Love Letters Written on the Back of a Star Chart

by Dawn Stripes

The Bat and the Believer (part 4)

The air balloon was small, but the night was huge.

According to Chlkthata, the former was on loan from a well-to-do friend in Ponyville. Luke had already guessed that much when he saw the purple fabric. But he’d never been in a hot air balloon before, and it was more alarming than he expected. This may have been partly because the balloon was of pony make. The basket edges barely came up past his knees.

So he was working crouched over to avoid running his head into the burner. After he finished setting up a telescope, he snuck a peek at Chlkthata. She was looking back at him.

“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful,” he said, “because this really is a very special night. But when you invited me to go flying with you, this isn’t quite what I imagined.”

She sent over a deadpan glance. “Did you think I would carry you? Just how much lifting power do you imagine my wings have? Nevermind the fact that you weigh more than I do, have you any idea how much training it takes to fly at all wearing armor?”

Luke threw up his hands and giggled like a schoolgirl.

When Chlkthata took pains to correct him, it was best to just sit back and enjoy the wry humor of how wrong he was. That lesson had been cemented the night Luke asked if Vespertila drank blood. Somehow it had seemed like a good idea at the time. In the end, he’d dozed off draped over the forge, because it was half an hour before she was willing to let down the rope to her tower. Despite what she thought, she could be moody, like a thunderclap. But they always had a good laugh about it afterwards.

He opened a thick book and nestled it in the center of the basket. It was the easiest and most dumbed-down star almanac Luke had been able to find. Chlkthata already had her own references; there were sheets and sheets of parchment tacked to the walls, covered in work she’d already done. Star charts were the only way Chlkthata was able to explore constellations that never appeared over this portion of the world.

Several fresh parchments were incomplete, scribbled with many points and reference stars but on the whole left blank. They would be filled in tonight with ballpoint pens and feather quills. Luke had long looked forward to this night.

He squinted through the telescope, taking down a particularly bright point in the sky and then using an astrolabe to double-check his amateurish astronomy.

“Okay, that’s Saggitarus, I think.” He wrote the name in among a patch of stars, connecting the dots with ruler-straight lines. Beside it, in another color of ink, Chlkthata added a few Equestrian stars with several relative positions.

Luke stood back so she could stand over the map, her legs splayed to either side to avoid ripping the parchment. She couldn’t read from very far away, so she had to stick her face in the paper, squinting over her notes, yawning ineffectually, and at last adding a few extra sentences of mouthwriting.

She looked up. “That constellation looks a bit like one Luna drew in the Third Age of Harmony. A rearing pegasus, right?”

Luke grabbed the textbook and started flipping pages. “A centaur, actually. It’s sort of a half-human, half-horse. In the picture they have here it’s drawing a bow.”

“Half-human. As in a cross between a human and a pony?”

“Sort of—”

“And when did your people name this constellation?”

“Says here ancient Sumeria. So quite a long time ago. Any particular reas—”

Luke lowered the book. Chlkthata was on the other side of the cover giving him a long, amused stare.

“What?”

She shook her head and patted his knee. “Oh, nothing, my little human.”

“No, really, what?” Luke laughed as she climbed his chest with her forelegs.

Chlkthata grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down so that he was sitting in the corner of the basket. Looming over him much like she had in their first encounter, she brought her face close to his, grinning to veil all but the tips of her fangs. “I enjoy being here with you.”

Luke reached out and rapped the telescope. “Me too, Chlkthata. This stuff is fascinating, and nothing makes a job go faster than doing it with good friends.”

She dropped away, turning for some reason with her head down. “Yeah…friends." A short cough. "Best keep on looking for similarities.”

He happily complied. They scanned the sky together, comparing every inch with a stack of scrolls that detailed the many, many star fields of Equestria.

They were drifting over the city in a hot air balloon for two. There were no clouds out, so they had the sky all to themselves. It twinkled above, and it twinkled below, and if Luke hadn’t been so preoccupied with falling he would have lost track of which ways were up and down. A bit nippy too. But they were both bundled up in their respective coats, and besides, it only made the space around the burner that much cozier.

After an hour and a half they took a break for cheese croissants in a picnic basket. Luke unwrapped two sandwiches and sat down carefully so as not to disturb the charts. He good-naturedly prodded his Vespertila companion. “Well, Chlkthata? Feel like you’ve managed to tame the heathen night?”

“About as much as you’ve managed to kindle your non-existent one,” she replied with her eye to a spyglass.

Luke always felt giggly at this hour, so he fought back the urge to laugh again. It was true his sleep schedule was still trying to shamble out of its own ashes. Making regular visits to see a member of the Night Guard didn’t mesh very well with the strict schedule of early to bed and early to rise he’d held himself to for most of his school career. But he never dreamed of asking Chlkthata to change her schedule. He still felt to need to make her feel welcome in Columbus, and that didn’t entail imposing a huge change on her personal habits. Besides, other ponies expected her to be out at night.

She didn’t get a ton of visitors, but Luke had gotten the privilege of sitting in once when an elderly unicorn stallion had felt the need for council. Luke had been pleased to no end that he could keep up with the discussion of Luna’s nocturnal consubstantiality. The one thing he hadn’t been able to understand was why Chlkthata had asked him into what should have been a very private encounter between her and a member of her ward. But she’d taken him aside later and let him in on the secret; according to her, seeing Luke’s enthusiasm for learning about Luna had comforted that pony more than anything she could have said.

Luke would have been willing to sleep more during the day, and adjust his own sleep schedule to hers. But he had work on weekdays. There was no getting around that. No matter how late he stayed up, the world would be back at his throat by nine a.m. The best time of day was that free rush of energy that started around eight in the evening and carried him through the joyous company of midnight. But now it was drawing past that hour, and he found his eyelids growing heavy as a bag of ballast.

High air’s crispness kept him awake for a while. The two of them debated as they worked, about the stars they were scrutinizing and the empty space beyond. As usual, Luke hardly noticed the time pass. Being with Chlkthata was nothing like school. When Luke debated with his fellow students, time seemed to slow down. Based on how doggedly they fought, they all seemed convinced that their immortal souls were at stake should they lose the argument. Even the ones who thought they didn’t have one. But when Luke debated with Chlkthata, neither of them could stop smiling. They tripped over their words not in a rush to prove themselves, but in their hurry to learn everything.

After two croissants apiece they were both back to work. But once they had finished researching the seven more constellations, Luke sat down, resting one arm across his telescope. “I might just take a little nap,” he yawned carefully. He meant to get up directly after he said that, in order to prove that he was joking. But he discovered that his shoulder had nestled itself into a resting position against the edge of the basket. It wasn’t terribly comfortable, but it was the closest to reclining he’d been all night. Luke couldn’t dredge up the motivation to move.

Chlkthata laughed, which stirred him for a second—he had never heard her laugh before. It was, he thought, an exceedingly rare sounded he should capture lest he never got to hear it again.

“Sleep, then.” She leaned over to nuzzle the top of his head.

Luke, with a clumsy shake, tried to slip away and stand. “You need my help. I didn’t come here to fall asleep on you.”

As he was gaining his knees, she pressed him back down with a bare hoof. “Sleep, if it comes,” she insisted. “Dreams are a gift from the Night. Don’t fight them for my sake.”

With a lame grunt, he held himself in a sitting position. But the familiar sound of her voice was making him drowsy, and not by accident. The notion of leaving his eyes shut was irresistible.

“I’m going to get up in a second,” he threatened with a mutter.

Another laugh—wonder of wonders, two in one night. “Really, Luke. I’m not supposed to keep anyone from sleep.”

She stroked his head a couple times with her wings. Luke hadn’t ever felt her wings before, and that made him shiver awake for a little second. But the leathery surface was gentle. It flattened his hair and made it that much harder to avoid relaxing. There wasn’t really any way to get comfortable in this balloon, but as Luke’s body collapsed, he found himself cradled. His head rested against her chest as she stood above him, still surveying the stars.

The smell of leather and velvet and musk overwhelmed him like a blanket. Luke was nearly unconscious. Strange objects touched his forehead, and he frowned for a second before realizing they were the flats of two fangs. There was also a spot of moisture left behind. He smiled, leaned up, and returned the gesture, using his hands to cup her muzzle—

—before processing what either of them had just done. Luke sat up straight nearly fast enough to give her a glass jaw.

There. Awake. And sweating at half-past midnight. The air ice-cold and milling like a restless spirit. The dizzy sway of a hot-air balloon. Distant hiss of burning gas, and red slit eyes watching, watching.

He had jumped back against the edge of the basket with both of his arms braced against the edge. Against the sickening vortex of dread sucking away at his chest. She was watching him with an unreadable expression. But he could tell that she was as fully awake as ever.

“Chlkthata…” he gasped. Her name tasted like mint, and it knocked the breath out of his lungs.

Her whole face dripping concern, she reached out to him, hoping to brush at his shoulder with an unshorn fetlock. “Luke.” Her voice was as high and squeaky as always, but did it crack this time? “I—should have told you this some time ago.”

“Stop.” His fingers curled, chest expanded. “You can’t. You can’t.”

Another crease crunched her muzzle. She retreated to her corner of the basket like a shattered child. “I know I’m not supposed to take a lover from this world, but Luke—the way I feel about you. Don’t you feel it too?”

“No. Oh, this can’t be happening.” Luke squeezed his eyes shut, though now they wouldn’t stay shut, as if he hoped he could open them to find his bedroom around him.

“Luke, oh, Luke.” She moved slowly to embrace him, setting one leg on each of his shoulders. “Don’t you want this to happen? I can hear you looking at me every sunset. Haven’t you thought about this too?”

He shook her embrace away. He was ready to shake because he knew it was his fault. Those touches, those nuzzles, and all the broken cookies—how stupid had he been to think they wouldn’t add up to anything? To be so distracted and happy that he didn’t see these bestial feelings blossom in his chest? Tom was right. He really was clueless. How could he be so moronic? To think that lust wouldn’t follow wherever he went in life?

“We can’t do this,” he gasped.

“I know,” she squeaked, trying to come close again. “I know you wouldn’t let me do anything I’ll regret. All I want is for you to say yes. Tell me you feel the way I do.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he growled under his breath.

She gave a tiny high-pitched crack.

“It doesn’t matter because I can’t either!” He looked up, desperate. “Oh, God, what have I done? I feel sick. This is wrong.”

Was it? It had been so long he couldn’t tell good feelings from the bad anymore.

She backpedaled now, still watching him. Her mouth hung open, but she said no more.

Luke writhed. There was nowhere to go, but he twisted his body to look over the edge of the basket. “Put me down.”

“Luke, you don’t have to go.”

“Put down.”

“Please, just a few more stars—”

“Put me down!” The basket shuddered. “I need out!”

He was stiff now, desperately holding back from a shout at the top of his lungs. Without looking up, Chlkthata dimmed the burner. Not a word as she dipped the balloon into the strip of meadow between forest and university, or as Luke fled without picking up his books.

He didn’t stop running once he was beyond her sight. He sprinted all the way to the Newman Center. There was a tabernacle room there—which was a small, quiet sort of room with green carpets and plaster statuettes. A small row of benches allowed the faithful to come and pray in veneration of the gilded box sitting on an altar, but the place was usually empty.

Luke ground his knees against the varnished pew, and his thumb-bones against prayer beads. Even here he didn’t speak—no gasping words into the votive candles. His lips moved, as if her were mumbling, but even if Tom were standing over his shoulder he wouldn’t heard what was being said.

Three months later, Tom flopped against a brick wall and rolled his eyes. He was still waiting for Luke to come out of the tabernacle room.

Luke hadn’t been in there for three months straight, of course. But sometimes it felt like it. It had been three months since Luke’s mystery night trips ceased, and Tom was still waiting for Luke to tell him about it. Not for lack of asking. He would have interrogated Luke’s friends just as he’d interrogated Luke, if he’d thought it would help. But Luke was the kind of person who didn’t talk to anyone about important things.

Tom wasn’t about to let that stop him. Luke was one of his closest friends, and one way or another, he was going to find out what was up in his life. If that meant hiding behind a brick wall with a trench coat and sunglasses, so be it.

The trench coat was to make his form blend into the shadows. The sunglasses made it harder to see, but they made Tom feel more like a spy.

He ducked behind bricks as a glass door swung open on the other side of the road. The target was in sight. Luke emerged from the Newman Center right on schedule. The Newman Center was a gathering place for Luke’s brand of faithful here at the university, and he led some kind of activity group there on Sundays. Tom always pictured a bunch of kids in ‘I <3 Jesus’ T-shirts gathering around with anchovy pizza to pretend to study the Bible.

Luke also walked down Lane Avenue, just as expected. Nothing unusual there. If Tom didn’t know better, it would have appeared that Luke was simply walking home. But he could see how bleary-eyed Luke came into classes on Monday morning. He didn’t go to sleep until late on Sunday nights, and this happened every week.

But just once a week. On a schedule, too, like clockwork, not spontaneously every night the way it had been when there was a light in Luke’s eyes. When Tom had been overjoyed, and expected any day to be introduced to Luke’s new fillyfriend, or even to get a white invitation with cursive writing. No, it wasn’t like that at all.

But this was the last remnant of the recklessness the girl had inspired in Luke. If there were any answers to be found, Tom figured he would find them tonight.

His suspicions were confirmed when Luke made a wrong turn at the corner. He wasn’t going home. Tom darted from behind car to car, tiptoeing over the crosswalk just fast enough to keep his target in sight. The tiptoeing didn’t do much good—Tom wasn’t particularly stealthy. But it was dark, and Luke could be pretty oblivious, so Tom wasn’t worried about getting caught.

Minutes ago, the gardens on Neil avenue had been cozy. Now every road was made up of the same grey bars of shadow. Tom followed Luke through the deep maze of off-campus housing, and city traffic faded away until there was little sound remaining but Luke, whistling some hymn or other.

For a little while Tom had entertained the vain hope that Luke was merely taking a roundabout path to the river. But this route wasn’t going near the glade or the stone tower where his bat-pony lived. Tom wasn’t surprised. But he still grumbled a bit, hidden behind the tire of a Ford Fusion. “You had a chance, Luke,” he grumbled. “What did you do?”

He really should have been asking what he was doing. Tom was out in the middle of nowhere at night in a trench coat. Everyone but his clueless target was staring at him. It was cold, the sidewalk was preposterously uncomfortable to crouch on, and he could have been at home right now.

Did he honestly know what was in Luke’s heart? Maybe he couldn’t imagine. Both times Tom had lost a high school sweetheart, he’d spent three weeks feeling certain that he wanted to die. But Luke never had such complaints—you would have thought the idea of love never crossed his mind. Tom couldn’t recall ever having a single normal conversation with Luke about a girl. It would have been too awkward to start talking about his dates—and Luke certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.

Did Luke just not care? Or if he did, was he just that much stronger than Tom? Luke wouldn’t have said anything either way. Love was something far too important for him to talk to anyone about.

But Tom thought he could remember slip-ups. Little, innocuous words. Words dropped around the Warhammer table, said unthinkingly and meant to be forgotten. Excuses for not having gone to each high school dance. Given this, Tom should have jumped for joy when Luke met this Vespertila girl he liked so much. Everything should have been happily-ever-after. But Tom knew Luke much better than he wanted to, and the prospects, rather than exciting him, had terrified him.

Luke hadn’t asked for help. He definitely would have said no if Tom had offered. Even still...maybe Tom should just leave Luke to his own love life. After all, he was a nice guy in his own right. In time, surely, things would work themselves out. There were ponies now.

Jeremy had once been a failed attempt at setting up dates too. But then, without any help from Tom, Jeremy had met a mare. Now they played Warhammer every night. And there had been Cara, whom he once tried to set up with Jeremy—she was too much a fighter to act cute. But there was a griffon who’d started to flirt with her over the Equestrian Postal service. Tom hadn’t checked up on that in a while. Well, Cara knew she was loveable, she was probably set.

Please let Luke be going to a hotel, Tom thought in one desperate, last-ditch attempt to imagine that there was a bat-pony at the end of all this. But who did he think he was joking? And for that matter—who did he think he was asking for help, anyway?

God? he thought. Yoo-hoo? Are you there? Oh, what am I even doing? Of course you don’t exist. But just in case I’m not talking to myself, I’m begging you. Let Luke and Chlkthata be fornicating an hour from now.

Do hear me, you fuck? You owe him. He’s done more for you than you ever did for him.

Luke turned off the road and through a hedgerow. Tom got down on his belly like a commando to follow.

There was a park on the other side, nothing large—the kind of place for parents who were still in school to take their kids and play on a chipped-yellow swingset. Luke climbed a knoll towards a lonely elm tree, and Tom was about to crawl closer when a shape unfolded from a branch. Tom fell back, paralyzed, on his stomach, for it was the largest bat he’d ever seen in his life. It landed with a deafening hiss right next to Luke.

Once Tom got over the initial wave of awe, he managed to get close enough to listen. So this was Luke’s paramour. She was a nightmare! Still, she was here. The part of Tom’s heart that hadn’t gotten arrhythmia was singing for joy.

They both sat now, leaning up against the elm about a foot away from each other. Both were staring outwards, barely looking at each other, more towards the sky, which had a few clouds today but was clear enough to make out a couple stars.

They exchanged a few words that Tom couldn’t make out from this distance. Probably just catching up. As Tom was shimmying closer so that he might eavesdrop, Luke produced a white paper bag and set it between them. Tom tried and see what the bat-pony was plucking from it. Looked like—cookies.

Of course, by the time he was close enough to hear, they didn’t seem to feel like saying any more. They just lay back, just staring at the sky.

After a few minutes the bat-pony let out a little high-pitched Equus. “Mm. Look at that one, Luke. It looks like a train.”

Tom and Luke tilted their heads to follow where she was pointing. It was either a cloud or a washed-out patch of stars.

“So it is,” said Luke. “Check out that one over there. I think it looks like a pizza pie.”

“Or a cookie!”

Tom pushed down his glass of hard cider with a satisfying thump.

“I don’t think they’ve ever kissed,” he growled, half to Twilight and Lyra and half to the whole assembly of The Little Pony. “But every Sunday they meet on the same hill in the park. They sit under a tree, and they look at the clouds.”

“I thought this was Lyra’s story,” said Fluttershy bemusedly.

But Lyra squished her cheeks. “How romantic!”

“Romantic?” Tom turned on her. “It’s a fucking waste! A shame. That’s what it is. Stupid Luke. Stupid, stupid, stupid. They could have had a great relationship, a whole life together!”

Lyra retreated as Tom, sighing, leaned forward towards the center of the table. “Knowing Luke, they’ll probably meet once a week for the rest of their lives. It’s a waste. I—”

He was interrupted by something yellow poking him in the side. It wasn’t Porter’s pencil, which was tapping in a lost way against the reporter’s notepad. It was a bit of fluff attached to a hoof. Fluttershy, with a diminutive brown drink perched between her hooves, was trying to get his attention.

“I’m…I’m not no sure,” she murmured. Her face turned red with the effort of that sentence, and she shut down as soon as anyone turned to look at her.

Tom turned away so that his frown wouldn’t singe her. He shook his head and banged his drink again. “A waste.”