From the Firmament

by Garamond

Le Debut

Pastor Demetrius staggered into his quarters in the parsonage. He was exhausted from working most of the evening with the local farmers digging a pair of graves for the Olson twins. Both of them had been soldiers, serving during the Germans’ Blitzkrieg and brought back to their homes in coffins. World War II had hit all of Europe very hard, but no country knew such pain as Demetrius’ beloved France, and this fact became more evident with each passing day. The Pastor’s formerly cushy lifestyle turned upside down and nowadays he found himself going from door to door, helping wherever he could. That is, whenever he wasn’t too busy tending to the sick and wounded that constantly came to his own doorstep. All the doctors had left town to join the Allied forces as medics, leaving him as the only healer in town.

He laughed at the thought. A healer with no medicine is hardly a healer, after all. He stripped out of his work clothes, a simple gray shirt with brown trousers, and lay on his feather mattress in his skivvies and glasses, staring at the ceiling. He was too exhausted to sleep and he knew it, but that didn’t stop him from trying to catch some winks before tomorrow reared its ugly head.

His eyes quested about the room for something to occupy his attention from his own restlessness, finally catching sight of pen and paper on the aged desk by the only window in the room. The desk was often a focal point of focus and meditation for him, where he could concentrate on writing his next sermon in peace, using the rolling foothills and thin pine forest outside his window to rest his eyes periodically.

Demetrius swung his thick, strong legs over the side of the bed and limped over to the desk, pulling out the chair, then sitting in it slowly, uttering a groan of pleasure as his bottom collided with the wooden seat.

He turned to clean the grimy windows with a washcloth. The pastor didn’t often do this; in fact, recently he’d tried to dirty the window as much as he could. As beautiful and full of natural grace as the hills and trees were, a scar marred the perfect scenery through the glass. A graveyard. Typically the graveyard didn’t bother him overly much, to him the dead were dead and no amount of ghost stories would change that. But ever since this war started, he couldn’t bring himself to look at those fenced-in tombstones. The yard used to be sparsely populated by stone and marble, almost giving it a rustic and quaint feeling, but ever since Germany invaded the graveyard had been growing rapidly. Exponentially. It saddened him and made him doubt the benevolence of his patron deity.

If God is so loving and caring, how could he let the people of France wither like this? He thought. What have we done to deserve this? Surely the whole country cannot be wicked enough to warrant such a widespread punishment! Of course, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, as written in Romans, but God hasn’t punished us for that, I’m certain.

The pastor shook his head rapidly as if to rid himself of a bothersome insect. Who am I to doubt the Lord of Hosts? It’s his world, after all.

He picked up the fountain pen lying on the desk and put pen to paper, writing a letter to his son, Ephraim. Ephraim was currently off with the Allies, fighting in Operation Sea Lion alongside the British, and Demetrius worried about him constantly. With father being a widower and son being a young bachelor serving in this deadly war, the pastor’s concern was well justified.

Demetrius paused, looking out the window thoughtfully. He raised an eyebrow as the space between two of the rows of weatherworn graves began to glow purple. Looking back, he was never able to figure why he was so calm and unafraid. Perhaps he was too tired; perhaps he was too jaded by the horrors of the war.

With a small snap the violet light popped into a ring shape. Through the center of the ring, Demetrius could see two strange looking equines peering outwards. It was as if a mystical television had coalesced outside his window, allowing him to view another world. One of the equines had a horn that was glowing magenta. He was clearly straining, though about or against what the pastor could not fathom. The mare beside him nuzzled him softly, and then leapt towards the ring. On closer examination, the wondering pastor saw that she was a chestnut pony, with a mane varying shades of gray. She also had wings, like the Pegasi from Greek myths.

Demetrius found this most unnerving, and rubbed his eyes wearily with a calloused hand to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. He opened them again, and standing half in the graveyard and half out was the mare, still there. The male unicorn walked shakily up to the ring, horn still glowing with power. The Pegasus beckoned to the other horse eagerly with a hoof, and placed a hind leg into the world, still leaving one hoof inside the ring. She looked about in amazement at the starry night sky, oblivious to the human watching her intently through the pane of glass.

The male pony placed one hoof through, then another. His eyes closed in concentration; he didn’t notice her rump inches from his face. The pastor watched curiously as the unicorn’s nose inched closer and closer through the gloomy night. His shnoz brushed against the pegasi’s flank and she let out a yelp. His eyes flew open, betraying his horror as the ring whipped shut, enveloping the graveyard in darkness once more. The mare cried out in pain, collapsing in the darkness.

Demetrius just stared.

What just happened? He thought as he stood to get his trousers on and investigate.

After pulling trousers and boots on, forgoing a shirt, he wandered through the house till he found the side door leading outside. The pastor jogged the small length from the parsonage to the cemetery, vaulting over the fence. Despite his tiredness from working all day, this new development filled him with an unexplainable energy. The graveyard echoed with the sobbing of the mare, eerie and sad, yet strangely human sounding, not at all like the scream of any normal equine.

Demetrius crept up to the prone form of the Pegasus in the dark, letting his eyes adjust to the lack of light. His boot trod on something wet and sticky during his approach. He knelt and drew his fingers through the dirt, then brought the slime to his nose. It was blood, judging by the coppery smell. He rushed to the mare, now fully aware that something horribly bad had happened. She sat on her rump, staring up at him with tears in her eyes, cradling something in her lap.

“Hey there. You’re a pretty horse. What’s your name, eh?” The pastor crooned, edging close to her cautiously. She appeared to be okay except for a bloody stump that was her right hind leg. He still couldn’t make out the thing in her lap, but he was starting to have suspicions.

She frowned, shouting. “H-How dare you?! My husband is dead, and you have the nerve to treat me like a dumb goat?!”

All at once, her rage gave way to grief and she huddled close to the object in her lap, crying.

“Whoa there, calm down Miss--?”

She sighed heavily, still huddled close to the object in misery. “Daring Do. Don’t ask again.”

The pastor, for some reason unsurprised by her ability to speak, craned his neck towards the object.
It was just as he expected and feared, though nothing could’ve prepared him for the actual sight. The unicorn’s decapitated head and shoulders, lying in his wife’s lap in a pool of red, eyes open in milky white horror.

Pastor Demetrius gingerly knelt in the dying grass beside the crying mare, shedding a tear of pity. She shivered and clutched the corpse, attempting to extract warmth from her dead husband to ward off the cold. The pastor placed a hand on the body with a shudder, and on the mare’s shoulder.

“Miss Daring. We need to get you patched up, and quickly. If I don’t get that leg bandaged and in a tourniquet quickly, you’ll bleed out.”

The Pegasus just shook her head, mane flying back and forth. “Y-You’re just going to take me to a lab and do tests on me, you heartless freak!” She stood shakily, anger and fury in her eyes. She reared up to strike him, balancing on her back leg and dropping the half-corpse to the dirt. Suddenly she collapsed from blood loss, shaking uncontrollably in a massive puddle of crimson.

Demetrius scooped her up gingerly despite her weak protests, careful not to touch the stub of her back leg. He whispered words of encouragement and condolences to the animal, trying desperately to ignore the disgusting liquid dripping from her stomach and rump onto his well-muscled chest and arms. He leapt over the fence, landing on the other side without a shock. He took long, quick steps towards the door of the parsonage, moving quickly to get her into a bed.

Daring piped up feebly. “W-Where are you taking me?” She squirmed, trying to escape.

“The parsonage. You landed in the graveyard of a church, Miss Do. Please don’t resist, you’ll only hurt yourself.” Demetrius replied, kicking the old door open, releasing a cloud of dust from some of the furniture in the living room.

“You’re the pastor, huh? A man of faith?’ She asked hesitantly.

“Yes, I am the pastor of the First Presbyterian church here in The Angel’s Haven.” He replied absentmindedly, standing in the doorframe of the den to let his eyes adjust to the extreme darkness.

The mare sighed in relief, cuddling close to the pastor’s bare, bloody, and hairy chest with a newfound affection.

Slowly, the outlines of a couch, futon, and fireplace all facing a coffee table emerged in his vision. He crept down into the pit in the middle of the room, where the coffee table was, and laid the Pegasus on the soft, plushy futon. He gathered up some tinder and firewood from a bin on the mantle and tossed them into the hearth along with a match. Flame burst into existence, casting long shadows in the room and quickly filling it with dry, pleasant warmth. The pastor walked back to the door and closed it behind him softly, then flicked on a light switch.

After a brief trip to the bathroom, Demetrius returned with several rolls of bandages and a bottle of anesthetic. He leaned against the blue futon, questing underneath the bottom of it for the lever that would convert it into a bed. Feeling a hint of cool metal with his fingertips, he bent down, grasped the metal object and rotated it to the left. With the release gone, the back of the futon fell on him, walloping him on his balding head with a mighty BONK.

Despite her current situation, the shellshocked mare laughed. “You okay there, clergy-boy?”

He sat up on the hard wooden floor, rubbing his prematurely bald head in a comical fashion. “Yea, I’m fine, no thanks to you. Why so concerned for my welfare all of a sudden?”

Daring responded after some hesitation. “M-My Father was a cardinal for the Celestian Church, and I guess you remind me of him a bit. He was bipedal too, one of the Lyrans.”

Demetrius stood up and grabbed the bottle and bandages. “Lyrans? Never heard of that before. You’ll also have to tell me about this Celestian Church while I fix your leg. You’re messing up my daybed with that blood of yours…”