The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards

by Cloud Ring

Chapter 4: Ease

Gentle Touch's cutie mark

⊛⊛⊛

Gentle Touch was a very young earth pony. She rested contentedly in Blue Moon’s soft fur, gazing into Her mane of eternal twinkling stars and smattering of nebulae. Gentle listened to the silence and thought of nothing in particular. There was no pain, no fear and no waiting for the next bout of queasiness, only Blue Moon and Her unending calm.

The pale orange earth pony raised her head to look into her Princess’ turquoise eyes, and Blue Moon smiled back.

“Do you know that you are powerful?” Moon said.

Gentle Touch thought about it, and doubted — not Moon’s words, but herself. Yes, she was able to help tulips sprout while working with her mom and dad, but then who couldn’t? And then there was that one time when she felt that a friend fell down in the cellar. Not heard but felt that Dispassion’s legs were hurt; that the unicorn was suddenly in the cramped and dark space; that she was lonely and afraid, and couldn’t even cry out for help. Gentle Touch decided to come down too and speak with Dispassion until the unicorn’s parents returned from their work. She took away another pony’s pain for the first time then… yes, maybe it was something to be cautiously proud of… but powerful? Nothing of that sort.

Especially since the Red looked at her right side through an unshielded window. Her coat there never would be the same as it had been.

And so Gentle Touch shook her head and blushed. “No, my Princess. I am just a pony.”

Blue Moon laughed, and the sound was as quiet stars in infinite space, points of light which never drew too close to each other, but who took comfort the others were there.

“Still, you have the will to deny Moon’s sayings. That is pretty powerful in my book.”

“But does it matter if I am going to—” Gentle Touch never finished; she suddenly got a mouthful of deep-blue feathers.

“You will survive,” Blue Moon assured, and in that moment it was always so. Because what Moon does say in word exists and what Moon keeps in silence does not.

Then Gentle Touch slowly surfaced from dreams to reality. Pain was the principal feeling there, sometimes weak and subtle, sometimes hot and throbbing. In a few cycles she learned that aquamarine lights on appliances surrounding her were usually good and promised a few relaxing slices. Yellow and orange ones were usually bad, and scarlet was… nothing could be said about scarlet, the cursed color, ever. Then, of course, the color was barred from entering her hospital room too.

Still, it was there, in her feverish ravings, until they eventually came to an end.

She had been visited by Blue Moon, or Desire, as She was sometimes called, in her dreams as well as in the waking world. Gentle Touch noticed that all other ponies that ever happened to be around Blue Moon tried to avoid Her sight and Her attention. But she herself paid no mind for that. Moon was always nice and polite next to her.

These visits were, then, exceptionally common — out-of-the-blue common, if Gentle Touch would have been in a mood for puns; later on she did giggle on that. Gentle Touch had lived in a hospital sector for a really long time. In her first luster of many to pass there she spoke with Blue Moon many more times than, on average, a pony does in all their life. And it had gone on like that, continually without pause: at least a single visit per three cycles, or nine visits per luster, no matter if Blue Moon had been waning or utterly magnificent in Her full glory.

She taught Gentle Touch to actually see the lines of pain, to move along them and draw them away from minds. A few lusters later Gentle learned how to ignite them in self-defense, and more than once she had been reminded of the consequences of doing so. Then, exactly one full round, or exactly nine lusters, or exactly three square nines of cycles since she had been first visited by Blue Moon, well on the way to her own recovery, she had delivered her first painless eternal sleep, and in doing so became a full-fledged Herald.

She cried in her room after that, and reminded herself, then and now, that she was just a pony, and that it was not her place to decide who should live. Five lusters later, she still saw the patient’s face in her dreams. Blue Moon comforted her for a while but then said that the memories are to stay for now, and that She would not alleviate the feeling, because without it the applications of Gentle Touch’s powers might eventually become too frivolous.

Only a few cycles ago she found that she actually could don her blue uniform without a twitch of sadness in her heart. She did not like wearing it though. She did not wear it if she could — mostly it was just there, in the bag, silently confirming her being a Herald. The uniform was hidden, rolled up in her bag when she finally left a hospital sector, as well as right now.

Now, in a train approaching the center region of Metropolis, she felt unsure about… pretty much everything. Where to live, how to find a friend in this busy community, would she be dismissed by colleagues?

Also, did the designation that she treasured in the envelope at her chest — one that she was constantly checking to make sure that the sheet sealed by the Trinity of Moons was not, against all odds, lost — mean that she would be mostly alone?

Once ponies deduced that you were a Herald, they usually minimized contact with you. For them, you were a function — healer and painkiller, in her case — rather than a living pony, and sometimes Gentle Touch asked herself if she had made the correct choice then.

Only sometimes, of course. Right now she was tugging the lines of three heartbeats and one headache almost subconsciously. The foal nearby was sound asleep for six slices straight while his grandmother found that she actually could tell her husband how she really loved him without being distracted by aching temples.

They never looked at Gentle’s small orange-tinted form on the top shelf too closely, of course, and no “thank you” was needed.

Comments

[Numinos]

So far so good. Interesting to see another glimpse of that world from another perspective.

[Koekelbag]

Hmm, so that explains just what the Blue and White Moon are...

Who (or what) would the Black Moon be then? Curious...

[Cloud Ring]

Minor thing, but I'll still ask, just in case: does the text need reference table of time units?

From shortest to longest:

beat,
[millicycle],
slice,
cycle,
luster, and
round

I hope these are deducible from the context!

[Cloud Ring]

10621248
Here's the thing why comments and questions are essential. I really thought it's most obvious thing (but author always assumes so), and never thought that it needs to be clarified — but you are the third person who asked me about it!

So, there will be a hint or two in the next few chapters.

[Cloud Ring]

10621238

We will stay with Gentle Touch for a couple of chapters.

[Chatoyance]

Okay, now I am unsure that this is a virtual world at all. This may simply be a magical one. I don't know. There is sickness, and, apparently, euthanasia. Onward.