Chapter 62: Good Folk
Lilac Empathy hadn't exactly known what responsibilities would be waiting for her when she accepted a covenant with the fairies of the mountain grove. What mattered to her was the new source of power, and more importantly—a new source of information. Having responsibilities to earn that privilege was no secret curse they sprung on her, but an expected and reasonable part of the process.
It was only because she had spent so long away from the grove that there was so much for her to do. Well that, and a few significant changes to the scale of her duties.
“I can't levitate something this big,” Risk repeated, staring up at the massive boulder before them. There were many like it all through the city—but this one obscured the location that shaman insisted would be ideal for a particularly choice flower. So long as the ground was covered, power could not spring forth to help her.
The fae folk might call their home a city, but that word meant something very different to them. Even feet from one of their finest mansions, the ground grew wild, with great plants growing so dense and thick overhead that Lilac sometimes couldn't see the sky.
There was barely enough room for her to circle around the huge stone, probing for hints at how they could get it out of the way.
She pressed both forelegs up against it from one side, bracing with all the strength of earth, and shoved.
It did move, sliding forward along the ground, but her shove only made it dig deeper into the ground, burying its front in soft soil, and sticking there.
Finally she dropped, groaning with frustration. “If we can't use magic to move it, what are we supposed to do?”
Risk rested one hoof over her shoulder in a brief hug. After spending a few days out here, there was something lighter about him, and leaner. It came from exchanging the fine foods of House Vale with nectar and pollen. “We'll figure it out. We cleared that whole field yesterday on our own, we can do this too.”
“It would be nice if we didn't have to!” she spoke, a little louder than she had to. But she was sweaty and frustrated enough not to care how many of the people watching overheard. “There's so much help around here! Think of how much we could do together!”
There were at least a dozen of them at any one time, perched on flowers overhead, watching through the underbrush, or sometimes even perched on the boulder she was trying to move. Sometimes they gave advice, but they never helped.
Lilac broke away a second later, then kicked off the rocky ground. Maybe she was just coming at this assignment from the wrong angle. Moving the rock didn't have to be that hard.
Firefly would probably be an instant expert at navigating like this, even if they had four wings instead of two and they were the clear stuff of dragonflies instead of muscles and feathers. But even after a few dozen brief visits to the scale of her teachers, Lilac still found the process clumsy. She could go up, hover in place, then go down again, and that was about it.
Little Risk couldn't even manage that. He watched from underneath, wings twitching in sympathy but unable to even lift off the ground. “See anything up there?”
She saw her last hour of effort hadn't gotten them anywhere. A little spell-diagram around the rock hadn't exploded it as intended, only made a few modest cracks down the center. Pushing it bodily wedged it in deeper, so any physical attack from that angle would only meet with failure.
Floating from overhead, she soon found herself distracted, watching Risk instead of the rock underneath. How many ponies would hold up through a trip like this? But she'd brought that unicorn deep under the earth, they'd fought demons, and now here he was in the domain of dangerous fairy creatures.
Still he followed her as loyal as he was cute. This would be so much simpler if her memory wasn't tied up with other complicated pain. She wanted to be with another boy again. But shouldn't it be Copper?
Compared to all that, her “father” trying to turn her over to Celestia for execution seemed like a little thing. The flames that came after were a little bigger, granted—she couldn't think of that without crying.
So she banished that thought, and landed beside Risk again. “I think I know something we can try.”
He nudged her with his shoulder this time, reassuring her as best he could. “Sure. Just so long as you don't want me to levitate something ten times my size again. Look at me, Lilac. I'm a bug, I'm not Celestia.”
She did look at him, right into his eyes. There were plenty of differences, but nothing different about him wasn't true about her too. She was stretched into the same “breezie” shape, with long legs, huge wings, and a relatively small body. Maybe that was why the differences in him didn't put her off.
“No levitation,” she finally said. “Just get around to this side, and we'll pull.”
As they walked, Lilac felt through the ground at their hooves. Her magic was easier than ever to reach at this size—not diminished by her scale so much as concentrated. Thin creepers wrapped around the stones she walked, vines that corresponded to no natural growth.
It was the same magic she used to defend herself, only without the violence this time. She got it around to the other side, then the plants extended like a rope, wrapping once past the stem of a nearby tree trunk. Well... probably the stem of a flower or something, at their scale.
She used a few other nearby plants in a similar way, working a simple mechanical pulley.
“That looks like a tangled mess,” Risk said. “How is that supposed to help?”
“Not magic this time, just mechanical laws.” She lifted the edge of the vine off the ground. “Help tie this around me, okay? I need a harness.”
He obeyed. The natural rope was strong stuff, so thick it would be difficult to tie. He recreated one of the simplest rope arrangements used by ponies of labor all over Willowbrook, except that it was a little further along her back. Lilac didn't even want to think about how much it would hurt to crush her wings.
“You think this will be enough?” he asked, when he was finished. “I think I see what you're trying to do here, but... I'm not sure you're strong enough.”
Lilac gritted her teeth, then started walking forward. As she expected, the extra loops in her makeshift pulley meant she had to move much further to get the rock very far. But with much less force required, this time her magic didn't give out. She heaved and grunted, but didn't use her wings to help. If she lifted off the ground, all the strength of her tribe would fail her in an instant, and she'd stop dead.
Risk followed along beside her, his horn glowing brightly. With his help, the tugging got easier, and the stone accelerated. Once past static friction and the softest soil, they were moving much easier.
Finally the rock touched up against the trunk of the first flower, and she stopped, turning to see her work. There was now a large empty place where it had been, along with a trail showing just how far they'd pulled it. Several whole body-lengths, plenty of room to plant a new flower.
“We did it.” She slumped against Risk, breathing heavily. For a few seconds the two of them just stood there, catching their breath.
Risk's horn glowed again, and the harness loosened around her, tumbling away. “How long do we have to keep... working here?”
Lilac's antennae twitched as she considered the list they'd received that morning. “I think that's all the manual labor! Saffron wants me to be part of a ritual tonight, and you can probably join if you want. If you... can figure out how to fly by then.”
Risk shoved her shoulder. Of course he was a unicorn, so the touch didn't even budge her. “I don't mean today. I mean how much longer do we have to keep hiding here in the grass, pretending to be breezies?”
“Act like people long enough, and you won't have to pretend,” said another voice. Saffron landed a little way from Lilac. No matter how many times she visited, it was still hard to look up at the breezie, who was now more than a full head taller than she was, with much grander wings. The latter mattered far more to the “people” than the former. “There's no reason to flee this place, apprentice. You know what darkness waits beyond its verdant walls.”
He approached, then touched antennae up against hers in the equivalent of a local hoof shake. It didn't get any less disorienting either. “The flowers still whisper from dark realms. Their roots probe deep, pry out what is dry and lifeless.”
Saffron was right—with so many natural duties, with the power of the living world as thick as sap around her, there was no reason to think about other things. The nameless vistas that bound her and the dark truths they whispered were little more than unpleasant memories here.
“We're not breezies,” Risk repeated. “We're grateful for your protection from Equestria, and we agree it's fair to earn our keep—but we've already been here for days. Lilac, don't you think we should at least check on Willowbrook? Our families might've been trying to reach us, but how would they even get here? This place is protected, even from them.”
Her teacher turned on Risk. His wings beat once in annoyance, but didn't buzz like smaller insects sometimes did. Breezies' wings were too large to move that fast, and each flap they made was deliberate. “Iris Vale has visited us before. She knows the path to follow to do so again, whenever she wishes. There are others too—Firefly's sympathy to Lilac is too powerful to sever. We will see one of them in time.”
“I know you don't want to stay like this longer than you have to,” Lilac said. “We probably won't have to. We can't stay gone for too long, or they'll miss us.”
“Unless what they think doesn't matter,“ Saffron finished. ”You could flee to return to this petty game of crowns and cults. Or stay in the wild and live forever. Even this one will learn, with your instruction. Great and small winds grant you sounder patience than I.“
Risk rolled his eyes, but didn't keep up the argument. It was the same discussion Saffron tried to raise with every visit. He no longer seemed to care that being small limited Lilac's ability to help the grove. In his strange, fairy way, he actually cared for her safety.
Lilac smelled it before she heard it—a silent call to alarm, released by one of the people in panic. There were many layers of subtlety to their pheromone communication, but almost all of it was lost on her. She sensed only the simplest concept underneath. “Something coming.”
Saffron took off instantly, hovering there. “See, unicorn? Your incessant anxiety to flee civilization was purposeless. Outsiders have arrived to lure my student away to foolish vanity and death.”
Lilac wanted to follow him immediately—but she couldn't, not without leaving Risk behind. She stayed with him on the ground, shouting up instead. “Where should we go?”
“Where it smells the worst!” Saffron yelled back. “How many hours did we spend scrubbing the pony out of you two? How can you not smell it?”
She could, now that he told her what to look for. She smelled ozone and moisture, along with winds so terrible they could sweep away whole cities. She smelled constant energy and motion. Firefly.
“She's here!” Lilac tugged at Risks's hoof, then started running through the plants. “Come on!”
He followed, glaring at her. “I hope you realize... what seeing me like this will do. She'll call me Little for the rest of my life.”
“I'm smaller than you,” Lilac insisted. “Just come on!”
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well here comes Firefly!
The team's assembling and the sisters reunited. Time to cut off all ties to cult and figure out what to do next.
Hopefully, it's less evil than the one Firefly was almost in.
It's not a cure, but Lilac's condition definitely improved here.
Whatever takes her out of the forest won't be by choice.
11330400
And Dusty/Septum. I'm really interested in seeing what the breeziest will do in regards to him.
oh boy and does she got new's to share
Those fair folk really have something going for them if they can just smell power like that.
At least her short dip into Abaddon didn't rub off a scent on her! That's gotta be a good sign.
And I see Fae are doing what Fae tend to do. Saffron's getting possessive. At least he's nice about it. So far.
That ceremony should probably be avoided at all costs. I have a feeling that it's something to bind her to the wood.
Every time I read about the Fae in the story, I keep wondering if there are more than one faction, considering the group of Fae that interacted with Fluttershy.
I mean I could never imagine the Fae in this story openly flying in a breeze, in an annual migration across open fields, and pony villages.
It's gonna be a big old reunion! I wonder how the fey are gonna take the buggo.
I'm curious as to how Lilac and Risk will react to the revelation of what the cult tried to do. I'm also very curious to see how the breezies react to a changeling.
A lot can happen in a few days. Wonder how they'll react to Dusty?