The Trinity of Moons: Mending Shards

by Cloud Ring

Chapter 44: Misunderstanding

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Gentle Touch was not a stranger to the feeling of being helpless. That feeling was her unwanted companion, as for any medic there was a beat when you can't do a thing anymore. Due to her aspects, it was Gentle Touch herself to put the patient to final sleep in these cases, without shoving the task on anypony else, and that was why she did not consider herself strong.

Others, especially Cursory Streak, to call her weak, were another story.

Both shadows of her soul had not been leaders, except when destiny forced them to head a present party. They were on supporting roles, accompanying those more powerful and energized, more skillful and cunning, more attentive and sensitive, helping at the right time with appropriate advice, physical effort or strong will: always at the backstage for true stars of the show, even if one of said stars never even wanted to be in the limelight.

Without even conferring, only glancing at each other, these shadows intervened before Gentle Touch went from the initial diagnostic of Solid Line — frozen, silent, ash-beige Solid Line — to any desperate actions that would only harm the inscrutable patient.

There is a time for laughter, there is a time for a feast, and there is a time for panic — and it was panic that sounded in the voice of Gentle and her shadows, “My friend is dying! Somepony help her!"

Even the cat escaped from her embrace and swam through the air towards the glowing dome.

Cursory was recoiled and confused for a beat, until she narrowed her eyes, twisting herself in the air and flying in an arc towards Solid's body. In that beat Cursory's wings shone with transparent pearly fire, there was river ice in her eyes, and Gentle felt how cold— how deadly and lonely is the frozen lake in the middle of—

—but three beats passed in the meantime, and Gentle never knew which spells were ready to be cast through Cursory, because then in the same moment of nearly frozen time—

—nine after nine of moonless ponies flocked to them from one side, and were flowing in still — confused, stern, ready to help — and everypony was here for their sake, answering Gentle Touch’s call for help. Nopony had a single ribbon of threat or fear, much less a weapon; Gentle did not know the language of orange scribbles on the yellowish-white surface of the giant room, and the rhythm did not coincide with the usual alarm signal, but she had heard “Enough!” from aside.

Cursory turned her body towards the largest group and arched her mighty wings forward, as if preparing to let something come out from the heart and in between them. She looked at Solid Line, not even glancing at the moonless ones; a choking, hasty voice assured that the station is not the enemy of the Moons and their envoys, but if—

—Gentle turned around at the delicate request of her shadows, and the duo spoke with haste, one over another, looking into Cursory's frosty eyes, having placed Gentle's body between her and still unmoving Solid Line, ‘Stop, M’Lady of the Crystal! This ain’t the war! This here band of younglings ain’t our enemies, they had no leaf dropped over poor ‘Shy!— —and I really, really don’t want to spoil your hobby, Rares, you are so prettivolous in the zone, but this is not a battle fantasy! A completely different setting! The traveler hasn't yet returned victorious!"—

—Storm, strangely naked and bright in her green coat without her suit, wearing only a round black-green bracelet dug deep into her right front leg with many thin black filaments, appeared next to them, closing the rhombus — Cursory Streak and Solid Line on the long axis, Gentle Touch and Faraway Storm on the other — and spoke to the station residents, guarding her small group from them, “This is not an invasion! These are our friends, and they want to save the world as much as we do! Have you heard the legends about the Six? These are no longer legends, now it is the truth, they are here and we will not offend them. Okay?”

(“What happened?” Cursory asked, “Did I attack these ponies?” Cursory asked, “Am I not the Moon yet?” Cursory asked; Gentle Touch tried to whisper that everything seems to be okay for now without interfering with another conversation.)

“Nopony was going to offend them,” a voice from the speaker replied, irritated, “Gentle Touch, your invitee, called for help, so we…”

“You’re saying you didn't attack them?” Storm interrupted.

“No! But look at your pegasus! This is an active anomaly, decon team is on their way. We would all be thrown down onto the planet…”

“Recall decons! I will fix it now,” Faraway Storm shouted, then turned her whole body to Cursory Streak and simply said, “Stop it.”

Her mark, black on green, trembled; the black grew deeper, the green brighter; the bracelet whizzled.

“What?” Cursory asked again.

Then she stopped.

“Here,” Storm said affirmatively, “Well done.”

Oh, this is so funny! not quite Gentle thought, and Gentle almost laughed out loud, but stumbled upon a squint of violet eyes, “You, too, stop right there!”

Gentle felt a shift in her soul. She still barely kept herself from giggling... but not that way anymore. She was not crazy. It did not border on the wish to cut open some examples of pretty nice and wide smiles on the most suitable bleeding tissues. She swallowed and nodded to Storm, “I'm fine, really.”

Solid Line was next; “You too. Stop it!” Storm said, sternly looking at her.

Solid Line did not answer.

“Hmm?”

Solid still didn't answer.

“Looks like she really needs a doctor,” Storm said quietly. The bracelet on her leg fell apart into three unequal parts with a harsh clink.

“Where have you been before?” Gentle asked, looking up at the tall unicorn.

“This is my home,” Storm looked back and twitched her ear, “Here is my job, friends and love. You will not be offended that you were not my main priority after coming back from your moonburnt preserve, will you?”

Gentle Touch nodded.

Less than a slice later, they sat at an oval table, all fastened with elastic straps. Signal was lying right in the middle of the table, all her legs tucked up under her, with a personal strap on the rump. Moonless ponies recognized the shadows of the six, and all of them — five out of six, counting Solid Line’s one — were identified, registered and presented to themselves.

Purity herself, a false alicorn of untainted white — more white than White Moon — took her place at the head of the table not before she gazed into the eyes of each of them. Gentle saw calm despair in her, and yet not a grain of hostility.

Her husband, Meteor, through all the meeting was forcing his melting mind to appear like himself and behave like himself, to nod in the right places and agree with Purity in all she ever said; inside this shell there was only “Help me... take me out of here... Let me walk on the ground and finally fall asleep..." Gentle nodded to him. Before the start of the main meeting she found time to approach him and say that she heard him and felt for him.

She didn't know if she was heard in turn. She did not risk looking at him again.

Solid was not among them; she was in a protected hospital compartment for overloaded synth-ponies. Additional blocks were neatly connected to her, one at a time, but each next block promptly reached a full load with no sign of saturation, and Solid continued to carry out her unknown calculation, still pale and unmoving; still lost for the outside world all the same.

Still out for Gentle Touch’s final regrets.

Dispassion sat next to Gentle, metal shoulder touching her own coat. After the strange and alien rituals of general respect for Purity, in which Gentle and Cursory refused to participate, Dispassion gave a report on why the Moons should be destroyed, and later corrected herself — not necessarily destroyed but limited in their hold over reality.

The talk ended and there was silence.

Everypony was looking at Gentle Touch; and she saw that everypony was waiting for an answer.

An answer from her, not from Cursory, the chosen team leader, Gentle Touch realised. From her, a small and weak Gentle Touch, still hopelessly far from home, family and friends, except for Dispassion, but whether she could be considered a friend, Gentle did not know.

She turned to Cursory Streak, closed her eyes, caught the love and thirst of the pegasus, returned it, picked it up again in a familiar trick — in a feedback loop, reinforcing it, running it stronger in a matter of beats. Over and over again.

There was no cold in Cursory now. Not a single chip of that arrogant ice. Only the desire to hug Gentle Touch, hide her in her wings from any threat, and always be there for her. A love. Not an artificial love, and even if so, then only a little. Strong enough for the task.

Gentle still did not share these desires. Cursory Streak was still not her ideal. Gentle herself was still neither the hero nor the Moon.

But you have to work with what you have, Gentle thought.

Gentle Touch, an earth pony, unbuckled her seat belts and slowly flew over the table.

“I heard you. You have a right for a miracle too,” Gentle said.

“We'll get together. We will work a miracle,” Gentle said.

She paused, remembering the last — perhaps now truly the last — conversation with Solid Line. If even the very weapon designed to destroy the Red, once no longer under the Moons' influence, refused to execute the plan...

She glanced at Cursory.

...if White Moon’s Herald still held a hope for the Red, despite all her experience in issue-solving, despite having seen with her own eyes those who suffered from the Red’s infusions…

...and the one time she spoke about the hope out loud was when we were talking in the vault protected from Their light — technically, from the Red’s light, but—

It was hard to finish this thought. Something was obstructing the flow. It was forbidden to think that way.

She never broke the wall; “But before that, we'll talk with the Red about how to keep our world in such a way that we all — all of us, no exception — can be alive and have a chance to be happy. Everypony deserves to be happy,” Gentle said instead.

Following the rhythm of the verbal triangle, she had to stop at three lines, but when she heard the shadow of Pinkie Pie, she grinned and added, “We need to get to the last remaining pony. We are tired of wandering. We need a boat to the center of Metropolis, two-thirds of a range to Blue Moon’s Ascent.”

Only after finishing her demand, she realized that she still remained in the triangle, but of a different order; Pinkie Pie sighed.

Moonless ponies were in strong disagreement. There were shouts, there were appeals to reason and safety; precedents were found too — Gentle was not the first with this idea. They said, over and over again, that this is madness, and the few that survived communication with the Red did not return unchanged; that the changes were always designed to harm ponies around; that there is nothing in the Red but blind hate.

Had Gentle Touch been alone and with no allies, she would buckle and retreat under the pressure for sure. They were right, after all. It was madness, and Gentle knew it — probably better than the moonless; forever subtly out of color, her right side ached.

She had Cursory Streak at her side, and a plaintive and promising look was enough now to launch a counterattack by Cursory while retreating herself to the backlines, at the position known too well.

In the forthcoming battle of shouts, conviction and endurance, surely enough, the pegasus emerged victorious protecting her love’s proposal — especially as Purity made it clear that she abstains.

Their request was fulfilled. The vial of ‘Guiding Starfall-TX’, still sparkling, was there for Gentle Touch too, in her bag; Solid Line apparently never parted with it. Now Gentle Touch waited only for a proper time and place to offer it to Pink and close the loop. The boat was spacious, and its mechanisms were silent; a medical pod, covered with translucent glass, containing Solid Line and monitors of her vital functions, stood inside no louder.

The planet under the boat was slowly becoming flat; Metropolis lay down below, the Forest remained a dark-green splotch on Her body; whispering engines were deorbiting the craft in a stable deceleration. Signal was sitting atop of the glass, looking at them, impervious; probably waiting.

This was when Gentle Touch kissed Cursory.

Comments

[Numinos]

Another good chapter, plot is moving, party is travelling, lore is solidifying, all good : )

Gentle is surprisingly and worryingly manipulative.

[Koekelbag]

Moonless ponies recognized the shadows of the six, and all of them — five out of six, counting Solid Line’s one

I'm curious to meet the last remaining member, moreso for the shadow in them. If I kept track right, Cursory has Rarity and Rainbow, Gentle has Applejack, Sharp Cut has Pinkie Pie (If Gentle and Sharp were two seperate ponies from the start), and Solid has Fluttershy, leaving Twilight with the last one... even though Black Moon is Twilight, or at least a form of it, so I'm excited as to how this will play out.