In the Company of Night

by Mitch H

A Command Performance

SBMS039

The dream of the moon-lit lagoon shone with a hyperreal luminescence, and the memory of foals in costume stepped through the old story, their piping high voices echoing from coral reef and sweet sand and the nodding tree-tops around the natural amphitheatre. The little donkey in her false horn and crown, the growing earth-pony, her own false horn glowing with real magic. An earth pony wrestling with his framework wings. They all trooped about, hitting their marks and reciting their lines, shivering in the cold air blowing over their improvised stage. The little donkey, his ears hidden inside the great big pudding-cup headdress, his slight stature swelling with the mad charisma of the lunatic earth pony chancellor as he played off the caribou fawn doing her best straight-mare as Smart Cookie.

Around the edges of the memory, the watching audience, faceless donkeys and earth ponies heavily bundled against the cold of the performance-hall, huddled. The militia-ponies, unfamiliar with the old pageant, provided an uncertain counter-point of confused laughter to the age-old comedy. Beyond the vision upon the waters, the sands were cluttered with a second audience, anthropods uncounted, hermit-crabs and fiddlers and sand-fleas and their many siblings and crustacean cousins, many clicking their claws in appreciation of the players and their play.

And above all, the tall spirit for whom this performance had been dredged forth from the day's recall, who was giggling and laughing like the filly she once had been, and if I had anything to do with it, might once be again someday.

Then the players got to the grand interlude of the story, the pegasi storming their new lands, and finding, to their consernation, the previous occupants – bat-winged flying horses, dancing over the virgin cloudscape in the twilight hour. I always found the thestrals' swagger-song to be a great deal of fun, and here it was, the other foals having quickly donned Company charms to act the part of the chorus:

When you're thestral,
You're the swing'st thin'
Little filly, you're a mare,
Little filly, you're a queen!

Here come the thestrals
Like bats outa Tartarus
Somepony get in our way
Somepony gon' call Cadeceus!

Charlehorse spun out of the el Ard, the clashing cymbal-noises of wingblades being rung by the Company pegasi standing off-stage and acting as a sort of barbaric pit-orchestra. He pulled off her wanting-aria with skill and a voice that was just on the edge of breaking. He'd not be able to sing this one next year – he had already shot up a half-hoof in just the last month.

Then came the pas de deux, which since neither our Pansy nor our Hurricane had functional wings, had to be done on the stage itself in two-dimensions.

Hold my hoof, and we're halfway there…
Hold my hoof, and I'll take us there
Somehow
Some day,
Somewhere!

And then tribe-uniting kiss, and:

I like to be in Eque-stri-ah
OK by me in Eque-stri-ah
Ev'rything free in Eque-stri-ah
For a slight fee in Eque-stri-ah!

Hundreds of rainbows over every song!
Hundreds of ponies on every cloud!
Immigrants goes to Eque-stri-ah
Many hellos in Eque-stri-ah
Wire-spoke chariots in Eque-stri-ah
Pegolopolis's in Eque-stri-ah!

I always loved that part of the pageant, the little moment of uniting love among the pegasi sub-tribes which presaged the pan-tribal unity of the finale, as well as the crass delight of the new immigrants in their fresh land. And so, I found, did the Spirit, who had turned entirely solar-pegasi in her aspect, feathered and blue-furred, weeping openly, grinning through her tears.

"Oh, I have always loved the old version of this tale, before they simplified all the joy and complexity out of it…"

The story took its dark turn, and the three great tribes quarrelling turning bloody. Gibblets' illusions provided the fighting and dying spear-carriers, we didn't want the foals hurting each other, even with play-hoofblades and padded sticks. Company pegasi and griffins wearing some of Shorthorn's glamours flew overhead and played the part of the Windigos, and we came to the climax, and the Hearth's Warming:

The Fire of Friendship burns in our hearts
As long as we live, we cannot dance alone
Though fighting erupt, may the bloodshed pass
Loving and singing will see us through
We are a nation of hoove'd tribes
And loving kindness will bind us to the end.

And… scene. The foals took their bows among a cacophony of weapons used as percussion off-stage, and the memory sank into the starlit dark of the lagoon, to the claw-clicking applause of the endless crowd of crabs and other sea-folk gathered on the shore.

"We know what you are doing, by showing us this, Acolyte. But we forgive you anyways. They were darling, and very well schooled. It is a marvel that our Regiment has thus preserved the old forms, even after all the losses of the years. You remember our beloved thestrals, even as they themselves died out in your and our service."

"We always keep an eye out for them, in hopes of having your special pegasi once more represented in the brotherhood by something other than witchcraft and charms and fading memories. But the clans are few and far between, and we've not seen one outside the Company in more than two centuries. Within the Company, the traits don't tend to breed true outside of pure-blooded pairings. There are many descendants of the old thestrals among the aerial cohort, but none have had the full manifestation of the moon-touch. Some long-eared mares, a couple with recessive fangs. You know how it goes, Mistress."

"I certainly do. We maintained breeding programs, as painful as it was for family cohesion, we thought it worse to lose one of the founding tribes by the vicissitudes of mere heredity. Such an irony, that the love of Hurricane and Pansy would be a threat to the existence of one of their tribes. Enough of ancient history and so forth. What are your plans for the immediate future? The egg-stealing dead thing is definitely gone?"

"As far as we can be sure, Mistress. We continue on our guard, and I have begun a doubled set of Annals, in case it gets past our guard again and raids the Annals-chest. The sanitized version will come to its call when it tries our defenses again, and the true text, though bound to the chest as it ought, is protected by the second layer of defenses. Five hundred years of sly and recondite magecraft can offer many traps and delusions for those who would break through and pillage our treasures."

"Which worries me, Acolyte. You retrieved the ancient scrolls it sought far too easily, that library should have been a terrible tangle of defensive runes, spell matrixes, and other traps for the unwary. And yet your griffins simply waltzed in, and cleared out the lot. As if some other guardian spirit thought to simply gift them to you out of motives I wot not."

"I have not had a chance to go through those scrolls as of yet, Mistress. I could use your input on their relevance, meaning, or context, if you had any opinions on the subject."

The Spirit had slowly re-gained her thestral aspect as we had discussed modern affairs, and now appeared fully as Nightmare Moon again. She grinned fiercely with her predator-teeth and glowing slit-eyed menace, delighted to be offered the chance to plot once again against enemies and opponents. Once you got to know her, she was a very simple mare. Competitive, savage, vicious, blood-thirsty to an extent beyond that of mere military conditioning. To meet the Spirit in her Nightmare aspect was to understand fear, to understand why the Company had survived as long as it did, thrived in a thousand savage blood-lands and ten thousand vicious blood-lettings.

"In other lack-of-news, we continue to extend feelers towards the Mistress of our employer, in hopes of placing our employment in Tambelon on a firmer basis than the tolerance of a mad capricious lich. No responses yet."

"Even if you do make contact with this ruler, it is to only exchange the caprice of one mad lich for a slightly more pragmatic lich, is it not? I vaguely recall the existence of this Bride, if we talk of that false alicorn which the vile necromancer kept leashed in his court as a diplomatic affront to every ambassador from alicorn-ruled polities. There was great rejoicing when that abomination and his court of abominations were torn down by the Light-bringers. We were quite wroth that our Sister refused to allow us to participate in the demolition of Grogar. Too far away from our lands, too many monsters threatening home itself. Always some other horror to be put down in our own back-yards. She never let us have our fun, not really…"

"So Equestria was in contact with Tambelon in the days of the Grogar Domination? Do we need to worry about Equestrian spies taking notice of us now?"

"If they did not take notice of you in the world known today as Crossroads, they surely would not here in Tambelon; it is yet further from our home by at least one further portal-jump. Unless, that is, some new portal-chain has contracted the web of the Chain of Creation on this side of the main torus. Brane topography and multi-world geopolitics were always our Sister's domain, and we perhaps did not pay such matters such attention as they might have otherwise warranted."

"For now, we remain in winter quarters, and await developments and the spring. I bid you good morning, Lady, and hope dawn finds you a sweet rest of your own."

Author's Note:

Thus begins the second arc. I thought about closing out the first as a single book, but really, it seems like a waste of structure. I know I myself tend to look for longer-form stories on fimfiction. Ah, well, I suppose it's all a matter of taste.

Sorry about the West Side Story pastiche. I needed some way to punch up the Hearths Warming story, and distinguish it from the Celstine version used in modern Equestria. And the idea of pegasi in old Roamish barding dance-fighting to Leonard Bernstein makes me giggle.

Comments

[ponygrad]

Embarrassingly, though I recognized the tune you were aping, my mind made the mistake of thinking it was from an American tail

[Mitch H]

8049030 Would you believe I've never seen An American Tail? Ah, well, we all have inexplicable holes in our cultural hrm, experiences?

[Bookeater_otaku]

I just binge read the first book and I am hooked. Its a briantly constructed tale with no real down time and even such down time are full of clues, plot point and detail that keep us immersed in this uninverse. I can see you defining the style I now find in 'Good Trooper Gilda', the first story from you I ever read, to my great enjoyment.

[Robert Noxon]

Here come the thestrals Like bats outa Tartarus Somepony get in our way Somepony gon' call Cadeceus!

West Side Story
Which was based on Romeo & Juliette