The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards

by Cloud Ring

Chapter 33: Introspection

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Gentle Touch was returning to meet Storm and the team, with a slight detour on the way. The road was twisting between the hills, sometimes scattering along quiet paths to small local settlements. Gentle chose one of these sideways by the smell of pastries and strawberries.

She was treated to a pie among a family never met before, and for a while Gentle felt at home where she belonged. Not at past home at the edge of the Great Desert where she was born or at future home in the heart of Metropolis where she will likely be helping ponies for the rest of her life; Black Moon once said so, and the Moons never lie.

Gentle Touch said that she needed to speak herself out, and weaved a story of her life in a long dream behind the mirrors; two sibling foals who have not yet crossed into unbound age were listening to her most attentively, with incisive prompts, and then even asked Gentle to show them the way to the land she has spoken about.

Of course, she left out some important details: the Red, perfectly still in the unchanging sky, the specific assortment of movies, Sharp Cut's true nature. Sharp was mostly silent but once remarked in a sleepy daze that she in fact could have shown them the way, as the Red's nonexistent demesne lay just three steps away from reality.

Gentle had little doubt about that. Sharp offered to make a bet, but Gentle was unmoved. The younger ponies politely hid their disappointment, and Gentle did not say that she saw their feelings.

She didn’t need to introduce herself as a Herald — that would be hurtful for the mood. Heralds were respected, appreciated, but not loved.

Gentle had enough solitude even without that.

She tried to clarify whether a pay is required, and was told that the right to record, retell and transmit the story would be enough, and she would have "neither grudges nor liabilities nor levies."

The words "Our paths are not to be intertwined" meant they do not want and do not expect a new meeting. The words "and let the outer things bring you more joy" had a sense that the meeting brought not so much good memories as bitterness and resentment.

These lines were both left unsaid.

In these ways the ritual farewell was built, coiling around the silence. So, getting all the major points across and folding her own reply in the same way, Gentle smiled and tried to remember this place so that one cycle she could return to the hearth and stay there, likely for a while if not more than that.

Leaving, Gentle could still let them know at the last moment that she was a Herald, and thus change everything.

Yet she didn’t.

She considered herself an honest pony, but not enough to refuse a subtle warmth in this endless cold. In more than five and a half slices spent on the run and two more at dinner, Gentle had barely moved, and the spires of Metropolis hadn't gotten any closer or farther. Mostly due to the fact that she turned around halfway; still, no progress made.

“We need to talk,” Sharp said with a fuss and urgency at the same time.

“Please do talk, as I can't block you out anyway,” Gentle suggested, not slowing down.

"Not here. Where we would be both equally real. On the verge of dreams," Sharp made an offer sounding like there was no possible catch.

“No,” Gentle saw that through, “You’ll trap me again… either you or the Red. You are that much stronger in dreams, and we both know that."

“Then listen here,” Sharp snorted, and continued, in an internal whisper that did little to nothing to distract from the running. “I am you. I am everything that you do not allow yourself to be, even in desires. In reality, it's you who wants power. You want not to blame yourself for the deaths of others. You want to be bolder in the end. By and large, I don't exist, or I didn't: that's why I was in the mirrors. I am locked and boarded up rooms of your house. And that's why you lived in peace, with me being quieter than sand devils beyond the farthest fields of your family. That was until you got the designation and fell into this story of lost souls. As since then,” Sharp said with a soft force in her whispering voice, "I have a chance to bolt. I can come to the table now, the one that you take for granted. I have my words, and the world will hear me."

Gentle smiled, "Well, you are with me and exist in our shared body, next to me, breathing the same air. Isn't that what you wanted? There is nothing to regret about that."

Sharp responded in the same beat, fast and tingly just like how a few rounds ago at her home so far away Dispassion whispered newly-minted stories in Gentle's ear, “Not really. Things are more complicated than that. In order for us to be compatible in our shared brain, we both had to change. Do you remember our long dream where we became friends? You didn't even notice that I tried to kill Storm. It didn't bother you, and it doesn't bother you now. And notice how at dinner you bypassed all the dangerous turns of conversation. And I… I know now that I’m… probably too hot-tempered. I am changing too, you see? I understand, and even can somewhat see that the ponies perhaps feel bad when I slice them. At this rate I will begin to sympathise and regret what I am doing in no time," Sharp laughed softly.

"Um... so what?" Gentle asked, blinking, "That's fine, I guess. You are growing, and you’d be better with some empathy."

"Fine? Not really. Not at all," Sharp's voice was now angry, almost annoyed. "It depends on who we speak about, dear. For me, not fine at all. Just listen to me, okay?"

Gentle nodded, “I’m listening, don’t you worry."

Sharp sobbed, but almost immediately her voice became mockingly playful in a familiar vein, “Your friends, especially this big white one, that one who still desires, will not be able to approve and love me. There is some chance if you'd actually go through to her and apply some knowledge of yours while making love with her, by the way. The chance is small, and there are more of your friends than just the pegasus. For them all, I am a malady that, once they'd known me a bit more," Sharp went sing-song here for three beats, "is an awful stain on your heart so beautiful and pure — and not only yours.”

“You and I carry shards of past souls. We are more than just reflected in each other. We also have those who lived before us, the ancient ponies," now the whisper was serious, "They lived before, more than once. They sometimes return, checking how we fare, looking after us like adults do after foals before they come into unbound age."

Gentle didn’t interrupt — she knew that anyway, and Sharp knew that she knew, and Sharp went on, tracing the unknown. Gentle heard that Sharp was trying to sound confident, but was instead making perilous steps in the darkness of vague sensations and assumptions.

“Only occasionally do they all come together at one time," Sharp said, "Like now. Harvest is coming, and it will be a time to reap a miracle; a great feast is near and the traveler returns victorious. You and I are not as important as these souls. We are candles, they are fire that pass from one candle to another. They influence us, highlight some directions over others, maybe even help, and they are bearing a miracle. Not us, they. If necessary to unchain even one of the six, Solid Line, and especially her Moon, will sacrifice us, or anypony else for that matter, without batting an eye. And you and I carry not one, but two of those between us."

Gentle stopped abruptly and pressed a hoof to her mouth, then replied aloud, “This is too much, Sharp. They are not at all like that, and the Moons do not wish any evil," and saying so she believed herself.

Sharp answered, “Okay, not that important. What is important is that I think it works both ways. We change them too. Be you pure and have the Red no influence on you through me, that soul that you and I carry — I'm not talking about an orange shard, only about two pink ones who would make a whole — would be, in this birth, different: much softer, kinder and more fun, and so much more naive. That's how she should be according to the Moons' view. Without my rusty taint that makes the ancient aligned to the Red if only a little."

Gentle waited for the conclusion. There was none.

"So what?" Gentle prompted with caution.

"So they will try to fix you. And they will decide that there is no other way. Because what if, by chance, because of me, the miracle just won't work? I will twist the shard of the soul, which is square nine times more important to them than both of us put together, and everything will be spoiled. That's the cut of their thoughts.”

Sharp sniffed and was silent for a while.

Gentle Touch tried to hug the immaterial voice in her head, and somewhat succeeded despite how ridiculous it was once she gave a thought about it.

“They'll find a way to slip 'Guiding Starfall-TX' to you, severing our life together, our bond, driving me out. But you are not very important to them too," Sharp eventually said.

“Are you totally sure?” Gentle asked, her voice trembling.

"Yes, I am," Sharp said.

Gentle did not answer right away. She sat down under a low tree, took a sip of fruit soda straight from the bottle, then laid down on her side. Nopony bothered her out of her thoughts, Sharp included.

Then Gentle Touch asked first, "Is this soul necessary for the miracle?"

"Yes, she is."

"And if we will be corrected by ‘Guiding Starfall-TX’, then a miracle will happen but you will be no part of it?" Gentle Touch asked then.

“Yes, I will remain, with that much less agency, a mere shadow of your own mind. Then there won't be a miracle for the Red,” Sharp said sadly.

"And if you don't fix me I will stay broken and will be a monster among the ponies?" Gentle waited for an answer as this was the most awful part.

"Yes, we are both monsters now. To your team, and factually too,” Sharp whispered with a tingle of hope.

Gentle asked nothing more.

Finally, after some long time spent unmoving and some bitter tears shed, she raised her head, “I… I’m not ready to die. And to give away all my life… to another me, as you say. And I think that untainted pony takes precedence. I know that I should be horrified by you and your bloodlust and readiness to murder, and I am not, so I am the broken one. That is, I… I'll take ‘Starfall’ and let myself be healed.”

“As expected,” Sharp said dryly.

Gentle smiled, “Gotcha. I have three questions. Can we talk to this ancient soul ourselves, or where it is, we cannot exist? Are there vows she will never break? And can’t we just find you another body, one of your own? I would be glad to see you as my sister,” Gentle said softly, “Yes, both of me would be glad. The one that I am now, and the one that will be after ‘Starfall’. Once we do a miracle for you and the Red. It deserves a miracle too.”

She knew at once that Sharp was crying. She didn't believe it right away. And then she was not able to calm her down right away too but she heard “yes, yes, and yes, of course. Just don’t make fun of that, p-please… nopony should ever say that and be so mean to take those words back!”

So they started preparing for the ritual.

First, Gentle Touch learned the oath of the ancient pink. It sounded funny, and Gentle wanted to believe that a pony who listens to such words cannot be very bad.

After that, there were shards. They could not immediately see the fragments of past souls in themselves. Each of these shards were hiding from their direct sight, and only with the outside opinion of a friend could they be grasped and held. But, extracted — and still associated with Gentle and Sharp by life’s eternal continuity — they took on color and shape: pale pink, caramel in taste, slightly warm to the touch.

An orange shard, rough, astringent and sour, they did not extract for now, as Sharp was worried only about the pink ones, and as one shard does not yet make a soul.

After that, it was much easier to connect the shards; not so much a ritual as a call, in the way Gentle invited sprouts of her favorite tulips to look over the ground, and Dispassion healed misaligned clockworks. Although the calling took them to the edge of dreams and fantasies, it was also funny, and deep, like a vat full of warm water with an admixture of lemonade foam, and this did not require even a drop of blood.

In this ritual, Gentle realized that the name — Pink Drop — that they have chosen for their shared body at the end of her long dream, was chosen not only by chance, and not only by the two of them.

They were able to emerge from the calling without losing any memories or distinction between themselves, although both were secretly afraid to dissolve into Pink; and Pink was indeed there, with no trace of her shards anymore.

Pink was grateful to them. They sat side by side in a quiet, cozy bar with balloons on the ceiling, at a table with a snow-white tablecloth. Gentle knew there was no bar and she could see the grassy hillside if she paid attention and grasped for staying awake, but Pink thought it was appropriate for an adventure. The food was quite real, taken from Gentle's bags, but prepared and served in a way Gentle could never have. And, since they had just one real body for not exactly three minds, nopony was left hungry.

Pink sat opposite them, and curiously peeped out the door in search of pursuers, and wiped her glasses behind the counter. She made an oath to them both, under the Pink Promise, that she would get ‘Guiding Starfall-TX’ for Gentle as a gift, however big the price would be, and that she would make sure Gentle would get a way to not be a monster, Sharp her own body, and the Red its chance.

No matter how Gentle tried, she did not see the slightest sign of betrayal — only Pink's minor lack of attention; but because of it Gentle demanded that at the meeting with Storm she would be present as an equal among equals and will not be separated from the conversation. So she would make sure that Pink did not forget anything important and would not be too distracted.

At the end of dinner, Pink called her to the counter and held out a small sparkling bottle without a label, with a button in the middle of a tight-fitting lid and a straw coming out on the side. Full of cyan radiance to the brim. Weighing hardly three buttons. Costing three times nine luminiferous stones — and by surrendering it anypony could instantly get one third of a status grade.

Gentle knew what it was. She checked the bag in reality; it was there.

She looked at Pink, her eyes wide, fighting tears.

“I promised, didn't I? And you risked everything for me to be. And now I am,” Pink smiled. “Here’s a reason for me to bypass causality for you. Any price, yup? And don't you even be afraid. As I am now,“ Pink repeated happily and brightly, “I now have just too many friends waiting here to die again any time soon. And as I promised I shall get you the cure, no way I shall not, so help yourself now. One miracle on the house! Don’t worry, for this one I still have enough juice as you can see,” she added a bottle of strawberry juice appearing seemingly out of nowhere, in tune with her bubbly words.

Pink lowered her ears, but looked at Gentle with smiling, shining, pleading blue eyes. Gentle had never seen these sparks before, neither in the mirrors nor behind them.

Gentle sat down on the grass, or on the high chair in front of the counter, and could only nod and ask, “But… your alliance with the Red? Sharp said that you will change if I... ”

Pink shook her head, “No. Don’t you worry. The Red still needs us, and I will remain as I see fit. You called me first, before taking the cure, and that was the key. I carry on your marks yet unhealed, and nopony will bar me from friendship.”

Gentle Touch had one more question. She forgot which one.

The button slid soft and with no effort.

‘Guiding Starfall-TX’ was pepper and electricity and — as suggested by the name — the mint of frozen stars.