The Zebra and The Bat

by Apple Bottoms

Wings Over Troubled Water

Candle didn’t need to be woken up this time; the light creak of Zeffir opening his door jerked Candle sharply out of whatever fraught dream he’d been lost in. Zeffir didn’t speak; he caught Candle’s eye, nodded, and closed the door again.

They prepared for their journey in the same tense silence. Zeffir had prepared Candle a set of saddlebags to match his, which looked much like his father’s travelling bags from home. His father didn’t travel much anymore, but sometimes he would tell Candle stories about all of the places he’d been to in Equestria, under cover of darkness. As a colt, he had played with his father’s saddlebags, and pretended he was on his own journey around Equestria. Zeffir had left one saddlebag empty for him, and his journal and pencils looked quite paltry, sitting in there alone. Dutifully, Candle buttoned it up all the same.

“Do you know how to put it on?” Zeffir said at last, breaking the silence as he cinched the saddlebags around his own frame. It was a simple enough strap, just a belt around the middle, it looked like.

“Yeah,” Candle lied, and pulled his own pair on. Just like wearing pants! He had pants at home, this would probably be the same. Probably was not definitely, though, and as he straightened up, the saddle bags slid neatly around his middle, hanging upside down.

“Can I help?” Zeffir asked, already halfway there, and with Candle’s little nod he righted the saddlebags. The tight yank around his middle startled a little ‘oof!’ out of Candle, but when Zeffir pulled back, they stayed upright. He considered him for a moment, then grabbed another length of rope and put it into Candle’s mostly empty saddlebag, next to his journal. Another considering glance, and another couple of jars, and the saddlebags felt more balanced on his hips.

“Not too heavy?”

“No, it’s fine,” Candle agreed, and followed Zeffir to the door. He missed Zeffir’s easy, warm banter, but he didn’t know how to ask for it back. Was that version of Zeffir reserved for his husband? Candle couldn’t blame him, he supposed, but it felt … lonely, even though he followed him around like a lost foal.

Zeffir locked the door behind them and left the key under the mat. Their journey out of town was a brief and quiet one; there was no one around to see them leave through the gate that was closest to Zeffir’s home.

And just like that, without any fanfare at all, they had started their journey.

Candle was familiar with the dusk, although the sun setting prompted him to feel more sleepy than alert after his weeks of practice. But weeks could not erase a lifetime of being a bat pony, and as his pupils expanded and his ears twitched to hear every night sound around them, Candle felt a comforting sense of familiarity ease over him. For all that it was a strange land, and he was on a journey to get a divorce from the admittedly-handsome guard walking in front of him, the night felt like home.

They walked in silence for a long time, following a road through the tall grass, much like the trail that they had walked from the port to Zeffir’s village. They met no one else, because who would travel at night? Candle kept his ears perked and alert for any signs of other life, mostly so that he could distract himself from the firm hindquarters of the guard walking ahead of him. There was lots to hear, at night; insects, and all of the little animals that hunted those insects, came out to play. He couldn’t recognize most of their sounds as from specific species like he could at home, but buzzing, humming, and skittering sounded the same in every language.

Candle skittered into a gallop himself when he caught the sound of something large whispering through the grass beside them. It was pure instinct that had him throwing himself in front of Zeffir, pushing him back, away from the sound. “Something’s there,” Candle whispered, his heart in his throat, and the pair froze.

Candle could hear the grass whispering around a large body and many hooves from a long ways off; Zeffir opened his mouth to ask what he was hearing, when suddenly it came much closer, and his smaller ears finally picked up the sound. A few yards ahead of them the grass moved suddenly (or not suddenly, if you had keen hearing and had been following their approach for minutes now), and a large boar emerged, trailed by an entire passel of rainbow-colored piglets. Candle had to assume it was a boar, anyway; it looked like a boar, but the colors were all different (not brown, but green!), and it had massive, angular tusks. The boar considered the pair with one sharp, sidelong glance, and then vanished into the grass on the other side of the path, following her piglets now.

“That was -” Candle’s whisper trailed off. Terrifying? Amazing? Thrilling? It was hard to pick a word, because even though the terror still made his heart race up into his throat, it felt like some kind of magic to see something like that up close. The boar was so large, and the babies were so small and colorful! It felt like watching lightning strike; dazzling, but he didn’t want to get too close, either.

“That was very clever,” Zeffir said at last, considering Candle. Candle didn’t want to admit how good the compliment felt after so much silence. “You heard them that far off?”

Candle nodded, avoiding Zeffir’s gaze, certain that he would see the way his cheeks warmed despite himself. “Bat ponies have very good hearing.”

“Indeed they do,” Zeffir agreed, considering him for a moment longer. “Would you like to take the lead? Your vision and hearing are far superior to mine in the darkness, I suspect.”

“I - really?” Candle asked, his ears perking. “Okay, if … you’re sure.” Were divorcees allowed to take point? It felt like a strange question to ask, so he didn’t.

“Stop us if you hear anything big like that again. There’s predators out here, too.”

Thanks for that comforting thought, Zeffir.

The next hour was spent in a high-alert, with Candle stopping for anything above the size of a housecat; some things crossed their path, and some heard them and turned the other way. Candle would start describing them, or at least how they sounded, and Zeffir would give him a rough translation of what it might be. (“Four paws, very rapid; it sounds like it’s heavy. It’s smaller than a cat, I think. Soft paws on the dirt.” “Might be a hyrax, they won’t hurt us. Sort of like a gopher.”)

The creatures that they came across were dazzling, and each one made Candle want to stop to pull out his journal. He saw plenty of little rodents, but each one was somehow different to what he was used to. Something like a skunk skulked across the path ahead of them later on, with a similar black and white pattern on a much larger frame, and it was Zeffir who pulled him further back that time. “Honey badger. Not a friend,” Zeffir had confirmed quietly, and they waited until Candle couldn’t hear it anymore before they continued.

They worked that way until the weak light of dawn broke the darkness overhead, and more of the savannah started to come alive. Zeffir let Candle lead for a little while longer, then wordlessly pulled ahead, taking the lead once more. Candle didn’t say it, but he hoped that the approach of day meant that they were done listening for things that might eat them.

Candle heard the roar of the water a long time before they saw it. It was a river, coursing and wild, and Candle was getting the sinking feeling that they weren’t just going to walk alongside it, especially once he noted the way Zeffir’s ears had flicked back.

“The rainy season has already swollen the river. It’s usually only knee deep; we’ll still be able to cross,” Zeffir explained, finishing confidently. “I’ll take the rocks, and of course you can fly over.”

Well, guano.

Before Candle could offer any opposition, Zeffir took off at a trot, and confidently leapt into the river. There were rocks whose edges just barely stuck above the current, and Zeffir leapt between them like some striped mountain goat, landing on the other side a few minutes later, still dry. “You can fly over now!” Zeffir called over the roar of the river.

Candle looked down at the river, then at Zeffir, then back at the river. What had looked beautiful and untamed from a distance now looked like a swirling death trap, and Candle struggled to pick out the rocks that Zeffir had jumped between. He had made it look so easy! But Zeffir was stronger, and faster, and - nope! Candle could do this! Candle wasn’t going to let himself overthink this! Rock to rock, right? Easy peasy!

Candle took a few steps back, his heart already pounding, and took off for the river at a gallop. With a mighty jump, he landed on the first rock, and leapt to the second one. Hey! This was working! It worked great until the third rock, anyway, when his hoof slipped on the surprisingly-slick surface, and his next jump went off-kilter. He barely made it to the next rock, and scrambled up where his back legs had slid into the water, soaking him in the cold, rushing current.

“What are you doing?” Zeffir shouted, approaching the river. “Just fly!”

Candle tried to shake off the yelling and the cold shock of the water; he braced himself, then took another jump, landing on the next rock. It was harder without momentum, and as he considered his final jump, he realized that he would never make it to the bank from where he stood. Candle could swim okay, but he’d never tested that theory in a storm-swollen river.

“You can make it!” Zeffir was still shouting, standing on the riverbank closest to him; his hooves were in the water. “Just fly the last bit!”

“I can’t fly!” Candle shouted back at last, his voice tight.

Zeffir stared at him for a long moment that felt longer. Then, wordlessly, he began to wade into the river. Candle wasn’t terribly far out, just too far to jump; but even in that short distance, Zeffir was already soaked up to his hips, and Candle could see him fighting the current.

“Climb on!” Zeffir called once he got close enough. He was struggling, but he was upright, for now; would he be able to handle Candle’s added weight? “NOW!” Alright, that answered that.

With great misgiving, Candle lowered himself to a crouch, and carefully slid onto Zeffir’s back. Zeffir’s knees buckled for a moment, then held; once Candle had his forelegs tightly around his neck, Zeffir turned away, and began making his way back to the riverbank. He was pulled by the current a little further downstream, but eventually Candle felt the icy water beginning to recede, and soon they were back on land. Candle all but fell off of Zeffir, and the pair laid on the riverbank for a long moment, panting.

It was Zeffir who broke the silence. “I didn’t know you couldn’t fly.”

Candle wordlessly climbed back up to his hooves and began walking again. Behind him, he could hear Zeffir rapidly clamber to his hooves, too, shaking off the river water before he trotted to catch up.

They walked in a tense silence, but Candle’s thoughts raced loudly enough in his ears to fill it ten times over. They went like that for a little while, maybe half an hour, before they came to a massive acacia tree.

“We should stop here. We need to rest. And I need to hang this to dry,” Zeffir jerked his head towards his saddlebags where his sodden bedroll still dripped down his legs.

A pang of guilt shot through Candle, and he could only nod wordlessly, following Zeffir as he began to set up camp. It wasn’t much; they hadn’t brought tents, like when Candle went camping as a colt. But the wide, branching canopy of the acacia offered shade, and Zeffir was able to throw his wet blanket high enough that it could catch on one of the lower branches and hang. Candle unrolled his own to find a brightly-patterned, sturdy blanket, woven of some thick material.

“You should sleep on that,” Zeffir instructed him, already starting to yank mouthfuls of the tall grass up and drag them over. “I will sleep on the grass.”

“I tore my wing.”

Zeffir froze, and slowly let his eyes travel to Candle, who was playing with the fringed end of his blanket.

“It wasn’t even a big accident,” Candle began slowly, his eyes on the blanket, his voice low. “I wasn’t attacked, or fell, or anything. I was just flying one day, and - I must have hit some kind of air pocket, I guess, because suddenly I was sideways, and then there was this - this horrible tearing,” Candle shuddered deeply at the memory, “and I could feel it in my wing, and I couldn’t do anything but fall out of the sky. It’s been healed up for months now, but …” Candle swallowed, and rubbed one eye with the back of his hoof. “I just keep remembering the tearing. How it came out of nowhere. How it could - it could just happen again.”

Zeffir waited until Candle fell quiet, then risked coming a little closer, abandoning his grass bed. “May I see?”

Candle’s glance to Zeffir was quick; the decision to let him see his wing, less so. But after a long moment, he carefully unfolded his right wing, and spread it out for Zeffir to see. The scar wasn’t huge; on the webbed, leathery skin of his wing, it was a thin, pale line, silver against his pale-grey body. It wasn’t much longer than one of his pencils, but it had felt so much bigger in his memory. Zeffir came close, and considered him. Candle waited for a touch that didn’t come.

“Scars are signs that we survived,” Zeffir finally said at last, and lifted his eyes to meet Candle’s. “We are stronger where we are remade.”

Candle could only stare at him, something unknowable in his gaze, only because Candle didn’t know what he was feeling just then. Zeffir shifted a little where he sat, so that he could extend one of his finely-muscled hind legs in front of Candle. A group of silvery blue lines criss-crossed over the place where the morning dawn pink of his coat melted into the pale blue. They were not stripes, like the white stripes that covered his coat; they were raised.

“I earned these defending the village from a honey badger,” Zeffir spoke quietly. “I was very afraid to go through that pain again.” Zeffir was quiet for a moment, considering what to say; his left ear twitched. “It got easier, over time. It will get easier for you, too.”

“I hope so,” Candle spoke softly.

“I know,” Zeffir affirmed, and considered Candle for a beat before he reached out, and let his hoof touch Candle’s wing, as light as a puff of breath. “You are stronger now.”

Candle couldn’t help the shiver that rolled through him.

Zeffir might have noticed it, or he might have not; either way, he pulled himself upright again, and resumed work on his bed.

“You shouldn’t sleep on the grass - we can both fit on this,” Candle said suddenly, lifting the blanket he’d been clutching without realizing. “It’s big. And - aren’t you wet? And … cold?”

Zeffir considered Candle, and gave a half-shrug. His fur still stood up at odd angles, spiny from where he’d shaken off most of the river water. “It will be hot by the time we wake up.”

“We can put the blanket over us, if we both sleep on the grass,” Candle answered, and climbed upright so he could join Zeffir, beginning to pull some grass in turn.

They both focused on the work instead of the promise of sharing a blanket; it seemed they were both more comfortable in the silence. They ate some, and pulled some, and within a few minutes had a respectable pile of grass to climb into. The blanket spread over both of them easily, and as Candle settled down against Zeffir’s back, he could feel his low trembling fade into nothing as the blanket’s warmth settled over them both. His coat was cold, for all that he denied it, but where Candle touched soon turned warm.

“Candle?” Zeffir’s voice was quiet, afraid to wake him perhaps. It had been some time since they laid down, but Candle was not used to sleeping on the ground.

“Yeah?” Candle answered, equally quiet.

“If I had been a bat pony, would you have been so upset to be married to me?”

Candle’s eyes widened. “I - of course, yes. I - it’s the - I don’t want to be married, period, it’s not because of - because of anything like that.”

Zeffir nodded, and Candle could feel it from where their backs were pressed together. “Okay.”

“It’s not you,” Candle added, and his voice was a little less uncertain, a little less herky-jerky. “I … I really like you, Zeffir. I’ve never … I’ve never had a friend like you before.” Candle swallowed; he wondered if Zeffir could feel it like he felt his nod. “I’m sorry that I … that I freaked out so much. I didn’t … I didn’t even think about how it would hurt you. But - of course it would. I’m sorry.”

Zeffir nodded again, and he was quiet for so long that Candle wondered if he was angry at him. . “I have never seen anyone so upset like that,” Zeffir murmured at last, his voice low. “I was afraid for you - that you couldn’t breathe. I thought, perhaps … if I was so abhorrent to you…”

“Never abhorrent, Zeffir,” Candle insisted softly, and rolled a little, so he could press his side against Zeffir’s more firmly. “You’re my friend.” Candle was quiet for a beat. “I’ve never been kissed before.”

Zeffir twisted, and Candle caught his gaze as he sat up a little. “Never?”

“No!” Candle flushed and turned away, his ears flattening out in embarrassment. “I - no.”

Zeffir considered him for a moment, very still. “I have kissed one other stallion.”

It was Candle’s turn to stare up at Zeffir. “Really?”

Zeffir nodded. “Xuiquex. My very first kiss.” Zeffir smiled a little at the memory, although it quickly faded. “We were so careful about it, but … my parents found out anyway. With everything else… they wouldn’t tolerate it. That’s how I ended up in Xara. They needed a guard, and I needed a new home.”

“Zeffir … Zeffir, I’m so sorry,” Candle whispered, and his ears whisked in the grass beneath him as they flicked back and forth.

“It’s alright. I did not put it in my letters to you; I didn’t know how.” Zeffir offered him a small, wistful smile. “I suppose I did not want you to pity me, if we were to be married. You should not pity your husband. But that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It’s nothing to pity you for, Zeffir,” Candle murmured, and rose a little so that he could sit up as well, hugging his hind legs as his gaze wandered. “My parents … they know about … this. That I like - stallions. But the day my mother found out, she wept like I had died. And she said it was okay, but …” Candle shook his head, and curled in on himself a little. “I knew it wasn’t. So I tried to keep it inside, to keep from talking about it, but I guess when I realized we were married … I’d have to talk about it.” Candle was quiet for a moment, then laughed, the sound sad. “And she would be disappointed in me, I guess. What a dumb thing to be worried about.”

But Zeffir considered Candle with a gentle gaze, and his hoof was light when he touched his shoulder. “It is not dumb, Candle. It is natural to seek her approval.”

Candle’s glance was sidelong, but the smile he offered him was grateful. “Thanks, Zeffir.”

“Of course.” Zeffir returned his little smile, then lowered himself back down onto the grass. “We should sleep. You will be tired from the travel, I imagine.”

“Okay,” Candle agreed, and lowered himself in kind. This time, when Zeffir rolled onto his side, Candle snuggled his front against his back, and settled his cheek between his shoulder blades. Zeffir’s mane was stiff and spiky, but his coat was soft, and smelled faintly of the peppery grass they laid on. “Good night, Zeffir.”

“Good night, Candle.”

They would wake up in the searing heat of the Eastern Desert sun, but for now, both stallions were warm under the blanket.

Comments

[Bicyclette]

For all that it was a strange land, and he was on a journey to get a divorce from the admittedly-handsome guard walking in front of him, the night felt like home.

that is quite a situation to be in the middle of!

“Honey badger. Not a friend,” Zeffir had confirmed quietly, and they waited until Candle couldn’t hear it anymore before they continued.

i have heard a lot about this creature

It wasn’t much longer than one of his pencils, but it had felt so much bigger in his memory.

ah, scars can be like that sometimes! and this is about what i expected from that earlier mention about not being able to go over the crowd

But the day my mother found out, she wept like I had died. And she said it was okay, but …

oof, sadly #relatable

They would wake up in the searing heat of the Eastern Desert sun, but for now, both stallions were warm under the blanket.

aww, a nice contrast to his earlier difficult sleep