Tales of an Equestrian Mare

by Durandal

Chapter 30

* * *

The envoy deposited her and Cas back in the buffer with a respectful bow. The grey unicorn was waiting - Hearthfire tried to remember if that was the same spot he’d been standing in when she left, but she couldn’t decide one way or the other.

“I apologise for any bad feeling between the Winter and yourself, Outsider,” trilled the envoy, in the sparse seconds before it vanished once more, back to its own Season, “I assure you that you are still most welcome, and that the king still looks on you favourably. Perhaps when you have reflected, you will come to see things his way, but regardless, the king still hopes that you enjoy the remainder of your stay.”

“Hmph. See things his way? Not likely,” Hearthfire muttered, as the creature dissipated. It had been a tense moment, as she waited to find out if she had called the king’s bluff correctly...

“Now what?” She spoke half to herself, half to Cas, but it was the unicorn who answered.

“You will remain here under our care until such a time - if it comes at all - you are invited elsewhere, or the duration of your visit elapses.”

“Great.” She inspected the smooth grey architecture. It was not exactly what she had imagined when she wondered as to what lay inside the city’s walls. “Is there anything interesting to see here?”

The look she received was one of very, very mild surprise.

“Of course.”

It turned out that their personal definitions of ‘interesting’ were not quite as far separated as she had worried they might prove to be. It seemed that the buffer was not just a neutral zone that sat between the four Seasons, but more like the backstage area of one of Manehattan’s prestigious theatres, where the gears and winches that made the scenery move were exposed for the curious eye to observe.

Hearthfire also discovered that the grey unicorn’s third-person ‘we’ was not a royal ‘we’ or any such, but a true plural; as they ventured away from the central circle of the buffer, they encountered others, identical in form as far as her eyes could discern. Some were hurrying here or there with mountains of paperwork levitating in their wake, others were glimpsed through open doorways, more paperwork in front of them. Still more were doing mechanical looking things, sculpting arcane mechanical edifices that protruded drive shafts and gears at odd angles. Every now and then, they would pass a splotch of brilliant colour in the grey domain, bizarre creatures that seemed native to this or that Season, held in suspended animation with their internal workings scattered around them in states of repair.

“This has been bugging me for a while,” Hearthfire said, as they passed another of the tireless grey workers, “are you all really funny-looking unicorns?”

“No. We are formless. You are seeing us in a shape that you can relate to.”

Hearthfire glanced around at where Cas was watching the surroundings from atop her back. The cat was unusually alert, given how little of interest to her was going on.

“...so is Cas seeing a bunch of giant cats walking around?”

“We do not know. It is possible.”

“The king of the Winter said the other Seasons don’t care about me. Do you think I’m just going to be ignored?” While the buffer was proving far more interesting than she had anticipated, she didn’t think she’d want to spend three whole days wandering around and conversing with the strange, vaguely reticent unicorn.

“We can not comment. It is possible, but the machinations and decisions of the Seasons are not of interest to us. Only the outcomes. Essentially, it is our task to keep the score.”

“How does that work, anyway? The king told me that the Seasons are at war, but not what it really meant. What are they fighting over? What are the victory conditions?”

“War is a strong term, though we admit that there is conflict. It is true that they are vying for power over each other. You are native to Equestria, correct?”

“That’s right. He said Equestria was controlled by the Spring.”

“It is. It is a region on the ascendant path, growing and flourishing. Such is the way of the Spring.”

“All right... and the far north is controlled by the Winter?”

“Yes. And Equestria was too, many years ago. Perhaps it is more correct to say, its inhabitants were controlled by the Winter. You are aware of your people’s history? Here, let us show you.”

He halted outside a building that looked to Hearthfire identical to all the others, and indicated that she should precede him inside.

The doorway opened onto another of the office-like spaces that she had glimpsed inside other buildings, but this one was immense; it looked like the entirety of Canterlot Castle, maybe the whole of Canterlot, could be dumped inside. It was an open vertical space filled with desks, grey unicorns toiling with heads down over their paperwork. Above, the soaring walls were lined with layer after layer of balconies, forming a strobed tunnel overhead that sucked at the eye like a perspective optical illusion.

“Woah. What the hay is this place? It’s big! Too big!”

“When we say that we keep the score, this is what we mean. Ponyfolk, terrestrial, thaumaturgical and avian, aeon seven, era six-eight-three.”

The later half was announced aloud to the room at large. The unicorn waited for some signal that was completely hidden from Hearthfire, before performing its reaching-into-nowhere trick and producing a stack of paper. It set them down on a nearby empty desk, and leafed through them until it evidently found what it was looking for.

“Here. This is the founding of the nation of Equestria as you know it, which marks the transition of your people from a Winter race to a Spring race. It was something of a coup for the Spring.”

Hearthfire looked down at the indicated sheet, but couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It was written in some kind of technical shorthand, full of symbols she didn’t recognise, and the bits she could read were so devoid of context as to mark them irrelevant.

“I can’t read this.”

“We are not surprised. Suffice to say, the balance was swung heavily in the Spring’s favour for a time following this event. That is what we record, here,” he waved a hoof, indicating the floor after floor that soared overhead. “The shift in the balance of the four Seasons that result in the actions they take to influence the Outside.”

“I’ll take your word for it... so who’s winning at the moment?”

“Winning is not a word that we would choose.”

Comments

[Durandal]

I want to say, "Hey, I'm not outputting as much word count as I was during NaPo, maybe I shouldn't be posting a new chapter every day; they're getting pretty darn short at this point, and not much is happening to a chapter."

On the other hand, forcing myself to post every day is helping to keep my momentum going so far, so whatever. Maybe it'll pick up, maybe it'll trail off. Time will tell, I guess. Sorry for the tiny chapters