The Immortal Dream

by Czar_Yoshi

Directions

The stars had come out by the time I set hoof in the Sires Hollow town hall, my legs wobbly from a day of hiking and a night without sleep. Everyone from the bonfire had followed us, plus some new curious ponies we picked up on our walk through town. I was certain they had all introduced themselves, but my mind was foggy enough from exhaustion that Fishy and Fluffy were the only ones I could remember for certain.

It was nice, though, being exhausted for ordinary reasons and not because I had spent the day running from unwanted corporate advances and trying to understand a city that made no sense. Tonight, I felt like I would get a very good sleep.

"Right over here," Fishy beckoned, motioning my entourage over to a corner of the high-roofed, stone-and-log building. A large table was sandwiched between two wide sofas in front of a hearth that was starting to burn low for the night, and into the surface was engraved a worn, detailed and wholly unfamiliar map.

My eyes took it in eagerly, locating first the compass rose - happily, that was a concept that existed both north and south of the Aldenfold. That would mean... yes, a vast mountain range formed the northern edge of the map. The Aldenfold, then.

The map was centered on a sizable body of water that ran right up against the slope of the Aldenfold. To the east, it was open, the coastline smooth and curved, cutting down from the mountains and curving south, southwest and then west. To the west, it was broken up, the waters fragmenting and mixing with the land, as if mountain valleys had long ago sunk below the surface, creating waterways that were too big to be called rivers yet too long and narrow to be seas or oceans. The shape reminded me of a griffon's hand, with the palm in the east and the talons stretching out to the west.

"Fancy," Corsica said, poring over it with her horn lit for illumination. "So where are we?"

"Sires Hollow is here," Fluffy Fleece explained, reaching with a wing to tap the northwesternmost corner of the map. "And the Catantan Peninsula..." She walked all the way to the other side of the table. "Is here."

Her feathers rested on the eastern coast of the sea, which ran off the edge of the map shortly after connecting the southern mainland to the Aldenfold.

Braen tilted her mechanical head. "Why is it called a peninsula?"

"Nobody knows," said a red stallion I felt like had called himself Hard Harvest. "There's nothing out there but desert. It's actually a land bridge - map doesn't show it, but the ocean proper starts on the other side."

I scrutinized the map again. Sires Hollow was easy to spot now that I knew where to look, right up at the very end of the northwesternmost talon, a slim channel of water that hugged the Aldenfold closely. The water probably started just east of town... That meant that, if we sailed from here to Catantan, we would be going in a perfectly straight line the whole way.

For four months. Any alternate routes would only take longer and longer.

I felt a lump in my throat. Four months out, and four months back, plus however long it took us to find a way back across the Aldenfold, and that was assuming my intel was accurate and Starlight still was on the Catantan Peninsula, and it haven't even told me where on the peninsula her village was... We weren't going to make it. The war between Yakyakistan and Ironridge would be decided long before our best-case scenario for return.

"There are trading towns here and here," Hard Harvest explained, pointing at several spots on the map. The first was near the center of the map, at the eastern end of one of the land spurs that separated the talons from one another. The second was near the southern edge of Catantan, just before the coast made a hard swing to the west. "Well... more like supply outposts than towns. Fort Greenwater and Fort Redsand." He gestured to them in the same order again. "There's a land route from Redsand across the peninsula to get to the open ocean."

"So we could get a boat from here to Fort Greenwater, and from there to Fort Redsand..." I studied the map. The comments from earlier about taking a road suddenly made a little more sense. I could see a path leading south from Sires Hollow, going through other towns at the tips of the other talons. From any of these towns, trips to Fort Redsand would take about the same amount of time. Fort Greenwater would be primarily useful as a midpoint if you wanted to sail from one of the talon-tip towns to another... but now that there was a decent road between them, it would obviously be much faster to go that way. So if we went south along the road to a different talon-tip town and found that it was busier, we might have better luck getting a boat to Fort Redsand in the east.

I blinked, and did a double-take when I realized the parts of the sea were actually labeled as various talons and the Palm. Had I subconsciously noticed that before, or did great minds just think alike?

"So is this map all of Equestria?" Corsica asked. "What do you get past the edges?"

Fishy chuckled. "Oh, no, this is just our backyard. You'd need a four-by-four of these tables to show the whole thing, or more. Equestria's populous areas are all to the south, though. The way I hear it, most of the country is towns in the wilderness like us."

Hard Harvest nodded. "Down here... This is Snowport." He pointed to the town at the tip of the southernmost talon. "It's the biggest city in our neck of the woods. Cargo from the west flows through here, and even some from the south. All of it goes through Fort Redsand to reach the ocean, and then to the big cities on Equestria proper's east coast. If you really want to reach Catantan in a hurry, your best bet would be to take the roads south to get there, then look for a ship headed east that's faster than my old trade boat."

"Snowport, huh?" Corsica looked intrigued. "Any chance they've got real snow? Been too long since I've seen that good stuff."

"But we saw snow on the way here," Braen pointed out. "On the mountains!"

Corsica rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean..."

"I'm afraid not," Hard Harvest said with a shake of his head. "Ever since the Crystal Empire returned, the blizzards that gave that town its name have let up. Place is downright pleasant now, much to the dragons' dismay."

Corsica looked peeved.

"Dragons?" Papyrus cut in, a distracted look on his face. "Do tell..."

"Not a common sight up north?" Fishy guessed. "The ice dragons have been friendly with Equestria since time immemorial. Most of them live far to the west, on the Cernial Plateau, fighting their holy war and not having much to do with the rest of us, but some of them are adventurous types who live for wanderlust. Our little trading ecosystem here starts at the far eastern edge of their territory." She pointed at the western edge of the map, which looked almost as mountainous as the Aldenfold. "Snowport is run by them. Up until a few years ago, it was the be-all, end-all gateway between west, south and east."

"Until a few years ago?" I pressed, hearing dragons and trying not to think of the one I'd seen in the Whitewing hangar with Coda. "What happened?"

"The Crystal Empire," Fluffy Fleece explained. "Everyone thought it was a myth - a lost mountain city with ponies whose coats glistened like ice dragon scales. It was a popular local story, since we're very close to where it supposedly used to be. The Crystal Mountains - that's these ones, west of here - were locked in a perpetual blizzard, so no one could actually go exploring to look for it. But then one day, just over two years ago, the blizzard let up, and the city was right there. Its ponies didn't realize they'd aged a day since a thousand years ago."

"At least, that's what the travelers say," Fishy added. "We're not the most popular stop for traders when it's much faster to just catch a boat east out of Snowport, so all of our news comes from our own locals who make the trip and then tell us what's what."

Hard Harvest shrugged. "I haven't been to the city itself, but I've seen its citizens. Crystal ponies, they call themselves. They're the kind of thing you gotta see to believe."

"How hard is it to reach the Crystal Empire now?" Corsica asked. "And how well-connected are they? You make it sound like they've usurped Snowport as the place around here where everyone wants to be?"

"Everyone says they have an alicorn princess," Fishy said. "It's hard to know the exact situation - I don't know if the bigwigs in Canterlot consider them a vassal state, or a separate country, or even a second capitol. But they're important enough that any of those sound plausible to me. Snowport's still relevant, of course, since the Crystal Empire itself is landlocked. Kind of a dead end, as far as trading is concerned."

Fluffy nodded. "I hear it's mostly tourists. I sure would like to visit someday..."

"It's not that far from Snowport," Hard Harvest explained. "Gotta circle around a bit to reach the pass through the Crystal Mountains, but it's an established road."

I glanced at the rest of my friends, who were all looking at each other.

"Not that I'd ever question Butterfly's information," Papyrus said, "but tourist traps are known for ponies coming and going, and Starlight was awful at keeping a low profile. I'd wager if we went to this so-called empire and asked around for a bit, we could find someone who's heard of her."

"Really?" Corsica raised an eyebrow. "One particular pony, and you think if we just ask around in a busy city, we'll randomly find someone who's heard of her?"

The locals in the room shuffled uncomfortably.

"Got something we should hear?" Leif asked, breaking her silence.

Awkward coughs and muttering ensued.

"It's just that you mentioned Starlight," Fluffy said. "Even after all these years, no one's quite sure what to make of her story."

"What is her story?" I asked. "We've heard some stuff, from the north, but not everything. What was she like down here? And what happened to her?"

Fishy sighed. "Starlight was an orphan. Her parents were treasure hunters who must have been from out of town - I was just a fishmonger at the time. Then a meteor fell, and landed up in the mountains." She gestured to the Aldenfold on the map. "Her parents must have taken her with them when they went up to go search for it. A few days later, she was brought back by another foreign treasure hunter who said he found both of her parents dead. Anyway, he took the meteor, and we took in Starlight."

A wistful look appeared in her eyes as she went on. "The ponies who adopted her... They were well-meaning folks. Friends of mine. Good ponies, through and through. Celestia, it feels like I'm explaining this to Starlight all over again..." She wiped at the corner of her eye. "But they weren't... Well, Starlight went through a rough patch when one of her friends left town. His name was Sunburst, and he had enough talent that we pooled our resources to send him off for a big-city education. And her parents just didn't quite know how to help her through it. She went downhill for a while, and eventually ran away. Everyone thought she must have died. Her parents couldn't handle it, and went their separate ways. And then, the better part of a year later, she came back."

Fishy cleared her throat. "She was with an airship full of adventurers from up north, who had adopted her again. Hardened folks. You could see it in their eyes that they were dead tired and had seen multiple lifetimes worth of hardship and suffering. None of them had used writs - don't ask how they got here without them, nobody knows - but they had one spare. They knew their path was no place for a filly, so they wanted to see her old home on their way back to the north. They were trying to make a decision, see, whether to give her the writ so she could legally go north with them, or give her new mother the writ so they could stay and live here together."

"Wait," Corsica cut in. "So she could legally go north? You mean Equestrians need writs to cross the border, too?"

"Sure do." Fishy nodded. "Anyway, what wound up happening was Starlight and her new mom decided to stay here. Then, right before they could set the decision in stone, another filly they had with them took the writ and used it herself, and Starlight had to stay here all on her lonesome. She almost killed that other kid right then and there. And when she didn't, it gave me this hollow feeling, like this outcome was even worse."

"Jamjars?" I breathed.

"Yep." Fishy hung her head. "That was her name. Wasn't certain I remembered it at first."

It hadn't quite sunk in, when I heard it from Valey and again when I heard it from Jamjars. But this time, it did. That was why Gerardo and Valey and everyone else hated Jamjars. Seeing the look on Fishy's face, what she must have witnessed in order to look this way...

"You were there, then?" Corsica guessed. "When it happened?"

Fishy nodded. "Yep. Newly appointed mayor. First crisis I really had to deal with, too. Those two kids, staring at each other on that ship deck... Starlight had this black knife, and was still as a stone, even when Jamjars shot her with her horn to try and defend herself. It's a sight I'm going to remember until my dying day."

"I was there too," Fluffy whispered, ashen.

I blinked at her. She couldn't have been much more than a kid herself at the time...

"I thought for sure we'd be at ground zero for a major international incident," Fishy said. "Those adventurers had some big name recognition in the north, and they knew things about Equestria that they could use to their advantage. If we had raised a hoof to try and stop them from taking Starlight anyway, I fully believe they could have started a war. But Starlight wouldn't let them. She stayed here, and refused to go with them. And they left. That night, a major earthquake struck the town that we all thought was some sort of omen. In the morning, Starlight was still here, but she had her cutie mark. And she was... different. Everyone knew something must have happened, but she never said what. And then she tried to live a normal life - made a valiant effort, really - but you could feel it on the tips of your fur every time she walked past that she wasn't long for this town. She started disappearing for days at a time. And then one day, a few months later, she said goodbye and joined a convoy and never came back."

My heart hammered heavily. The way Valey told this story, she sounded so detached, like it had happened to someone else. Not Fishy. Nor Fluffy, nor the rest of the townsponies listening in the background...

Maybe that was just Valey's way of coping. I suddenly wondered, if we did find Starlight, exactly what we'd find.

A quick glance at the rest of my friends told me most were thinking the same. The older ponies, Mother and Leif, looked more resigned, as if they were used to stories like this, or had lived them themselves. Braen and Corsica looked disturbed, and I took a moment to appreciate the range of facial expression that a machine was capable of. Papyrus's face was stony and impassive.

"...Thanks," I eventually said. "For... remembering that for us."

"I wasn't going to forget it anyway," Fishy said with half a smile. "But I think it's my turn for a question or two. Why are you looking for her? When her friends left, they promised to one day get enough writs for each and every one of them and then come look for her again. And here you come, calling after her with an unheard-of amount of writs together in the same place, and not a single member of her original group."

"We were sent by her friends," I said. "Or some of them, at least. They can't afford to travel anymore. They're too important, and have too much counting on them. But we... or, I, at least, really wanted to see the world. And so our interests lined up, and they asked us to look for her and find out how she's doing."

I deliberately omitted any part about potentially calling Starlight back to the north. After what I had just heard, that would be in poor taste at best. And besides, doing that in the first place was technically my idea, and contingent on meeting her and deciding it was a good idea at all.

Fishy nodded thoughtfully. "You're... not the first. One of her friends came back already... Her new mother, Maple. Never seen her since, either. Wherever they are, I hope they found each other and are happy. It's hard to think of someone who needs it more."

"What about Fluttershy?" Corsica cut in. "Every heard of a pony by that name? Starlight's not the only one in Equestria we're looking for."

"Fluttershy?" The crowd started muttering. "You mean the Element of Harmony?"

I blinked. "She's well-known enough to have a title? That's a good sign..."

Fishy nodded. "I take it you're pretty new to who's who in Equestrian culture. She's something of a modern-day folk hero. One of the friends of Princess Twilight. Equestria's newest alicorn, if you didn't know."

"Newest?" Corsica raised an eyebrow. "Fluttershy, or Twilight? Guessing the latter? Is that the one you said was in the Crystal Empire?"

Fluffy Fleece sighed. "Equestria has four alicorns. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna govern the sun and moon. They're a diarchy. They rule Equestria together from Canterlot, which is in the middle. Princess Twilight is the Princess of Magic, and she's too new to have any lands that she rules. Princess Cadence is the Princess of Love, and she's been ruling the Crystal Empire after it returned. Does that clear things up?"

At the words Princess of Love, my heart sank a little. Whether or not this Cadence was a real alicorn, I doubted I would care about her more than Coda any time soon.

"Illuminating," Papyrus told her. "Got any other gods or powers that be for us to be aware of? You mentioned a holy war the dragons are involved in?"

Fishy shook her head. "The ice dragons are real hush-hush about their religion to ponies. I couldn't tell you much about their war, or who they're fighting or why. I can't think of any other powers that sane ponies would worship, though."

"As insightful as all this is," Mother interrupted, "some of us are old and have been walking all day. Do you have anywhere we could spend the night?"

I sheepishly lowered my hoof and let my next question die on my lips, remembering that I, too, was dead tired. "Err, right..."

"Oh!" Fishy looked slightly embarrassed. "Sure. Should have asked that myself. Come with me. There should be some good spots laying around..."

---

Most of the townsponies went their own way as we set out for a house Fishy claimed was empty. "All the houses in Sires Hollow are owned by the mayor," she explained. "We don't have a lot of buildable land, and our population is too small to afford to waste something as hard to build as a house. So whenever a house opens up, from its occupants dying or leaving or moving in with a new spouse, it goes back to the town hall, and then we keep it in reserve for next time someone needs it."

"Really?" Corsica raised an eyebrow. "Do ponies get better or worse houses depending on how important they are, or do you try to keep everything roughly equal?"

"The latter." Fishy shrugged. "I doubt it would work for a place much bigger than ours. The only way it works for us is that if someone gets too ambitious and wants to rise above the rest, they'll probably just leave instead. And since we're small enough that everyone knows everyone, you don't want to get a reputation as a serial freeloader. In a place this remote, everyone being in it together is the only way to survive."

"You've got some nice amenities, though," Corsica pointed out, looking around as we walked. "Yards, glass windows..."

Fishy nodded. "All thanks to generation after generation of our ancestors. Hard work, minimal waste, and community support for our traveling traders has let us slowly enrich ourselves through the years, but it takes conscious effort to maintain. Everyone here knows that as much as we have, we still have little enough that if we ever turned against each other, we wouldn't have enough to survive. By making it easier to leave than to be selfish, we do our best to make that not an option."

"Is that sustainable?" Corsica tilted her head. "What if too many ponies leave?"

"It happens." Fishy shrugged. "The next town down south isn't doing so well on that front. Too many of its younger ponies getting up and going out to see the world. But we can't try too hard to fight it. If we forbid our youngsters from ever leaving, how will we get the next generation of traders who go out into the world to bring back the things we need to live the way we do? The best we can do is try our best to raise them right and make them feel like Sires Hollow is a place worth coming home to."

"It must have been very sad when Starlight ran away," Braen observed. "Sires Hollow must have felt like they didn't try hard enough to raise her right."

"You can say that again," Fishy said. "Especially since it wasn't the usual case of someone feeling like they were destined for bigger things. She was-" She blinked, looking again at who had spoken. "You know, uhh... I hope you don't find this rude, but you're pretty eloquent for a machine. You are a machine, right? How do you, like... you know...?"

Braen shrugged. "Braen is made from advanced technology. Mother created me to be hope for all ponykind. However, she raised me very close. Many rules. This is the first time I have been able to go where I want and talk freely to new ponies. It is very interesting."

Fishy pursed her lips. "Raised you, huh? Sorry if I'm being intrusive. Never met someone like you before."

"Not at all!" Braen saluted. "I am curious about you, too."

"What do you mean, hope for all ponykind?" I cut in. "When you say mother, you mean Shinespark, right? I thought I heard that somewhere?"

Braen nodded. "Halcyon is right. Shinespark created me. Her love is very great. So is her attention to detail, and skill with machines. This journey is like a test run to see how well I am made. When I get home, Mother will extract data and make a new, more-grown-up body for my next phase."

"A more-grown-up body?" Fishy looked intrigued. "So you can grow and learn, and are made by an inventor who upgrades your body to look older as you age?"

"Yes!" Braen looked pleased. "Right now, I am still a new Braen with little worldly experience. Before, I got to watch ponies, but rarely interact with them because Braen project is top secret. Had to wear disguises all day long. Now that I can for-real meet you, I will surely grow much, much faster."

Fishy chuckled. "Wouldn't be the craziest story I've heard. Anyhow, the house should be right over here..."

---

A key turned, and we stepped into a dark foyer that was quickly illuminated as Fishy switched on the lights. "Here you are!" she announced, stepping back and waving us inside. "Home sweet home, for as long as you decide to stay with us. Though I assume you'll be taking the first caravan south?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "We're not in the world's biggest hurry, but four months is still pretty long, you know?"

Fishy winked. "It'll feel shorter when you're older. I'll see what I can organize, and maybe we can get one heading out within the week for you. Sleep well, now!"

She turned to leave. All the other townsponies save for Fluffy had gone home, leaving us alone with the ephemeral pegasus.

"My house is just across the street," Fluffy said, pointing and preparing to set off. "I'm a bit of a night owl, so if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask!"

I nodded, said goodbye and turned to look around at our new lodgings.

It had clearly not been lived in for over a month, but the house was clean, as if it was regularly seen to by ponies to stop it from falling into disrepair. The hedge was a little overgrown and there was a light coating of dust on the floor, but nothing that would cause a sneeze if you stepped too hard.

"Right," Leif said, coming down the stairs from above. "I count four bedrooms, so two of us are going to have to double up. Who's volunteering?"

"I can sleep standing up!" Braen cheerfully announced.

"I'll take Hallie's room," Corsica added, stepping over to my side.

Leif winked. "Well, that was easy." She gave me a look that was slightly more serious. "Oh, and, Halcyon?"

"Eh?" I looked up.

She met my eyes. "You're kind of our self-appointed leader right now. Which you have the right to be when you provided most of our writs, are the one who visibly cares the most about this expedition, and I agreed to follow you anyway before all that. But if you will accept some advice from someone who's done this before too many times to count?" She raised an eyebrow. "Try to get some sleep tonight. You were pretty out of it today."

I reddened. "Oh. Err, right. Sure..."

Papyrus yawned. "She's the leader? For the record, I never was consulted... Mmm, bed..."

One by one, everyone stumbled off to their rooms, our bags spread out near the door where some helpful townsponies had left them, until it was just me and Corsica remaining.

I yawned too.

"Big couple of days, huh?" Corsica asked, looking not quite in a hurry to go anywhere.

"Yeah." I licked my lips. "You, err... what do you think? Of this town?"

"Nice enough." Corsica looked away. "Not nearly as interesting as you, or your secrets. Get some sleep, but... you know you can tell me anything, right?"

Oh. This was about me dancing around that I was a changeling queen.

"I'm sorry." I lowered my voice. "I actually can't. It's not because it's you, or anyone else. It's just... the words don't form in my mouth. I've tried to say so many things, and it's like I'm fighting myself the whole entire way. I want to, but I'm not the only me. I don't know... all of how I work. So some of the things I can't do, I just don't understand."

"Must be rough." Corsica sounded mostly neutral. "Maybe you can toss it over to the other you, then, and I can pester her about it. Just keep in mind that you're not someone who's happy with the status quo. If you were, you never would have left Icereach."

"You're not either," I pointed out. "Back when all this began, you were the one who most adamantly wanted to go."

She shook her head. "Only because I wasn't trying to be nice to Ansel like you were. What I'm saying is... Ugh." She glared at the floor. "Read the subtext, alright?"

I hesitated.

Corsica watched me, and when I couldn't get together anything to say, she marched over, stepped into my personal space and stared me straight in the eye. "Our research was your project that you got me in on and turned into our project. Now we've got some revolutionary new data that could completely change everything and rightfully should light a fire under both of us to figure this out once and for all. I've always known you had some personal reason for wanting to understand those fault planes that goes beyond just the curiosity you've told me about, and the longer we've studied this, the more I've hoped you'll someday tell me so I can experience our breakthroughs along with you. And now, it... it feels like you're making connections that are on the home stretch, and you're not telling me. And you're not even that focused on it. You're, you're... You're ignoring everything that just happened in the mountains with the crater and that pegasus spirit and focusing on Braen and shipping routes instead. Are you trying to make me think there's not actually anything there, that I'm not missing out at all? I don't get it."

My breath stuck in my throat. Corsica stepped back to give me room to answer.

"I..." I swallowed. "I don't know. I don't understand myself well enough to answer that. Maybe I'm more afraid of some of the answers I'm finding than I think I am. Maybe I'm trying not to think about it because I'm running from the responsibility. I..."

"Rather than run from the responsibility, why not share it?" Corsica stared intently at me. "I want to help you."

"Because it's too hard to believe," I squeaked, fumbling for answers I knew weren't accurate, but were still the best I could manage. "I... It'll sound silly if I say everything out loud."

"Try me." Corsica kept up her stare. "It doesn't matter if it's silly, or even if it's correct. I just wanna know how you feel, what you're thinking about. Some days, the inside of my head feels like a sinking ship. I'd rather focus on any silly problems as long as they're not my own."

It was an olive branch. I could almost taste how badly she wanted me to trust her. And... her fear of something, too.

I opened my mouth, took a breath, and closed my eyes, ready to see what I would be able to say.

Comments

[Boopers]

I love the map in this chapter!

I just had to use this as an excuse to sketch it before I even finished reading.
bestpony.ditzydoo.de/TID-map.png
It shows a lot more though than was described in the chapter, because why not?

Also it's kinda funny how the villagers didn't even realize Starlight was just gone for a night blowing up a whole mountain but was back in the morning. But I had no idea all of that happened in such a short time.

[Mini-Joe]

YEAH!

[BurningSkies]

11426265
Varsidel being so far north makes me wonder if the reason they're constantly at war is because they're too far away from the crystal palaces (ethereal harmonic world-soul maintenance foci) for that country to be as harmonic as the rest of the world. Yakyakistan, Ironridge, and the Griffon Empire each have one, and Equestria has multiple.

[Venlinelle]

"Sure do." Fishy nodded. "Anyway, what wound up happening was Starlight and her new mom decided to stay here. Then, right before they could set the decision in stone, another filly they had with them took the writ and used it herself, and Starlight had to stay here all on her lonesome. She almost killed that other kid right then and there. And when she didn't, it gave me this hollow feeling, like this outcome was even worse."

Listen you. Stop rehashing extremely sad scenes.

I’m loving Braen so far. Leave it to Shinespark to make herself such an unconventional daughter <3