JULY
If May was the summer’s dawn, and June the full light of morning, then July was surely the droning hours which hovered about noon. July could only offer the highest, hottest days of the summer… and yet, it was easier, somehow, than June. A familiar, predictable heat which quickly became surprisingly bearable. A constant sheen of sweat wiped from one’s upper lip. White-hot sunlight beating down on the top of your head.
Despite its familiarity, Night found herself venturing out after sundown more and more often. The coolness of the evening was comforting to Night Glider, not to mention the constant symphony of crickets and cicadas to keep her company.
Sky was a bit of a night owl, too, it seemed. While her days were spent weather-forecasting, her nights were her own—and she was sure to take advantage of every one.
“Alright. So my little map says you should find another recording on your…” Sky trailed off, obviously orienting herself to the massive map on the wall of her own tower. “Your right. Wait, left! Wait…"
Night Glider leapt atop a small log, waiting patiently for Sky to finish her muttering.
"Left," Sky said. "Final answer.”
Night shook her head, snickering to herself as she turned off the trail and headed deeper into the woods. “I dunno, Sky. I think your little map might be more wishful thinking than anything else.”
“Tsk. You just don’t get meteorology.”
Night let out a single, sharp laugh. “Right, right,” she said. “I forgot about the required classes on ghost forecasting at weather school. My bad.”
Sky did not reply. Though Night had quite literally not a shred of evidence, she always believed this to be her way of concealing laughter. It brought a secretive smile to her face.
“Did they not have those classes at your weather school?” Sky asked, barely maintaining her facade of seriousness.
Night was caught a bit off guard by the question. “Uh. I actually didn’t go to the weather—to the flight academy,” she said, carefully correcting herself. “I was trained differently. Because of my talent.”
“Oh.” Sky seemed to experience a moment of genuine confusion. “I—sorry, I thought you were a pegasus. I don’t know why. I mean, for hoofness’ sake, I’m a unicorn.”
“Wait—you’re a unicorn?” Night repeated.
Sky laughed, this time not bothering to hide it. “Okay, okay. Let’s try it this way: Night Glider, what is your very special talent?”
Night smirked into her chest as she clambered over a rather large root. “It’s, uh… kinda stupid,” she admitted softly. “I’m a precision flier, particularly at night. I-I just have really good night vision. That’s why I did search-and-rescue—they always need more ponies willing to work the night shift.”
“Interesting,” Sky mused. “And you went to a specialized school?”
“It was… like a sleepaway camp, sort of. The Cloudsdale flight academy tends to train pegasi for flying, like, way up in the sky. In the cloud layer,” Night explained. “But precision fliers can’t depend on that sort of open space for flight. Plus, we don’t need to know any of the actual weather science mumbo-jumbo.”
“That sounds intense,” Sky commented.
Night shrugged, even though Sky couldn’t see it. Or perhaps because she couldn’t. “I didn’t really have anything better to do with myself at the time,” she said. “I, uh. I lost my mom pretty soon after I got my cutie mark. Sending me to woodland survivalist boarding school was my dad’s easiest option, I think.”
There was a long silence.
Night tried not to think much about it, and tried not to keep talking. That was the hardest part about these things, she thought: stopping the word vomit before it overtook her completely.
Instead, she focused on the path ahead of her. One hoof in front of the other.
“Night, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was a…” Sky struggled to find the words. “I didn’t realize.”
"It's okay. In the past," she said, though she hardly believed it. She quickly shook the heaviness off and returned to an almost teasing tone: "Clear Sky, what is your very special talent?"
Sky chuckled, but it didn't sound quite the same as usual. It was terse—almost forced. An awkward thing.
"Um… well, I'm in weather forecasting. My talent is in weather magic—just like pegasi—but I can't exactly do much with it being a unicorn," Sky explained. "Both my parents were pegasi. I was a bit of a surprise. I think I'm still a bit of a surprise to a lot of ponies, to be honest."
"Certainly surprised me," Night Glider replied.
Sky said nothing. Night figured she probably wasn't laughing this time.
"It's weird that I didn't know that," Night said softly.
A pause. "Didn't know what?"
"That you're a unicorn," Night replied. "I guess I feel like I know you pretty well by now, but I think part of me still pictures you as… I dunno. A little yellow radio, I guess."
At last, a laugh. "You picture me as a radio?"
Night huffed softly. "Shut up."
"Am I a cute radio at least?"
"Maybe we get off the radios for a bit and listen, huh?" Night suggested, powering through the sentence with everything she had.
Silence.
A good silence.
A laughing silence.
Funny how quickly she had learned the difference.
As Night continued her tromp through the woods, she did her best to picture the pony on the other end of the radio. Knowing that Sky was a unicorn gave her something to fill in, at least. A basic outline that she could scribble in with colors and shapes and swoops and swirls.
She sounded tall. Something about the smoothness of her voice, that deep undertone… she was definitely tall. At least a head taller than Night.
And she was so bright and bubbly. Night had never heard her any less than content, and very often she was outright glowing with joy—even through the radio. So bright colors. The colors of the sky.
A bright blue coat. Springtime sky-blue. And a mane like clouds; curly and weightless and white, with streaks of yellow like the summer sun.
"—time to think about going back?"
Night froze.
For a moment, she had seen it come from Sky’s lips. Her imagined lips. But the form dissipated into another, fuzzier form: a more mysterious figure yet.
Under the whistling wind was, indeed, the hum of the radio. It was a sound that made Night’s hair stand on end, sending a pricking sensation from her scalp down her spine.
“Going back?” the stallion replied. “You wanna go back?”
The stone under Night’s hooves shifted, and she stumbled forward a few steps, falling against a tree.
The radio hummed.
“We can’t stay here forever,” the mare replied, forcing a laugh.
“Why not?”
“Why not?” the mare repeated. “We’re in the woods! I thought this was a… a romantic getaway!”
“It is,” the stallion assured her. “But… babygirl, you have to admit it’s nice to be away from everything else.”
The mare grumbled something in response, though the exact words were unclear. Perhaps they weren’t words at all.
“Isn’t this so much easier without all those distractions?” the stallion cooed. Night could practically picture the way he must have nuzzled into the mare’s neck as he spoke. “Just you and me. In our fairytale.”
There was a long pause. The sort which suggested a musing, a mulling over. Looks exchanged. Wordless thoughts.
The mare chuckled. Husky and deep. “A little longer. Maybe.”
“Perfecto!” the stallion exclaimed. “Let’s claim our territory then, hm?”
There was a quiet rustling, then a sharp and shiny wish-click! Night recognized it instantly as the sound of switchblade.
The mare laughed again. “That’s a pony tool, dope.”
A harsh sound. Sudden scraping, long and low.
The radio fizzled out.
“She’s not a pony?” Sky asked no one in particular.
Night sighed. “That’s what we get for assuming, I guess.”
“I think I got it all down,” Sky said. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that these two came to the woods for the same reason everyone else does.”
Night scoffed. “And what reason is that?”
“To escape,” Sky said simply. “I don’t think there’s another place in Equestria so completely cut off from the real world. I told you before: ponies come here to get away. No one with a perfect life is going to isolate themselves from everyone they know and love for five months.”
Maybe that was true.
It was hard not to hear it as accusatory.
“Hm,” Night replied.
Sky held her tongue a moment longer, almost as if she were willing Night to reply.
Night did not take the bait.
“Well. Theories?” Sky asked.
Night furrowed her brows. “Theories on what?”
“The voices,” Sky said. “Where they’re coming from. Who they are. We’ve been chasing them for a month now—I feel like we know so little.”
“Does it matter?” Night answered. “I thought we were… y’know, doing this for fun.”
Sky didn’t answer.
“What do you think?”
Sky thought for a moment. “I’m not sure.”
Night sighed. Her head dropped against the tree she’d been leaning on. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Me neither.”
The sounds of the woods swallowed her up. Crickets and cicadas. Wind in the trees. The memory of heat radiating up from the earth beneath her hooves.
Perhaps it was silly to pour so much into chasing the voices. As much as her heart fluttered in her chest when they caught them, Night couldn’t ignore the feeling of subdued emptiness which filled her when they petered out. Never an answer. Never so much as a name.
Night pushed off the tree and held the radio to her mouth. “I think it’s time I head back,” she said. “Getting late.”
Sky was quiet for a long moment.
Night tried not to overthink it, and resisted the urge to say more. To apologize. To explain herself.
It was a difficult urge to resist.
"Hey, uh…" Night Glider cleared her throat. "What do you look like, Sky?"
A pause.
"A little blue radio. Sorry to catfish you like that."
A smile curled on Night's lips. "You know what I mean."
Another pause.
"I've never really thought about it before," Sky admitted. "I have, um… a pink coat and a long mane. Also mostly pink."
The image in Night's mind shifted. "Hm."
"My snout turns up at the end, which I hate," Sky went on. "And I have these stupid tiny ears that I hate. And, um… I dunno. I guess my face is mostly fine otherwise."
Night shook her head and tried to hold back the embarrassed laughter in her voice. "Anything you actually like?"
A pause.
"Honestly?"
"Honestly."
"I have… really nice pasterns." Sky made a small sound, as if admiring the joint above her hoof. "I don't know what I did to deserve them."
Though Night couldn't exactly picture what a really nice hoof joint looked like, she made a note of it. Something to look out for; when, she didn't know.
"Your turn," Sky said.
Ah.
"Um… me?" Night asked.
"No, the other lookout I'm spending an irresponsible amount of time with," Sky snarked.
"I'm, uh…" Night looked down at her chest. "Blue."
A pause.
"Thanks for that."
"I'm… kinda small," she admitted. "Just all over small. I used to get teased for it."
Sky waited a moment before a quick and strained. "Go on."
"More?"
"Tell me about your face."
"My face?"
Sky sighed, long and dramatic. "Relationships are a give and take, Night."
"I've just… never really noticed the shape of my face before."
"Well, me neither!"
"But I—you're the one who's good with words!" Night argued.
A pause.
"You have a round face, I bet," Sky said. Her voice had softened a bit at the edges, no longer quite as exasperated as she'd been pretending. "Not round like a kid, though. Bone-structure round. With big eyes. And low ears."
Night found herself feeling her own face with her hoof, very gently, checking Sky's guesses for accuracy.
"You probably have a perfect snout—not one that goes up at the end like mine," she continued.
Night's hoof ran down the bridge of her snout, lingering in the perfectly square angle it made with the bridge.
"A strong neck," Sky added. "Not a delicate one. But a nice one."
Her hoof traveled along her jawline and to the cord of muscle which ran down the side of her neck.
She swallowed softly. She felt the way her neck moved with the action.
"Oh, and your mane," Sky said. "Done up tall, right? With big waves?"
Night's hoof hesitated.
The woods hummed with crickets.
The spell was broken.
The blood rushed to Night's cheeks in an instant.
She clicked on the radio and forced a laugh. "Uh-huh," she mumed, trying to muster even an ounce of enthusiasm. "You got me."
A long quiet.
"Do you need help getting back to the tower?" Sky asked.
Her voice was limp, too.
Night cleared her throat. "Maybe."
"Can you find your way back to a path?"
Night stepped away from the tree and rubbed the sore spot on her shoulder where she had been leaning against it. The rough texture of the bark had imprinted there on her fur and her skin, leaving a strange pattern of swoops and swirls which she tried to smooth back into position.
It was then, as she stood trying to wipe away the woods, that she saw it,
It was hard to tell what it was at first, owing both to the darkness which surrounded her and to the crudeness of the shape that had been carved into the wood. One half of it was comprised of deep, scooping gashes, while the other looked more like mouthwritten chicken scratch—but, together, they formed a clear image:
A heart.
The longer Night stared at it, the more clearly she could see it. Not only the carving, but the action; two lovers, crowded together. The sound of a switchblade opening. The rough chipping away of the bark. The tangling of limbs and tails and wings…
Territory claimed.
“Night?” Sky’s voice pierced through the daydream. “You there?”
Night shook herself out of her daze and fumbled with the button on the radio. “Y-yeah. Sky, you’re never gonna believe what I’m looking at right now.” She said it so breathlessly, a smile in her voice, even if it wasn’t quite on her lips.
Sky was quiet. “Um… what?”
“They were real, Sky,” Night said, running her hoof over the rough carving one more time. “The voices. They were real.”
Chronology became very important to the mares in the woods.
July slipped quickly away as Clear Sky and Night Glider tried to create a timeline from their notes—with occasional help from Star Hunter. It was barebones, sure, but a story began to form across the walls of the lookout tower. A love story.
Two creatures. Very different in as many respects as one could imagine.
One was a griffin. The other seemed to be some sort of pony.
The griffin was tough. A bit rude, all said. Thorny. Difficult to reach in many ways—she was a creature of few words, and seemed to drape most of her communication in joking and sarcasm. Catching one of her more vulnerable moments was rare.
The pony, a stallion, was the opposite. Honest and open to an extent that made even Clear Sky roll her eyes and sigh. He was always hunting for affection and approval from the other—asking whether she still loved, whether she thought him handsome, or funny, or skilled. Clingy.
It was difficult to imagine how they'd found each other. They seemed to be of two worlds in every respect, and yet completely convinced that they belonged together.
Despite what the other creatures in their lives seemed to believe. Hence the woods.
Their love story, however, was far from the only topic of conversation Night and Sky regularly returned to.
“Do you believe in time travel?” Sky asked.
Night snorted. “I never really thought of it as a belief,” she admitted. “It’s… well, there’s limits, right? Just like any other magic.”
Sky hummed thoughtfully into the radio. Her breath came through the speaker as warm static.
“Plus, this isn’t… time travel time travel,” Night continued. “It’s something else.”
“Ghosts?”
“It’s not ghosts.”
“Wow. Awfully sure about that, arencha?” Sky said, a note of teasing in her voice.
Night grumbled something wordless to herself and rolled onto her back. “It’s just… I dunno. There’s rules, y’know?” she said.
Sky was quiet for a moment. “Ghost rules?”
“Like, life rules!” Night specified. “Science and magic rules! And ponies a lot smarter than me have spent… I dunno, a lot of years figuring all the rules out. I feel like the odds of us managing to break the rules are pretty low.”
Sky grunted softly. Her sheets rustled.
Night pictured Sky pushing herself up into a sitting position, tossing her curls over her shoulder, and lifting a didactic hoof in preparation for the coming lecture. She was picturing Sky a lot these days—especially as they spoke later and later into the night.
“You know, I always thought the park was a little off,” Sky said.
Night furrowed her brows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just… it’s weird out here,” Sky murmured. She shifted again, and Night imagined she was pulling her blankets around her into a cape. “I can usually convince myself that it’s just the isolation, but… I don't know. Sometimes it feels like more than that.”
“Hm.” Night nodded, mostly to herself, but partly so that Sky would hear the quiet rushing of her mane against the pillow. So that maybe Sky would try to imagine her, too. “Like… more how?”
Sky sighed, tense and a bit frustrated, though not with Night. “It’s just a feeling. Like deja vu, I guess. Or like… you know when you open a drawer and forget what you were looking for? Or walk into a room and forget why you were there in the first place?”
“Mhm.”
“It’s like that,” she said. “Like there’s something right on the tip of my tongue that I’m forgetting. Or—actually, you know what it’s like? It’s like when you wear a hat all day, and you take off the hat when you get home but it still feels like you’re wearing it.”
“Like a… phantom limb?” Night prompted.
Sky snickered. “A phantom hat,” she corrected, that comforting edge of humor lifting her words again.
Night laughed with her. The sound drifted out the window of the lookout tower and into the night air.
After a moment, Sky sighed again, that warm static once again blooming against Night’s chest. “It’s just a nagging feeling that I’m… missing something. Or I’ve forgotten something,” she said softly. “And I feel like I can sense it on other ponies, too. I know Star Hunter wasn’t all there—at least, not after a few months. And now these voices…”
Night waited a moment, but Sky only breathed deep and slow. “What about them?”
Sky made a small sound of discomfort. “Willful ignorance, I think,” she said. “They came here to forget."
She went quiet, though her hoof remained steadfastly on the button. Night swore she could hear the clicking of the forecasting instruments over the radio.
“You don’t think that’s…” Night paused, fighting to get the word to the tip of her tongue. “Kinda romantic?”
A long silence.
“Forgetting?” Sky repeated, emotion untraceable.
Night fumbled with the hem of the sheet she’d wrapped herself in. “N-no. Not exactly,” she replied at last. “Just, like… not caring.”
Another long pause.
Night held her tongue. She couldn’t put a hoof on why, but it felt like a forbidden line of questioning. The sort of thing which forever remains unspoken—at least between her and Clear Sky.
“Yeah,” Sky said. Almost flippantly. “It’s romantic. But it isn’t love.”
She would know, Night thought.
She wasn’t sure why she thought that.
The radio sat quietly on her chest, bobbing with the gentle rise and fall of her breath as she tried to think of what to say. Or even just how to say it. The time to reply passed quickly, and still she sat. Frozen.
She swore she felt the tower sway.
"Do you think you could force yourself to forget something?" Sky asked, her voice soft and fuzzy and tickling Night’s ears.
Night shuddered at the feeling. "I dunno."
"Well, do you think magic can make you forget?"
Night opened her mouth to reply, but found that no words came to her. She made a small sound, sighed and let the radio fall to her chest.
"You would know better than me," Night said.
"Why's that?"
"You're a unicorn."
Sky chuckled softly.
Night breathed a light and private sigh of relief.
"That's not really how it works,” Sky murmured.
"Well, I dunno," Night said. She allowed a tiny smile to creep across her face. "You seem pretty smart to me."
Sky did not reply.
Night imagine that she was smiling to herself, caught in a moment of awe and flattery, concerned that it would show in her voice.
There is something to be said for sitting in silence with a friend. Night often found herself wondering if these moments, when the radios were off and yet still clutched in matching hooves, counted.
She figured they probably didn't.
Still, Night Glider had the strangest feeling that, even when the radios were off, Clear Sky was there with her. Perhaps it was a result of the isolation, perhaps the little investigation they had concocted, or perhaps it was merely Night Glider’s wishful thinking.
Truthfully, it was probably something to do with how Clear Sky was constantly on Night’s mind, whether or not they happened to be speaking.
And how could she not? To Night, Sky was as great a mystery as the other voices on her radio.
"Hey, Sky?" Night's voice squeaked on the end of her name.
A moment, then: "yes?"
"Um. You always talk about how ponies come out here to… get away from stuff," Night murmured. She pawed gently at the cot beneath her with a single rear hoof, hoping to fill the silence with the rustling of the sheets.
Sky laughed once, short and dry. “Do I?”
Night laughed along. “Once or twice.”
“It’s just one of those jobs,” Sky said. “There are plenty of perfectly innocent things to get away from.”
“Yeah,” Night agreed.
Another silence fell.
This one was not quite so warm.
“Hey, Sky?”
“Yes?”
“I-I have stuff," Night said softly.
Another silence consumed them.
This one was not warm.
Night Glider held still under her sheets. She wondered what sorts of things must be running through Sky's mind, what things she might assume Night Glider to be running from.
She wondered if any of them were quite awful enough that she should just admit the small, pathetic truth of it.
"Um." Sky held down the button despite her silence. "I mean… I guess I knew that."
"Whatever it is you're trying to get away from…"
"I…" Sky cleared her throat. "I have stuff, too."
A different silence.
A silence in the other direction.
Night Glider hadn't known that silences were directional. She also hadn't even entertained the idea of Clear Sky being at all… messed up.
She tried not to think about all the things it might be. But things crept in.
"I don't think we should talk about it," Sky said.
Night's lips pressed together into a thin line as she tried to think of a response.
"We're here to get away," Sky said. "I think talking about it would defeat the purpose."
There was some sense in that.
Night clenched and unclenched her jaw. "Hm."
Sky cleared her throat. "Th-thank you," she said. "For… not asking."
Night forced a smile. "Sure," she said. "Not my business, anyway."
"And yours isn't mine."
The radio static lingered, as if she intended to say more, only to click off and leave Night Glider in silence once again.
The wind whistled in the trees.
The crickets chirped, fast and high.
A feeling of profound isolation, bone-deep loneliness, crept over Night Glider as she drifted into fitful sleep.
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i mean, her name is Night Glider, after all! hehehe
i love how this instantly makes the mystery less an anxiety-inducing unknown and more a harmless thing that they're having fun figuring out
augh, love that they both do this
aww, so she is called Night Glider for a reason! these pony names have a habit of always working out somehow
augh, and i imagine this would make Clear Sky think of what Wind Sprint is going through...
huh, i guess that might explain Wind Sprint!
auauaugh, i love this! and it brings me back my earlier blathering about Clear Sky being embodied in a radio, perfect
augh she sounds so lovely through Night Glider's description
and this just happened after the conversation about assuming Clear Sky is a unicorn! agh i love it
pfft
augh, love how this puts Clear Sky on the other hoof when it comes to not being poetic when describing things
this is too relatable
:pinkiewhy:
ooh!
aww, it's so fun that these characters in a romance story are writing a romance story within it!
i do love how Equestrians both live in a world of literal magic and deities and yet maintain a very modern worldview! it definitely makes their thinking more relatable to us, at the very least!
oof!
also oof
oof, that's not gonna stay down
augh, this just put that entire mood directly into my head. it's the pony version of seeing the "person is typing" thing at the end of an IM conversation, then nothing.