The Chronicles of Summer Rain, Vol. 10 -- Ariel Dawn

by shysage

Chapter 8, Some Sweet Way

Shysage said he could just tell by looking at me, from my face, my eyes... Well, I could tell too. I knew my body had changed. And, in some sweet way, I knew the next morning, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there were two of us now. I felt Ariel's presence, in a way I can't really explain. I smiled a lot at this. I cried a lot too.

I felt the presence of our foal, but the practical impact of that, of her; it took a few weeks for that to fully dawn on me. I started being more careful; what I did, how much I ate. And I was a lot more careful to drink enough water, especially because it was pretty warm the rest of the summer. I even tried to land more carefully after flying (a princess landing, Shysage called it), and a bunch more seemingly minor things like that. The drive to compete from when I was younger had left a certain recklessness, well maybe just carelessness now. Ariel fixed that! I became a lot more cautious, maybe more like Shysage. It wasn't just me anymore. That next afternoon, I just started crying. Shysage was concerned of course. Still crying, and trying to not cry really hard, I said "Shysage, I love her so much already..." We cried together for a while, and that wouldn't be the only occasion. I was pretty sure Shysage felt that way too. And it wasn't that we didn't deeply love Cel and Lu; both Shysage and I so fully and completely bonded with them both soon after they were strapped to our backs, and we were flying high and away from deadly Cougers. But Ariel... She was here already, even though she had not even been born yet. Shysage and I, we both loved her so deeply already. And she was ours... Nopony could take her away from us.

Shysage and I, well we did really revel in the amazing pleasure we could freely give each other now. (opt:btm10d) But after a month maybe and some amazing times together, Shysage suggested that I should probably pick a body, and stay that way until after Ariel was born. Since this was Equestria, that meant my pony body, and that was that. This didn't stop us from enjoying...

Still, me carrying a foal, well our foal, that one fact quickly assumed primary importance in both our lives.

And this was so funny... Since it was clear I carried a foal, Shysage was in overdrive, spending a lot of time thinking about how to accommodate his Mare and his own daughter, he said. This was an intensely practical concern, and I really value how Shysage thinks this stuff through. One of the most important things he realized we would need, was some way to be able to hold and transport water, during really cold winter days, and for the time when moving would be very difficult for me. Yes, he was thinking that far ahead, and I am so glad! Shysage and I were sitting together, as people in our Equestria Girls clothing, on a low limb of one of the scraggly trees. As we hugged, Shysage mentioned his concern. When we raised Cel and Lu, we were near Coptol (the main pony city in the past), and happened to find a cast-off bucket. This worked fine then, but we had not seen another pony, or even any evidence of ponies here AT ALL.

Well, it was a warm day, and I had worked one of my shoes off, and was letting it hang by my toes. I was slowly rocking it back and forth. My Equestria Girls shoes weren't 'high-heel', I think they are called, but were shiny black, with a beautiful black bow over the elastic where most shoes get tied up. "What about my shoes?" I asked out of nowhere. I wasn't even looking at them, and not really thinking seriously about the problem. It was a joke; I honestly expected Shysage to laugh. Instead, he looked at my shoes a minute, then asked me if I wanted a piggy-back ride down to the lake, so we could try them. They held water very well, and I doubt our particular use was anything the makers of these shoes even dreamed of. Here we were, maybe 1500 years in Equestria's past... And we would be drinking out of these Equestria Girls world shoes! And we realized Shysage's shoes had a bunch of holes in them; the water drained quickly out. Anyway, the last time I was a people that summer, off came my shoes, and Shysage found a safe spot for them until they were needed.

One other rather important consideration was also resolved in an amazing sort of way. Shysage pointed out the obvious; we could not spend the winter, especially with me carrying a foal, by relying on Shysage's carefully built but very minimal wind break. We had to find someplace both warmer and safer for us to spend the winter together. We had to find a place suitable for having a foal in, too. It was still summer, and so there was some time to deal with this. Still, this was a pretty serious concern. We had actually done some extra flying in order to see if there was anything nearby. We found more ponds, and more trees... I don't know what we were looking for; there were no houses here yet! Shysage could try to build a house, but he had no tools. And the only big tree we knew of was that huge Redwood, and there was no convenient door in the side. As the summer wore on, I think Shysage was more and more concerned about this. It was still warm, but we both knew that would change eventually.

Near the end of summer, I stayed a pony from one day on, until after Ariel was born. Shysage and I still did Canterlot Recorder stuff, but Shysage had to be a people and handle any writing that needed to be done. He just wrote what I said. And we had talked about this too. We both knew we would need to use the Portal to get us all back to our present. It was doubtful we would be able to take a huge stack of leaves that contained the record of our time here. We spent a lot of time basically re-reading what we had written, and making (usually small) corrections we thought appropriate. Shysage was pretty sure we would both be able to duplicate what we had written if we were familiar enough with it.

One day near the end of summer, Shysage and I were relaxing behind the wind break one warm afternoon. I think Shysage was just discouraged. We needed a place to live. That was his responsibility. Shysage knew his family depended on that. Still, we had not found anything at all. We had just talked to true friend some about this. Shysage was still discouraged. I guess, I wanted to avoid a touchy issue. I asked Shysage if we could do a title page for the stack of pages of our record here so far. Maybe he was happy for the distraction; he jumped right into it, and quickly had a new page torn out of one of the dried, broad leaves. I had him write this along the top of the empty page:

The Chronicles of Summer Rain, Volume 10 -- Ariel Dawn"

Once he was done, I was thinking. "Shysage draw a large heart shape below that title. I want it to take most of the rest of the page."

Shysage looked at me, then smiled, then gently kissed my pony nose. "Of course, Mare" he said softly, then carefully drew a heart shape covering most of the bottom of our title page. Shysage was very careful, and it took a while, but it looked very nice. When he was done, he looked at me again, and again kissed my nose.

I was still thinking. "What should we put in there?" I was actually thinking out loud, and said this slowly and quietly.

Shysage answered right away "Oh, I know!" Then Shysage carefully wrote inside the heart "Summer + Shysage". Then he smiled, looked up at me and kissed me again. Then he added "An enduring monument to my lo--"

Shysage stopped abruptly right there, looked up, then gazed off into the distance. I felt bad. I thought this had upset him, and I didn't mean too...

For a minute maybe, Shysage didn't move or speak. Then, he said quietly "Oh, my goodness..." Maybe a minute later "Summer, can we fly some?"

We were soon in the air heading East. Shysage led us over where the East meadow would be in our present. A smaller lake was approximately where the larger lake would be, and we could now easily see the small creek that led from lake to lake. The water flowed slowly to the West. Some distance past this little lake, past the edge of this East meadow in the Past, was a small wooded area we had found before. Shysage said these trees were hardwoods. I don't know trees, but ok. There was a small lake near the center of this small wooded area. We carefully landed on the edge of this new lake. I just followed Shysage. We were soon standing in front of...

I was soon weeping softly. It was our cave... Well, when we brought Cel and Lu on a trip here to Ponyville before Ponyville, we spent the night in this cave. I guess we had both forgotten about this, until my title page reminded Shysage. Shysage was so happy, and gave me a huge... Well, we hugged for a while there in front of that cave. Shysage was smiling again, anyway, and that made me cry again. I am sure this discovery was a big load off his mind.

Shysage changed into a people, and went inside to check it out. The cave was empty, and not very big; I could see him the whole time. But it was big enough for the two, even the three of us. I remembered that from our first time here. Cel, Lu, Shysage and I; the four of us had slept comfortably in here... Er, would... Nevermind... Well, as long as a bear didn't have the same idea, or beat us in here for the winter. Shysage felt this a very remote possibility. There was just not enough around here to support any larger animals, let alone a bear.

Shysage was out soon. "No enduring monument yet... This means that we are even further back in the Past than Cel and Lu." Shysage stopped and thought a minute, then added "I have no idea why, though..."

I just smiled. "I think Ariel Dawn might be reason enough!"

Shysage smiled, changed back into a pony, and we both climbed inside the cave, and laid on our bellies, side by side, facing the entrance. Shysage hugged me while I wept softly. We stayed in there for a while. Even though it was pretty warm outside, it was very comfortable inside. I asked him if he was going to add that enduring monument like he had the last time we were here, hmm, which was now in the future from this time... Shysage explained that while we were here, since it was before our previous time here, we had to avoid doing anything that might change our future here in the Past. Well, all I saw was an empty cave, but I was not about to question Shysage. And his explanation made my head hurt! Maybe we time-travel too much, I don't know. But it was fine, this cave would make an amazing home this winter. And with the small lake so close... I guessed correctly that we would probably move here soon. And I was right, Shysage relaxed a LOT with this major detail taken care of.

Well, now it seemed like the stage was set. The passage of time, and a lot of little details, and Shysage and I... We would have Ariel! Shysage said we should enjoy the rest of our summer vacation, he called it with a smile. We did. One amazing afternoon, we were relaxing down at the lake, half in and half out of the water. I was laying on my back, and was just so relaxed, I didn't even want to move. Shysage bent carefully over, and kissed my belly. "That is for Ariel, by the way" he said quietly. We both couldn't avoid weeping softly together for a while after that. And I don't know why, but I remembered one of the bleacher girls trying to explain this to me. She called it a procedure, whatever that is. But the process sounded so... terrible... This young girl was surely trying to be gentle about the details, and was clearly apologetic, but what she was describing rapidly became so appallingly... I had to block it out. I just had to... True friends would never... And remembering this, on that afternoon, I couldn't help but cry. I asked Shysage to lay his head down over my belly, over our Ariel, which he immediately did. Shysage would protect her. Shysage would protect us. Shysage, my stallion... Like I heard one of the other bleacher girls say; Shysage was all over this. Accepting responsibility for what he had done; that makes him a real stallion, a real man in my mind.

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