Perilous Silence
“Sunny?”
She groaned and blinked open her eyes. She was lying half-submerged in a river, the cool water refreshing and a welcome change after the desert. She felt surprisingly calm after escaping from the buffalo camp - all her feelings of anger had disappeared. It was a welcome contrast.
Sunny got to her hooves and stood up, water dripping from her coat, and she shook herself off, getting rid of the excess water. She blinked and looked around.
She was standing on the bank of a river that came from a waterfall, though it surprisingly made no sound. Surrounding her were her friends: Imara, Ash, and Kailani. And Little Braveheart. The tiny buffalo looked absolutely terrified at the fact that she was nowhere near her home - she may as well have been on the other side of the world.
“Where are we?” Sunny tried to say, but no sound came out of her mouth. She covered her mouth with her hoof. She didn’t feel very different. In fact, she didn’t feel at all. She opened her mouth, and absolutely no sound came out.
“Oh, no,” Imara groaned. “Not you, too!”
Sunny furiously wrote in the dirt with her hoof. What’s going on?
“I don’t know!” Imara wailed, sinking to the ground. “You went all magicky back at the buffalo place, and then we appeared here, and Little Braveheart landed in the water, and she couldn’t swim, so Kailani went in after her, and now they both can’t talk, and you were also in the water, so now you can’t talk, and the river has stolen your voice somehow!”
Sunny gaped and turned to her other friends for assurance that this was not the case. Both Kailani and Little Braveheart shrugged, their expressions blank.
Oh, no, Sunny thought, but, strangely, it didn’t come with the rush of panic she’d thought it would. She still felt that blissful calm feeling. But while it was very soothing, she felt… empty. As if she was missing something she constantly took for granted: the ability to speak and feel.
“It’s okay, Sunny,” Ash whispered, thankfully able to still speak. “We’ll find a cure for this.”
“I’m not sure how you’d do that.”
From the bushes stepped a pony who looked like a unicorn, but with a very strange horn - it was taller and split into two prongs at the top - and a large bushy mane around his face. His coat was gray, as was his mane, with slivers of blue and silver that made it ripple like water when he moved. He had blue eyes that studied the group of strange creatures like they were a potential threat, though he wasn’t quite sure what to do about them yet.
“What did you say?” Imara demanded, stepping in front of her friends defensively.
The strange unicorn gestured to the river Sunny and her friends had fallen into. “The Stream of Silence. Once you touch that water, you’ll never talk or feel again until you get the cure.”
“So where’s the cure?”
“You’d need foal’s breath flowers for that,” the pony explained, “and we haven’t found them since last time.”
“Last time?” Ash asked, ignoring the glare that Imara sent her, and pretending not to hear the changeling mutter, “Let me do all the talking.” “What do you mean by that?”
Something sparked in the unicorn’s eyes, and suddenly a wall of fire engulfed him, just like Imara’s transformation, but with fire. When it cleared, his mane was made of flickering red and blue flames, his coat as black as coal, and his eyes a burning white. Imara and Ash screamed and clung to each other, and Sunny, Kailani, and Little Braveheart would have done the same, except that they couldn’t talk - and the panic they would have been feeling was numbed so that it was almost ignorable.
The wall of fire surrounded the fiery pony again, and when it cleared, he was back to his original state. “Niriks,” he explained, his voice seething. Small flames curled off his horn, and he took a deep breath, though the anger in his voice was still very detectable. “When kirin get angry, they turn into a nirik, a creature of fire and destruction. The last time everyone turned into a nirik, the village was destroyed, and they all went into the Stream of Silence to keep something like that from happening again.”
“But you can talk now,” Ash peeped, cowering behind Imara’s wing.
The kirin snorted. “How ingenious of you to notice,” he snarked. “We found a cure - foal’s breath flowers. But the short-cut out of the Peaks caved in, and we haven’t had access to the flowers in years. So I’m afraid your friends are stuck like that forever.”
Honestly, Sunny didn’t mind. It was actually sort of nice to not feel anything. She didn’t have to worry about the Legion of Doom now - all the stress she had been working up about the situation seemed to have evaporated. Her friends could handle the situation on their own, right? She didn’t have to worry anymore.
Hm. Her friends…
Why did they mean so much to her? Why did it seem like now… they didn’t?
Okay. That was slightly concerning. More than slightly. Every memory Sunny had of her friends told her that she loved them more than anything in the world. So why couldn’t she remember it?
At this point, she would welcome a full-blown panic attack if it meant she was feeling things again.
“Is there any way to get foal’s breath flowers?” Ash asked, looking slightly less terrified of the kirin now. “We really need to get our friends talking again. You see, we have a bit of a quest to save the world, and-”
“You think I care?” the kirin snapped, rolling his eyes and turning to leave. “That’s your problem, not mine.”
“Hey, watch your words, mister!” Imara told him, glaring at his retreating head.
The kirin stopped. When he turned to look at them again, Sunny was - or she would have been - startled to see that his surly gaze had dropped away, his voice trembling slightly with fear as he spoke. “You should leave. Before you get hurt.”
“Fine!” Imara shouted, rolling her eyes and scoffing. “We’ll find that cure on our own. We don’t need your help.” The changeling turned and led Kailani, Sunny, and Little Braveheart in the other direction. Sunny faltered as she saw Ash stay right where she stood, even approaching the kirin as he tried to leave again.
“I told you to leave,” he growled.
“I know,” Ash assured him. “I was just wondering… what’s your name?”
That stopped him. He looked at her and saw that she was completely serious… and he didn’t know quite what to do about that. “Brooks.”
Ash stuck out her claw. “Nice to meet you, Brooks. I’m Ash.”
It had been so long since he’d had a social interaction with another creature that Brooks wasn’t quite sure what to do. He eventually took Ash’s claw, and they shook.
“Are there other kirin around here?” Ash looked around as if more of the strange unicorns were hiding in the trees.
“No,” Brooks said too quickly. “I’m the only one around here.”
“Why is that?”
“Because-” He faltered. “Because I-” He looked at Imara’s retreating back and decided that he couldn’t tell it - but the opportunity to share his pain with another living creature was too much for him to resist. “Because I’m too dangerous!” he wailed, shoving his hoof into his mouth the moment the words were out of his mouth.
“Because you can turn into a nirik?” Ash’s expression wasn’t judgemental - it was sympathetic. Brooks nodded. “But can’t all kirin do that? What makes you more dangerous than the others?”
“Mine is worse,” he moaned. “Even the slightest thing will set it off - and it’s so destructive the village leader eventually suggested that it might be a good idea for me to go off somewhere else for a while - to protect everyone else. I knew I wasn’t wanted, and I knew I was dangerous, so I came here, to the Stream of Silence, so everyone else would be safe.” He walked over to the edge of the river and dipped his hoof in the water.
Sunny expected him to fall silent and bland, just like her, but he moaned and turned back to Ash with an agonized look on his face. “But it doesn’t work on me, see? So I just stay here, waiting to see if, maybe one day, that’ll change.”
Ash walked up to him and put her arm around his shoulders. “I know what it feels like to be unwanted,” she told him, and he looked doubtful. “My father threw me out, too. But instead of wallowing in that pain, I found some friends that are going to change the world - and I’m going to help with that. We can change so much in the world if we want to - we just have to find the confidence to do it - the courage to stand up and say, ‘Yes, I’m flawed, I’m not perfect, but that doesn’t matter - because I’m fighting for what’s right.’ ”
She walked towards her friends. “If you want to come with us, we’d be happy to have another friend along - the more the merrier, right?”
Brooks was silent. “Okay, I lied,” he blurted. “The pass out of the Peaks of Peril isn’t blocked - I just didn’t think it was fair that the Stream works on you but doesn’t work on me. If you want… I can show you where it is, and what foal’s breath looks like.”
“Really?” Ash smiled and looked like she could hug him. “That’d be amazing!”
“Ahem,” Imara coughed, pulling the dragon aside. “How can we trust him? He literally just admitted to lying - he says he’s really dangerous - he turns into a raging fire monster, for stars’ sake. What if he’s leading us into a trap?”
“I’m choosing to trust him,” Ash said firmly, gesturing to Sunny, Kailani, and Little Braveheart. The silenced creatures followed the dragon and the kirin, with Imara dragging along behind.
The short-cut was a simple rock tunnel that led through a massive set of mountains, and Sunny was glad they didn’t have to scale them. Brooks trotted over to another river - a different river, he assured them - and picked a blue flower off the bank.
“This is foal’s breath,” he said around the flower in his mouth. Then, trotting over to a small pool in a rock bowl, he dropped the flower into the water, turning it a deeper blue. Brooks stepped away, now looking like he regretted this whole thing. Kailani stepped forward, bent her head, and, eyes on Brooks, carefully took a drink from the blue water. The hippogriff stood up, frowning.
“Did it work?” she asked. Then she gasped and clasped her claws to her snout. “It worked!” She ran over to the kirin to give him a huge hug, but he lit up his horn and immobilized her before she could reach him.
“No hugs,” he said forcefully, though Sunny caught a hint of amusement there.
Sunny and Little Braveheart both approached the pool at the same time and drank from the water, just as Kailani had. The water tasted sweet, with a hint of bitterness, and Sunny lifted her head, waiting.
A rush of emotions nearly overwhelmed her. Fear, for the future. Panic, because time was running out, and none of the creatures were listening to her. Anger, at the Legion of Doom and all they were doing. And love - a love so strong she couldn’t believe she’d lost it, for her friends. Her friends.
Sunny looked around her, at the other creatures surrounding her, and she felt something… different inside her. For the first time since she had been cursed, she felt at peace.
“Oh!” Sunny said suddenly, thinking of something. She turned to Little Braveheart and said, “I didn’t mean to teleport you with us - if you’d like, I can bring you back home-”
“That’s okay,” the tiny creature interrupted. “I think - I think I want to help you save the world. I want to see these other creatures for myself, see these villains for myself, make my own decision on how I feel about them. I’m done with other buffalo - or ponies - telling me what things are like when I could be finding out for myself.” She looked at Sunny with a startled look. “I - I mean, no offense or anything, but-”
“I know,” Sunny laughed. “Some ponies just aren’t as awesome as I am.” She turned to see Brooks standing awkwardly off to the side. “Are you coming?”
He jumped, as if surprised she had noticed him. “I - I mean-”
“Oh, please do!” Ash took one of his hooves in her talons. “It would be so nice to have another friend along - especially one who might be better at releasing the evil fiery monster inside than I am.” She flushed and looked at her feet.
The kirin sighed. “I mean… why not. Maybe I’ll find a cure for this.” He lifted his hoof, where a flame burned bright. He quickly stamped it out. “And… if you want me.”
“Well,” Sunny said, turning to face all of them, “how do you feel about Griffonstone?”
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Cue the music, Mr. Newman
Oh no it's the silent River and I know where they are
Ohh this Kirin is a special one here
So after that teleportation it looks like they got away from the Buffaloes but unfortunately they landed in the river but it is not an ordinary River it's the stream of silent apparently sunny Kailani and little Braveheart landed into the river now they don't have any emotion and they can't talk but the other two creatures are okay but then there was another creature approach them a kirin name Brook told them that they are in the Stream of Silence but he said there's a cure for it but he said he couldn't help them to find a cure so the other two going to find another way but ash talk with Brook and she told him he can actually relate to his feelings and it was pretty sweet of her to comfort him so he told them the truth that they did saw the flower and then once they got to the flowers and put in the water they finally can speak again now they're heading for griffonstone and it looks like Brook is joining the group again it's always nice to have other friends to join in but something tells me Griffin Stone won't be easy well we'll find out how this will work out next time
Very good on your new chapter, bookhorse125. This is starting to get better, I'll be willing to see how they're going to do in Griffonstone. The journey is never ending. There's always gonna be growth, improvement, adversity; you just gotta take it all in and do what's right, continue to grow, continue to live in the moment.
I like Brooks, and he might've found a friend in Ash and the others.