Rivers
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE - RIVERS
"We fear many kinds of darkness, and we often feel that we don’t deserve any kind of light." - Craig D. Lounsbrough
When Daisy the Cabin Girl came to the Great Sorcerer Planktoneth in tears because her courage failed her at the Battle of Anemone Bay, she cried, "I don't even know who I am anymore."
And Planktoneth, predictably responded with a riddle, or rather, a super annoying train of thought.
"What is a river?" he asked.
"Huh?" said Daisy.
"What is a river?" he repeated.
"Huh?" said Daisy yet again.
"What is a river?"
"Huh?"
"What is…"
They went back and forth like this for about seventeen pages or so before Planktoneth conjured up an illusion - showing, well, you know...a river.
Daisy first defined it as the water.
The Great Sorcerer Planktoneth responded by standing above the river, and pouring his own goblet of water into it. The illusion followed - tracked the fluid all the way down to the river's mouth.
"Ah," the sorcerer said sorcererishly. "But water is fleeting. See? My water is no longer the river. Now it is the sea."
Daisy scratched her chin, having already forgotten her troubles, completely distracted by Planktoneth and his annoying wisdom bullshit.
She then reasoned that the water itself wasn't the river - merely wet stuff passing through it. The real river had to be the firmament - the cradle of Earth that ushered wet stuff from the mountains - a giant swirly straw leading into the ocean.
"Ah," the sorcerer said sorcererishly. His illusion suddenly turned to a dried up riverbed. A sad gash in the earth. "Is this a river?"
"Arg!" The Cabin Girl exclaimed. "What has this got to do with me? I lost the Pearl of Katzarh'dongrath! I chickened out under the cannon fire of Admiral Clammo, and worst of all - Captain Pinkbeard's favorite hat fell into the evil appendages of the Great Algae Assassin's Guild. And it's all my fault!"
Daisy wailed. Daisy cried.
"Self is an unstable thing," Planktoneth answered at last. “You are neither your failures nor your successes; you are not merely your thoughts and feelings and deeds of the moment, scattering like droplets of water - fleeting toward the Ocean of Death. Nor are you the riverbed - some static firmament - eroding only ever slowly as your own feelings wear you down." The Great Sorcerer Planktoneth leapt up, floated, and touched Daisy's heart with an antenna-majig. "You are the tension between the two," he said. "An unspoken argument."
"B-b-but how does that help me find my courage?" Daisy sniffled. "How does that help me get Cap'n's hat back?"
"It doesn't," Planktoneth replied dryly. "Best not to dwell on it."
* * *
The Safety Sneaker herd followed the long shadow that the fun house cast. Into a gash in the earth - a narrow little trench that light couldn't have found its way into, even when the Pinkie balloon let loose its flames. Its concrete had collapsed under some strange fault line, and its edges had long since smoothened under centuries of rain.
We all trudged through. Two at a time. Making for a hill up on the horizon. And the whole way, I thought about Daisy and Planktoneth. How you can't just condense a pony into a singular image of self - not even with a cutie mark. How nothing is ever really static. How everypony - absolutely everypony - is, in reality, actually made out of rivers.
But somehow, that stupid mirror had found a way to climb into Cliff Diver's head anyway - to swish the river water in his brain around, and stir up some kinda nightmare.
What the Hell could Cliff have seen that would make him think he'd ever 'let us down'? What fake-river-funhouse bullshit put that idea inside his head in the first place? And why did the mirror haunt him in particular, and not Foster?
Cliff sulked alongside me. Dragging his hooves like each one was hitched to a kiddie pool full of boulders. But he held his head up high. Determined to pass for one of the kids that the fun house visions hadn't hurt too badly.
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong about all that stupid mirror stuff. I needed to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and say, 'Hay, Cliff! You're awesome and loyal and honest and funny and generous and kind. And I know you'd never "let me down". No matter what that stupid piece of glass showed you!'
But I'd sworn that I would protect him - that I'd swat away any concernitty attention from the Safety kids. That I'd wait until he was good and ready - in some deep, dark, ultra-private corner of the Wasteland, where he could have a proper meltdown in peace.
And that's what I was gonna do.
"Hay," I said to him. "Psst, hay, Cliff."
He looked to me out of the corner of his eye, and whispered out of the corner of his mouth. "What?"
"You're a good river," I told him.
"Huh?"
I pressed a hoof on his shoulder. "I said, 'You're a good river'."
"Uh, thanks," he replied.
Fwoooorsh! The clouds above us bloomed orange as Pinkie's flames reached for the sky like fiery dragon claws, flailing for freedom.
A gust of popcorn-smoke rolled down the ditch, sending waves of coughitty fits across the herd. The balloon was close. Damn near overhead.
As I squeezed my watery eyes shut, all I could think about was Pinkie Pie. The one who'd built all this creepy shit for some messed up reason I'd never fully understand.
And the mirror! The mirror weighed on me most of all. It was the whole reason that Cliff Diver had gone existentially upside down in the first place!
That stupid piece of glass was a great big giant what-the-fuck. But it still knew Misty and me from our tarot cards. So for all its crazy nonsense, only one thing about that mirror was absolutely certain: there was no way that anypony but Pinkie Pie coulda built it.
"Okay," Foster crept up on me, and whispered from behind. "...So only one thing about that mirror is absolutely certain. There's no way that Pinkie Pie could have built it."
"Huh, what?" I said. "But–;"
"The tarot cards don't matter," Foster replied. "That may be Pinkie's card game, but what we saw in there?" Foster craned her neck backwards. Looked over the section of the herd that followed us. Gestured in the vague direction of the mirror house, now a shadowy lump on a distant hill, haloed by the marble notebook strobe light. "That doesn't smell like Pinkie Pie."
"I mean…sure," I said. "It's not her usual style, but nothing here is like Pinkie. Not the Pinkie Pie that we know."
"No," Foster leaned over, and peered at me from behind Cliff Diver's hulking, sulking form. "You don't understand. This literally doesn't smell like Pinkie Pie." Bananas Foster tapped her nose. "Pinkie left a trail of emotion behind in absolutely everything that she did. Even this messed up amusement park." Foster reared up. Pointed all around her with thrashing hooves, (though there was nothing to see at the moment but dirt and empty sky). "This park - twisted though it may be - it still smells like her. But that–" Foster pointed her nose at the fun house behind us. Way up high on a hill. "--That. Wasn't. Pinkie. Pie."
Foster's eyeballs bored holes into my head. Like this was a matter of life or death.
"Okay, okay, okay," I said. "It wasn't her."
Cliff's lumpy shoulders drooped down in a great big heaving sigh of relief. "Good to know."
It dawned on me - just how fucked up it must be for Cliff Diver. To get your river self hurt so badly by a mirrorvision. And on top of that, to think that it was your local party planner who did that to you.
But then the obvious question arose out of my mouth. Like bubbles frothing over a boiling pot. "If not Pinkie, where did it come from?"
I looked to Foster. So did Cliff. As did Misty, who caught up with us just in time to weigh in. "I do not like thees mirror," said the unicorn. "...Transcending dee magic of The Pink One. Is bad."
My friends and I all turned to him silently. As our hooves pierced the quiet with their crunchitty clopping noises. Crkkk! Crkkk! Crkkk! went the frozen dirt beneath us.
"My hat!" Misty continued. "Een mirror vision. It is dumb hat. Not like thees one." Misty straightened out the pointy magician's cap that the Safety kids had given him. I'd totally forgotten that he was wearing it.
"Can't you use your magic hat - or, you know, the horn underneath it - to teleport us to the sewer entrance?" Cliff asked.
"Yes!" Misty replied. "Of course."
"Then what are you waiting for?" I squeaked.
"Shhh," came some voices ahead of us. Other Sneakers.
I clapped my hoof to my mouth. We were surrounded. Kids in front. Kids behind. Walls of dirt and eroded concrete on each side - wide enough not to cramp us, but too tall to scale without creating a great big commotion.
"I cannot make teleport of what I cannot see."
"But the sewers," I said. "The fountain? The crescent ledge?"
Misty pointed at Cliff Diver. "He described them. I did not see it."
"What about when we got out of the mirror house?" said Cliff. "The flames were brighter than ever! You didn't think to look?"
Misty shrugged.
"And you didn't notice the great big letter Y?"
Misty shook his head.
"...you know, the giant Y-shaped hill at the end of this exact trench?...The fountain full of Safety kids on one end? …Canyon with giant crescent steps on the other?"
Misty was dead silent. His face - blank.
"You saw nOnE oF iT?!" Cliff's voice cracked.
"Shhhhhh!" went the ponies ahead of us yet again. While the kids behind us hung even further back, timid and quiet.
Crkk crkk crkk, went our hooves against the ground.
"I was distracted!" Misty whisper-snapped. And hung his head in shame.
That mirror house hadn't shown him anything special. Just an inferior hat. But afterwards, Cliff had suggested that Fate might still be playing a role in our zebra heist. And Misty had been 'distracted' ever since.
After killing Twink, and driving my mom insane, (along with every single one of my relatives), Fate was high up on my List o' Stuff That Pissed Me Off. Just under the shadowmajigs, and slavers. But Misty hated them even more.
I couldn't imagine how that could even be possible. But then again, I'd never been transformed into a bowl of sentient tapioca pudding.
"Bananas Foster, why not…make change of yourself?" Misty spoke out at last.
I spun to Foster. To see what she'd say. Cliff did too.
She didn't flinch under the pressing weight of our eyeballs. She just got all prim, and announced, "It's an option that I'm keeping in reserves."
"You do not even need to turn into dragon, and make kill of them," said Misty. "They just need scaring away."
"No," said Foster.
"Ees only to distract them for me to find vantage point, and teleport there."
"No."
"You could be Miss Honey," I said.
"No."
"Why not?" said Cliff. "We'll be gone either way. We won't have to worry about tripping up anymore."
"Because I said, 'no',"Foster whisper-shouted.
A hush fell over us. A really, really, really, really, really, really, reeeeeallly confusing hush.
Foster sucked in a monster-of-a-breath - the kind of breath that could swallow a whole train car - and huffed out a sigh. "If the Safety kids scatter, they might get spotted by guards, who will be on alert after that point. This would rob our mission of the element of surprise - which, right now, is the only advantage that we've got."
I could see it in my brain's eye. Iris and Lucky and Flip. They'd stay put and stick their hooves up. Just like they'd practiced a hundred times before. But Scribbles? That mirror had left her wounded. And she was already unstable. Unpredictable.
There was no telling what she might do!
And what if there were other kids in the herd who'd panic too?
Flip's words came back to me, and spilled right out of my mouth - a little whimper. "You run, you die."
"I'm a scout," Foster continued. "Not a drone. We do deep cover. Investigation. Research. I have no experience sowing chaos, or using multiple ponysonas to disorient our opponents. You couldn't count on me to pull it off."
Cliff recoiled. Like a whip had struck his nose, ripping its noseflesh with those words: You couldn't count on me.
Foster held her tongue, and studied Cliff with sideways eyeballs as he clenched his jaw, stiffened his gait, and shut his eyes.
"We're all outside our comfort zones," Foster said carefully. "And we're all fully capable of the task at hoof."
Cliff exhaled good and hard, opened his eyes, and held his head upright again. It's impossible to say whether he was genuinely reassured or just hiding his pain better.
But it unnerved the fuck out of me. A lot. It unnervified me so hard that my nerves weren't even, like, real nerves anymore, but, unnerves. The evil opposite of nerves.
'Cause his river water thoughts had gotten all obsessiony about the riverbed-static-selfhood that the mirror had put in his brain. And the currents were roaring rapids - brain-thoughts. Going all over the place, tearing Cliff apart.
And damnit, he'd know not to do that if only he'd read Pinkbeard and the River of Eternal Doubt.
If only he saw that Daisy the Cabin Girl was able to overcome her case of whitewater-rapid-brain without a single magical artifact, or dolphin ex machina. Then he'd know that he could do the same! That he didn't need any stupid dolphins to fix what that ancient mirror had done to his river self.
And the fact that there weren't any dolphins in the Wasteland wouldn't matter anymore, and Cliff wouldn't be so hopeless!
"Here we are!" A distant voice exclaimed.
"Aaahh!" I leapt up. Twirled in circles. Found Misty beside me. Facehoofing.
The voice belonged to Iris. He was way up ahead. Rearing up and flailing his legs, victorious-like, atop a slope at the very end of our trench. The ridge of the aforementioned "Y."
Light blasted behind him. And I could see a sort of shadow play in the glow that hugged the top of the hill. Other fillies. Moving around on the opposite side.
A second figure emerged on the hill, and staggered over to Iris. She had a thin green aura. Gigantic poofy mane.
It was Lime-o. The other new kid. "Hay, come on down," she said, apparently no longer mourning her mirror house vision. "Let's get emotionally edumacated!" She stumbled into Iris. And turned it into an impromptu hug. "Safety Sneakers forever!" Lime-O cried out with joy.
Even from a distance, I could smell Berry Punch belches when the wind caught her breath just right.
My friends and I looked to one another, what-do-we-do-now-ishly. But nopony had any answers.
Misty tossed his eyeballs all over the place, knowing that every second counted - sick to death of playing along with the Safety kids who'd already fulfilled their usefulness.
Meanwhile, Foster kept her eyeballs squarely on Cliff Diver, who was tensing up all over again.
I stepped in front of him. Turned myself into a living shield betwixt Cliff Diver and the Safety Sneaker party up ahead. I didn't know exactly how I was gonna protect him. But I'd sworn that I'd carry his trauma anvils for him, and…well
…I had to start somewhere.
"Hay," came a voice from behind.
"Ahh!" I spun around. Scrambled to tapdance back to where I'd started. Tripped. Rolled. Slammed my chin on the frozen dirt, and leapt back up, hooves pedaling.
But there was nopony there. Not yet.
Not till a bunch of Secret Sneaker Society kids came out of the shadows, catching up with us from the rear of the herd.
It was a small gang - the same exact kids who'd crowded concernish-like around Bananas Foster after she'd stepped out of the Mirror House, and faked a breakdown.
"Hay, why are y'all stopped?" said one troubled unicorn.
"Are you okay?" said a little blue earth pony.
Foster slid in between Cliff and the Concern Squad. Shielding him a trillion times more gracefully than I had. "We're fine," she said - absolutely un-fine-ishly. Drooping her tail. Averting her eyeballs.
Misty Mountain rolled his own eyes and tapped his hoof, impatient-like. But the Safety kids ate Foster's act right up.
Each and every one of them flinched and squirmed and cringed, and shuffled their hooves. It sounded like sandpaper grinding against a pile of bricks.
"The party's um, like…right over that hill," said an orange filly. "Just hang in there. It'll do you some good to, y'know...talk it over. Our club is all about making sense of what we see when we look in the mirror."
Foster twitched - a simple trick of the eye muscles that somehow managed to devastate everypony - as if the word 'mirror' had transformed into a giant word-monster-thingy that stomped on her head, and clawed out her kidneys and brains and pancreas and guts and stuff while playing hacky sack with her liver.
The Concern Herd froze in horrified silence. But the crunchitty clopping of the rest of the Sneakers' hooves grew dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer up ahead - crackling like a faraway pot of popcorn on a sailboat as it drifted off to sea - till they all caught up with Iris and disappeared into the light on the other side of the hill.
"Hay, uh…listen," a little purple girl stepped forward. "It gets better from here, okay? Really, it does." She held a trembling hoof over Foster's shoulder, but chickened out, and didn't dare give it a pat.
Bananas Foster nodded grimly. "I know," she said. "I'll be okay."
The kids eyed one another. Obviously unconvinced that Foster was, at all, okay.
Misty, meanwhile, peeked over the edge of the trench, and the split up ahead. One side of the "Y" hill curved upward, herding Iris and the S.S.S.S.S. over the ridge, toward some vague campfire glow; the other side of the "Y" swung around and led to a high point - the steel grates that Cliff had seen earlier, (all the way from the Mirror House), and a crescent-shaped step that still flashed with marble notebook light before descending into an unseen abyss beneath its edge.
Some yellow kid with an eye patch squeaked Foster a question, "Do you wanna, um, maybe…I dunno…turn back?...Sorta?"
"Oh, no," said Foster. "I shouldn't. I really shouldn't."
Cliff maneuvered his way out of the kid-cluster gathering around Bananas Foster. And took a giant step back. To get a view of everypony.
That's when a tiny hint of green flame flickered in the squeaky girl's singular eye.
Cliff saw it quite clearly. But he didn't gasp. Or jump. Or grab Bananas Foster, and start shaking her, and shout n her ear that bug magic was slavery, or anything like that. His face simply…went dead. Like a plaster mask.
"They can't just turn back now," said the blue kid to the girl with changeling fire in her eyeball.
"Yeah," said another voice. "It's too late. Heading home now would be a very bad idea."
Foster emerged from the herd gathering around her, and went straight to Cliff. Patted his hoof. Held it. Until he met her gaze. "Yeah, you're right," Foster said to the crowd, though her eyes never left Cliff Diver's. "You're absolutely right. That would be a very very bad idea."
Cliff withdrew his hoof from Foster's touch. "Just do it," he mouthed silently.
Foster shook her head.
"Do it," Cliff mouthed yet again. A tear ran down his cheek.
"Not without you to keep me in line."
Cliff rubbed his eyes with his sleeve. "What?"
The Concern Squad behind us turned away, and did their very best to give our whispery huddle some much needed privacy.
"We need you," whispered Foster.
Cliff blink-bloinked his bloinkitty eyelids as a gust of wind whistled down the trench. The whole herd pulled their coats up, and Cliff used it as an excuse to hide his face and huddle in silence. As the cracks of the trench whistled against the gale.
WoooOOoOoO!!!
WooOooOOOooOO!!!
WoOOOooOoOooooOoOO!!!
"Oh, for the sake of fuck!" Misty cried out. Then, PWASH! A burst of light, and Misty was gone.
Just…gone.
…
…
…
Foster and I whipped around. Twirling in circles like frantic dogs. As though Misty might be hiding somewhere behind us if only we spun fast enough to catch him.
I jerked and I turned and I pirouetted.
Till bam! I found myself face-to-face with Cliff Diver. His great big eyeballs o' terror were flung wide open. As if to say, 'Sweet merciful Celestia, did Misty Mountain actually just fucking ditch us???!!!!!' in eyeball-speak.
I shook my head, 'no'. Even as I scoured the trench for signs of him. The whole thing made me dizzy, and scrambled the fuck out of my now-fuck-less brain. Until, at last, I caught another burst of light out of the corner of my eye.
Fwshwwwfwing! It erupted on the 'Y' ledge just above the trenches - the perfect vantage point for looking out over the fountain where the Super Safety Sneaker Squad held their drunken emotional education party. …Aaaaand for gazing into the other valley opposite it - the crescent-shaped steps that, supposedly, led down into Fillydelphia's ancient sewers.
But it only caught my eye for a fraction of an instant. I was barely starting to kinda sorta maaayyyybe make sense of it, when Poof! Light erupted again. This time, inside my own eyeballs.
Pop! One disoriented blink later, and I wasn't in the trenches at all anymore! I was standing in the dark, on a curved precipice, suspended over a deep black pit below.
It had descending ledges. Like the ridges in a throat that gobble you up. Getting darker and darker and darker the deeper you gaze into its depths.
My eyeballs swirled around my skull. Knocking into my brain. While my hooves held firm to the concrete beneath me. Like anchors keeping a pirate ship in place as it involuntarily breakdanced on the ocean's stormy surface.
Somepony grabbed me from behind and swept me backwards. "Eep!" I tried to say, but Misty thrust his hoof over my mouth. Looked me square in my spinning eyeballs, and said, "Shhhhh!"
Careful-like, he guided me backwards towards Cliff and Foster. They were already pressed against a shadowy wall. It had traces of faded spray paint all over it, and bits of broken steel rods jutting out.
"What the Hell was that?" said Foster. Pointing an accusatory hoof at Misty. "We were having an important moment."
"Bleeegggghhhh," said Cliff Diver, as he dropped to his knees, and dry heaved, desperately trying to vomit out of a stomach that hadn't eaten all day.
"This is serious," Foster snapped at Misty some more. "You can't just…" She stopped ranting mid sentence. Blink-bloinked her eyelids, and suddenly dropped to her knees, beside Cliff, all concernitty-like. "Jeez! Are you okay?"
"Sssshhh!" said Misty. He pointed upwards..
There, above us, was a whole bunch more crescent ridges, climbing toward the sky like the concentric rows of an amphitheater. The top ledge bordered the horizon, and flickered with wild, strobe-itty light.
I gasped. Clutched my muzzle with my forehooves and plopped down upon my flank.
That flickering ridge - it looked like a great big crescent Moon, swallowing the night with its crazy flashes!
For an instant - neigh, half an instant - I thought I was back in that field from my dreams. Where I'd met Luna.
Ahhhh! Had the Wasteland somehow climbed inside my head and apocalyzed my dreamscape too?! My heart slammed into my ribcage what-the-fuck-ishly as dread kicked me in the forehead. But my heart was being dumb. The crescent above us was not a moon at all, nor a vision conveying some hornet message about the Realm of Dreams.
It was part of Marble Notebookland. Getting strobed all over the place by distant floodlights, and the barbed wire mesh that danced in front of them.
A ridge on that Y-shaped hill - separating Crescent Canyon from the Safety Sneaker Fountain Party on the other side.
A gang of silhouettes sprung up on the 'moon' above us.
"Cliff? Rose? Misty? Foster?" a voice called out as the shadowy figures peered down into the dark chasm, where we all hid.
"They're gone," squeaked a voice I recognized from the Concern Squad - the eyepatch kid with the changeling fire in her eye.
"What do you mean they're gone?" said Iris.
"They're not feeling good," the poor kid tried to explain. "So I think they, uh…went away?"
"Fuck!" said Meadow Blade, the one grown up.
I closed my eyes. Pressed my flank against the stony wall. Even harder. Meadow's voice was tinged with rage as much as worry. Fear more than anything. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"
Rustle. Stomp! Crack!
"Oww!" cried the shrill little voice of Eyepatch Kid.
"Leave her alone," Flip cried out. "It's not her fault!"
"Just find them!" Meadow Blade roared.
As galloping hooves scattered to the four winds in search of us, Meadow Blade himself leaned out over the strobing crescent edge.
I could feel him. Watching the abyss, raw panic boiling underneath his silence.
Then Wooooorrrrrshhh! The Pinkie balloon let loose a burst of flame once again. And Meadow Blade's crazed shadow struck the crescent-moon-shaped-chasm-thing my friends and I were huddled in. His silhouette panted out manic breaths as the Pinkie fires above blasted everything everywhere with stray heat, and wild, mandarin light.
But then it was dark again. The air stank like the butt of a pile of flaming garbage (if flaming garbage piles actually had butts), and Meadow Blade whimpered out a fragile little exclamation, "Damnit."
A sigh and a gallop later, and he was off.
Misty Mountain held his foreleg across my chest, urging me to freeze in place. No matter what. His other leg pressed against Cliff Diver, who sat huddled on the ground.
Misty didn't dare breathe. Even as my heart pounded against his hoof. He just listened. And waited. Long and slow.
When the Safety kids were gone. All gone. Distant hoofsteps. Fading voices, calling to one another from further and furtheraway. Misty Mountain sorta...waited some more. And more. And more and more and more and more and more.
Till Finally, Foster brushed his leg aside, and extended a helping hoof toward Cliff Diver.
Cliff didn't say a word, and neither did she. But he let Foster help him to his hooves. And that was enough.
"What do we do now?" I whisper-shouted at Misty, who remained perched upon a rock, waiting for some kinda signal. Even though the Safety kids had already skedaddled. It seemed kinda dumb, till…
...WHRRRMMMMMMMMM. A great and powerful hum filled the air, drowning out every clop and whisper. I felt it in the very concrete beneath my hooves.
Even the pebbles chittered with vibrations.
"What the fuck is that?" I yelled out loud.
"Turbines," said Foster.
"What?" said Cliff.
We all took a moment to cluster really, really, reeeeeaaaallly close together. So we could actually fucking hear one another
"Turbines," Foster repeated. "They switch on automatically at midnight. The Sneaker Society chose the fountain over there because of the acoustics." Foster gestured with her nose, vaguely in the direction of the ridge, and whatever lay beyond the Y. "They can sing and dance and yell and party, and hear each other without being heard."
I gazed down the crescent stairs below, descending into darkness. It was a giant punchbowl-of-a-canyon, and it boomed all around us with crazy vibrations. The opposite of good acoustics for, you know...not going deaf when you've got giant turbines humming into them.
"What is this place?" I said to Misty.
"Eet make connect to old water treatment plant," he replied. "Already out of commission in my home time. Teenagers used to do scooter tricks here. And illegal community theater troupes make use of it as performance space. When not getting arrested, of course."
"Community theater?" I said. "Illegal?!"
"Some were," Misty shrugged.
I recoiled. Wartime Equestria was so weird and evil and horrible! Sure, Wastelanders may have killed and enslaved one another left and right, but they didn't have any kind of civilization to unite under. They didn't have the first clue how to build one.
But Wartime Equestria? They had like, vast armies, and crazy technology, and super advanced magic, and stuff. Yet they chose to use all that power to murder zebras, and burn pirate books, and outlaw community theater troupes.
"We didn't let it stop us." Misty winked at me. The kinda wink that makes a ding sound.
"Uh…us?" I said?
"You were a theater nerd?!" said Cliff.
"I am not nerd," balked Misty. "Could nerd use magic for lighting of effects, and make sing of the 'Princess and I' at same time?" Misty smirked.
"Yes," we all replied in unison.
Misty harrumphed.
* * *
It was a slow trip down, and the hum of the turbines didn't let up. At all. Misty led us down some stairs, or what remained of them: crumbling planks of stone that led from one giant crescent platform to the next.
My hooves stumbled with every uncertain step, but it wasn't just me. We were all super mega careful not to trip. Not to leave any trace behind that could be used to track us. Not to generate light. Or make great big booming noises that might get heard over the turbines somehow, and attract Sneakers or slavers or shadows or soldiers…or anything else that started with the letter 'S.'
But we could talk at least. If we stayed within a wagon's length of one another.
"So, uh…Foster?" said Cliff. His voice squeaked with uncertainty.
"Yeah?" Bananas Foster carefully lowered a hoof from one splintered stair to the next.
"How did you figure all that out? The fountain and the acoustics and the turbines and stuff? Did your powers tell you that?" Cliff Diver chuckled nervously.
Foster flopped her own ears in reply. "You'd be surprised the secrets that you can learn using only these." She twiddled her ears once again.
Cliff nodded, but didn't smile, Foster sighed, and hung her head so low I thought she was gonna trip on it.
"What do the turbines do?" I asked, changing-the-subject-ish-ly.
"What?" Foster perked up her head.
"The turbines," I repeated. "What do you reckon they….y'know….do?"
I descended the last step. A wobbly, crunchy one.
"How should I know?" Foster eased herself onto that same step.
"You're the one who overheard." I sprang off that ricketty slab, and landed on the solid ground beneath it. The very bottom of Community Theater Canyon. There were rocks all over the place. Hunks of gravel the size of magic crystal balls.
Foster's hooves hit the dirt beside me. "I didn't overhear anything," she replied. "I simply talked to the Safety kids. And listened."
"It's gotta be a cooling system," said Cliff.
"A cooling system?" Misty asked.
"Yeah." Cliff pulled his mane out of his face. "Pinkie's fires wouldn't have kept running for centuries unless there was a way to keep the machinery from overheating. If this used to be some kinda water treatment plant, then it's probably still pumping some from below, maybe even powered by it...
'Now," he raised a hoof, and added. "I doubt that these turbines are coated with tri-magnesium crystal like the long term perma-fuel core that the Bearded Stallions of Space Station 11 are researching and developing. But the principles still apply."
"Beard pirates." Misty threw his eyeballs at me. "Beard spaceships." Misty pointed them at Cliff Diver next. "What ees it with you ponies and the beard literature?"
I shrugged. Honestly, I'd never thought about it before.
But Cliff lowered his ears, all bashful-like. "Beards are cute," he said.
I gave him a playful shove. He giggled, and shoved me right back. A bit of his old self again.
PATREON
If this story, or my Heart Full of Pony essays have touched you, please consider supporting me on Patreon. 
For those of you who already are pledging, seriously, and for real, thank you. Your support means a great deal to me. /]*[\
SPECIAL THANKS: As always, I would like to thank Seraphem for his tireless assistance providing feedback during the editing process, and Kkat for writing the original Fallout: Equestria story that inspired me to write Hooves of Fate in the first place.
THOUGHTS:
Those of you who read my blog already know this, but, after over four months' worth of writing, and a great deal of frustration at my own sluggish pace, I took a look at the word count. It was 18,000+ words long.
So this chapter is the result of breaking that earlier draft into smaller fragments. At first, this was sheer practicality, but as I got to tweaking this chapter, and trying to make it coherent on its own, I found myself discovering how right it felt as a short, little transition chapter that really laser-focused on the characters, and the issues between them.
I hope you enjoy what you read, and tell me what you think.
Also, new chapter is well on its way because I have a big head start!
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It is actually very nice to have a chapter so focused on the characters. Can't have a compelling story without compelling characters. Of course, I am now anxiously waiting for the next chapter. Is this the longest arc of the story thus far? It feels like this arc alone could be an entire book.
That was absolutely beautiful.
11717068
Hooves of Fate is broken into six "books" so far. The current adventure takes up a quarter of the entire story, and is maybe 2/3 done. It's not the longest book in the series (yet), but when it's complete, it will be, by far.
I have the stats handy because, just yesterday, I was actually marveling at this for the first time.
Book One: The Great Escape (Ch. 1-10)
69,600 words
Book Two: No Mare's Land (Ch. 11-23)
125,900 words
Book Three: After the Storm (Ch. 24-28)
(This one is very short, and takes place entirely in the hospital. Foster's backstory, told in flashback, is the real adventure here).
40,400 words
Book Four: The Sound of Silence (Ch. 29-41)
(Rose trying to readjust to Ponyville life, and family backstory and all that).
72,700 words
Book Five: Doors (Ch. 42-47)
(Rose's lessons)
53,500 words
And we are currently on
Book Six: Us and Them (Ch. 48-present)
115,000 words and counting...
Book Seven: TBA
11717116
Thank you. I'll tell the Great Sorceror Planktoneth you said that.
I really like how you write these ponies and their dynamics! Plus, I like the beard lore theme.
11717239
I see, we're already on the longest book by number of chapters, but not words.
Ballparking it, how many books will there be in the end? 30? Finishing up this story in the year 2062? Let it never end, haha.
11717595
There will be seven books total.
11718029
Lucky Number Seven! Good to know. Hopefully that's not a spoiler. Then again, I asked for it.
11718384
It's not a secret.
Originally I had been hoping that there would be six books, because six is so numerically important in FiM, but that would involve mashing Book 5 and 6 together, and that's just too damn big.
From the opening, I'm now remembering this, which I thought you might find amusing if you'd not seen it already:
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/164
"were roaring rapids - brain-thoughts"
"were roaring rapids - brain-thoughts"?
Or am I missing something here?
"and shout n her ear that"
"and shout in her ear that"?
"another from further and furtheraway. Misty"
"another from further and further away. Misty"?
"Till Finally, Foster brushed his leg aside"
"Till finally, Foster brushed his leg aside"?
Thanks for writing!
11731016
I'm a fan of Existential Comics, but no, I have not seen that one!
I do know that the River Question is a classic philosophy argument, though I honestly don't have a clue who first posed/popularized it.
It's something I just sort of picked up along the way, and figured that the Great Sorcerer Planktoneth could make good use of.
Thanks, as always, for sharing.
11732165
Ah, glad I thought of and decided to link it, then. :)
No do I, sorry.
Well, I think he did. :D
For the purposes of this story, at least; I don't know how much it helped Daisy the Cabin Girl.
:)