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It's an angel isn't it?3,088 words
One dumb raven2,410 words
Chunks of water2,500 words
Two days2,474 words
exposed2,675 words
shudder of light2,719 words
the end of it2,209 words
an epilogue 2,163 words

Chunks of water

“Come on its just a little further. Don’t worry I’ll catch you. Come on, I made you a bed, not some pile of old rugs and blankets, an actual bed. You can’t stop, if you stop then your broken bones is going to act up. I know it hurts but we’re nearly there.”

Her response is small pitiful groans. They fly from the bottom of her lungs, ragged torn up sounds. The clouds sink into the horizon. They fight the sunlight and form patches of grey. Unsubstantial drizzles of water struggle to the ground because the wind’s breath pulls them into leaves. And like the sun the pair’s progress is stunted and diminished, their bodies cling to each other like the rain on their bodies.

“Please, a little further. Just lean on me.”

The changeling queen holds the short unicorn, her hair tangles in his pale white coat. Closeness is necessary and wanted. Heavy steps tumble into each other, each metre, each inch a monument to the stallion’s will. This grey little world only has her and him.

“You said it. You said you wouldn’t hurt me. You lied” Words shaped like blades, words meant to wound. Spiteful isn’t she?

Her body needs to stop. Her body needs to steal more air. In a heartbeat her words plummet on to a strained conscience. Rips up the stallion’s burnt out heart, because he’s so spent trying to ease her pain. It hurts more then she knows.

“It’s going to be bad but it will be better. You’ll sleep on a comfy bed if we get home. Okay?”
“Okay. Promise to do my bandages again.”
“Yes. I promise”

The cold and dark track their prey stumbling across the fields. Tall stacks of shadow and wood make a cabin. It stands at about one and a half miles from the crater. Solid and real it holds out in the divide between sky and ground, a mountain in the tamed land that hugs the ground. As they near it the rain pounds out the smell from the cabin, the smell of stale wood in your hands. Rough, ragged squares give the cabin a window and a door. A mess of changeling and unicorn clump and hit the walls.

It’s those gaping holes in her hooves, holes that twist and bend air around itself in flight, holes that let changelings feel the pulse and pound of the tearing wind. They bog her down; suck her legs in a marriage of dirt and water. Each step rips out watery isolated earth and leaves them panting, exhausted. The sound of hinges groaning, the sound of a door complaining, and colour and light is lost on his mellow maze of hair and sweat. The blackness of a changeling’s shell eats the light, a black hole in the shape of a queen. Strength is spent and the quiet colour of a warm home fills their eyes.

“Over here. There you go, just make yourself comfortable. I’m going to make something to eat.”
“I’d like an apple”
The Hushed voice barely reaches his ear, a feeble string of words shackled to a shallow breath. Joints pop and melt into the mattress he gave her.

A fire grows, decomposes wood into ash and collapses into scathing red. There was something in her heart that burned and stirred, like those sparks amongst that unruly fire. Warmth shrouds everything, hides her despair, and hides his desperation; two souls listening to the squeal of boiling water. A stale loaf soaks the fire, specks of burnt brown and black slowly growing on its skin. He’s leaning on a small stove now, his horn radiates because a tray hangs in the air, dragged down by a meal. A crusty roll leaking crumbs, an apple stained with the splash of red a flash of green, a tenderly made cup of tea. She blows a whisper of steam across the feast, a small ghost of the food, a small ghost of her thanks.

“Enjoy. I even got you an apple”
She grunts in acknowledgement. Kindness is short- lived and precious. Vicious and unfettered her pain tries to cut into her grunt.

Five days since the angel fell. Her bone is scarred and cracked; her wings are small torn dirty coughs of air. They’ve been healing though, the shattered plates of bone no longer move on her body like broken ice on water. She’s able to stand now, able to push her legs against the earth. For a few days she couldn’t use magic, but now her horn twitches and hums, a hungry dog waiting for food. Pain leaves her body more and more frequently. As surely as day turns to night, her injuries heal.

“Wandering Thoughts?”
His name isn’t said often, he pays close attention.
“Yes”
A deafening pause, all her fondness for him turning into jittery nerves.
“Why are you looking after me?”
“Because she did. Because she took me in when I was in a dark place”
“The mare you told me about?”
He didn’t realise she remembered, nor how blunt she could be.
“Yes. She helped me like I’m helping you”
He reaches for his own dinner while she suddenly becomes mute. She looks downwards, staggers on her words. Her wings flutter and twitch.

I don’t deserve help. I’m not as good as you; don’t think I’ll ever be. I’m going to leave because no one has ever made me feel so worthless and so valuable. Your kindness is brutal. Say it chrysalis. Say it.

“I’m not as good as you. I’m not right in the head.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I don’t look after strangers, I don’t nurse a dying changeling back to health.”
A peal of silver laughter, he finds something funny while she’s bleaker then the gates of Tartarus. He digs into his meal; the words that leave him are light hearted, float into her mind and arrest her dark mood.

“I don’t worship Celestia, I don’t forgive easily, and I don’t even wash my hooves sometimes. Does that make me bad? Do you think anyone gives a damn about the things I haven’t even done? You shouldn’t feel bad about what hasn’t happened. You shouldn’t regret.”
“I never used to. I never even thought twice. Then you did something to me.”
“I bandaged you up”
“You ruined me, I never had to look at myself until I met you. Never had to care.”
“So I should have killed you”
Half question half statement, it sticks like an unpleasant stain.
“I don’t know. It’s just that looking at you is like a mirror. Whenever I try to think about you, I think about myself, I wonder what I should have done”
“You shouldn’t”
“It’s hard when death was so close to me.”

Seconds slip out in between the words, a lull in conversation. She’s bold now. The unicorn moves to her side and sits down. Her sight is lost in the aged gnarled wall. The great body of the changeling queen a giant to the unicorn.

“I’ve done bad things”
“Have you?”
“Yes. I hit you”
“That’s fine”
“I invaded equestria”
“That’s pretty major”
“I defeated a god”
“That’s also pretty major”
She bites her lip. She knows which of her sins will draw a reaction from him. It’s not the big details, it’s the small ones.
“I lied and deceived. I disguised myself as a bride and stole her groom. I taunted, shouted and hounded. The hive paid the price for my mistake.”

Her stare is cold and hard, tries to penetrate the walls and run away from the conflict in her head. It’s not her conscience she wrestles with; she made her peace with her actions a long time ago. She wrestles with the disappointment that will flow from his mouth. It will hurt more than her scars.

“You did the wrong things for the right reason. You did it for your family”
“It’s not enough of a reason for you, is it?”

He reaches out for her, wants to fight away the anxiety that feeds on her. He touches her and she shrugs him off, a cold angry action that stops him from comforting the changeling. She’s tired of his loaded words and opinions, tired of him invading her mind. How dare he take away her thoughts. How dare he make insignificant moments last a lifetime. How dare he replace everything with his smile. Dense and suffocating, her feelings strangle the world and her mind walls it off. You can see the rage which wakes on the surface of her. She’s still staring at the wall.

A sudden flash of aggression. He breaks her gaze. Firmly her head is pulled to his face, a stubborn stare collapsing into surprise, her wide eyes staring at two hardened ones. His gaze is metal, unyielding, and brilliant. He’s holding her face in his hooves, an assault of bravery and good intentions, his grip as solid and serious as his gaze. She releases her animosity, it’s nothingness floating on the sound of soft and heavy breaths. A stab of shock on her face, next to the hooves that hold her head.

“Look at me Chrysalis. You love your family. You’d defeat a god and invade a nation for them. I wouldn’t act like an ass, but I’d do it as well. You’d do anything for them. You’re alright.”
“Alright?”
“Yeah alright. You know that old mare? She was alright. She always told me to be kind to everyone I met, because everyone is fighting a hard battle. Life is a struggle that the selfish can’t understand, they don’t want to. We look out for everyone that’s fighting or struggling.”
The sound of a whisper. Their voices are coarse barely heard noises.
“I’m not fighting as hard as you”
“No. You just had a harder fight. You didn’t have anyone to help you.”

There was a small patch of flesh where his hooves touched her face. It was cold and hot, a paradox between the two, something massive that wanted to break out. It held itself in their thoughts while it grew and grew in their minds and hearts. A silly thing, a feverish waking dream, disappeared when they tried to take make of sense of what they felt. She’s closing her eyes now, leans in to a pair of shaking hooves that still hold her, screws up her face and listens. Listens closely and fiercely to affection and tenderness, wants to force it from his hooves into her skin.

The silence speaks of things better un-said, it wraps itself in what they remember, and they can’t forget this brittle delicate memory. His hooves drop to his sides. A useless pair of limbs. Something has gone, something has disappeared, something has been changed and can’t be taken back. They’re both blushing, a fierce rush of colour fires underneath her cheeks, hard to see under the exoskeleton. His back is now turned and he’s made a gulf between them.

She moves across the gulf. Massive legs cross each other and she holds him. Now he drowns in her embrace and they lean in to each other on a creaky broken mattress. Holds him in her large gangly limbs, lifts her legs over him and envelopes him in her worry and admiration. Alive in that instance, she kills the fear and stress that lives in his joints and muscles. It’s a hell of cold wind and grey light outside; it tells us that we need to shelter ourselves in the company of others when the weather breaks down into fragments of piercing wind. It speaks of a lost evening of warmness and a breakable strength that lives in all moments shared.

“Thank you.”

She frees him with a small squeeze. He was a tiny mess of nerves and concern in her hug. His meal is half finished, lost and forgotten. The fading fire gives a layer of auburn, wind peeling through cracks, wailing disappearing heat.

“Serious today aren’t you Chrysalis?”
He tries to bring confidence and humour back into the cabin. He’s turned to face her.

“Yes, I am”
She’s a sharp mouth of jagged points and fangs, a grinning cheeky face. There are excited eyes, feels like she climbed a mountain.

There is a place that she dreams of, more of a time actually. She loves someone and they love her, there is safety and happiness. She reads maps, schematics, blue prints, but have never read the romance novels full of crap. She doesn’t know what romance or affairs of the heart are, so she settles for this. Settles for the promise that they would make for each other in her dream, semi whispered ideas that would make her smile.

Then he trips over his meal, and her laughter rings out, bounces against the walls of the cabin.

********************************

The sleep is urgent really. There is no hushed small talk at midnight, they both fell into sleep let wakefulness pour out of their heads. They slept on separate beds and slept comfortably but they both wanted something. They don’t know what it is yet, so they talk and fight in their dreams. It’s a fire that wants to step into the past and it fends of the cold outside. Small shadows shudder and dance around the cabin that sleeps.

The night is cold iron, it can’t reach them. Dark is weighty and formless, stretches out from unseen corners. Wind would whip and chase the reduced clouds of dust across the domesticated land, but there is no movement because nothing is awake, no one cares because the night is abandoned. A god cries for her followers that shun the night, a parody of religion. Luna can ask questions at this night and receive no answers. This is how night lives here, and how it should be, unbodied and without end far away from the borders of equestria. It’s all around, the love and hate we feel for the darkness.

There is a patch of darkness that moves. A small bump of life that’s now gone. The hidden moon builds a kingdom of moonlight on top of thick boiling clouds, while something glides. How long did it travel, how long did day and night blur around it. Where are its eyes underneath that hood of darkness? Does it land with soft hooves? It’s in the crater now; its heart is the murderous one we hide in ours. The royal guard unfurls its wings.

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