Cold Wind Blowing

by Rambling Writer

4 - Bundles of Nerves

Mistral didn’t have much of a nose for food, so she couldn’t say what she was smelling as she walked down the staircase. Other ponies could probably differentiate the plants being used, but to her, it smelled decent, and that was it.

She’d only just stepped off the stairs when Griselda was in her face and pulling her towards a corner. “Over here,” Griselda muttered. “Don’t want her to hear us.”

“Which ‘her’? We’re all wo-”

“Desmoda!” Griselda swung Mistral around and leaned in close, dropping her voice even more. “She’s nuts. Don’t try to talk to her. I think she’s just looking for an excuse to hurt somebody. I mean, just a few minutes ago, I try to take her hot chocolate and she nearly breaks my frigging arm!”

“…Why’d you try to take her hot chocolate?”

“Wha- No, listen, she’s crazy, y-”

“No, seriously, why’d you try to take her hot chocolate?”

“It doesn’t justify her almost breaking my arm!”

“Of course it doesn’t. But you had to expect some kind of response from that. Why the mother duck did you try to take her hot chocolate?”

Griselda scowled. “Breaking my arm is kinda over-the-top, don’t you think?”

“I’m not denying that, but-” Mistral sighed and planted her face in her hoof. “Forget it, I’ll try to not annoy her, let’s go eat.”

The table wasn’t completely set just yet; Clarity was bringing the last few dishes out, with some help from Thistledown. Like the rest of the inn, the food seemed to be Mistral to be adequate enough, given the circumstances. In fact, the variety looked better than she expected. Not to mention… “Hey, Clarity?” Mistral asked. “Did you make all of this yourself?”

“Mmhmm.” Clarity nudged a bowlful of apples into place. “I-I have to, since I’m the only one here. Plus, I c-can’t exactly go out and buy food. I’ve worked here as long as I can r-remember, so-” She grinned. “-I’ve been working with limited ingredients long enough that I can make a meal from a-anything.”

“Yeah, great,” said Griselda, “but you’ve got my meat, right? You said you were cooking it.”

“Uh, yeah, here.” Thistledown plucked a plate from her levitated collection and set it on the table. On the plate was a misshapen brown blob that made Mistral’s stomach churn.

“Finally,” said Griselda, rubbing her front feet together as she took her seat. “I’m starving, and this looks great.”

“Yeah. Great.” Mistral restrained a gag. “‘Cause there’s nothing quite like eating the seared flesh of another living thing.”

Griselda grinned and, not even bothering with utensils, picked up her meat. “Nope!” She bit into it and suddenly paused. After a moment, she ripped off a chunk and swallowed. She stared at her food. “Huh.”

“What?” asked Mistral. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Griselda said, “just- I’ve never tasted this kind of meat before.” She tore away another chunk. “Not bad, just unexpected.” Another tear. “Although, actually, I think it might just be the spices.”

“You could ask Clarity what kind of meat it is or what she uses.”

“Nah. It’s not really the kind of taste I’m dying for.” Tear. “‘S ahwite,” Griselda said through a full beak, “bu’ no’ da’ gweat.” She swallowed. “Still, meat is meat, so I don’t mind. Except for fish. Every fish I’ve had tastes like every other fish I’ve had: bland and thin.”

“Ah.” Neither knowing nor wanting what “bland” meat was supposed to taste like, Mistral dug into her salad. She liked salads. Clean some vegetables (maybe some fruits, too), cut them up, throw them all in a bowl, done. Not like meat, where you could spend a quarter hour preparing it using specialized equipment and it still might not be done. She considered bringing this up to Griselda, but the latter was busy wolfing down her meat, so she said nothing.

No one else said anything, either. The group ate in silence for several moments before Cassandra cleared her throat. “So. Who’s got an icebreaker?”

Everyone looked up at her so simultaneously the sounds they made started and ended at the same time. “Icebreaker,” Cassandra said quickly, perhaps a touch exasperatedly. “You know. A story or something to get conversation going? Don’t tell me you want to just sit here and eat.”

After a moment, Thistledown coughed. “I, um, I’ve got nothing,” she said quietly. “I study plants. Not even plants that are interesting if you’re not a botanist. I’m a regular botanist, not an arcanobotanist.” She grinned for half an instant and quickly looked down. “So don’t expect much from me. Just, FYI.”

“Fat lot of good that was,” Desmoda said.

Thistledown quailed and folded her ears back. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“Lay off, not everypony has stories,” said Cassandra. “What about you? If you’re so-”

“How about the time I was in the Royal Guard and my squad was called in to secure a water park?”

Cassandra’s jaw dropped. “…What, seriously? The Lunar Regiment. Securing a water park.”

“It was, let’s just say…” Desmoda clicked her tongue. “…a very odd assignment.” She chuckled. “So?”

“Heck, yeah,” said Mistral. Even if Desmoda was half as bad as she appeared and Griselda said, she might be a good storyteller. And if she was lying, so what? A story to pass the time was a story to pass the time.

“Spit it out,” said Griselda.

Desmoda snickered and flicked her tail. “Alright. It was…” She tapped her chin. “…just after one in the morning — perfectly ordinary for the Lunar Regiment, we weren’t getting some shit detail — and suddenly this pegasus comes screaming in full tilt from the Canterlot Zoo…”

---

“-and you should’ve seen the look on the sergeant’s face when she heard what we’d needed the catnip for!”

Everybody’s laughs doubled. Even Facet, who apparently wasn’t listening, was giggling a little. Mistral had actually had to stop eating to keep herself from choking. This story was good.

“Oh, and the best part?” said Desmoda, just barely keeping it together. “You remember the bit with the dark slide? Asio actually managed to argue that we deserved hazard pay from that!”

“How does that happen?” asked Griselda, still laughing. “You’re soldiers!”

“I don’t know! But he got it! A hundred extra bits for each of us!”

Royal guards. Hazard pay. If she hadn’t been in a chair already, Mistral would’ve collapsed. It was just too rich. “You know, Desmoda,” she chuckled, “you’re a funny mare.”

All lightness dropped from Desmoda’s voice. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Silence fell. Mistral looked up; Desmoda was glaring at her, ears back and wings flared, and those slitted pupils were looking very monstrous all of a sudden. The other people eating were subtly shying away from her. Mistral blinked. “You, you know,” she said, “you’re funny. You know?”

“No,” whispered Desmoda, “I don’t know. I’m funny how?”

“Well, it’s…” Mistral swallowed. Anypony else, this wouldn’t’ve been a problem. Not from Desmoda. Not after what she’d seen and heard. “The, the story, the way you told it, it’s…” She rustled her wings. “It’s funny.”

“Oh, so I’m a stand-up comedian, now?” hissed Desmoda. “I tell stories that make you laugh? Is that what you think I’m here for?”

“I’m getting something to drink,” Facet said loudly, and immediately left the table for the bar.

For an instant, Mistral hoped that would distract Desmoda. No luck. Mistral swallowed again. “N-no, it’s-”

“Look, Desmoda,” said Griselda, “she meant-”

Without taking her eyes from Mistral, Desmoda backhoofed Griselda across the face. “She’s a big filly, she can explain it herself. What’s so funny about me?”

Mistral was sure she was sweating. She could hear her blood rushing in her ears. Griselda, Thistledown, and Cassandra were all exchanging glances. It took Mistral several seconds to find the right words. “It’s, it’s just… You’re funny. You know?”

Desmoda twitched her head a millimeter back and forth. “No. I don’t know. Do I look like a mind reader? Funny how?”

Mistral’s wings and hooves twitched in fear. Her instincts screamed at her to run. She pushed her stool an inch away from the table. “I, I just-”

Then Desmoda burst out laughing. “Oh, sweet Luna, you should see the look on your face!” She doubled over the table, she was shaking so hard. “I had you! I so had you!”

After a moment, Cassandra started chuckling. “Okay,” she said, “your face was pretty funny.”

Then Griselda. “Yeah, it- hehe- It was kinda ridiculous.” She clamped her claws around her beak, but that didn’t stop the laughter.

It was infectious. Mistral started laughing, too. She imagined what her face had been like and, well, now it just seemed ridiculous. It was one of those times where you had to laugh at yourself.

After a few moments, the ridiculousness had run its course. Not just for Mistral, but for Griselda and Cassandra, too. Hearty laughs petered out to minor chuckles before vanishing altogether. Soon, everyone gone silent.

But not Desmoda. Desmoda kept laughing.

And laughing.

And laughing.

And laughing.

Mistral and Griselda looked at each other in confusion and nervousness. Griselda coughed. “It’s not that funny,” she said.

“It is!” said Desmoda when she could take a breath. “Did- did you see the way she squirmed?! It was great!”

Mistral bit her tongue and waited a few more seconds. Desmoda didn’t stop. Eventually, Mistral cleared her throat. “Desmoda, it-”

Desmoda waved her down, still giggling. “Sorry, just- give me a minute.” She coughed, hit herself on the chest a few times. She cleared her throat. “Hem. Sorry.”

Mistral stared at Desmoda. Seeing somepony squirm could be funny, yes. But not that funny. What sort of pony laughed that hard at something like… like that? “Exactly what was so funny about that?” she asked in a low voice.

“Oh, pssht, really?” Desmoda said, waving a hoof. “You can’t explain humor. I just found it funny, that’s all. Really.” She smirked. “Your face was pretty great.”

“You were threatening me,” Mistral replied. She was breathing deeply. “I just want to know what’s so funny about threats.”

“You- You really thought-” Desmoda’s jaw dropped. “Oh, whaaaat?” She grinned disarmingly. Or, at least, it would’ve been disarming if not for her fangs. “I didn’t make any actual threats, did I? What do think I’m gonna do?”

Rock, hard place. Hammer, anvil. Mistral swallowed and did her best to soften the blow. “Well, I don’t know,” she said, “but you haven’t exactly been the nicest, so-”

“It’s not that hard to see you snapping,” Thistledown said breathlessly. “You pretty much punched me in the face for asking you a few questions about what you were doing out here.”

The smile vanished. Desmoda folded her ears back and glared at Thistledown. “You were being nosy,” she whispered, “and-”

“You nearly broke my arm!” put in Griselda. “I just wanted some hot chocolate!”

“Then don’t take my hot chocolate,” snapped Desmoda.

“And you’re getting hostile now,” said Cassandra. Her voice was surprisingly steady. “You really need to get that temper under control. You could hurt somepony.”

Desmoda gave Cassandra a black look, but for once she didn’t have a response. She grunted and mumbled very quickly to Mistral, “Fine sorry won’t do it again happy?”

No, thought Mistral. “Apology accepted-ish,” said Mistral.

For a moment, nothing. Then Desmoda smirked. “Your face was pretty great, though.”

Mistral opened her mouth just in time for Griselda to bellow, “SO WHO WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT HOW I GOT THIS?” She held up her amulet and was talking loudly before anypony could say “yay” or “nay”.

With the distraction going, Mistral focused on her food to blot out her thoughts of Desmoda. Griselda’s story dissolved into white noise as she breathed in and out. Gradually, she stopped being so fixated on Desmoda, even if the thoughts kept coming back whenever she tried pushing them out. In between bites, she tried to keep half an ear on Griselda’s story, but she soon got lost amid a jumble of names she didn’t recognize. Desmoda was listening to it with a sort of detached interest. At first glance, Cassandra seemed to be more invested, but she kept shooting sideways looks at Desmoda. But Thistledown wasn’t listening at all. She was staring at her drink, deep in thought. Glad to take another distraction, Mistral asked, “What’s up?”

Thistledown waited a moment before whispering, “Clarity.” She looked over her shoulder at the bar for a second. “She said she’s worked here all her life, right?”

“Yeah…”

“And she’s a crystal pony.”

“Yeah…”

“But all the crystal ponies were in the Crystal Empire, which vanished over a thousand years ago and only returned two years ago.” Thistledown looked Mistral in the eye and dropped her voice even more. “What is up with her?”

Mistral swiveled to look at Clarity moments before she disappeared into the back. Yeah, that was true. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? Why would Clarity-

The journal. The innkeep had been a stallion. If she dug deeper, there’d be something in there, Mistral was sure of it. “I don’t know,” she said, “but, listen to this: in my room, I-”

Thistledown’s ears suddenly stood up and she slid off her chair. “Back in a sec.” She trotted over to the bar and took a seat next to Facet before Mistral could react.

“But…” Mistral stammered to the empty space. “I-I was… going to tell you…” She groaned, but didn’t move. If Thistledown wasn’t going to stick around to listen, Mistral wasn’t going to walk around to talk. Deprived of her main distraction from Desmoda, and with Griselda’s names growing ever more impenetrable, Mistral buried her muzzle in her salad.

---

Clarity nudged the cup in Facet’s direction. “Problem?” she asked.

The steam said the hot chocolate was still scalding; Facet downed it anyway. She wasn’t claustrophobic, but the tight space was getting to her and she needed some comfort drink.

No, not the space. If it was just the space, she’d be fine. It was the company. Desmoda was psycho (something she may or may not have had a hoof in, Facet was forced to admit), Cassandra was intrusive, Griselda was a barbaric vandal, Thistledown was horrifically inoffensive, and Mistral- Actually, Facet didn’t know a thing about Mistral. Though that didn’t mean there wasn’t something about her lurking just under the surface. Between those four (possibly plus one) and the tight inn, to say she was quite vexed was a colossal understatement. Desmoda’s story had almost deflated her irritation, but then she got all bitter with Mistral and inflated it right back up. Of course, the space wasn’t helping things; she couldn’t get more than fifty feet from anypony.

“Ponies,” grunted Facet. “Soon as the storm clears-” She swept a hoof across nothing in particular. “Gone.”

“Ah. Cabin fever,” said Clarity, nodding sympathetically. “I see it all the time when it’s storming and ponies can’t l-leave.” As if for emphasis, the wind outside howled and the entrance door rattled a little.

“And I don’t like company in the first place,” Facet grumbled, “so it’s even worse.”

“So sorry. What if you were alone in here?”

“Not great, but much better.” Another deep quaff. The heat made Facet’s throat itch, even though it still tasted good. “Be able to just sit and read and not have to worry about-”

Griselda screamed something and Facet twitched, narrowly avoiding spilling her cup. She sighed and ruffled her mane. “-about that,” she mumbled.

“Oh, it can’t be that b-bad,” said Clarity. “Just you wait. Th-things will calm down once you a-are all settled in. Those bad thoughts will stop c-coming.” She smiled, as if she hadn’t said something mind-bogglingly banal. “Now, sorry, but I’ve got to clean some dishes.” She vanished into the door behind the bar.

Facet rolled her eyes and swirled her hot chocolate around. Oh. Sure. “Can’t be that bad.” Yeah, right. Wouldn’t mind if they all just dropped dead. Nopony to pester me then.

Speak of the draconequus, Thistledown took a seat next to her to pester her. “Um, sorry to bother you,” she said, “but would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

Based on the ones she’d asked earlier? “Probably,” said Facet.

“Not personal ones,” Thistledown said quickly. “Ones about mental magic, if you know that. The kind crystal ponies can use.”

Facet sat up and turned to Thistledown in surprise. She hadn’t thought she’d ever meet a pony outside the Crystal Empire. Maybe Thistledown just liked to read up on different kinds of magic. And besides- “You’re a unicorn and you’re asking me about magic?”

“Well, it’s, I, I don’t really, um, know much about the mechanics of magic outside my field. Heh. Field. Plant pun.” After a strained chuckle, Thistledown clopped her hooves together, bit her lip, and looked away. “I work with plants. So though I’m not an arcanobotanist, I know lot about earth magic — ley lines, thaumatic wells, those sorts of things, I even took a couple of electives on the theory of earth pony magic. But outside of that, I mostly just know the basics. Levitation and light and whatnot. So… please?”

“Why?” asked Facet, looking flatly at Thistledown.

“Call it… paranoid curiosity.” Thistledown did something halfway between a grin and a grimace.

Facet squinted at Thistledown for a second. She was feeling spiteful at the moment and didn’t want to spend time with anypony. But Thistledown was, from what she’d seen, the least-intolerable pony, and she’d feel guilty (for some reason) if she turned Thistledown down. Facet gritted her teeth internally. “I can give you the basics, on one condition. When it’s done, leave me alone. Alright?”

“Sure. Great. Promise. Cross my heart.” Thistledown did so. At least she seemed like the kind of pony to keep that promise.

“Fine.” Facet took a sip of cocoa for a little bit of nerve-calming. “And remember-” She pointed at herself. “Crystal pony. You’ll get a limited perspective on this.”

Thistledown nodded. “I know.”

Facet sipped again to wet her throat. This was probably going to be the longest conversation she’d ever had with another pony. “As you probably know, mental magic’s not very widely used, even when it’s legal.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The main issue with it, disregarding all the moral implications, is that it’s hard to account for just how fast the mind changes from moment to moment. It’s possible to modify emotions, bu-” She suddenly slammed her hoof on the table.

Thistledown yipped and almost fell from her chair. Her ears twitching, she asked, “What was that for?”

“A demonstration,” said Facet. “Think about it. You were thinking about mental magic. I hit the table. You immediately thought about me hitting the table. Get it?”

At first, Thistledown frowned. Then her frown slowly turned to realization as her brain worked. “So no matter what you do to somepony,” she said slowly, “it could be gone in an instant once their mental state changed.”

“Exaggeration, maybe, but accurate enough.” Actually, Thistledown was closer to it than most. Which didn’t say great things about the ‘most’. “The mind is always changing. A pony may have a certain emotion, but there’s nothing stopping that emotion from changing at a moment’s notice or even just slipping away on its own. The same is true whether the emotion is natural or artificial.”

“Could you keep it in if you kept applying magic to the pony?”

“Well… hypothetically, maybe, but it’d be too much effort for too little gain. It’s not like you can force emotions into ponies from halfway across the country. You’d have to keep near them — follow them around or keep them in one area — if you wanted to keep doing magic on them.” Why’s she asking me this? She said “paranoid curiosity, so what’s she paranoid about? It’s not me, is it?

“Uh-huh. Okay.” Thistledown chewed on her lip for a moment. “So, uh, emotions can change easily. But, but what about ideas? I mean, fully-formed ideas, those things stick. They just… eat away at you, you know? If you put one of those in, would it stay longer?”

“Those, um…” Facet frowned. She hadn’t actually tried pushing ideas into ponies before, but now that she thought about it, there didn’t seem to be any reason that couldn’t work, aside from some metaphysical rule about crystal pony magic not working that way that she didn’t know about. Her curiosity was piqued, she had to admit, and Thistledown seemed to be intelligent enough to be a sounding board of sorts. Maybe this particular back-and-forth would actually be something other than an annoyance. “That might not actually need anything,” she said slowly, “beyond the initial planting. The pony’s own mind would feed it.”

“But it’d still need to be in line with their actual beliefs, right? Otherwise they’d know it wasn’t theirs, and they’d start feeling… feeling… Gah, what’s the term…” Thistledown kneaded her forehead, mumbling quiet nothings. “That thing where you have two ideas that’re the opposite of each other-”

“Cognitive dissonance, I presume?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Probably.” Facet actually found herself enjoying this a little. She’d never actually talked with somepony about this. New perspectives were nice. “And if you noticed a thought that probably wasn’t yours, you’d do your best to ignore it. Wouldn’t make it fully go away, though. Not for a while, at least.”

“Erng-hrng… Okay…” Thistledown swallowed. “What about… What about subconscious ideas?”

The enjoyment was suddenly strained. “Subconscious ideas?”

“You know. Ideas that you don’t, it’s like, you don’t know they’re ideas you have. They just kinda… push you a certain way and you attribute it to random stuff in your head. You know?”

“…No, I don’t know.” Facet’s good feeling began dripping away. “What’re you talking about?”

Thistledown gave a tiny, somewhat exasperated thing somewhere between a squeak and a moan. She ruffled her mane. “Stuff like favorite colors, favorite foods, why you went down this way when that way was just a good, randomly picking something from a list, those things.”

Facet stared. Blinked. Thistledown was still the least-intolerable pony, but something was up with her. This wasn’t just curiosity. “Just what, exactly, are you getting at?”

“It’s, I-” Thistledown’s ears twitched towards the door Clarity had disappeared into. “You know what I’ve asked too much this way past the basics thank you sorry to waste your time goodbye!” She quickly left her seat and bolted up the stairs.

Odd. But she was gone, and gone one way was gone all ways, so Facet wasn’t complaining. She went back to her hot chocolate (although it’d cooled off enough that it was now above-warm chocolate).

Clarity walked out of the back, brushing flour from her mane. “Errands: r-run. So. What did you think of while I was a-away?”

Facet snorted. “All the ponies in this inn,” she muttered, “are crazy.”

“Including you?”

“Probably.”

Comments

[Dlaf rferg]

Oh, damn. We need some clarity on Clarity, if you know what I mean.

[JeremyStorm]

So admittedly commenting mid-chapter. Really hoping the death tag in this fic applies to Desmoda.

[Moosetasm]

“No,” whispered Desmoda, “I don’t know. I’m funny how?”

Funny like a clown? Like she’s here to amuse you?
Now Desmoda has Joe Pesci’s voice in my head. I hope you’re proud of yourself.

[FOXTrot2]

“Oh, it can’t be that b-bad,” said Clarity. “Just you wait. Th-things will calm down once you a-are all settled in. Those bad thoughts will stop c-coming.”

Wait...

Crystal ponies...

Emotion manipulation...

Something tells me she's being literal here.

. You’d have to keep near them — follow them around or keep them in one area — if you wanted to keep doing magic on them.”

So Clarity has trapped them and is subtly influencing their thoughts and feelings