H A Z E

by Bandy

Chapter 27

When Hypha entered the terrarium the following morning, he found Flannel asleep beside six rows of authentic eastern floatstone boulders.

Ancient earth pony sensibility compelled Hypha to lick them. He tested each boulder with a soft tap of his hoof, listening for every mineral nook and hollow fissure. They were pockmarked, cracked, and filled with impurities. Perfectly imperfect. Ideal for cultivating mother sky.

All thirty pounds of the general’s mushrooms were stored in a storage closet in the corner. Hypha fished one out of the bag and popped it in his mouth. Then he crawled onto one of the boulders and sank into meditation. The twenty tons of cloudstone insulation made the terrarium the only truly silent place in Derecho.

How long he stayed locked in his lotus pose, he couldn’t say. The sound of a scream pulled him back to reality. He opened his eyes to find Flannel staring at him, his mouth agape. The room was tilted at a strange angle.

“What’s wrong?” Hypha asked.

Flannel replied, “You’re, uh. You’re floating.”

Hypha looked down. Sure enough, he was hovering a few yards above the rock. He’d listed to one side, which explained the tilt of the room.

Coming to his senses cut his buoyancy. A moment later, his rear end reconnected with the rock.

“Are you okay?” Flannel asked.

“Fine, thanks.” Hypha patted the boulder like it was an old friend. “Good job with these rocks. They feel great.”

“Uh. Thanks. Do you do that a lot?”

“Yeah, I meditate every morning. You’re welcome to join me if you’d like.”

“No. The floating thing.”

“Oh.” Hypha closed his eyes and focused his magic. His muscles strained, a familiar motion forgotten and relearned. He lifted off. The flight was short—only a few seconds. When he landed, a headache bloomed painfully in the front of his brain. That was the first time he’d made a conscious effort to fly since he ferried Red into Giesu’s courtyard. He’d lost so much since then. Far more than just a leg.

“That’s...” Flannel worked his jaw, trying to find the right words. “That’s not possible.”

“So is growing mother sky in a cloud city,” Hypha said. “Life has a funny way of throwing impossible situations into our laps.”

“So you’re some kinda earth pony wizard, then?”

“Not a wizard, no.” He was about to say, a monk, but stopped short.

Flannel gave him an expectant look. “Okay, fine. Can you at least tell me about what we’re growing?”

Hypha thought about what Cumulus would say in this situation. How much to give away. He finally settled on a curt, “It’s a sacred mushroom. It gives you insightful visions and enhances earth pony magic.”

“So that’s why Romulus wants them so bad. He wants to fly around like his pegasus friends.”

Hypha couldn’t help but laugh. “Something like that.”

When would he fell Flannel the truth? That he’d sooner let the city crumble and fall to earth like hail than let Romulus get his hooves on the harvest? Flannel wasn’t Derechan—his accent and lack of wings told Hypha that much. But he was loyal to Romulus. There was no way to tell if he could be convinced to take his side when Romulus inevitably came to collect on his investment.

Hypha thought back to elder Cumulus. He would make a gesture. An olive branch. Perhaps that could make the difference in whose side Flannel took.

“I’m sorry if I’m being mean,” Hypha said. “It’s been a stressful few months.”

“It’s okay. I get it. I was a refugee too.”

Hypha nodded to the boulder next to him. “Would you sit with me for a bit?” He waited for Flannel to get comfy. Then he said, “Picture a mountain.”

---

Some buildings in Derecho were built down instead of up in order to maximize space. Aside from the underground labyrinth of offices and armories and research rooms, Romulus’s estate offered a few small but lavish guest suites. Hypha and Flannel each got their own. Their rooms came with a plush full-sized bed, a dresser, a work desk, and a window looking out on the grasslands below.

The first thing Hypha did was wrap himself up in the comforter and weep. He’d never felt something so soft, so perfect, in his entire life.

When the crying was done, he climbed up to the window and attempted to squeeze out.

As his head crossed the threshold, a familiar buzzing energy filled the air. The outside world bowed out, warping like molten plastic. A static vwoop, vwoop, vwoop filled his ears. He pushed harder.

The magical shield over the window kicked in with a flash and shot him back into the opposite wall. The impact made his ears ring and sent jolts of pain up his spine. The counterweights and gyros in his prosthetic leg whirred madly as they struggled to reorient themselves.

He laid with his head on the floor until the throbbing subsided. Then he crawled back into bed, defeated.

---

“This dirt’s got too much dirt in it.”

Flannel gave Hypha an exasperated look. “Run that by me again.”

“It’s too clean.” Hypha picked up a hooffull and squeezed it until it crumbled. “It feels too oxygenated.” He put a little on his tongue and smacked his lips together. “The mineral content is all balanced. There’s no impurities.”

Perhaps the peeved look on Flannel’s face was warranted. The poor colt had just spent the last day and a half ferrying sacks of soil up from ground level to the terrarium. He’d been lucky enough to charter private chariot flights on the general’s dime, but because regular ponies weren’t allowed into the estate and Hypha was still too weak from his abuse at the hooves of Giesu, the task of lugging the forty-pound bags of soil three at a time from the front stoops of Romulus’s estate all the way to the terrarium fell squarely on Flannel’s back.

And now, apparently, he’d gotten the wrong kind of dirt. The kind with too much dirt in it.

“This is how dirt’s supposed to be.” Flannel tapped a bag for good measure. “It’s perfect dirt. The king of Griffonia couldn’t backstab his way into dirt this good.”

“Maybe if we brought up some shale, crushed it into powder, and mixed it with the dirt.” He saw Flannel’s face go pale. “Not a lot of shale. Just a few pounds. But we’ll need to get the mixture just right. Maybe some sand too. And we’ll need to spread this soil out under fans to dry it out. And UV lamps to kill the good bacteria.”

Flannel’s face contorted. His farmer’s instinct screamed, Stop him, kill him, feed the dirt his flesh, but instead of murder he settled on a curt, “You can’t kill the good bacteria.”

Hypha sniffed around the pile of supplies Flannel had brought up. He paused in front of a stack of blue-colored bags. His nose wrinkled. “What on earth is this?”

“Nitrogen fertilizer. It's good for growing.”

“If it’s good for growing, I don’t want it anywhere near the grow stones.”

“Y’want me to take it back down? Or should I just throw it off the side of the city instead?”

Hypha stopped short of snapping back. “No. I’m sorry if I was being short with you. Can you move them off to the corner at least? Then we can take a break.”

Flannel sighed. “You’re the boss.”

---

Before they brought the whole operation to scale, Hypha and Flannel agreed to test various different types of soil, water, and light combinations in order to determine which was best. That way, they could isolate a usable formula without depleting all their resources.

They divided each boulder into a grid, placing soil of various compositions on each square. They sterilized themselves and their working implements so as not to accidentally introduce any other random variables to the mix. Then, they spread the spores out evenly along the grid and set a few UV lights at different heights to simulate variable sun exposure.

Water variability would be important, too. Some squares got only the mist they pumped into the air through the humidifiers and seed clouds. Others got an extra spritzing, and a few got a thin trickle of direct water fed through an additional series of pumps and tubes.

Once they’d recorded their results and washed up, Hypha asked, “What did you used to farm?”

“Oh, just about everything. Corn, wheat, soybeans. Cash crops. But we kept a little sustenance farm too, just for the family.” His eyes lit up. “And back when I was a kid, we had these big mulberry trees growing on the edge of the farm. When they got good and ripe, we’d boil ‘em up into syrup and pour it over ice cream.”

Hypha cocked his head. “What’s ice cream?”

Flannel blinked. “You’re kidding me.”

“Ice cream. So it’s dairy, right?”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I grew up on a mountain. I’ve never even met a cow before.”

Without another word, Flannel grabbed Hypha’s hoof and dragged him out of the terrarium.

The front gate was an ornate masterclass in metallurgy. Curved metal snaked from cloudstone bases into flowering petals of silver and gold. They were open slightly, just enough for two ponies to squeeze through side by side. Two legionaries in black armor with ceremonial red plumage in their helmets stood guard. Their spears seemed almost as tall as the gate they guarded.

“I wish I could paint,” Flannel said loudly. “I wanna capture the look on your face when you taste it.”

Hypha slowed as they approached the gate. Flannel didn’t understand Hypha’s hesitation and grabbed his real arm. “C’mon.”

“I’m not supposed to—”

“Not supposed to enjoy life? C’mon now, you’re not one of those ponies who whip themselves for fun or something, are ya?”

“No, but—”

“I don’t wanna hear it. You deserve this. It’s—”

The guards dropped out of attention. Their spears fell with frightening speed to block their path. Flannel slid to a stop, his chin hovering inches above the dark wood shaft.

“Papers,” one guard said.

“But we’re leaving,” Flannel said. “We don’t have to show our papers if we’re leaving.”

The guard took a step forward. The angle of the spear changed. The cutting edge, which had been facing down at the floor, angled towards Flannel. “Are you gonna be a problem?”

Flannel dug out a piece of paper indicating him as part of the general’s support staff. “We’ll be back in a few minutes. We’re just getting some ice cream.”

The guard glanced at his papers for a moment before lifting his spear. “Have your papers ready when you get back.”

Flannel looked over his shoulder. “See? No problem.”

Hypha hadn’t moved. He sat on his haunches, stone still, a fine sheen of sweat beading on his forehead. His mechanical leg made trembling tick-tick sounds. His eyes followed a decorative red and black scrap of cloth tied around the butt end of the spear.

Flannel reached out to put his hoof on Hypha’s shoulder. Hypha sucked in a breath and took a big step back.

“I don’t need any ice cream,” he said. “I’m gonna go back to the terrarium.”

“What? They’re not gonna hurt you. Just show ‘em your papers and—”

“I don’t have papers.”

“You work for general Romulus. You gotta have papers.”

“I don’t work for him. I was given to him as a gift.”

The full implication of Hypha’s words sank in slowly. Flannel looked down at the ground. Then outside. “Uh. I’ll, um.” Words of consolation danced on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them down before they could come up. He finally said, “I’ll bring you something back,” and slipped out the gates.

---

While it was true Hypha had never tried ice cream before, he had a fairly concrete idea of what it was. The cups of sweet soup Flannel brought back didn’t strike Hypha as particularly icy. But the way Flannel’s mane was plastered to his face made it clear he’d galloped all the way there and back. It was the thought that counted.

Hypha put the cup to his lips and took a small, experimental sip. Then he tilted the cup to the sky and drank greedily. Thin trickles of the stuff rolled down his chin.

“That doesn’t wash out easy,” Flannel said, giggling.

Hypha licked his lips. “Worth it.”

When they were done, Flannel suggested they take a walk inside the palace to stretch their legs. Hypha agreed, and after walking around aimlessly for a while they found themselves resting in one of the complex’s upper level gardens. Greenery imported from the surface snaked up the walls. The room had no roof and looked up at the white contrail of the jetstream as it rushed past.

If I were a pegasus, Hypha thought, I could fly up there and let that thing take me wherever it wanted. He licked his lips. A hint of sugar remained. Wherever I wanted...

“Y’ever kiss anyone?” Flannel asked.

Hypha blinked. The daydream disappeared. “No,” he said, “I guess I never did.”

“Did you not have special someponies at that monastery you were in?”

“Yeah, we did. But I stayed busy with acolyte stuff. Kissing was less fun than all the other stuff.” He turned his attention to Flannel. “Why do you ask?”

“If you ask someone if you ever kissed anyone, and they did, they’ll tell you a story about how it happened. They’re usually good stories.”

“Ah. Have you ever kissed anyone?”

“Nope.” Flannel broke into a smile. “I found out about kissing too late. I was already in Derecho, and pegasi get weird about canoodlin’ with earth ponies.”

“Earth pony farmers have big families, though. Doesn’t that mean...” Hypha bumped his hooves together a couple times. They went, clop-clop-clop.

“That’s different. There’s a division of labor on the farm that needs to be respected. Little fillies and colts get the easy stuff like pickin’ berries or helping with inside chores or fitting into small spaces when we need it. Smart ponies cook the books. Bigger ponies do the heavy lifting. Ponies who’re good with their hooves handle the machinery. Moms and dads do the procreatin’.”

He laughed again. Hypha imagined the sound going up and up until it hit the jetstream and went for a ride around the world.

Hypha said, “Now that you’re in Derecho, though, you don’t have to worry about farmwork anymore.”

“Yeah right,” he snorted. “There’s more work here than there ever was on the farm. Plus, pegasi don’t treat earth ponies well. That means they’re alway sticking me with crapshoot jobs.” He settled deeper into his cloud seat. “Til this job came around, anyway.”

“If all the pegasi treat you badly, why’d you come to a pegasi city?”

The smile on Flannel’s lips flattened. Anger flashed in his eyes. “You playin’ stupid or something?” He caught himself. “Ah shoot, I’m sorry. You don’t even know about ice cream. You probably don’t know about the wars either.”

“There were wars?”

“Yeah. Big’uns.”

“Did Romulus do those, too?”

“Nah. The griffon kingdom used to be this big patchwork of smaller kingdoms. But three hundred-ish years ago, one of the first Derechan emperors swept in and conquered them. Then he had a bunch of pony settlers come in and start working the land. That was my great great great great great grandparents.”

“What happened?”

“Griffons happened. Ten years ago they overthrew the ruling pony government. They broke the governor’s wings and threw him off a cliff. Anyone who had ties to the old settlers got killed or ran outta town. That meant just about all the ponies.”

“I’m sorry,” Hypha said.

“S’okay.” Flannel fumbled for something on the tip of his tongue. “I kinda get it, y’know? But how long’s a pony gotta live in a place before it’s theirs? I never hated any griffons. I never stole anyone’s land. Why’d they gotta do that to me and my mom? I tried to tell ‘em. I tried, but...” He sighed. “So, that’s why I’m here. It was that or get chucked off a cliff. I’m happier here.”

“How old are you?” Hypha asked.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen?” Flannel let out a big belly laugh. “I’m older than you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I turn eighteen next month.”

“Happy early birthday.”

“Thanks!”

“You don’t look seventeen. You look older.”

“I spend a lot of time in the sun. It’s bad for my fur.” His eyes fell to Hypha’s prosthetic leg. “You’re really sixteen, huh?”

“Yup.” Hypha flexed the leg back and forth. The strut inside let out a happy little whoosh.

Comments

[hehelover]

Hypha thought about what Cumulus would say in this situation. How much to give away. He finally settled on a curt, “It’s a sacred plant. It gives you insightful visions and enhances earth pony magic.”

My respect for Hypha just went down another level.

Jokes aside, after the conquest, how long do you need to rule and colonize a place before it's rightfully yours? Some peoples conquered and some peoples were conquered. Some peoples have countries of their own, some are struggling for one, and some went extinct or were long assimilated. Human history is just full of this kind of mess. I guess in magical pony land griffons will always remain as griffons unless you kill them off. Same with different pony tribes: ultimately they all fit into one of the three categories. Not sure how it would impact things compared to us hairless monkeys.

[Bandy]

11470555 Blame falls on the author for the "plant" slip spare Hypha some sympathy there, lol

You raise some really interesting questions. While this story isn't an analog for native american struggles with land theft, the questions you raised are certainly applicable. People far smarter than me have failed to come up with an adequate answer, but the question still begs to be asked: what is the threshold for calling a place "yours?" And could such a question even be answered in terms of number of years passed since the land was taken? Or is there some other way to quantify it?

[hehelover]

11470576
I can't say I know the answers. All I can say is that similar things had happened and is happening all around the globe. Some of the past events are long forgotten by most living people while some are still haunting us. I don't think we can truly escape these ancient and not-so-ancient wrongdoings and bloodsheds, but I sure do hope they are drifting away from us, not toward us.

[Bandy]

11470595 Agreed! Well said