You Can't Take The Sky From Me

by FailcopterWes

Chapter 12: Silence.

Chapter 12

For hours the night was filled with triumphant howls. The terrible noise flowed through the trees and through the grass upon the dry earth. The calm air froze with each new sound. The nightly chill swept across the land, and above shone the moon, impassionate and gleaming.

The trees were still, with no wind to shake their leaves.

The earth was solid, with no rain to let soften it.

The lamps went out, with no fuel left to burn.

And after several hours, the wolves were quiet, with nothing more to eat.

The sun began to rise above the trees. Slowly, it shone through the branches and played against the leaves, its bright glow illuminating the canopy.

Between the trees, shadows stretched and thinned, slowly being chipped away by the encroaching light.

It was in one of these shadows that Fluttershy lay. Her body hung limply in the grass, her head lying against Ditzy’s belly. A grey hoof sat against her mane, amongst the dishevelled pink mess that flowed from her head. Her eyes were closed, the eyelids tightly pushed against each other. Her mouth was shut, the teeth firmly clamped. Her legs were tucked up against her body, making herself as small as she could. Even in sleep she could not help but curl up against the closest thing she knew.

Ditzy shifted uncomfortably against the hard bark of the tree. With Fluttershy asleep against her, she could not move any more than a slight shuffle without waking her. But sometime in the night she had been overwhelmed by her exhausted mind and forced to sleep in such a position. Rays of sunlight began to play across her face, highlighting the marks under her eyes and the twin streaks running down her face. Her breath came gently, careful not to wake the mare beside her. With one hoof in Fluttershy’s mane, the other held her shoulder in a light grip. Even in sleep she would take care of her friend.

As the sun shone into her eyes, slipping between her eyelids as they groggily pulled themselves open, Ditzy opened her mouth to give off a small and silent yawn. Between her legs she saw the saddlebags sitting in a pile, with the food bag lying against them. Before her lay a small green area, hemmed in by trees and bushes. The grass was short and damp, clinging to Ditzy’s coat. With tired eyes she looked around. All she saw ahead of her hooves were the signs of nature. Trees that reached up to Celestia’s rising fire, flowers that dotted the grass as blue islands in the small ocean of green, bushes that lined the trees like a fence between gardens. But Ditzy saw no pony other than herself and the yellow mare beside her. In their sleep, Rainbow Dash had disappeared.

Rainbow swatted aside a fern, barging past without a care for the plants she trampled underfoot. Each movement of her legs bore more in similarity to a kick at the earth beneath her than a step. Her back was arched slightly and her head thrust forwards, her neck stiff. Her face was marked with tear lines and smears of mud. Her mane was beyond dishevelled, it was destroyed, with hairs leading in every direction, some of it seemed to be thinning slightly. She was dimly aware of her physical condition, somewhere in her mind she knew her time out here was having a negative effect on her.

But she did not care, she simply stormed on, with a snarl upon her lips and a cold fire in her eyes. She stormed on as fast as she could without breaking into a run, moving away from the sun, keeping below the trees where it was harder to spot her. Before long she would find what she was looking for.

Somewhere in her mind, if just for a moment, she remembered abandoning Ditzy and Fluttershy in the clearing, sleeping gently. This thought caused Rainbow to screw up her eyes in hatred. Her thoughts made it sound as if she never planned on returning. But she knew she would go back, but first she had to see something. She would have thought it better to leave it and go, but something told her to go, forced her to go. A voice in her head, speaking in a language she did not speak, and yet she understood it. It made sense, even if the sounds were not words and the things in her head were not anything she recognised, Rainbow knew that investigating took priority. Briefly, she wondered if she had made the wrong decision to leave them, even if temporarily, but reasoned that it was too late to turn back now. That was before she had left, now her mind was filled with a dual purpose: to see what was being shown to her, and get back to her friends before anything bad happened to them.

Fluttershy stirred from her sleep. Her back ached from the hard ground and her eyes were heavy as if she had never slept. Her breath came to her in long, dry gasps, her throat dry. Her mind a cloud of half remembered flashes and faded sounds. Ditzy lowered her head, attempting a weak smile for the yellow mare. All that came to her lips were a few twitches at the corner of her mouth. The weary eyes below her saw, gazed for a moment, and attempted a smile back.

But she could not manage it. The moment her lips moved her mind began to clear. The orbs of her eyes widened and stared, unfocused and glistening, as she gazed in silent horror at the things in her mind that played before her eyes. Visions swirled, until dispelled suddenly by a waving grey hoof. The hoof moved and gently clasped Fluttershy’s cheek. Beyond the fading sights, Ditzy’s eyes swirled into place and stared.

Fluttershy opened her mouth to say something, anything about what she saw, but only succeeded in breathing out. Hearing the rasp coming from her throat, Ditzy pulled her hooves from Fluttershy and reached towards the saddlebags. She rummaged through them for a short while, eventually pulling out a canteen, filled with water. Gripping it in her hooves, she undid the top with her teeth and held it out for Fluttershy. The yellow mare leaned forwards slightly, brought her lips to the canteen, and let Ditzy tilt it enough for the water to trickle out. After a few sips, Fluttershy pulled away. Ditzy brought the canteen up and drank from it, enjoying the fresh taste. After a moment, she felt it being lightly pushed down, replaced with two large eyes.

Ditzy took the hint and closed the lid of the canteen before placing it back in the saddlebag. Carefully moving Fluttershy to one side, Ditzy stood up. She gazed around the clearing, searching again for her missing friend. With a strangely bouncy trot she made her way to the bushes. Much to Fluttershy’s confusion Ditzy turned around upon reaching the nearest bush, put a hoof to her lips, and then dived inside.

After a great degree of removed bush and seemingly disembodied limbs emerging from it, Ditzy emerged from the foliage. Twigs and leaves stuck out of her wings and mane at unusual angles. Fluttershy stifled a giggle. Ditzy shot her a small glare. Immediately silencing herself, Fluttershy could not help but sigh as Ditzy made her way to the next bush and dived in.

The walls were still up. The thick beams of wood stood high above her, scratched and dented at all heights. Rainbow stared up at them for a moment. It had never occurred to her while she had been within the walls just how high they were. She wondered for a moment how they had been erected, if some primitive form of heavy machinery had been used to help.

She would never know the answer to this, and like many questions in life, she would eventually forget she had ever asked it.

Rainbow turned her head to the spear protruding from a nearby tree. She pushed it experimentally with her hoof. The thin shaft bent slightly under the pressure. Returning her hoof to ground level, she lowered her body slightly and backed away. Her eyes scanned around, watching for movement. Her ears raised up, listening for the rustle of leaves as something passes by.

She heard nothing. She saw nothing.

And so, Rainbow began to move, keeping low, towards the wall. She drew close enough to lick it before stopping, her eyes centimetres from the splinters and grooves before her. Her eyes bored into the wood, as if she would find its very secrets by staring. But soon enough, a little voice in her head told her to stop, that staring at the wood would achieve nothing more than a simple sight. After a quick glance around, she began to move along the wall. Each step was slow, measured and precise. Her muscles were stiff, screaming to just go and look, but something in her mind held her back. It tugged on her limbs as she moved, making every step a struggle.

But still she carried on, she pushed through the voices and moved on. Before long, she found the gate. Looking up, Rainbow could see the arch above it still intact.

But the gate itself was gone. All that remained were chunks of wood scattered across the ground. Rainbow found her eyes travelling to where the hinges had been, but they had been completely torn out, taking with them a large chunk of the wall. Curious, she stepped forwards, but stopped when she felt her hoof land in something wet and soft. For a moment, Rainbow stood still. She did not dare look down. Inside her head, a voice tempted her to look down, taunting her with curiosity.

Rainbow shut her eyes. She gritted her teeth and focused on a thought. She forced herself to think of nothing, of it being simply a puddle.

She opened her eyes again. Slowly she began to lower her gaze. Her mouth began to move as she repeated to herself that it was just a puddle.

Water pooled around her hoof. She had stepped in a puddle, inside which a small Temise, the same thing that was inside Fluttershy’s wounds, had floated until Rainbow had stepped on it. Rainbow let out a breath she had been unconsciously holding, a smile coming to her face. Mentally, she chastised herself for jumping to such a conclusion immediately, remembering all the times Applejack had scolded her for flying ahead or assuming the answers immediately. Rainbow remembered fondly the slight strain on her tail every time the hat wearing mare would grab at her whenever she tried to fly away without thinking. Turning away from the gate, Rainbow nodded lightly at another memory passing through her mind. Her wings opened, spreading out in a feathery frame around her head. With a few quick beats, she took off, hovering just above the ground. She had seen what she came to see; now she only needed to return to Ditzy and Fluttershy before they awoke and let them be none the wiser of her trip. Rising into the air, she turned and made her way above the forest, feeling the cold air pummel its way through her mane. The air felt hard and stiff, like she was flying against a house, but she paid it no attention, dismissing it as freak weather in this part of the world.

Ditzy had given up on her search for Rainbow. She sat under the shadow of a tree, chewing half heartedly on a small treat from the food bag. Fluttershy sat a short distance away, carefully watching her marefriend. Between Fluttershy wanting to be left alone with her thoughts and Ditzy’s increasingly disgruntled mood, the two had barely communicated in the time since they awoke. Ditzy gazed at the sky, searching with her wayward eyes for any sign of her missing friend. She outright refused to believe Rainbow had been taken away, insisting to herself that she was a light sleeper and would have been woken by anything attacking. But that only left one option for Ditzy’s mind to comprehend, that Rainbow Dash had left them behind. She was unsure if this pained her more or less to consider than the possibility of a silent attacker, reasoning that the silent attacker would probably be trained to be instantly lethal, so pain would be somewhat nonexistent and would also prevent victims from crying out, which Ditzy assumed was a useful side effect in that line of work.

The arrival of a small blob in her vision refocused Ditzy to her view of the sky. She peered at the blob, realising it was heading this way. Fluttershy saw Ditzy’s face, and followed her gaze. The two stared for a moment before either of them realised what it was. Fluttershy gave a small choke of suprise, while Ditzy got to her hooves and strode towards the blob in the sky, waiting patiently for it to land. As the blob came closer, the colours along it could clearly be made out, an entire spectrum of light in the hairs of its body.

Rainbow Dash glided in, carefully alighting next to Ditzy and smiling happily. Ditzy opened her mouth to speak, too angry to bother keeping her eyes straight, when her rolling vision caught sight of something on the ground. Rainbow trotted towards Fluttershy, largely ignoring Ditzy. But Ditzy’s eye was locked on the ground where Rainbow had landed, trying to comprehend it’s existence. Her other eye moved to Rainbow, scanning her for any clues before joining the first eye in staring at the ground. Tentatively, Ditzy lifted a hoof and reached out. She touched at the ground and brought her hoof back up to her face.

The tip of her hoof was covered in red.

Comments

[DreadedCandiru2]

Do I wanna know why the ground is red?

[FailcopterWes]

1293207 here's a clue. You may have been correct about RD being a bit messed up. That may not have been a puddle she stepped in.

[OddRaccoon]

1293207
Considering how this story seems to be going, no. You really don't. Then again, if you thought like that, you'd probably have run away around Chapter 2. So I suspect that you already know what happened.

Also: "going to"?
Your optimism amuses me.

[DreadedCandiru2]

1297169

Oh, super. This means that Ditzy and Fluttershy have just ended up stuck with somepony infreakingsane.

Ah, well. Broken-up Ponyville, broken lives of whoever's left standing back home, might as well have a broken Rainbow Dash.

[FailcopterWes]

1297279 I know, not a pretty picture is it? But don't worry, with any luck this might have a happy ending.

Might.

[DreadedCandiru2]

1297287

It might but it could go either way.....

[FailcopterWes]

1297344 I've got two endings planned. Whichever one I use depends on how depressed I am by the time I get around to using them. If I'm sad enough I'll write the happy one.

No that's not an excuse to heckle me to get a happy ending

[DreadedCandiru2]

1298529
So we should expect the rocks-fall-everypony-dies thing then.

[FailcopterWes]

1298605 Nah. The story is planned all the way up to there. And the amount of death is the same in both endings. It's just the tone that changes and the actual actions and end state of the surviving characters at the end.

[DreadedCandiru2]

1298635
So instead of whoever's left standing being broken utterly, they can somehow or other build on what they've learned. Gotcha.