of us: Down the hill and across an old, cracked, and pothole-ridden road was a small collection of buildings.

We couldn't see movement down among them, but the place had an appearance of life to it: there were stacks of wooden crates in front of one building with a faded sign proclaiming "general store," and next to one of the other buildings was a patch of tilled soil in which small clumps of plants managed to grow.

Rake stopped me before I even started to move toward it. "I know what you're thinking: it looks inviting, doesn't it? Well, thinking like that will get you killed."

I stepped back. "So what do we do?"

His horn lit up with his red aura and his sword floated out at the ready. "You wait here. I'll go in and check it out. When it's all clear, I'll signal for you to come down."

"Wait. You're not going to hurt anyone . . . are you?"

"If I have to." He shrugged. "Which is probable. Most ponies need some convincing before they part with supplies, and usually a lot more convincing when only one pony's asking for them."

"Y—you can't! I mean . . . can't we just talk to them? Ask them for help?"

Rake turned to face me. His look was grim. "There's no room for trust out here. We take what we can get, and if somepony else gets hurt, then too bad, but it's us or them. I'm here now only because I made a habit of choosing myself over others. And you did the same, in case you've forgotten. Is it right? Is it fair? No. But this is the world we live in now, not the ivory towers we used to."

I stood there, mouth agape, but with nothing to say. I was tired and sore and dehydrated. And though it made my stomach twist into knots to think that Rake might hurt or even kill somepony just to get me some water, I wasn't in a place to argue with him. So I closed my mouth and lowered my head with a sigh as I sat down to rest my hooves.

Rake made his way down the hill and then broke into a gallop toward the settlement. He reached the middle of the road, and then suddenly he collapsed. It was like watching a marionette with its strings cut—his whole body simply went limp all at once. And a couple seconds later, I heard the crack of gunfire.

"Rake!" I screamed as I ran out to him.

His neck was a mess. Blood bubbled out through the hole in his throat. His eyes locked onto mine, and his mouth moved as he tried to say something, but he only managed a sickening gurgling noise from his throat. He stopped trying to talk, and instead drew his lips into a smile just before his eyes rolled back. I watched as the light went out of him.

And then I was alone. I stayed there, kneeling over him, just staring down at his face and the empty smile left on it. Even as his blood pooled around my hooves, I didn't move. I had been following him. Without him, there was no place for me to go.

***

I might have stayed there with Rake until I myself died of dehydration or exposure, except that somepony else showed up. I hadn't even heard her hoofsteps as she approached. A shadow passed over my face, and I looked up to see her: She was expressionless, and her eyes were cold. She wore a brown leather duster, tattered and muddy as was the rest of her. Her dirty mane hung off either side of her neck in tangles.

Her horn was lit up with a bright green aura which carried a long rifle in the air beside her. She held it pointed at me.

"Get up," she said.

I did as she told me, and she slung her rifle across her back. Without ever taking her eyes away from mine, she stepped around Rake's body while carefully keeping her hooves out of his blood. She wrapped her aura around his sword and took it off him.

"Start moving, little bird," she told me. And I moved toward the settlement at her direction.