Making Wishes on the Furthest Stars

by Henbane Skies

Ch 4 - Placebo Integrity

Chapter Four
Placebo Integrity

“Stop! You don’t have permission to be here!”

The mare felt a familiar coldness forming in her stomach, soothing her limbs and nulling the adrenaline that was pulsing behind her eyes. She glared at the guard pony that had spoken, looking him directly in the eyes as she drew herself up to her full height. “I want to talk to Twilight Sparkle,” she said.

Some of the lances pressed a little bit harder against her neck. One of the guards said “If you won’t get out peacefully, you’ll be forcing us to toss you out, and I don’t think any of us will like that.”

One of his compatriots scoffed loudly. The mare looked down at him as he gave an unpleasant grin; he was a full head shorter than her. “I would,” he said.

The mare was silent, and she allowed the silence to stretch on, knowing that even though they had the weapons, she was still the problem—she controlled the conversation. There were worse things than six angry guard ponies, worse things than the threatening blades of six lances. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said.

The pony snarled, hefting the lance and making it bite into the side of her neck. The cold steel reminded her of the Storm King’s land, now just a faraway dream that would mutter to her when the wind blew and the temperature fell. “You think we don’t remember what you did?” the guard said, and the mare braced herself for another variation of the same old words. “You think we’re just going to forget all of the things that happened a year ago? You led an attack on this nation, with foreign interests in mind. You attacked and imprisoned the princesses and led an assault on Canterlot. If it were up to me, the law would be a little less lenient to traitors like you.”

The mare rolled her eyes. She sighed; this whole day was dragging on, and she was getting nowhere. The stallion’s eyes darted to his compatriots, not wanting to leave her, as though she might pull a knife on him and start cackling like a madmare. “Why’d she come here anyway? Who’s to say that she didn’t come here to try it again? Maybe she’s been tricking Princess Twilight into being a goody four-shoes this whole time, and she’s just been waiting for the right moment.”

Another guard, with a gaudier and more formidable look to his armor, stomped his hoof. “Shut up, Flint. Stirring up trouble isn’t going to help anything.”

This Flint looked like he wasn’t about to listen to a superior officer. He looked like he wasn’t even seeing her anymore, and the mare was fairly certain that was the truth; she could recognize that look a mile away. He was looking back a year ago. Maybe he’d been there in Canterlot when it happened. She opened her mouth to speak when she felt the blade push harder against her neck. Flint’s head lowered, looking like he was about to pounce. “Are you telling me we’re not going to do anything about this?”

She was getting tired of this rigmarole; a pony can only take so much. The mare jerked her neck down, feeling the sharp tickle as the blade nicked her skin—a brief flash of cold, a hot wetness that ran a loose path down her magenta fur. “Why don’t you try something, boy?” she said. The guards shuffled their hooves and made disgusted noises, a clearing of a throat or a disbelieving scoff. She stared down the stallion Flint.

“You’re crazy. This mare’s crazy!”

She almost started laughing, almost chuckled and would have agreed if she hadn’t realized it would have invalidated her whole reason for being here. She allowed a smirk and stared down at them. “Gentlecolts, I came here to see the princess. I didn’t come here to break heads. But if you have to insist, I’m up for it if you are.”

For one whip-smack moment, it looked as if some of them were going to oblige her. She knew she couldn’t get very far in a fight against six lances, herself unarmed, but she knew she could at least do some damage. In the expectant silence, she heard the sound of hooves echoing across the atrium. She looked up towards that stairs and saw Twilight walking across the second floor, a number of well-dressed dignitaries in her wake. Whatever she was telling them, they were enraptured by it, not looking anywhere else. Spike took up the rear, throwing a bored glance over the railing. He took another few steps before he blanched. He ran down the stairs at a speed that would have been deemed unsafe by any rational being, leaping two or three of the steps at a time.

The little dragon ran up to the guards, his arms flailing. “What’s going on here, guys!? You’re just supposed to—.” He stopped when he looked at the mare, his eyes wide and drawing down to follow the red path her blood made in her neck and chest, already making lightning marks on her foreleg.

“Spike, I have to talk to Twilight, right now,” the mare said.

The dragon looked at her, then back at the stairs. Twilight and the dignitaries were standing at the top of the stairs, pausing to hear some slice of wit Twilight was conjuring. Spike waved his arms and whispered as loudly as he dared. “Back off, back off! You, get over here!” He grabbed the mare’s hoof and led her away from the guards, running down a hall diagonal to the staircase. “In the library, quick!” he whispered, letting her go so he could run.

She followed close behind him, darting into the library as he flung the door open, twitching when he slammed it shut. “That was close,” he said. “Sorry about all this, Tempest, but Twilight’s having an important meeting right now, and the last she needs right now is…um, well, more distractions.”

She saw the apologetic expression on his face and she knew that that last word wasn’t the one he meant. It was clear he meant to say problems instead of distractions. Spike looked her up and down, looking like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to keep staring or look away in horror. She didn’t blame him; one foreleg partly shaven with badly healed-over scars, the other foreleg and her chest tattooed with her blood, already dried in clumpy ridges into the fur. And then, of course, the old ones, the hairless gash across her eye, and the horn, the place where a horn ought to be.

“Geez, did they do that? They were just supposed to watch the door. They weren’t meant to actually do anything.”

“Spike, I have to talk to Twilight about my medical bill. She told the receptionist she was going to consult with me about it.”

The dragon frowned. “That’s right! You were in—well, you’re out of the hospital now. That’s good! It’s good to see you…healthy again?”

The mare narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips into a scowl. The effect was immediate; Spike cleared his throat and looked away. “Look, Twilight’s going to be busy for a few hours, so just hang tight right here, okay? I know what Twilight wants is kinda weird, but it’s a good plan. You have to trust her on this. Okay?”

This time it was her turn to look away. She sighed, breathing in the scent of books as she fought for a reason to argue, coming up blank. She felt like she was wasting time, that there should be a direct route to the answer she was seeking, rather than this waiting rubbish. But she understood the value of taking the best offer available. She nodded, feeling like she’d just lost a fight. Spike showed her a shortcut to the bathroom so she could wash off the blood, and then left before she could thank him. He left her with herself, with her smoldering impatience, confusion, and anger that didn’t have anywhere to go.

She took a wet cloth and dabbed the blood off her body, starting with her hoof. You idiot, she thought to herself, angling her body so that she couldn’t see her face in the mirror, only the small cut in her neck. You had to push them, didn’t you? You couldn’t just explain, or leave a message even? What was the purpose of getting yourself cut? Showing off in front of the stallions? Showing off to yourself, that you can still bleed for something? Or did you just want to bleed again? Stupidity isn’t integrity, and it can’t be a substitute.

The mare paused then, holding the wet cloth over the tiny wound. No, stupidity wasn’t integrity, and it wasn’t an excuse, either. Her sea foam eyes slowly went up from the cloth to—don’t look there don’t look there don’t—her face. She looked at herself for what felt like the first time in a long time. The sharpness of her chin to the curve of her cheekbones, the distrusting look in her eyes she was giving the mirror, and she was certain this time that it was the mirror she was looking at and not herself. Then she looked there, she had to look there, at the cracked stump of her horn, the ragged scars around one eye. Ugly and defective broken mare.

So own it.

The mare felt a knot form in her stomach—not because of what she thought, but because it had Rainbow Dash’s voice. Three little words; so own it, and it felt like something had stirred inside her, had just eaten up some of her aggravation. She looked at herself again, at the same scars and the same jagged stump of a horn, her reflection meeting her gaze, and she felt that something had changed. Whoever she was, the scars were hers, and they belonged to her. She didn’t belong to them.

Yeah, right. She shook her head and broke eye contact with the mare in the mirror.

A flicker of something dark caught her eye, and she noticed the spider as it began crawling down her scarred foreleg and onto the pale blue sink. The mare had a deep respect for spiders, but that respect only went as far as her own body. She smacked it, the sound explosive in the little room, but when she inspected her hoof there was no little twitching body, either on her hoof or on the sink.

It was the one thing she found unsettling about them. Their uncanny ability to vanish regardless of how certain you were that you’d just killed them. The mare finished up and made her way back to the library. There were a number of tables, but one caught her eye, one facing the door to the hallway.

That’s where they sat, she thought to herself, remembering the two unicorn mares, one with the witch’s hat and the other with a clever look in her eyes. She remembered the way they laughed, gentle and genuine, while they transfigured objects they passed to each other in a lenticular pattern. She sighed—why did she have to keep remembering things like that, when she knew plain well what she was doing to herself? The mare grabbed a book off the nearest shelf, taking to a different table.

She didn’t know how long she’d been there, how many books she grabbed with the intention of losing herself in them, how many passages she’d read and reread before she starting asking herself questions. She could hear the ticking of a clock, but she couldn’t see one anywhere in the room. Is it Fizzlepop now, or is it Tempest? Whatever you were trying to do at home with the dreams, you didn’t do a good job of it, did you? And then Luna came and tried to show you the way, but that just seemed to make things worse, didn’t it? The strong one, the one by which everypony already refers to you, or the weak one, the one you were born with and the one you want to be again…Tempest or Fizzlepop…

I don’t know. I answer to both of them. Maybe I can have both of them.

That’s stupid and dangerous and you know that. It’s a simple thing, you stupid filly! Just pick one and stick with it. Is it really that hard to pick something as simple as a name?

I guess…Tempest, since nopony will call me by anything else. But that’s not really a valid reason to choose, is it? Do I want to be what other ponies want me to be, or don’t I still want to be me…whoever that is? Do I take the hard road or the, well, less hard road? The road of nails, or the road of thorns? Tempest doesn’t have to be the bad one, does she?

“What would it change if she wasn’t?” she asked herself aloud, and that seemed both comforting and disheartening.

Looking back down at her book, some unmemorable old tome on ancient architecture, she saw a spider hobbling across the pages, black star on a yellow sky. Two of its legs were broken, and she remembered the bathroom. She angrily slapped the spider away for the second time. Whatever name the spider had, it had only one, and it didn’t take so much time out of its life to ask itself who it was. She looked back at the book, barely seeing the words before her mind began to wander again.

She didn’t know how much time had passed before Spike returned, waving at her from the doorway. A stack of partially read books lay to one side was a good enough marker of its passage, anyway, and she supposed it had been a few hours. She trotted over to him, following him as he led the way to a grand-looking door, silently watching as he knocked several times. He stepped aside and motioned for her to enter the room. She pretended that the meager thumbs-up he gave her was encouraging, and she walked through the door.

She remembered Twilight always referred to it as the Map Room, though every time she met the alicorn in here, she didn’t see any map. There was a broad circular table encompassed by high-backed chairs made of thick, sharply angled stone. Each chair had a cutie mark set in a bas relief on the back and front, cutie marks from that unique group of ponies. Sitting in those chairs now were those same ponies, their heads turning to see her entering. She saw in their eyes an amalgam of expressions, all tied by an intense interest. As she walked toward the table she felt their attention burning her.

Above, the roots of a colossal tree hung down from the ceiling. Crystalline lights dangling from the tip of each root, giving the impression that they were in a cavern beneath a fantasy. This alone continued to amaze her.

Pinkie Pie smiled and threw a subdued wave at her, and she gave a small nod. The others also gave her variations of a smile, except for Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was staring down at the table, one elbow propped up on the side of her chair, head in hoof. The mare frowned, seeing now that the table itself was a map, eliciting a soft blue-white glow. She saw the ragged outline of mountain ranges and the low sweep of fields, lakes bleeding through the land into the seas. There were even strings of clouds, floating lazily through the space above the map like trapped smoke.

Twilight was walking around the back of her chair, walking toward her. She had her eyes down to the floor, and the mare recognized that exhausted look. The alicorn gave a sparrow’s look at her, eyes darting away as if the mare’s presence made her eyes hurt. As if the shame was burning her. They met at the edge of the table, each shuffling nervously on their hooves. The others seemed to both want to watch and seem as though they weren’t interested.

“I met your guards at the door,” the mare said. “Nice guys.”

Twilight shrugged. “Yeah, sorry about them. They were a necessary decoration for the meeting today. They ought to be gone by now.”

“That’s alright, I had them surrounded.”

The alicorn smiled at her and nodded, her eyes not straying too close to the scars on her leg. There was an uncomfortable quiet, so the mare decided to take the initiative.

“Twilight, we have to talk.”

“I know, I know, Fizzlepop, but we have to—.”

“It’s Tempest, Twilight. My name is Tempest.”

The alicorn stared at her for an disomforting while, but she wouldn’t allow herself to look away. Twilight’s mouth opened and closed, opened again and she said “Okay, fair enough, I guess. Look, I know we have things to do, but I think we need to clear up a few things. I just want you to know how sorry I am for what I did to you.”

“Twilight, it wasn’t your—.”

“No, it was! It was my fault what happened to you in your home, and it was my fault that you were in the hospital. If I had bothered asking you if there was anything wrong, if I could have done something else to help you, then you wouldn’t have done that!” Twilight pointed her hoof at Tempest’s foreleg, her eyes seeming to accuse it of being some terrible mistake she had made.

Tempest was amazed; she actually felt jaded that another pony would want to take the blame for what she had done to herself. They say misery loves company, but it wasn’t something that should be shared. She looked at Twilight, seeing long sleepless nights in her eyes, nightmares of her own conjuring swirling in her pupils, and Tempest felt a pang of sadness. She trotted up to Twilight and placed her hoof on her chest. She said “Twilight, if you remember correctly, and I’m sure that you do, I came here to ask you for a way to see my dreams. I didn’t tell you what or why, and I wouldn’t have even if you had asked me. I would have begged you to shut up and let me have the spell. I don’t blame you for anything, and you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“But I did the spell wrong!”

“You made a mistake, Twilight. It’s a thing most ponies do, and they usually happen when we don’t want them to happen. The whole thing was my fault.”

Twilight looked at her with pleading eyes, pleading to give her back the blame, but she wasn’t going to. Tempest smiled down at her and held it until Twilight smiled back, shaking her head. She gave Tempest a small worried look. “We’re gonna have to talk about this some other time, Fizz…Tempest.”

“Alright, but you know what I’m going to say about that.”

“Yeah, and you should—.”

Rainbow smacked the table with her hoof, hard, and everypony jumped. “Maybe you two can play this dumb blame game some other time? You know, when only your own job schedules are involved?”

Rarity made a loud indignant noise in her throat. “Rainbow Dash! Really!”

The blue pegasus had the audacity to roll her eyes, letting them rest back on the glowing map. “There isn’t any overtime pay in the Wonderbolts, you know.”

In the intervening silence, Twilight cleared her throat and motioned for Tempest to stand beside her. The mare did, and together they looked down at the map. It struck her that she was looking at the edges of Equestria and well beyond. She’d been in briefing rooms before, had seen maps of distant lands she once expected to see and claim under some useless king’s name, but what she was seeing here was an impressive sight. It was difficult to say if the scale was correct, but the detail was impeccable. She tried to find Ponyville, but it was a big world.

“A lot has happened since you were in the hospital, Tempest,” Twilight said. “A lot of…stuff. I know you want to talk about your medical bill first, but just wait a minute. It actually ties in with what I…well, what we have to say.”

“Okay,” Tempest said. The feeling that she was becoming everypony’s problem started to worm itself into the flesh of her confidence again, and she tried to push it back down.

Twilight went on. “Now, I’ve told you about the map, haven’t I? Whenever a serious friendship problem occurs in Equestria, the map calls us, in one or another permutation, to go to a pre-selected location and solve the problem. There have been times when the map has chosen ponies other than us. I’ve been trying to determine the pattern, if any, by which the map chooses the location, or how it standardizes the seriousness of a friendship problem, but so far I haven’t made much leeway. It’s like there’s some…spirit, I suppose, or an objective power just as natural as fire, water, air, or the earth, that’s controlling it. Or maybe it’s possessed by it? I’m not entirely sure. It’s all about Harmony, that much we know. On one side of the coin, it’s the most useful thing that ever happened, and at the same time, there’s nothing I’ve seen that’s more mysterious.”

Tempest grinned. “You have told me that before, but the recap is appreciated.”

Twilight ruffled her wings and grinned apologetically, fading to a pensive frown like it was melting butter. “Look at the map, Tempest. Right over there is this castle, that big crystal tree. But, if you look over there…”

Twilight floated out a telescopic pointer, the kind that seemed especially made for stuffy professors. She
extended it and made it hover above a spot quite some distance away from Ponyville. “Do you see it?” Twilight asked. Tempest squinted, not sure what it was Twilight wanted her to see. Then—a flicker of light, concentric symbols converging onto one point, forming one symbol and then vanishing. It happened so fast that Tempest wasn’t sure she had even seen it. But then it happened again, and then again a moment later, flickering on and off. But she recognized the symbol as soon as she saw it; the ornate glass with dark bubbling soda inside it, tiny stars above the rim acting as flecks of carbonation.

The symbol was her own cutie mark.

“You’re saying the map is calling…me?”

“Well, we’re not really sure on that.” The tip of the pointer spun in circles above the space where her cutie mark was busy disappearing again. “It’s never done this before, Tempest. This weird flickering here, it’s not normal. It certainly shouldn’t look like this, and it’s been doing this for the past eight days. We can only assume that the map is calling you because, well, I really can’t think of any other reason why it would be doing this.”

“Maybe it’s a mistake.” Tempest ventured.

“No, I don’t think so, Tempest. This is weird behavior, certainly, but I don’t think Harmony makes mistakes. It’s just not possible. Tempest…” Here Twilight turned and looked up at her, a pleading seriousness in her eyes that made Tempest uncomfortable. The alicorn paused for a moment, one moment that seemed to stretch on and on until she finally continued. “Tempest, we’ve all trusted this thing, this power, and it led to us all being here. It connected my friends and I before we even knew each other, and it’s still leading us down roads we’re not even aware we’re following. The Elements of Harmony, the Tree of Harmony, the map…it’s all just facets of something immense and powerful. And when something like this happens, Tempest, when a problem happens, we do anything and everything we can to fix the problem. I just wanted you to be aware of how things are done with the map before you go.”

Tempest tore her eyes away from Twilight long enough to look at the map, at the spot where her cutie mark continued to reappear. She felt her mouth had gone as dry as burnt toast. “Go? You mean I’m really…I’m really doing this then?”

“Yep!”

She looked at the other ponies staring back at her around the table, half hoping one of them would fess up and claim it was all a joke, a prank just to get her out of the hospital. With the abstention of one, the six all seemed relatively happy, if blatantly nervous. Were they worried that she’d have a relapse and become Tempest the Conqueror again? Or were they concerned that she would have another breakdown, dream-free psychotic episode in some other town in Equestria where they couldn’t reach her?

Suddenly, she felt rather queasy. Somewhere far away, Twilight was telling her something; she shook her head awake and asked her what she had said.

“I said that every one of us here knows that you’ve come a long way already, Tempest. We know that you can do this, even if you’re not sure. I mean, you nearly dethroned two empires and conquered an entire nation—what can’t you do, right?”

The general response to that statement was one of mortified anxiousness. The brim of Applejack’s hat snuck down over her eyes as she groaned; Fluttershy herself sank below the table until both ears and the upper half of her head were visible; both Pinkie Pie and Rarity suddenly found something peculiar on their hooves or on the table to invest their interest. Twilight seemed lost in her bliss, or else she was completely ignoring the looks. Tempest frowned, her ears angled down in her embarrassment. “I don’t know, Twilight. Are you really sure about this? Do you really think I can take care of something as important as this?”

“Absolutely. And considering where you’d be going, I can’t think of anypony else to handle the job.”

“What’re you talking about?”

The smile on Twilight’s face was somehow both restrained and manic. “Tempest, that’s your old village.”

The sensation of falling, of having forgotten about the final step in a staircase, the feeling of plunging toward something terrible welled up inside of her. Although she turned her head toward Twilight, her eyes were locked on the map. She tried to see that little village, the tiny hamlet, but she couldn’t. It couldn’t be a real location anymore, just a place reserved for her and her memories; her loss, her pain, her hate.

No...

“Twilight, I don’t know about this,” she managed to say, wondering why her voice sounded so faint.

“We believe you can do this, Tempest. We know you can. And we trust you to accomplish your missions in quick succession.”

Tempest frowned. She was starting to sweat. “Missions? There’s more?”

The princess turned away from the map, walking back to her chair. “Yes—two, actually. The map started calling you while you were still in the hospital. I waited as long as I dared before putting in a word for you and tried to get you out sooner. There’s an old law that makes it difficult for anypony, even royalty, to forcibly extricate a patient from a designated medical care facility, and I wasn’t about to play that card anyway. I’d kept in touch with your doctor until I was certain you were well enough that I could send for you without much red tape. Those guys do not like being told what to do!

“Your bill is pretty steep, Tempest. I mean, really steep. Sheer cliff-face steep, but I made an agreement with the hospital as for how you’re going to pay it. It’s a long ways from here to your village, and you’re bound to come across some dusty old ruins along the way. So, any treasure you might come across—coins or gems, any modern tradable currency, really—you can send back here, and either Spike or I will make the payment on your behalf.”

Tempest chewed on the inside of her cheek. By now, it was starting to feel the same way a leech looked after it’s been set on a hook and hauled up out of a lake. “Is that a good idea, Twilight?”

“I wanted to pay your bill on the spot, Tempest. Believe me, I did. But I can’t use government money for personal uses, like breaking a friend out of the hospital. That’s unethical, and it would be setting a bad precedent. Trust me, this plan is the best I could come up with.”

Tempest mulled it over in her mind, wondering how she was going to be able to send the cash here; you don’t send great lumps of money through the mail without it being noticed. She voiced this concern aloud, and Twilight smiled as her horn glowed a bright violet color. There was a sudden flash, and a box appeared in the space in front of Tempest. It was a small and ornate thing, no bigger than a common jewelry box, made of a dark wood with silver and gold filigree on the sides and a number of small turquoise and topaz gems set into the lid. She heard Rarity make bird-like cooing sounds.

“This jewelry box is enchanted with a doorway charm, so that anything you put into it will magically teleport to its opposing end—a point here in this castle. Just put the currency in and let Spike and me worry about it. You’re going to be using it a lot.”

Pinkie Pie suddenly appeared beside Tempest, giving the box the evil eye. She tapped it with her hoof and—to Tempest’s puzzlement—licked the metal sides. She sat down on her haunches, rolling the taste in her mouth, and then frowned. “Hmm…Don’t you think it’s a little conspicuous, Twilight? I mean, ponies are going to notice a box like this, and who knows who she’s going to meet on the road? Like burglars and charlatans and other mean old meanies.”

Tempest agreed with that, though she felt Pinkie could have reached that conclusion without running her tongue over the object. Twilight rolled her eyes and set off another little flash. Now the box looked heavily weather-worn, no inlaid gems on the lid, and no precious metal filigree. It looked like something that would be placed in the dimmest corner of a yard sale. The box floated down and landed onto the edge of the table.

Pinkie threw her foreleg around Tempest and tapped her on the shoulder. “I got your back, sis,” she said, and then bounced back to her chair.

After a moment, Applejack called out from her seat across the map. “Don’t ya’ll have any insurance or something, Tempest? Something to cushion the blow?”

The mare smirked. “I’m not even a legal resident of Ponyville. As far as Equestria is concerned, I’m just a transient with a house to live in.”

She didn’t notice the looks the six ponies exchanged, not until Rarity cleared her throat and tried to hide behind the curve of her purple mane. Tempest looked at them, feeling another squirming sensation in her stomach. Here’s another step, she thought. Another hole you had to fall into. “What is it?” she asked. “What did I say?”

She heard Twilight sigh, saw her place her hoof over her temple and massage it. She’d had her eyes closed for a while, too long for Tempest to feel it was any good news.

It’s about me, isn’t it? Why would it be good news?

Twilight looked at her, and the way the map glinted in her eyes, the incline of her eyebrows, it all told Tempest that whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it. “Tempest, that was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. I wanted to wait until you were out of there first, and there were so many things going on that…um…”

Rarity picked up the torch when Twilight faltered. “There was a storm, dear. I’m sure you had seen it from the window of your room. From what we understand, the storm clouds got out of control and the pegasi couldn’t reclaim it. It floated outside of Ponyville, right above your home, actually, and…well, lightning will do what lightning does best, I’m afraid.”

Tempest felt cold. “What? My house is…”

“Yep, burnt to a crisp,” Applejack said. “Darndest thing, too. It weren’t just one bolt of lightning, but a whole bunch of ‘em. It was like the storm really had it in for just your property.”

“I could see it from Sugarcube Corner. It was pretty scary…”

“Only this made it out unscathed, Tempest.” Rarity’s horn glowed and she floated up a jacket, the birthday present she and Zecora had made for her. There were no scuffs or scorch marks, its black and beige tailoring unmarred, the belts around the waist just fine, its tall collar and multiple lapels and pockets intact. It looked no different than how it was when she first opened the box it had lain in. The jacket, neatly folded, hovered above the map like an exotic cloud and rested on the table’s edge, beside the jewelry box. “I don’t mean to make light of your loss, but I think Zecora and I made quite a jacket for you.”

Tempest smiled at her as the others groaned, smiled in spite of the awful tightening in her stomach and the lump forming in her throat. But there was something not quite right about this. Storms could be hazardous when not handled properly, and she knew that measures would have been employed by weather factory’s staff to prevent slipups like this. Her eyes almost instinctively turned to Rainbow Dash. The pegasus was staring at her, her heavy eyes devoid of any expression. It was like she was looking at a disinteresting book. Before she could say anything, the blue mare shrugged her shoulders and said “The trainees that were on the job never handled clouds like that before. The storm got out of control, and it slipped out of their grasp. It happens.”

Tempest watched Rainbow watching her, feeling a fire begin to burn away the sickening feeling inside her, begin to fill her limbs with a longing to feel something break beneath them. Suspicion bubbled up in her mind, and anger right beside it. In a moment, those concepts of friendship and harmony she’d been trying to learn had slipped away, swept under a mental rug as she envisioned Rainbow Dash’s arrogant face after she’d finished with her. She imagined all of the apologies she could pummel out of the pegasus, remembering anatomy charts. She wanted to leap across the table, scatter the insignificant mountains and valleys below as her rage swept over the other mare.

Then the fire died out. “That’s a shame,” Tempest said, and looked away.

In the resultant quiet that filled the room, silence so vast it felt unsettling, Twilight said “We’re all really sorry, Tempest. I know how you feel, what it feels like to lose a home…”

Tempest scoffed. She hadn’t meant to, wanted to bottle it back up and keep it hidden, but she did it anyway. To her credit, Twilight ignored it. “We’re going to do whatever we can to help you here, while you’re away. Things will get better, Tempest. I’m sure of that.”

I wish I could share your enthusiasm. Tempest thought about the money she had stashed away in that house, wondering if the lightning had melted it into a liquid mess, coiling through the ashes. “Is there anything I need to take with me? I mean, how should I prepare for this?” Preferably on the cheap, she thought.

“Oh, nothin’ you wouldn’t expect to need on a trip,” Applejack said. “Some rope, extra pair of boots, raincoat, matches, some extra cloth so’s you can make a poultice should you need it—.”

“And emergency thread! Yes, you don’t know when you’ll be invited to some extravagant situation and you find your best number has a tear in it.”

“And snacks! Emergency tummy situations take priority!”

“I think she’s got this, girls,” Twilight said, giving Tempest a look that almost made her want to cry. There was so much confidence in those eyes, in that smile; she wanted to feel it, too. Chained up in the rear of her mind was that little voice, the one that knew exactly where to bite and spit, rattling its cage. Twilight stepped down from her chair and walked up to her, holding out the jewelry box to her. Tempest took it, feeling like she was walking onto gangplank of some titanic airship with nothing, not even the clouds below her.

“You have our total confidence and trust, Tempest. You can do this. Besides, this should be more than enough for one pony.”

“Two, Twilight.”

All heads turned towards Fluttershy, sitting tall in her chair. She gave Twilight an odd, grim look before she stepped out of her chair, the sound of her hooves echoing in the silence. She walked up to the mares, and Tempest had a fleeting moment where she wanted to tuck tail and flee. After a moment’s hesitation, the whole assembly began to chatter.

“I’m sure that’s not necessary, Fluttershy…”

“Sugarcube, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Are you insane!?”

Twilight put her hoof on yellow pegasus’s chest. “Fluttershy, I think she has this well in hoof. And the map did call for just her…”

“After what had happened? Do you really think that’s a good idea, Twilight? It’s clear that she needs somepony to help her on her task, so nothing happens.”

Tempest recoiled, blush spreading across her face like rosacea. You are a problem! They all think it! They’re all afraid you’re going to do something stupid; only Fluttershy has the guts to come clean! You really do need a supervisor! She said “Fluttershy, I don’t think you should.”

Fluttershy gave her a look that made her clam up quick smart. “Well, I think I should. I mean, this is your first mission with the map, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you take somepony along with you who can help offer a different perspective on things? Wouldn’t that be a good idea, Twilight?”

The alicorn’s eyes darted from Fluttershy to Tempest. This was in no way part of her plan. She stammered for a moment before she unstuck her tongue and said “I guess I don’t see any problem with it. Tempest?”

She wouldn’t look at Fluttershy, keeping her eyes on the ground as she nodded her head.

“Alright, then. I’m going to go and get some supplies. I’ll be waiting for you at Applejack’s farm, Tempest.”

The orange mare cocked her head, one eyebrow darting up into her hat. “What’s that now?”

Fluttershy was already walking toward the door, pausing just long enough to say “You have some things that we’ll be needing, some things that we can’t buy in the market. We’ll be there in a little while.”

They watched her walk away, out the door, not another word spoken. Applejack tilted her hat back, thoroughly perplexed. “Well, alright, then,” she said numbly. Tempest managed to find her tongue, daring a glance at the door.

“I’m sorry, Twilight. I didn’t want to cause this kind of trouble.”

The princess patted her shoulder with her wing. The feeling was strangely exotic to her, simultaneously silky and coarse. “No, no, it’s not you at all, Tempest. She’s still really worked up over what happened at your home. To tell the truth, so am I.”

Tempest sighed, looking away at the map. She tried again to see the little spot where that village was supposed to be. Why was her cutie mark flickering on and off in the air like that? She tried to think about that, think about something else so she wouldn’t have to think about what happened in her home, the screaming dreams, and the fruit knife—or Twilight’s shame, or Fluttershy’s contempt.

She wanted to bury it all and forget about it. What she did to herself was patched up and healing—healing as well as it could. Nothing happened in there that she couldn’t get a grip on. Nothing…

Tempest thanked Twilight and the others, wished them luck, and they gave variations of the same wish. She grabbed the inauspicious jewelry box with her mouth and threw the jacket over her back, heading for the door. She glanced at Rainbow Dash as she passed, seeing a mare that looked like she was going to explode.

Swallow it. Bury it. Tempest continued walking. She shut the door behind her, heaving out another sigh. She remembered her soft bed with the black linens back at home, and then she remembered what had happened to her home. She hung her head and continued walking.

There was no lock; the door shut with a hollow thud. The five ponies looked around at each other, wondering exactly what to make of the past events, this whole day that already seemed far too long as the clock struck noon.

“Can you believe that?” Rainbow growled, throwing her hooves down on the edge of the table.

Applejack gave a low whistle. “I know. Where did Fluttershy learn to talk like that? She got so...loud, all of a sudden.”

“I think it’s a good thing,” Rarity proclaimed. “It’s high time Fluttershy began to speak her opinions. Perhaps it will do them both some good.”

Rainbow slammed her hoof down on the table. “I’m not talking about her! I’m talking about Tempest! She’s caused enough trouble here, and now we’re sending her off to terrorize some other corner of Equestria? Who’s in charge of this nonsense? And another thing, where does she get off poaching Fluttershy like that?”

“Poaching Fluttershy?” Rarity stared at the pegasus. “What on earth are you talking about, Rainbow?”

“Weren’t you listening? She just manipulated Fluttershy into coming with her!”

Twilight quietly ruffled her wings and began walking slowly around the chairs. Pinkie Pie cleared her throat and waved her foreleg in the air. “Um, I don’t think that’s what happened, Dashie. I was listening, and it sounded like Fluttershy made up her own mind when she said she wanted to go.”

Rainbow shook her head. To look at her, one would think she was the only intelligent mare trying to make sense in a world full of morons. “Yeah, that’s how clever Tempest is. Why can’t you guys see that!? Look, ponies like her don’t change. They. Do. Not. Change! Ever since she came here she’s been causing trouble, and nopony here wants to do anything about because she’s blinded all of you with that victim act garbage. This thing with the map—who’s to say that she isn’t the reason why it’s so messed up right now? And now she’s got to Fluttershy…”

In the throes of her fury, she didn’t notice Twilight walking up to stand beside her chair until she was right there, inches away. She didn’t blink, didn’t pause. “And you!” she said. “You just excuse everything she does, don’t you?”

“Shut up, Rainbow.”

Pinkie Pie gasped; it was the only sound that dared to exist in the vacuum that followed. Every eye stared in uncertain, horrified anticipation. Twilight and Rainbow were glaring at each other, connected and separated by their own rage. Neither Applejack nor Rarity dared so much as breathe; Pinkie Pie looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here.

When she spoke, Twilight’s voice was low and lethally calm, like a muddy lake that holds something sinister and unseen. “If anypony can prove that it was under your direction that the storm clouds went rogue, if they can prove that you intentionally allowed to happen what had happened, there’s going to be repercussions. No amount of your righteous bravado can protect you from that. The law, the princesses, even me. We will all know if you did it, and I give you my word, Rainbow, I’ll put the chains on you myself.”

Rainbow Dash glared in silence, and she kept her silence in a field of contained rage. When Twilight began walking away, heading past her chair to the staircase, Rainbow hopped off in a huff and began trotting to the door.

Pinkie Pie walked up and put her hoof around Rainbow’s shoulders—the pegasus slapped it away and gave her a hateful look, snarling, continuing to the door undeterred. Pinkie shrank down to the floor, holding her stinging hoof as tears began to homogenize her vision. She began sobbing as Rarity walked over and held her, shouting ineffectual chidings at Rainbow Dash.

Applejack stared, stricken in her bewilderment. Twilight caught her eye and the two shared a look, one that she didn’t like very much, and then Twilight turned back to the stairs. “Twi?” Applejack asked before she could get any further, and the alicorn stopped, not looking at her, not looking at anything. “Twi, what’s going on here?”

And the look that Twilight gave just then told her that she knew what Applejack meant, even if she didn’t specify it aloud. She knew exactly what Applejack meant. “I don’t know,” she whispered, and then louder, “I have to go check on something…”

The orange mare watched her go until she was out of eyesight. She supposed she had to leave as well, if Fluttershy and Tempest would be expecting her at her farm, but she didn’t want to go. She looked at Pinkie Pie, crying quietly on the floor, and a powerful sadness began to swell and gestate deep inside her. Something’s broken, she thought, and her ingrained reaction to something being broken, the sudden need, the urgency to fix that something washed through her and broke against the crest of her sorrow. But she began to doubt if this was something that could be fixed at all. Not by one pony.

What a mess, she thought, wondering if she’d spoken it aloud or just thought it, not caring either which way.

Equestria was not a land of perfection. Its histories were riddled with periods of isolation, of want and need, desperation, and turmoil. Because of its strong magical associations and its openness in expressing and expanding social mores and philosophies, it was generally assumed that Equestrians felt they were superior to others, that they were immune to the cruelty of natural disasters or social unrest. Most families living during the brighter times would infrequently feel the same way. Occasionally, the onset of these periods was rapid and violent, though more often they crept up as the result of numerous factors, adding to a whole that spelled disaster.

Although most of Equestria was unaware of it for the moment, it was now slowly becoming a victim of itself again. Somewhere in the country was a little patch of land where wheat grew tall and strong. This little patch was part of a vast network of finely tended wheat fields that stretched on for many miles, the heart and arteries of Equestria’s grain economy. But this one patch was especially significant, in that it was the location where a bull Ugallu chose to die. The creature, with its large and uniformly leonine body, was covered in thick black hair, which it used to traverse through the air, pushing off of it as though each strand were a feather, and its cavernous mouth was always open to catch some scrap of food as it flew by, carrying threatening weather patterns behind it.

Animals that live violent lives are known to die violent deaths. This creature, however, was a victim of its own body. The Ugallu was a creature that carried the weather across its body, and often airborne pathogens would become captured in its coarse fur. Old and frail in its old age, its system could not effectively combat the armies of microbes that it carried. As it decayed beneath the hot spring sun, the pathogens and bacteria were released into the air, jumping ship. Most of the bacteria died on the air, and the pathogens withered away as well, except for one particular strain of Claviceps Purpurea.

Ergot was known far and wide among generational farms; any farmer who grew rye on their property acknowledged it for what it was, an infestation. A fungus that was parasitic in nature, it grew along the stalk in bunches of darkly colored knobby encrustations shaped like talons or claws, rendering the stalk useless. When subject to high heat—as in the temperatures used to bake bread—ergot would release a faint psychotropic chemical. Because of this, older generations were known to refer to ergot as Nightmare’s Horn, or Nightmare’s Teeth, because of the intense and terrifying dreams or hallucinations that would come about eating contaminated bread.

This was the monster that was spreading across the fields and prairies of Equestria like a black fire, chewing at the veins of the grain economy. By now, even distant small towns would be feeling the effects of the famine, seeking other forms of food that didn’t require wheat.

“So, how many pies did you say you wanted?”

“Oh, I didn’t ask for any pies.” Fluttershy tilted her head and gave the orange mare a questioning look. Applejack smiled and shook her head as she smacked her hoof on her cart, making the apples and apple-made foods wobble and tap against each other. A breeze murmured through the immense apple orchard, filling Tempest’s lungs with the crisp and sweet scent of apples. Her mouth watered just because of the scent, but her stomach rumbled agreeably at the sight of such good looking comestibles.

“Shoot, Fluttershy, you know you don’t have to ask for one of these here pies. It’s gonna be a long road, ain’t it? And you’re gonna need something to fill your stomachs and taste like it came from a place of beauty and wonder. Ergo, the pies. Now you can take a few, or you can let me give you a few. No other options.”

The pegasus smiled and thanked Applejack as she took a pair of pies and gently placed them into easy-carry boxes, then set them into her knapsack. Tempest hefted her own pack, a large messenger bag the same color as coffee, no milk, feeling the several pounds of apples that Applejack had already forced them to accept. The bag had been a gift from a grey mail mare she’d always seen flying around Ponyville but had never taken the moment to learn her name, the strap draped across her chest and the bag bouncing against her side as she followed Fluttershy and Applejack around the farm.

Fluttershy was being very money-conscious, not daring to purchase too many things that they couldn’t find on the road. They hadn’t purchased much food, and she was unwilling to give up the resources in her pantry, those that were reserved for her animals. Tempest realized that it was lucky Applejack was at least amiable enough to offer them something. She tried to think more and more about Applejack and her family’s farm and its almost storybook grandiosity, but the thoughts kept being superseded by the past couple of hours.

It’s because of me, she felt, as she switched her weight from her left hooves to her right, turning away from the other mares to look at the apple trees dancing in the wind. It’s because of me that they were arguing. You’re just a walking, breathing ball of conflict, aren’t you, Tempest?

“Tempest?”

She felt a hoof press against her shoulder, and she twitched out of her mind. Fluttershy was looking at her, the worry in her eyes either a perpetual default expression or something she’d come up with just for her. “We’ll just be inside the barn to gather a few things, okay? We won’t be more than a few minutes.”

“Alright,” Tempest, wondering why they weren’t including her, pretending it wasn’t for the reason she was thinking. She watched the two walk to the barn, chatting like old friends, like the close friends they were. Twilight had told her about the six of them, connected long before they had ever met by Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom, a feat no filly her age had ever accomplished. Twilight was adamant that there was an unseen force behind Rainbow Dash’s act, but Tempest doubted that. She had already been witness to what the six ponies could do, had been told what they had all done long before Tempest had attacked. She could almost feel the power around those ponies, the strength of their bond so powerful it was almost a tangible, visible thing, and it made her ache with longing.

But that bond seemed to be chipping away recently. She couldn’t feel it very much anymore.

Because of me.

Her discomfort with herself and with her friends bled into a route she was more familiar and comfortable with, her frustration. Her patience depleted, she walked away from the apple cart with its cornucopia of apple products and walked around the side of the barn. Featureless washed white and fire engine red walls. She turned away from it and began walking through the orchard. She looked up at the sturdy, graceful boughs, strong knotty trunks and leaves as green as summer grass covering every limb.

This could be nice, she thought. I could do this—it would be better than menial odd jobs that dried up once you left. She imagined herself with her own farm, something more substantial than a paltry garden that didn’t even want to survive to see the next week. Perhaps not apples, no, something else.

Nah, who was she kidding? Running a farm, and running it well, took time, care, planning, and motivation, all things that she had in short supply. She doubted a weed would want to grow where she put her hooves.

“Tempest.”

She turned her head toward the sound. There was nopony there. She turned in the other direction, seeing no one.

“Over here.”

She looked around, trying to place the voice or a body to put the voice to, trying and failing. A squirrel ran across her path and circled up the trunk of a nearby tree, scolding her loudly and reporting her presence to the rest of the orchard.

“Tempest.” She turned again, certain that she now knew which direction the voice had come from, and began walking down that way. The day was getting along now, the bright gold of the day deepening to a caramelized hue, the sun reflected back by most of the apples in captured flares. Tempest could see them up there from where she was in the shadows, beneath the canopy, where apples were just apples. She heard the voice again, whispery little voice that she was now dead-certain was not the wind.

You’re getting lost, you stupid filly. You’re getting lost in an apple orchard. The barn was now no longer in sight. She couldn’t even see the silo. There were just the trees, the sweet-sick smell of earth and apples all over.

“Hey.”

She stopped at the base of a low hill, where the roots stuck up from the ground like cairns of broken bones. The voice was very near now, so close she ought to be seeing the speaker. She turned about, growling low in her voice. “Who’s there?”

“Me.”

“Who’s me?”

“Geez, and how am I supposed to know that? You ask stupid questions.”

Tempest squinted, trying to see between the trees. Turquoise sparks began to flare out from the stump of her horn, bouncing off her cheeks and making her eyes glimmer with a dangerous light. “Show yourself now!” she shouted.

A short sharp whistle lanced her ears. “Up here, sharp stuff.”

Tempest glanced up, seeing nothing but apples hanging from branches. Leaves swaying and murmuring in the breeze. Suddenly, she heard “So how do I look, sweetheart?” and her eyes followed the voice, and she felt like her stomach had done a backflip.

The apple was talking to her.

“So, how you doing, toots? I ask you not to use adjectives that pertain to fruits other than apples. That’s, like, a felony around here.”

For a long moment, Tempest was silent. She looked at the apple, large and bright red, its otherwise featureless skin glinting in the shadows as it hung from a bough right beside a knot in the tree. The knot looked like an eye. She shook her head and spat “You’re not real.” She looked away, wondering which way the barn was.

“That was rude. You’re rude. I think you hurt my feelings. Look at me, my skin is bruising.”

The mare rolled her eyes. Not only was it talkative, it knew how to be sarcastic. “Go away.”

“Hey, sister, you went looking for me! I don’t mean to be snippy here, but if anyone’s bound to ‘go away’ from where they are, shouldn’t it be you? I’m just saying, here.”

“Am I really lowering myself to talk to an apple, or is it maybe the worm inside the apple? I don’t know you in either case. And I’m not talking to apples! That’s what crazy ponies do.”

“Very true. That’s smart. You’re a smart little pony. You don’t seem crazy to me at all.”

“How comforting!”

She heard a sigh. The apple sighed, a lofty and tired sound that she pretended she didn’t hear, but she knew she had. This isn’t happening, she thought, screamed in her head. Apples don’t talk, and she was fairly certain that any apple-eating worms couldn’t speak, either. She shook her head, hoping to shake the voice out of her head.

“Look, I know you got a lot on your mind…I guess I’m proof of that, aren’t I? But listen to me—hey, hey, don’t you give me that look! Just listen! You know you can’t take her with you, right?”

Tempest paused, glaring at the fruit. Would it be easier to pretend that she was dreaming, or that she was merely sleepwalking? Would it lessen this silliness by any degree? She thought no, and she said “What? What’re you talking about?”

Although the surface of the apple was featureless, she had the feeling that it had somehow rolled whatever might have passed for its eyes. “’Who,’ she says, like she doesn’t know. Fluttershy, of course! She’s a good pony, Tempest, so kind and loving and brave, in her own little way, and trusting. My word, is she trusting! She trusts you right down the line, I think. Right down the line.”

“Yeah, I know. But I didn’t ask her to come along.”

“No, no, you didn’t. But it’s just as bad, yes? She expects to keep you in line, to keep your eyes on that straight and narrow road that all naïve and innocent ponies try to walk. She doesn’t know about the real world, does she?”

“I’m sure she does. They’ve told me about their adventures.”

The apple, or perhaps the worm inside the apple, seemed to snicker at that, sounding like the rustling of leaves. “Oh, sure. They told you about those, obviously! But nopony tells you exactly what they’re thinking at a given moment, do they? They don’t tell you their belief systems all in one go, do they? Seems to me that Fluttershy doesn’t know how bleak the world really is outside her tiny cottage, and she won’t know until it comes knock-knock-knocking on her front door. And how long do you think that will be while she’s walking the road with you?”

Tempest gritted her teeth as she stared the apple down, convinced that it was doing the same. “I wouldn’t hurt her,” she said.

“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to. But look at the facts, sweetheart; bad things happen when you’re around. Remember when you went to ask Twilight for that spell, the one she wonderfully screwed up? When you tried to get Rainbow Dash’s attention, you blew up the cloud she was sleeping on. You could have really hurt her. What if your magic had burned off her feathers? She’d have plummeted right down to the ground—Bam, crick! Don’t send for the ambulance, better get this horse a hearse!”

An ache began to beat in her heart. “That…that wouldn’t have happened.”

The insufferable apple laughed again. “Are you sure? Can you look around corners now? Can you witness a thing happening before it happens? I don’t think so. You’re not that talented, or lucky enough. Face it, kid; ponies get hurt when you’re around them. You best let Fluttershy go, for her sake.”

“She won’t want to go, no matter what I’d say.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Are you telling me you can’t see how agitated you make her, just by being around her? I’m sure you can do something stupid that will get her to leave. Then you can be on your own, back on your own path, which is the way it should be. This way, nopony will get hurt because of you. Am I right, or am I right?”

The mare sat down on her haunches as she contemplated this. She hated the strange apple, hated it because it was making her day even more bizarre than it ought to be and because it was right. The longer Fluttershy stayed with her on this journey, her journey, the greater the chances of her getting injured or worse. She didn’t want another pony to become another regret, another shame lurking in her head. The idea made her want to shrivel up and cry. She waited for the apple to say something else, something that would be easier to refute or contradict, but it was silent. It was silent because it knew that it was correct.

How could you!? How could you!?

Tempest growled, sparks flickering from her forehead. “I don’t care! She’s staying with me for as long as she wants; I’ll take full responsibility for whatever happens. I know I can keep her safe. So you can just shut up and leave your thoughts to yourself.”

“Um…excuse me?”

“I said shut up!”

The voice was different, and it came from a different direction. “Whoa, t-take it easy!” it said, and Tempest jumped to her hooves when she saw a filly standing nearby atop the mound of roots. She brushed her purple hair out of her eyes, purple eyes the color of Jacob’s ladder petals and tired winter evenings. Eyes that were swollen with caution and fear as they stared at her.

Tempest opened her mouth and then shut it, unsure what she was going to say, realizing that her mouth had become very dry. How long had she been standing there? How much had she heard? Was the filly even real? Tempest hoped she was.

“Were you, uh, talking to an apple?”

Tempest began rubbing at her foreleg. There was an itch there that needed to go away. She looked away from the filly and her orange coat, rudimentary wings, and those eyes she might get lost in, looking instead at a squirrel running from the base of one apple tree to another.

“Look, it’s okay if you were,” the filly said, and she hopped off the mound of twisting roots. Tempest tried not to jump, tried to keep the sweat from seeping through her skin. “I mean, I’ve done weird things when I’m alone, too. I think everypony does.”

The filly walked up to her. Tempest forced herself to stop rubbing at her leg, at the itch she pretended was there. What’s wrong with me, she wondered as she started tapping at the ground. Stop it! There’s nothing wrong here! Just calm down!

Tempest found her voice when the filly held out her hoof for her to shake. She leaned backward, keeping her hooves on the ground. “How much did you hear?” she said as she narrowed her eyes. There was a rustling in the bushes some distance away, probably more squirrels or some other diminutive animal.

The filly’s wings rustled. “Well, you caught my attention when you said you ‘wouldn’t hurt her.’ Who were you talking about, by the way? Was it Fluttershy?”

“That’s my business,” Tempest said, her lips barely moving. The filly just nodded and kicked at a stick. There was a bandage on her cheek, the center stained maroon. Her cutie mark looked like a shield.

“Yeah, that’s okay. I’m sure you meant it, whatever you were talking about.”

“What?”

The filly looked up at her, and this time there wasn’t any fear there. It was gone, just like that, replaced by something like a fiery curiosity. She remembered seeing that look years ago, when she was whole, when she was so small she couldn’t look over a kitchen table unless she’d stood on her rear legs. She’d had it and her friends had it, but then the world made her grow up and doused that fire. The filly gave her a tiny humorless smile and said “Rainbow Dash tells me that you’re still bad. She says that you’re still trying to undermine or destroy Equestria, only now you’re doing it from the inside. She says that you’re trying to tear us all apart…”

Tempest sighed. She wanted to feel angry, but there was no anger anymore, just a faded-out feeling of having woken up to a terribly grey day. She didn’t know what to say, if anything could be said, and she doubted she wanted to talk to the filly anyway. She just wanted her to go away.

“I don’t believe any of that, though. I don’t think you’re evil anymore.”

“How can you be sure? Maybe I am.”

The bushes rustled again, and she was certain that whatever was in there, it was bigger than a squirrel. Bigger than a rabbit. The filly kept staring at her, eyes boring into her and seeming to draw the sweat right out of her body, making her head throb with a slowly growing ache. She looked perplexed, trying to read something that Tempest wouldn’t give her.

“I told you, I don’t believe that. You can change, Tempest. No matter what a pony used to be, they always have the capacity to change. That’s, like, common wisdom.”

“Maybe fillies that eavesdrop on other ponies talking to apples ought to invest a bit more in what they think wisdom is.”

The bushes rustled again and two more fillies broke away from its branches. One was an earth pony, bright yellow coat with a brilliant red mane. Tempest immediately recognized her as Applejack’s sister, having seen the two together enough times in the street. The other was a pretty white unicorn, obviously Rarity’s sister. They grabbed their pegasus friend and smiled up at Tempest, hiding their fear behind feigned bashfulness.

The earth pony said “Scootaloo, there you are! Come on, we got, um, Crusader business to attend to. Oh-hi-Tempest-good-to-see-you-have-a-good-one-see-ya-later!”

They ushered the little pegasus away, pushing her back to the bushes. The filly, Scootaloo, looked like she was about to say something else, was about to resist her friends so she could walk back to her, but she gave up and allowed her friends (her friends, Tempest thought) to move her. The unicorn gave a smile as brief as it was polite, and said nothing.

The three young mares all had near-identical cutie marks. Tempest watched them go, receding out of sight and through the apple trees like little ghosts that never were. Finally, her pounding lungs found a reason to work and she gasped for air, her body going cold.

What’s happening? Why couldn’t I breathe just then? They were just foals, that’s all they were, no reason to be afraid. Why was I afraid of them? What’s going on?

She wiped the sudden sweat from her forehead, too late and it got into her eyes, tired salt-to-wound sting. She looked at the apple, feeling it was looking at her with a smirk, if apples were capable of such things. She angrily, quietly, asked if it had anything else to say. The apple was silent, and Tempest walked back the way she had come, back toward the barn.

When she finally found her way back to the apple cart in front of the barn, Fluttershy and Applejack were there waiting for her. When they saw her, they gave her odd lingering looks but didn’t say anything. She tried to avoid their gazes, seeing the suspicion in their eyes for the bare instant she looked at them.

Before they could ask where she was, she told them she’d been admiring the apple orchard. Applejack gave a proud smile and thanked her, yes, they were mighty proud of their land. Tempest could see Fluttershy was willing to finish their business but she started asking Applejack questions about farm life, just to make the pegasus wait just as she had to.

“Sun’s goin’ down,” Applejack said after a while, tilting her hat up. Tempest looked up into the depths of the sky and saw that it was all gold and garnet, the horizon a slash of purple, and all the trees had become shadowed silhouettes. The wind already smelled of night. Applejack pointed toward the old farmhouse and said “Ya’ll want to stay inside for the night? You could do worse than to get a good night’s rest before headin’ out in the morning.”

“Thank you, but no, Applejack. I really should be getting back to my animals. They’re going to be on their own for a while, and I need to make sure everything is just right for them.”

“Ain’t no need to fuss, Fluttershy. I can take care of your animals while you’re gone, and if I can’t, I know Apple Bloom would love to.”

Fluttershy thanked Applejack again, declined again, and started walking for home. She didn’t say anything to Tempest, just passed by, eyes forward. Tempest stood there, watching her go and wanting to go home, as well, knowing it was now a charred cinder but wanting to go there anyway. Because it was something to go back to. Before the pegasus got too far to hear, she called after her. “Hey, Fluttershy! Where and when did you want to get started?”

Fluttershy said nothing. Tempest waited, vainly holding to the belief that Fluttershy was just thinking it out, but she passed by the Apple’s mailbox and, eventually, out of sight entirely.

She grumbled to herself, her head hanging low as she tried to figure out what to do. Fluttershy wanted to be her companion on this journey of hers, and here she was ignoring any sort of collaboration or communication. Tempest wanted to run after the pegasus and scream at her, tell her to stop making her feel ashamed and worthless, to just forget what she and Twilight had caught her doing to herself. It was easier to breathe in the night and let it out in a sigh.

Every night is a latent sigh, and each new day is a tear in a tired eye. She didn’t know where she’d heard that before, but it came to her just then, some scrap of tattered, shattered pseudo-poetry that she might have read some time ago or had just conjured out of nothing. More nonsense, more apple-speech.

“Don’t you worry about her,” Applejack said, and Tempest turned around, content to keep her eyes down on the table instead of on the earth pony’s face. “She said she wanted to get started early tomorrow, with the sunrise. You know ‘bout a place you can spend the night, Tempest?”

“No. I mean, I know about the Broken Paddle Apartments in town, but I don’t have any money. Everything I saved up was in the house.”

“Oh, well…” and Applejack paused, as if allowing a pause would smooth over the discomfort, the social equivalent of taking off an old bandage to allow a wound to breathe. Neither case worked very well. “If you want, we got a couple spare bedrooms inside. Ain’t been much good, ‘cept for storage and dust collectin’.”

The mare looked at her, wanting to see a lie in those summer-green eyes. “I don’t know, Applejack…I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Why not? Buildings don’t suddenly fall down when you’re around, do they? You don’t have skunks following you all over the place, do ya?”

“No, but…”

Applejack smacked the table with her hoof. “But nothin’. You need a place to stay for the night, and we got rooms that need stayin’ in. You can try and say no, but I’m gonna keep insistin’ on it.”

Tempest was silent, frowning as she searched for an entry wound to rip open. Applejack only smiled at her, and it made her uncomfortable. “Why?” she asked, ignoring the other things she wanted to say.

The smile widened. Tempest couldn’t look at it any longer, feeling her throat start to cinch up. “You really think you don’t have any friends, don’t you, Tempest? I’ll bet you think that this whole town hates you so much, that we’re all just near dancing at the thought we’re gonna be rid of you. I’m going to be real honest with you, Tempest, and I think you know me well enough to know that honesty means honesty with me. You did bad by Equestria, that’s true—ain’t no way of getting around that. But, you’ve been making up for that every single day, and not all the ponies here have ignored that fact, even if they don’t want to see it.

“It takes time, Tempest. Like everything else, it just takes time. Pain becomes old pain, and then it isn’t pain no more. Twilight tried to tell us what happened at your house that day, though I reckon what happens in a mare’s house is her own business, and what happened that day is definitely your business. But that too is gonna heal over. It’s going to hurt for a long time, and the ponies here ain’t going to trust you for a long time. You just…you have to keep working at it, no matter how hard it gets. We Apples have been here for a long time—when bad things come our way, we hunker down and get to working our way through it. It’s just what we Apples do.”

Bright green eyes looked at her, displaying all the truth in her words. That’s not right, she’s lying, Tempest thought, frown turning into a pout as shadows became pregnant with the coming night. She can’t be right, she just can’t. I don’t deserve any of it.

“Hey, Applejack?”

“Uh-huh?”

“What does an Apple do when they feel that not even a mountain could push them any further into the dirt?”

The orange mare looked at her for a short while before her face softened, eyes filling with something Tempest perceived as recognition, maybe something like sympathy, cracked by a thin smile. She said “I reckon an Apple would grab the nearest mug, fill it right to the brim with some cider, and spend the rest of the evening mulling. You wanna do some mulling with me, Tempest?”

Tempest swallowed. No falsehood, no deceit in those eyes, in that smile. The last piece of disdainful mistrust faded away, screaming and scuttling back into the soil of her subconscious and she allowed herself to smile back.