II.
They told me I couldn’t know what it must have looked like, but it starts the same way every time. Mid-morning, and we’re going about our usual business. Marigold is playing with some of her friends, and we’re shoulder-to-shoulder, walking down the street. Everything is as it ever was, for as long as I can remember: the sun is bright, but not blinding; the Pegasi are shifting clouds in their usual skittish frenzy. The market is a-bustle, and five generations of overripe produce hawk their wares to passers-by. The baker is screaming.
You kiss the top of my head, beard pushing through my mane to the scalp, where the soft tickle is likeliest to get me to sneeze (you bastard). I give you my best Eohippic frown, and you smile oh-so-patiently at my intractableness. I start to tell you off and then—from the east, from the forest, from whence it must have come, a blinding flash, rippling outwards. Three waves: light, pressure, heat.
Everyone staggers, panics. There is screaming, a stampede backwards.
Then the second wave hits. Houses blow down like matchsticks, an afterthought. Ponies slide apart where they stand, splayed like tanning leather along the lines their shadows cast. The luckier ones are crushed against buildings, slam into each other like war-hammers, or simply break their necks as they’re tossed end over end over end.
We’re not spared: I’ve been thrown clear of you, dashing my head against a stall, feeling my horn snap jaggedly against it like so much brittle china, wailing as I cast about for you. And miraculously, you’re there, and bleeding, and still safe. And I paw at your face and tell you I love you and all the things I’ve always wanted to tell you and never did, and all the things I should’ve fixed and never did, and you shush me and hold me and our blood forms little contrails in the dirt in the second we have before the fire comes and I watch you boil away in front of me from the inside out, screaming.
And I wake many miles away and I’m screaming, and I wake again and I’m here and I’m silent and I choke.
The dream-colour pearling at the edges of my vision can’t hide the tears. I bury my face in my pillow, kicking futilely at the horrible rat’s nest of blankets I’ve managed to tie myself up in. It’s dark still—she wouldn’t hear me if I screamed—but even so, the nameless, thoughtless impulse is there: you’re the adult; don’t wake the child.
As if I’m the adult. As if there is such a thing. We look at our collective spawn, and pride ourselves on how far we’ve come by comparison, and go back to barely treading water ourselves. Asinine.
I finally disentangle myself from the blankets, throw the whole sweat-soaked mess off the edge of the bed, and stand. I’m trembling, dripping—mane plastered to my forehead, horn still rutting aching. I drag myself on sleep-numb legs to the bathroom, perform the requisite steps—toilet, tap, showerhead; teeth, coat, hairline.
It takes until the water hits my neck to really snap fully awake, and even then the lathery knead of shampoo against my scalp is almost enough to lull me back again. Hateful. No winning that one, and nary a hoof-full of coffee grounds left this side of Las Pegasus to make the choice for me.
I can chase my tail forever, in my little Orouboros wend. And not just in this—showers are beautiful things, and moreso still the more you have to wash. A quarter hour passes, half, and you find yourself soaping the same bits, in the same rolling motions, and as fleeting as the comfort is, it feels like something.
I have the cleanest shoulders in all of Equestria, and you’re not even here to appreciate them.
. . .
I’ve already been over it with you more times than I can count. We were hunting down another of those pop-up doomsday cults outside of Hoofwich—some madmare and her band of rabid rutting werecats. Barely even a blip on the celestial radar, given everything else we knew was brewing by then. I’d just thrown the last one on the fire when we felt the shockwave.
We were too far away to see it—see anything—but somehow I knew. Speaking in tongues, they said, and fire rolling in my eyes. Just about killed Sarge when he grabbed for my spear. Still surprised that got me leave; field executions were already being rolled out by that point, and usually for less.
And I ran. Caught the first airship I could back from the front, made it as far as Canterlot before the red tape came out. ‘Unstable metamagic’ this, and ‘living spellburn’ that. And I mentioned you, walked the camps, knowing even as I checked the rosters.
Still didn’t hit me until I got there, though. Got clearance, volunteered for one of the containment crews trying to leech the residuum back off into the war-crystals they were still using at that point. There were dozens of us there, scattered across the glasslands like ants on a dish, playing goddess with energies we barely understood. I watched my fair share of Gifted Unicorns burn themselves to rapture inside their pretty plastic suits.
Gave it a few hours, let them get distracted. ‘Got separated’, found the house.
Found the shadows.
She looked so small in your hooves.
Something wrenches inside me, and it’s all I can do not to empty my stomach into the drain. Bitch to clean, if nothing else, and harder to explain.
But it’s done. I’ve run the course, and you’ve—I love you—you’ve receded a little since last night. Some days you’re still the best thing in my world, but days like today, I need you at a distance.
. . .
I know.
The tap shuts off, just as I hear the bathroom door creak open.
‘Hey.’ Too ragged. Smile.
‘Hey yourself!’ The inquisitive little snoot is followed by deeply expectant eyes. ‘I heard the water running.’
‘Yeah, I was up a little earlier than expected this morning. Still plenty warm for you, but I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to wait for breakfast.’
‘Oh, did the banging upstairs wake you up too?’
My heart’s in my throat almost as quickly as I’m out of the shower. ‘What banging?’
She blanches. ‘I don’t—it was just a couple of minutes ago? It sounded like something falling.’
I’m already out in the hall, dripping all over the hardwood. ‘Okay, thanks for telling me. Get yourself some breakfast, and I’ll go—’
‘Maybe it was a phoenix?’
That brings me up short. ‘What?’
‘You know, a phoenix.’ She’s bobbing excitedly next to me, dancing around the growing pool of shower-dribblings. ‘I read about them in one of the books at the last house.’
‘No.’ Firmly. ‘There aren’t any left in these parts. And even if there were, we’d know by the house being on fire.’
‘Oh, they only do that when they’re getting ready to reic—reicklenate.’
‘Reincarnate. Stay here.’
The fewer words I use, the better she listens. She stops dead behind me in the kitchen as I stride outside, shimmering like a showmare in my shower-slick altogether. The western ridge is steeped in pink and reflected cloud-tangerine; the precipice east still inky black, the house itself mired in shadow and half-light. I don’t even bother with the ladder; there isn’t time, and if something’s up there . . .
I square my shoulders and, in a wild burst of shuddering blue-grey light, grip myself by the horn and heft myself swiftly but silently onto the dark and slanting tile above.
It’s agony. My horn sparks and spits with outrage, crackling silently even after I’ve touched down, and the sharp echoes of its displeasure ring through my skull all the way down to my teeth. Still worn out from last night. Still burning through the excess faster than the New Ley can replenish it. So close and yet so far.
Agony.
It’s enough that I almost stop then and there—flop onto my side and let the breeze just whisk me away like so many dry leaves. But even as I swim and sway, my body—ever the good little soldier—takes over, and I watch myself creep, low-slung and silent, over the lip of the open wall and onto the loose and creaking boards beyond. Terrifying, if it were the first time, but they teach you things about minds and bodies at the Academy, and I can relax into the autonomic as the Pyre-bright pain behind my eyes begins to cool.
The upper floor is still as empty as I remember it: open to the elements, everything of value long since stolen or rotted away. The little steeple-slant jade roof is barely supported at all, and inconsistently for its apparent weight: four cross-hatched corner beams of the same dark wood as the rest, cut with steel or starsilver or good old-fashioned levitation rods. The only enclosed space up here—the only hiding place, directly above the bedrooms—is the paper-walled tea closet in the far corner.
Or, at least, that had been the assumption. One of the boys I used to get paired with for patrol did a tour in Neighpon, and had the whole thing figured for some weird wingbeater take on a private sitting-room—the kind of place you sequestered your most honoured guests for an afternoon to talk politics and philosophy, and the best ways to skin a chimera.
Back in the day, with the mountains, it never would’ve gotten direct sunlight past about noon, and the ocean breeze would filter in comfortably on the summer thermals. Back in the day, this whole place would’ve been lit up brighter than a Crystalline stripper’s ass this time of morning.
One more curse to add to the litany I’m muttering under my breath as I edge toward the back-room. The wood’s fared worse for its exposure to the elements; the varnish is all but gone, and the boards scrape and groan at even the lightest touch. I’ve been up here a few times, though, and it’s simple enough to trace my own past trails over the crossbeams. My head is still pounding, but I can feel control slipping back to me again: directing the carriage from the backseat, by proxy; slowly taking the reins again. By the time I’ve spidered my way over to the far wall and flattened myself along it, I’m the only one driving.
The door is just slightly ajar, and I crane around as far as I dare to check the corner behind me before daring a peek inside. Pitch-black, obviously, and dead-silent. I rap the jamb with the back of my hoof—once, twice, and on the third time, something shifts within. My ear turns to the familiar cue: the slough-rustle of dry skin, the subtle hiss of chalky tongues. I can feel the hair lifting along the back of my neck.
Heart pounding, I brace myself against the jamb, and kick the door open.
The worst part of any breach was always that terrible half-second of uncertainty after blowing the door. If you were lucky, you stacked up near the back, and the worst you had to worry about was covering whatever hapless sod ended up on point. If not, well, you just had to hope there wasn’t much worse than a crossbow bolt bearing down on your breastplate; all the armour in the battalion couldn’t save you from alchemist’s dragonflame or a well-timed fleshripper hex.
The abyss yawns before me for a briefest of moments, a perfect dark square silhouetted against the greying room—then, all at once, an explosion of shrieks and feathers and confusion, tearing past my cheek and out into the pre-dawn gloom to my right. I leap backwards, but even as I crack one of the boards underhoof and kick it into my waiting grip, I catch sight of the two dusky V’s climbing falteringly away over the vegetable patch and veer back toward the cupola overhead.
Half-right. She was half-right.
With a disgusted sigh, I poke my nose back into the little room, letting my eyes adjust to the now far less foreboding darkness. And, sure enough, there it is, stacked in a haphazard inverted dome of twigs, cloth, and what looks to be a not-inconsequential quantity of familiar mane-fluff: has to be the third or fourth nest I’ve had to break up since we got here. I’m surprised they didn’t come out with tiny pitchforks and torches and stab me to death.
After a quick and cursory once-over to make sure there aren’t any surprise eggs this time around, I scoop the thing up with my makeshift bludgeon and toss it unceremoniously over the nearest roof-edge. The plank follows soon after.
I sweep my hoof around the dark space, making dead certain there’s nothing else waiting to entice the little snipes back up here, and then pull the door firmly shut. Either I forgot to do so the last time I was up here, or their little conniving beaks actually managed to pull the damn thing open; either way, this should keep them from settling in too comfortably up here. There’s more than a little outraged chattering from above me as I make my way back out onto the roof over the patio, and I can almost feel the four individual little black eyes boring into the back of my head as I square myself for the drop.
It’s not a long one—three yards, if that—but even so, I can feel my knees tighten uncomfortably in anticipation even as my horn reminds me that, yes, it’s there and still all manner of tender. Took me a long time to understand what Mum really meant about aging being so exhausting, but days like today are reminder enough—it’s not just watching your body fall apart, it’s the calculus. Horn or hoof? Can I afford to make that walk? How tired will I be after I get back, and will I make it to dinner-time?
She and Ma would’ve gotten a kick out of this, though. Me, up here, pawing the edge like a Pegasus yearling ready to faceplant into the lake? That’s the kind of thing they’d have hooted ‘round the book-club after one too many glasses of sherry.
I hit the ground hard, and my forelegs almost fold under me, but I only stagger a little as I make my way back inside, closing the door perhaps a touch harder than I strictly need to. She’s already set herself a tidy breakfast of oats, berries, and a whole apple besides.
‘I’m back—false alarm.’ I manage, evenly. ‘Our friends from the garden built a nest up there.’
‘See!’ she chirps through a mouthful of fruit, ‘I told you it was birds. I could hear them chirping through the wood.’
‘No, you said phoenixes,’ I grunt, leaning on the counter as I get out the fixings for myself. The paring-knife I leave aside for now, even if it means doubling down on what’s left of the berries. ‘If you’d told me it was just the magpies I wouldn’t have bothered going up there. Did you already put everything away?’
‘Uh-huh!’
‘Thanks. How are we doing on apples?’
‘There are a couple still in the bag.’
‘Good deal. Make sure you finish that one, since you brought the whole thing out.’
‘Yep! And it can always be part of lunch if I can’t finish now.’
I settle in opposite her and begin gently grazing. The little eyes are on me instantly, gently probing.
‘You aren’t using your horn.’
‘Can’t. Used up a lot of energy digging around upstairs for your mystery bird.’
‘If you’re not feeling okay—’
‘Nah, it’s fine. Painting doesn’t take much out of me, and it’s easy enough to do by hoof.’
‘You said you don’t have all that much left to do, right?’
‘Right.’ The word’s out of my mouth before I can catch myself. Tartarus.
‘Oh, great! Then we’re still on for the Dun?’
‘If I get everything done today, yes.’ Tartarus. ‘And assuming my head clears up.’
‘And if not?’
Then I get to keep putting this off. ‘Then it’s a couple more days. I don’t want to go in anything less than full strength. Remember what we saw on the road?’
She meets my gaze for a long moment, then looks away. ‘Yeah.’
‘As long as we understand each other.’
‘. . . yeah.’
Too far.
‘Hey.’ I lay my hoof out on the table near her bowl, wiggle it this way and that. She looks up, catches sight of it, and gets her evillest grin on. She knows the game. My hoof meanders its way casually around the pepper-shaker, edging closer to her water-bowl. Closer . . .
She lunges with both hooves, but I jerk back just in time. She guards left, I roll right; she jabs forward, I snake under. We dance like this for a minute, wending our way through the forest of tableware, until she finally ‘corners’ me at the table edge. She feints left, I go right, and there’s her other hoof waiting to pin me.
‘Outfoxed!’ she crows, grinning at me as the other hoof flies over to join its sister-in-arms. I make sure to let her see me laughing as I reach over with my free hoof to tousle her mane.
‘Alright, you little mug. If you want to help me get started, and if you can manage it safely, you can drag the ladder over to where the cans are at the back of the house. Remember from yesterday?’
‘Yep!’ She’s grinning ear to ear, blowing a lock of hair I mussed out of her eye. She’s off her pillow in seconds, trotting merrily toward the door.
‘And you come back and get me if it’s too big for you, got it?’ I call after her as she disappears outside. I hear some muffled cry of acknowledgement from the porch, and she’s gone.
As soon as I’m sure I have the necessary thirty seconds to myself, I lay my head down on the table, and let the gentle coolness of it spread comfortingly across my aching forehead. We used to laugh about That Ol’ Ague Obscura, I know, but ‘sblood . . .
I’m going to be basically useless today, it’s becoming apparent. And that’s not even counting whatever I’m going to try to pull to keep her off my back about the Dun.
I don’t know why I’m so reluctant. It wasn’t exactly a strategic hub even when I was there; once the fighting started in earnest, I’m sure they were cleaned out and sorted within a week, if that. I know exactly where the stores will be, know exactly how much of it we can carry between us, and which of Smiley’s whetstones I’m planning to steal. I’ve been running the calculations since we got here.
We can be in and out in five minutes, if she lets me.
. . . is that it? Am I just worried it’s going to be reduced to an Adventure?
And shouldn’t it? Crumbling old ruins, secret passages, the odd gleaming helmet or horde of pre-Unification coins to catch a filly’s eye. It’s like every Daring Derp novel ever published rolled into one. Perfect for a girl of her age and disposition, right? Would’ve been for me.
Would’ve.
I slap the table, hard, by my ear. It’s enough—jerks me back, peeling sweat-fur and gummy cheek away from the oh-so-inviting hardwood. Bleh.
I drop the bowls in the sink, clean my teeth for the second time this morning, and heave myself out the door after the little rapscallion ruining my well-kept lawn.
To her credit, she did manage to get it out of the shed. I don’t dare look in there just now—despair at the hash she’s made of the careful spider-nonaggression pact I’ve upheld since we got here would undo me completely.
‘Nice work getting it out. Any trouble with the locals?’
She shakes her head. ‘I saw a rabbit in the vegetable patch. Do we need to let him out?’
‘Oh, it’s a him, now? Yeah, saw him last night as I was locking up. Guess he must’ve slipped in when we went out for lunch.’
Again, a pensive shake. ‘No . . . I was watching, while you had your eyes closed. Both ways.’
‘Huh.’ Worrisome. ‘Well, the magpies managed to fly under the radar until after I’d gotten the wards up. Here, help me with this.’
I take the end nearest me, guiding it carefully over my back. A screw wedges uncomfortably between my shoulder-blades, but I do my best to ignore it; it’ll only be a few minutes’ walk around the house, if that. She hesitates for a moment, then wiggles her way under the narrow end, pushing up carefully. One wing flits out, falteringly, stabilising.
‘Careful with that, okay? You get tired or start hurting, you get out from under there and let me take it the rest of the way.’
‘Okay.’
I let her set the pace, only calling out directions where I need to. We make our way carefully around the vegetable patch, along the long strip of unkempt grass where the lawn meets the sloping rubble of the incline. We have to turn when we get closer to the house to avoid hitting any of the wards, and she calls for a break.
Give her credit, the girl’s stronger than she looks—wiry and all that, I know, but she’s still a kid. She pops out from under the ladder, a little out of breath, and after a moment I let my side fall too. She catches me looking and does her best to look nonchalant. I cover with a long, low stretch, feeling my hips and shoulder pop unsubtly as I languor my way through the cat-like undulation.
‘Hey, um.’
I look up. ‘Hm?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No, go on.’
‘Are—are we going anywhere today? I know not down the cliffs, but . . .’
I bump her shoulder, gently. ‘Hey. Of course we are. May have to stay inside the wards today, but that just means we won’t have to carry the basket as far, right?’
She studies me carefully. ‘Okay. I’ll come and help once the gardening’s done.’
I hum out my assent, admiring a swallow that goes swooping by just outside the wards. Somewhere above, the magpies croak out a few territorial protestations. It disappears off into the trees out towards the coast. A nest . . . ?
I shake myself. ‘Alright. You ready?’
She nods, flexes her shoulders, and works her way under the ladder again. I take up my half behind her and together we trot around the back of the house to the neat little row of paint cans still standing at attention along the worn siding. I only trip once, over a little clot of dirt inauspiciously placed in the middle of the lawn.
I take over from there, heaving the thing skyward and flicking the A-frame open. It cracks heavily against the gutter as the legs settle in the soft earth, and we both wince at the clatter.
‘Alright,’ I announce, testing the lowest rung gently with a hoof. ‘Looks like that’ll hold. You going to be okay in the garden?’
‘You going to be okay up there?’
‘Haven’t fallen yet, have I?’ I say around the handle of the paint can, halfway up the ladder.
‘Don’t say that!’ she wails, flitting suddenly skyward to hover next to me.
‘It’ll be fine, kid. Mind passing me those other open cans? The . . . second and third from the left?’
She does so, hefting them easily over the lip and onto the tile before giving me another appraising look. I give her a Look of my own in turn, nod in the direction of the garden, and she rolls her eyes, smiling, before disappearing over the cupola. I catch a drift of faint, wordless cooing at the magpies, the rustle of a blueberry bush, then nothing.
I let the mask drop, then, and let out the ragged breath I’ve been holding.
Useless.
It’s an effort to pry open the paint cans by hoof, the last elegant patch of red-shot gold staring at me expectantly from under the heavy arch of the cupola. The brush is tacky and stale between my teeth, a paint-splotch here or there brushing against my unaccustomed tongue.
I begin to paint.
Primer first. Long strokes. One, two; up, down. Slather-white glue in runny, uneven streaks. Dip, hold your breath against the fumes. Misjudge the distance, paint on your muzzle, running down along your chin. Long strokes. Up and arch and down again, feel it running from neck to back to legs. One coat, two, but don’t breathe in, don’t get too close. Melodic, nothing, white, silencing the flame. Dripping down onto the tile, drippings on your chest.
Ragged breath, but not because I’m out of it.
The last beam runs up to the tile; the corner, from earlier. Longest yet, and even half-scaling the wall, braced against it, I can barely scrape the furthest edge with my brush, the filigree. The shiniest prizes, the furthest out of reach. Taunting me, at that, wavering like heatstroke in the warming sun. The frayed yellow weave of the paper-fibre walls beyond, silent accomplices, dance hypnotically in the breeze—dry skin against cracking half-timber bones.
I half-fall onto my haunches, shaking my head. Gotta clear the air.
I drop the brush back in the bucket, and totter unevenly over the too-narrow purlins to the corner facing the sea. The watery sun has crested the mountains now; the fog, the curve of the bay. It’s hazy this morning, wet, and while there’s not a cloud on the horizon, we might get rain yet. The mountains are odd for that, I’ve found—and doubly so at the coast. Even the most beautiful day can turn to torrential mud-grey slop in a heartbeat and a half-hour, but all the low cloud and coat-cling clag in the world isn’t a guarantee of storms to come.
Weird place. Wild place.
Some slice of cloud above me parts, letting the sun through to lay itself full and warm across my neck. I glance up at it, and—not for the first time—wonder to myself who’s left to roll that stone. Not Her, for whom those first graceless fire-dancing, phoenix-birthed, Mount-bestriding ballads were written, so many ages past. Dawn, maybe, if she weren’t still too busy hiding behind that mourning-veil; Dark wouldn’t really have the stomach for it, save perhaps to share a last gallows-laugh with her sister.
It doesn’t really matter. Either could do it, and the both of them have surrounded themselves with enough worried mares and stallions, sputtering along with their little spectacles and vellum, to know better.
May be a moot point, if what we got out of those sunbleached border-town fishermares was anything to go by. If the Starcrossed Dyad are still in the picture at all, they’ve got enough on their plates that they may’ve just thrown up their hooves and foisted it back on the Unicorns, like we’re back in the days of rutting yore. It was kind of an open secret that was part of the Grand Design—lightbringers and luminaries, phoenix-bright they, but only as long as it took for the rest of us to catch up. After She walked into the Pyre—well, maybe their work was done, and they could go with clear conscience to their eternal rest, like sister and daughter before them.
Maybe the planet still spins on its axis simply because we think it should. It would go a long way toward explaining how ass-backwards everything’s gotten.
I heave a sigh, and look out over the picturesque valley again. Shadows play across the grass, across the bay, scuttering long and shallow in the high mountain winds. Gods, they had so much power, and we loved them for the world we knew they were building for us—with us. Dusk, Day, Dawn, and Dark: the Fundament, grand and spacious, and room for all in the wheels of the Celestial Clockwork. Every pony a point of light; every day a chance to be the next engine for betterment, the next name all up in letters across the Elysian marquee.
Who doesn’t grow up with the stars in their eyes, and the world turning at the tip of their horn?
I did, and like most foals I came to learn better. We get our Marks, and with them our choices: we don’t all raise the moon, but maybe we raise a statue in a square; we don’t all save the kingdom, we save a battered stallion, a hungry filly, a sobbing Griffon cub. And of course there’s freedom in that; of course there’s liberation in the abdication, willing or otherwise: heal what you can, grasp what’s in reach.
That’s good. That’s what the kids back home used to call ‘adulting’.
But that’s never enough, is it? We all settle in, and get comfortable, and it never, ever takes long before we’re unsatisfied again—stuck in our bloody-minded sureness that we could be doing something more, or better, or different, even if it’s completely out of reach.
Were they any different? Just as I can sit here and know that damnable itch of my grandsire’s blood runs strong in me, know that I could close my eyes and map the whole sprawling canvas, every curve, every whorl, and never, ever make it further than a canvas wet with mistakes—what did they dream of that never went fulfilled?
They preached Elysium, and beauty, and hope. Could they have known? Was it even possible for them to see past the intricate clockwork they crafted for us?
Did She?
Did Dusk?
Silk purse, pig’s ear.
I rouse myself, cast a glance over my shoulder. The primer’s flat and dry against the wall, and the cans of green stink of chemical heat. I rise, and amble over to save them from their fate.
Lunch is quiet without the usual entourage. The little one managed to scrounge up a round of hard cheese I’d forgotten we had, and I whipped up a basic compote on the stove with the last few cups of berries. I cut conservatively around the mould, and the worst of the green-blue-white gets thrown in a bucket for disposal outside the wards.
All in all, it makes for a nice little picnic. The compote is warm, the cheese sharp and rich, and a half-dozen slices of fluffy white bread, fried but gently in the compote-skillet, round out the affair. I’m impressed our reserve loaves have held up this well, but a factory seal and a queen’s gallon of preservatives will do wonders. ‘Sorbet Eight’s takes it to the Nines!’, indeed. I’m sure the Rockdogs’ll be digging this stuff up in the same condition a hundred years from now.
I’ve tasked her with figuring out what we need for baking our own, but for now, our stocks will hold.
She’s moved on from bugs today, and—apparently gearing up for what she still assumes is happening tomorrow—is asking me everything about everything about the sea. Seems she shares my confusion at the sheer scope of it, too—begged me to promise we’d get the best cliff-side view of it we could before we leave. It’s fabulous anaesthetic for everything swirling through my head and horn; between that and the rich food, I’m almost back to my Comfortable early-afternoon Numb.
‘So why does it make waves?’ she’s asking through a mouthful of bread. ‘Is it all flowing somewhere?’
‘Take small bites. And it’s a combination of things, as I understand it—the Seaponies fiddle with the currents the same way the Pegasi do the clouds, but it’s also a combination of wind and the moon. The moon pulls on it, the same way the world pulls on us. It’s another natural force called gravity.’
She swallows, heavily. ‘Like friction, then.’
‘Like friction, yes.’
‘Does the moon pull on us too?’
‘I suppose it has to. Back in the day, folks used to think that your humours—y’know, blood, and all that—could get out of balance if your birth aligned strongly with the Moon Court calendar. You know the word “lunatic”?’
‘Yeah . . .?’
‘Well, “Luna” is another word for “Moon”.’
‘Moonatic?’
‘Well, don’t let the cows hear you saying it, but . . .’
That gets the laugh. Then: ‘Is it true, though? About the humours?’
‘Nah. The only people that still think that way are the backwoods Horse types who’ve been breeding in the same cottage since the last millennium and the crackpot thaumatheoreticians you used to hear on the radio who’ve been banned from practising medicine.’
‘Science!’
‘And don’t you forget it.’
I drag myself to my hooves, rolling the sharp taste of the cheese on my tongue one last time. It’ll be a while before we see anything that decent again.
‘Alright, I’m going to go get the ladder put away and organise the shed. You gonna stay here with your book?’
She’s been trying off and on to find us on the maps in her battered little copy of The Royal Gamekeeper’s Almanac, liberated from some abandoned guard station or other outside of Fillydelphia. I know she won’t have much luck, but I don’t discourage her; orienteering is something she needs to learn, even if the best we’re usually going to be able to do is point to the little ‘Here Be Dragons!’ illustrations at the fringes.
‘Yeah, I think so.’ She settles in comfortably, laying the book open before her on the blanket.
‘Don’t get into too much trouble, alright?’
She’s already fully absorbed, and I barely rate a murmured ‘Mhm’ before she’s tracing some river or other east of what used to be Manehatten with her nose. I chuckle a little, and make my way over to the shed, humming gently.
We’d already dragged the ladder back past the vegetable patch while the stove was heating up, so it won’t be too much trouble wrangling the thing back inside. Means we’re square, too, after this morning; all-around win.
I crack the door, nervously awaiting the hail of spiders no doubt preparing to drop on my head. None are forthcoming, however, so I swing the door open to survey the full extent of the damage.
It’s both better and worse than I’d feared: she did, as expected, drag the ladder directly through the neat piles of garbage we’d been planning to go through sometime after the early-summer harvest, but the bigger stuff towards the back is mercifully undisturbed. Making sure to check directly overhead as I do so, I step inside and start kicking a path clear to the wall I’d had the ladder in after yesterday.
It quickly becomes apparent that I’m only going to end up making more of a mess than she did if I don’t start from scratch. It’s the standard arrangement: try to pull the obvious-looking hockey stick, the rake and four other garden instruments go catawampus; grab the hoofball or the croquet mallet and four sacks of seed are all over the floor. One thing leads to another, and suddenly the whole place is a squalid tornado of misery and shame.
I start with the seed-bags, seeing as they’re the heaviest and most likely to exacerbate the existing chaos if ripped. I gingerly stack them outside the door, trying once again to decode the faded pictograph labels. They’ve fallen out of vogue the last ten years or so as the Literacy Reforms really started picking up steam, but it’s not much of a surprise to find them out in the boondocks like this. Lentils, cabbage, tubers, tomatoes, and a half-dozen kinds of fruit acclimated to the northern climes, as well.
It’s still amazing to me that we found this place as well-stocked as we did. We’d always had it figured for a summer home, but the fact that no-one had been hiding out up here, that no-one had come along, well . . . either they were buried under the whispering sands of Manehatten, or they’d been among the poor unfortunates who’d tried to make the trip north to Haliflanks.
I’m just preparing to drag the tangle of sports equipment out onto the lawn when I hear her scream.
No no no no no.
I’ve never moved faster. One moment I’m in the shed, the next I’m halfway back to the house. This can’t be it. This can’t be the one time I let her out of my sight.
She’s scrabbling backward across the grass, almanac forgotten, away from the blanket, away from—
The air hisses out between my teeth. Dark, flat head; tongue tasting the air; hunched and defensive, coiling into that characteristic, springloaded ‘S’. Maybe a hoof’s length that I can see, bobbing on the air like roots in a current. Small, but still well within striking range.
The sword is at my side before I know it, spraying earth and sparks. Everything blurs, miasmic speed and vertigo, as I hone in on the point directly behind its head—the kill-spot. I can see it curling, watch the muscles contract in precise and rhythmic order as it bares its tiny, sharp fangs. Her wings, clamped tight against her body, flare in instinctive alarm as I rush past, and the snake reacts as its tiny angry brain dictates it must.
It lunges the same time I do.
With a roar of rage and surprise, I fumble to turn the overhoof swing into a stab—a pin. The snake snaps wide of me, and the sword comes crashing down like a thunderbolt, driving one hoof, two, three full lengths into the soil, a third of the way down the dark, scaly length.
The snake writhes and twists, hisses and spits, but I leap clear, and all it can do is thrash madly at the air. The damage is done, though, and after a moment, that too is stilled.
I whirl, and grip her by the shoulders. She’s wide-eyed and shaking, her wings at a fearful half-attention, staring past me at the place the snake’s head had been. I drag her further away from the blanket, checking her over for swelling or bites or—
‘Did it bite you?’ I can’t keep the tremor out of my tone, and it rattles her harder still.
‘I—I d—’
I shake her, harder than I intend, my voice rising. ‘Did it bite you?’
‘No!’
And when she looks up at me again, I can see the familiar look she’s never worn back there again—the terror and the rage and the incomprehension, and all of it wells up inside her in the space of a moment, and she bursts into tears. I pull her close, and she doesn’t resist, and in an instant you rush in and I’m home. I rock her, gently, as she wails into my chest. Whispering, to her, to myself. Mari, my baby girl. I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay.
‘You killed it,’ she keeps sobbing. ‘You killed it.’
She’s mostly stopped hiccupping one I get her set up with a book and the best approximation of hot chocolate I can come up with—a candy bar melted in boiling water with some honey. It’s too hot out for it, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She’s just been kind of silently staring at the four walls as I bustle around trying to loudly play house.
Still verbal, which is good. She nods when I tell her I’m going out to check the perimeter, goes back to her book. I lock the door behind me.
Thing’s still lying there where I left it, twitching, nearly bisected. With an effort, I pull the sword free with my teeth and—clumsily—put it out of its misery. It doesn’t even snap at me, just kind of . . . lies there, piteously, shuddering.
I gather up the bits in a bucket, kick some dirt over the stains, and throw what’s left of our lunches out for the magpies. I check the blanket for anything untoward and, finding nothing, toss it on the wash-pile anyway. The contents of the bucket are scattered against the west-facing ward. They spark and hiss where the wetter parts hit them and, with a couple of violet flashes, vanish.
Takes me a couple of tries to get it all on there, and I do my best to spread it out across the breadth of the invisible wall of force, never putting too much pressure on any one spot. The bucket clatters away once I’ve finished.
It’s still somehow only early afternoon, and the sun is in an ideal spot directly overhead. I scour the lawn, looking for any sign, any trace—turned earth, tracks, the discharge of a previous meal. I circle around the back of the house, where it’s coolest, and—yep, there, a couple of yards from the foundation under the high bathroom window.
It’s the little white cottontail I see first, which strikes me as oddly poignant. I turn it over with the shovel I’ve brought, observe the twin blotches halfway down its leg. Definitely poisonous—venomous? I can never keep them straight—then. Didn’t even know we got anything like that this high up. But it didn’t have any of the signs, either, so . . .
Smaller than most I’ve seen, too. Would’ve had trouble getting its head around a decent-sized dormouse, let alone a rabbit four times its weight. I know they’re deadlier when they're young—poison’s more concentrated, or it hasn’t learned moderation, or something.
The rabbit must’ve scared it—come up on it unawares, put it on the back-hoof (so to speak). What would it be doing approaching a snake, though? Everything woodland born knows its predators, soon as it hits dirt out of the womb. Something else, then, something—
I’m seized by a sudden and very uncomfortable idea. Making as much noise as I can in the event we have any more surprise guests, I start sweeping the grass in wide arcs with the shovel. Here and there I’ll bounce off a rock, a partially-emerged root, a solid tuft of turf.
The surprise appearance of the rabbit should’ve tipped me off. The kid said nothing came through the barrier the last time we went out, and it only showed up last night. Even if a rabbit had the wherewithal to skydive off one of the outlying trees, the wards form a solid dome overhead.
Dome.
Not sphere.
The shovel hits the turned earth at an angle, spraying a little over the hole. I scoop it back out quickly, and, after a moment, step back to admire the rather brazen burrow just sitting there in the middle of the lawn. Plain as day, when you come at it from the right angle. Idiot. Of course they’d both shy away from the barrier itself, and of course, the snake would’ve followed the scent down and under, but why the hell would the rabbit tunnel up here?
Could it be one of the ones I frightened yesterday? I know they’re supposed to be incredibly stupid when startled, but even that’s testing the limits of my disbelief. Did it recognise the wards for what they were, think it’d be safer in here? I’d ask Little Miss Fae-Warden to ID it, but, well . . .
Either way, it’s pretty clear what I’m going to have to do, here. Can’t magic the damn thing shut, can’t collapse it, and can’t extend the wards—not today. Can’t dig up the whole lawn, can’t just knock the thing down from above without creating a hole at ground-level for something else to squeeze through.
That leaves one very unpalatable option.
Pyreblight, I am an idiot.
I glance over my shoulder, checking for any anxious little faces at the window. Nothing. Moving swiftly, I take up the stiffening carcass with the shovel and walk it back over to the hole, trying very hard not to inhale, and harder still not to think.
Everything hates the smell of its own dead.
They don’t dig much wider than the little they need to squeeze through.
It’ll fit.
With the last of the loose earth tamped down, it’s practically indistinguishable from any other patch of dirt on the lawn.
The shower does me good, and the clarity it brings with it is surprising, if not unwelcome. Adrenaline maybe; recrimination certainly. Still simmering bitterly away in resentment at my horn and the fumes for spacing me out, even as they themselves begin to dissipate.
I make my way out front to find her huddled on the couch, staring at nothing. A hoof-ful of books are splayed open around her, but her attention seems to be focussed on the pillow clamped tight to her chest. She doesn’t say anything as I move one of the larger books and take up a place beside her, getting my hooves under me. After a moment, though, she leans into me, hard, her cheek pushing into my shoulder.
We sit like that for a long time, as the afternoon slowly reddens to evening: she, cat-like, burrowing into my side; I, alert to every change in the wind, watching the afternoon sky. She jerks a little with every twitch of my ear to the creaks and groans of the old house; the exotic tern-calls echoing weirdly off the cliffs below; the rustle of long grasses in the breeze. Each time I gently shush her, and each time she pushes harder into my side.
The haze I’d noticed earlier is heavier now, and thicker, colouring the air around us with sea-tang and cloying humidity. We’ll almost certainly be getting some rain overnight, and more than likely tomorrow, as well; even considering the general propensity for high-altitude Fug I'd noted earlier in the day, moisture doesn't stick around this long without leaning toward making a whole production of things.
The wards are attuned to ignore water droplets below a certain volume, much as with air, so I at least won’t have to worry about doing any extra layering tonight. As long as everything’s still in place, I can do my usual rounds and . . . well, relax is too strong a word.
Eventually, the light from the setting sun is shining directly in my eye, and I stand briefly to close the blinds. She inhales sharply when I shift, and makes a grab for my leg, but I gently move out of her reach, turn, and settle her comfortably on my back. She wraps her forelegs around my neck in something just short of a chokehold, and, after checking she’s secure, we go from window to window, room to room, and lock up the house for the night.
The seed-bags are drying on the hardwood by the front door, and I step over them gingerly as we make our way outside and do the evening patrol. She’s seen me do it before, and if she reacts at all to the gentle probing light from my horn sweeping over the wards, the grounds, the grass, she doesn’t give it voice. I prefer doing it after she’s gone to bed, just so I can focus on getting it done without the added distraction, but there’s no point in trying for that tonight.
Unsurprisingly, she shakes her head when I ask whether she’s hungry, and by the time we get back to the house, she’s already drooping, and her little grip slackens. Moving with care, I carry her back into the house, bolt and lock the door, and take her to the bathroom. She cleans her teeth sluggishly, dripping a little on my shoulder.
She doesn’t speak again until I’ve tucked her in under a mound of blankets, pale and wan. If I didn’t know better—hadn’t checked every inch of her for a bite she might’ve been concealing for fear of worrying me—I’d almost think it was fever.
‘Hey.’ Her little voice is hoarse.
‘Hey yourself. Do you need anything? Water, snack, painkiller?’
‘Would you stay until I fall asleep?’
‘If you’d like.’
‘Would you—’
‘Would I what, little one?’
‘Would you sing to me?’
The earnestness of it hits me like a crossbow-shot. She hasn’t asked for something like that in years, easily. Books were always the easier companions, and maybe the occasional stuffed rabbit, if it weren’t too moth-eaten. In the earlier days, I’d read to her some nights, sung on others—it was a habit we’d always kept to with Marigold, and it . . . only seemed natural that she get the same. The sheer intellectual rabidity with which she attacked each new subject that piqued her interest seemed to imply that had been the right call.
She’d stopped asking right around the time we first started heading north, and there were always enough other things on my mind that I left that for her to decide. It hurts more than I want to admit that there might have been some measure of comfort in that for her—or might still. I barely remember any of the words, and the horn-fuzz still clouding the edges of my thinking isn’t doing me any favours in that department.
‘It’s okay if you don’t want to.’
Another arrow.
‘No, it—I just need a minute to think of one.’
She blanches. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘No, kid. I promise, it’s okay. Been a right arse of a day for the both of us, hasn’t it?’ She joins in for the punchline: ‘But don’t let the donkeys hear you saying it.’
She laughs a little, and I use the opening to cast about for something to sing. The only things coming to mind are the bawdy roundelays we used to belt out after hours at the Dun, and—
Tartarus.
I clear my tightening throat before meeting her expectant little eyes. ‘It’s been awhile since I’ve . . . well, just bear with me, okay?’
She nods, and I begin: humming at first to find the melody, and slowly building into lyrics once I remember how. It’s low, and heavy, and contralto—or at least the best approximation I can manage after nearly half a decade of doing my level best not to think about it:
Somewhere bright across the sea,
Lies the home I know to be,
Green of heath and hill and tree:
It calls to me,
It calls to me.
You left for there one autumn night;
Not fire nor ill nor deathly blight,
Bore you sightless from our sight,
Just the shining light,
Just the sacred light.
Now you walk the foreign shore,
Of the home that I yearn for,
There to stay forevermore,
Past the breakers’ roar,
Past the breakers’ roar.
White mare stands upon green hill,
Braving wind and winter chill,
Waiting long and waiting still,
‘Till you reach that hill,
‘Till you crest that hill.
To your side I’ll someday fly,
Breathless, joyful, and eyes dry:
Softly, wings, and bear me high.
To summer skies go I,
To summer skies go I.
My eyes are wet, but I pride myself on not letting it get further than that. I look down at her again, only to find that she’s nestled in tight around the hoof I used to tuck her in. She looks dead to the world, but her eyelids flutter open when it becomes apparent that the song has ended.
‘You have a nice voice,’ she mumbles thickly, face half-lost in pillow.
I suppress a snort. ‘Thank you.’
‘You do, though.’
‘I did say thank you.’
‘Is it a happy song? You made it sound like it was, but . . .’
I chuckle a little, withdrawing my hoof and myself from the bed. ‘We can get into the specifics of lyric analysis tomorrow, little one.’
‘Okay, but—will the little filly see her family again?’
I pause at the door, fixing my gaze on a point somewhere to the right of her expectant, probing little eyes.
‘Yeah,’ I lie. ‘Yeah, of course she will.’
‘Okay,’ she sighs, before loosing a truly stupendous yawn. ‘Goodnight.’
‘G’night.’
I slide the door gently shut, and lean heavily against it, and slide to the floor myself. Everything I’ve held in abeyance rushes in at once the moment my rump touches wood: the heavy thudding of my horn, the ugliness of the afternoon, and now this. Everything I’d done to distract myself from this morning, last night, you—all of it gone in an instant, and everything comes flooding back, bright and shining-new, playing out for the thousandth time in perfect crystal clarity.
It’s the last night: a crisp, clear evening, and you’re expecting me back from the station. You weren’t there to pick me up, but that wasn’t unusual; the curfew wasn’t in place by then, but they’d restricted unnecessary travel after dark. It was gorgeous out that night, with the wind whispering through the summergreen trees and the little oil lamps painting the dirt-pack roads in soft umbers and heady yellows. It was maybe a quarter hour to our house from the station, and I let myself wander a little.
I remember looking up at the sky, the way we do when we’re all alone with the wind and the night. The moon was a slender, smiling crescent, and things were looking up: no hindbred rutstags giving us grief on the train, and now here, at home—the heady promise of two whole weeks’ leave, and all of it for the three of us. The stars were twinkling very prettily that night, and all of it seemed like it was just for me.
I let myself in through the back, like usual—waited for you, in the kitchen. Your mother was there in the living room with you, screaming at you about sole custody again. I caught a glimpse of you over her shoulder, and you just looked so tired. As if we didn’t have a hundred better things to worry about at the end of the world. We were still joking about that, then.
I don’t know if you saw me, but you told her to go home: the bread line would be opening early that day, and she kept saying she wasn’t getting enough . . .
She stomped out, and I walked in. You didn’t say anything, and you didn’t wait for me to, either. We just . . . touched, forehead to forehead, and when you wrapped your hooves around me I thought I might melt into them forever. You had the best hugs. It wasn’t even fair.
One last squeeze, and you went off to make dinner. I went upstairs, but her door was locked. The bass thrumming out from the little crack between it and the floor made my stomach turn. I knocked, she cranked the thing another notch; I knocked again, louder still. I don’t know if she knew, but you didn’t say anything when I came back downstairs alone.
You did your best with the bean salad, and between that and the little wine you’d kept, it almost felt like a normal night to ourselves. I probably should’ve given more weight to those last few drops sliding out of the bottle; portentous, that’s it. Did the job, though—got us loose enough to go to bed, spend those last delicious hours reminding ourselves we still loved each other.
After we’d showered, long after you fell asleep, and long after even the endless thumping 4-minute cassette-loop had finally, mercifully shut off, I lay there thinking about Marigold, and what we were going to do with the time we had, now that we had it. You’d mentioned she’d become something of a night-owl the last year or so, started hanging out with Those Kids at school.
It struck me that there was still so much I just didn’t know now, even around your very dutiful husbandly letters. Who were her friends? Did she still play with little Apple Sprocket, or giggle at those cat-shaped cupcakes at Sugarcube Corner? Did she still do her mane in the same little asymmetrical bob that the kids in Manehatten were going crazy over a year ago? What did she like? What did she love? What did she want to do?
I remember the little despairing note in my head—how long I’d been away, how many emergencies I’d had to attend to, how little I understood my daughter. It was a strange feeling—carry something in your womb for two-and-a-half seasons, change its diapers, watch the joy in its eyes as it discovers its own limbs, its touch of magic, you think you’ve seen all there is to see.
And the Tartarus of it was, I still couldn’t think of that as a loss. Things had happened, things that I hadn’t been there to see, sure, but—wasn’t that just an opportunity to learn and grow with her again? Wasn’t that what this whole two weeks could be about? To relive, relearn, reconnect?
Did I have the luxury of lamenting the time we had, when half my life was spent cutting short those who’d just as soon do the same to us? To the innocent? To my husband? My child?
And I know—I know it would’ve ended in tears. I know there would’ve been screaming, and fights, and bitter recriminations at my absence. I’m not stupid, and even in my fondest memories of that night, there’s always that little hint of guilt that I didn’t see that coming—too wrapped up in my own selfish glee at being home, in my own bed, with my own family.
On some level, it’s a mercy I was still up to take the call that morning—a wee-hours dispatch from headquarters, calling me back up. They’d had word of this cult out in Hoofwich, I explained to you over a hurried breakfast, and folk were disappearing. This could be a big one—the lead we were looking for, some way to get ahead of whatever had the seers and the Swarm so panicked.
I’m not sure you were awake enough to look properly disappointed, but you were kind—it wasn’t my fault (I knew), you hoped I’d be safe (I would), and that you’d all be there when I got back.
Five days later, a thousand miles away, I felt the World-Tree tear itself to pieces in the Everfree Forest, and for the first time I knew what it meant to really be lied to. And when I walked the glasslands, and found you, and when I walked the camps, and found the intelligence officer presiding ever-so-calmly over the rubble . . .
Him I had to beat until he talked; you’ve never stopped once since.
And when he told me what they’d done—what Dusk and the Six had set out to do—I knew they weren’t to blame. Ponyville wasn’t to blame. We weren’t to blame. Dusk was ours—Ponyville’s, the people’s. She was the last to be raised, and the first to fall; firstborn of mortal blood, and the last borne aloft on goddess’ wings.
And she was bright, and loving, and wise—and she never did anything without her Mother’s knowledge and assent.
Her Mother, who sleeps so soundly in Her golden Egg in a little back-pantry here at the end of the world.
Her Mother, who sleeps so soundly behind the little door against which I lie slumped and sobbing.
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Oh dear. Something went badly wrong with this Equestria, to put it mildly.
Dusk and the Six... Twilight and a new set of Bearers, or something else entirely? Mysterious, and intriguing. Plus the hints about the filly... Can't wait for the next chapter!
10842269
Welcome, and thanks for the kind comments and watch both! Glad you're enjoying the story so far.
10838771
Heh! Well, that's just in reference to the Timberwolves they chopped up for the fire back in the day. For now.
Curiouser and curiouser.
10849036
I aim to intrigue.
A truly fascinating world you're weaving here! Relative peace with allusions to something ominous lurking just under the surface. I get the feeling that I'll need to reread this once it's done to see what I missed...
So many hints here and there; I feel like I could write half a novel just speculating what's going on. I'm eagerly looking forwards to the next chapter!
That nickname all of a sudden seems rather apt...
I find as I am reading that my attention drags. Like...their is a heft to some of the paragraphs.
I think if you broke those paragraphs - a mite. Perhaps a variety in your sentence games would help with the drag? I mean this is more in your large ones ala , , ,?
Otherwise I wish their was just a bit more environmental story telling? Or is it mood? Embedding and burrowing in...something that deepily entrenchs into you?
On the flipside. Im not sure how to end this. I wish the premise was a...little more apparent and weird. Which to be honest I think of 90% of what I read. In truth its why I write...either way...
If what I say is unclear or you desire a elaboration I can do so.
Thank you
Hrm. You're good at writing mystery and obscuring the obvious behind local's presumption - things that are generally known to the character, and which don't need further elaboration, but which remain unknown to readers because we haven't the same experiences. This feels related to the Equestria we know, but I can't tell how. Some portions seems to suggest a distant past, while others a horrible future. But it's all so wrapped up in half-reveals that I can't make full sense of the pieces you scattered all over.
Less fae-foreshadowing this, but still steeped in potential dangers. Is this the last, best hope for
Princess Leiaponykind? Hrm.The little threads that are wound all through bring this world to life, and make me want to keep reading more.