Siren Song

by TheDarkStarCzar

Therapy is Violence

"Cappy," I pled, "Cappy, get up, it'll be okay, just, please be okay....you bucking hateful, selfish, death mongering..." I lashed out blindly, but mother sidestepped the blow.

"My Baby, we're in public, don't draw attention..." She warned, but I interrupted.

"It's your fault we're in public," My voice fell to a growling whisper, "Look, it'll be okay, just fix it with your magic, you're strong enough aren't you? Just fix this and I'll do whatever you tell me, please, just, you have to make him okay again." I said, knowing full well how foalish I sounded, how pathetic, I broke back down into a series of deep, wracking sobs.

Then I was over it.

I've been around and my cyclic rate through the stages of grief have been accelerated through practice. "Dammit, you didn't have to do that, Mom." I said coldly, the wavering in my voice evening out.

"That's twice that damned dog found me, there was nothing for it." She said dispassionately, still rubbing her neck and keeping lookout for anypony watching us. I looked sadly to Cappy's body, tears still hung on my face. She was probably right at that. He was just a dog, I told myself, though I didn't believe that for a moment. From his collar trailed a lead rope that had been chewed through. The spit on it was still fresh and wet.

"He's run off from somepony, just like when he ran off from me. This town's no Ponyville though, so they've got to be pretty close by, regardless. We need to get out of here, now, but I don't know the area." I said, but she ignored me, eyeing the sky, I kicked her, "Hey! I said now! If you want to get out of this we've got to run. I'm fine either way, in fact if you give me long enough to think about how you just killed my Celestia damned dog I might turn you in myself." I kicked her again, right in the plot. She turned and scowled at me then took off at a slow trot towards a nearby bar but I stopped her, "Nope, whoever this is knows about you, you're not going to be able to do this hiding in plain sight schtick. We've got to skip out, like now."

For the first time I could remember she looked frazzled and confused, "Who the buck put you in charge?"

"You did when you froze just then. Do you know how to get out of this town without being spotted or not?" I demanded. She grumbled that she thought she did, but it'd been a long time since she'd been here.

"Why are you helping me anyway?" She asked as we passed through the sparsely inhabited main drag on the shadowed side of the street. With our new coats and confident steady gates we were the picture of nondescript. It was all glass storefronts and plank boardwalks clear to the end of town. It was the tail end of the season which accounted for the lack of business, all in all I wish we'd had a bit of a crowd to hide in, but at least there wasn't snow on the ground at this elevation.

"Why?" I replied at length, "I...Dunno. Momentum?" It wasn't a good answer. Did I have time to think of a better one? Did I want to think of a better one? She was my Mom and so I was helping her, it's the natural thing to do, isn't it? It was clear, though, that she needed help of the mental variety, was I planning to get her that help? I hadn't really thought about it, but I probably wasn't.

There was no barricade at the edge of town, no ponies milling around out of place. I took that as a good sign. Our pursuer's numbers were limited, they'd probably have to search the whole town before they knew for certain that we'd fled. I wasn't sure how they realized Cappy could track mother or how they got him here so fast but it did imply they were resourceful. They must have gotten to the pegasus who was supposed to deliver the package and replaced him. If they'd waited in or near the cabin odds are that we would have seen them and it would be tough to have backup close enough to be effective yet hidden. That implied more than one pony was tracking us if they wanted to be in town where they'd be less conspicuous.

But why was I on her side? It was instinctual, primal, but did it make sense? Whoever was after us was an unknown factor. They might kill her, or both of us, or send us both to prison. Was I exposed yet, was I culpable? Something told me I was, but it may have been the burst of guilt my newly restored memories foisted on me, but that was my own fault too. Now I was free, I knew, but had I been wrong? Was there really such a great value in knowing?

We were on the narrow winding path out of town. It was full of switchbacks and blind turns, I couldn't decide whether that was beneficial to us or not and I broke into a gallop which Mom tried to keep up with but was having difficulty. She reluctantly gave me her saddle bags to lighten her burden.

It doesn't make sense. The things she's done to me, if you listed them out, would read like a list of warcrimes. She hadn't beat me as a child, that much was true, but she used me as a living weapon.

All of a sudden I remembered a spell she'd taught me that I'd forgotten all about. It was useless in normal circumstances, all it did was make one's irises glow. I could give myself glowing scarlet eyes, just like my mother's, it was the perfect thing to strike fear in the hearts of a bunch of defenseless ponies as your mother sang to them, told them to kill themselves and each other before I ground the ship to splinters with my whirlpool.

Was I to blame for that? In my heart I always would be, now that I knew, but legally? I was a little filly, she was a bucking monster and I remember she'd stand on deck and laugh as her puppets fought each other to the death after politely removing their most valuable cargo to her waiting skiff. Moreover, remembering it this way left out something key. I had no idea if she'd compelled me to my actions or I'd done it of my own free will. In short, I wasn't sure if I was a monster too. I've always known I was a bucked up pony, but that's a whole different level of bucked up right there.

We'd slowed to a trot but I wouldn't let her go any slower, goading her on that we'd have to run again if we had any hope of getting to safety. She was wheezing raggedly, trying her hardest to keep up the pace though it was already clear she couldn't, but it was miles yet to the next town and I wasn't going to let her stop.

Give a kid a weapon and tell them it's okay, right even, to use it and they'll do it. They'll be the purest, cruelest soldiers the world has ever seen and when you turn their imaginations to unspeakable acts their initiative and innovation will startle the coldest blooded amongst us. The whirlpool was a weapon given to me. Granted I was predisposed to it's particular brand of magic but I clearly recall being schooled in it's use at a very early age. First in a bowl, then a pond, then in the bay until it became second nature. It was about the time I was being potty trained, the two things inexorably linked in my newly restored memories.

We'd slowed to a fast walk, it was all that Mom could manage now. The town was in view, maybe a mile distant as the crow flies. More than that on hoof, but what I could see of it gave me hope. Plumes of smoke lazily drifted up from a train that had just arrived. I urged her on. If we could just make the train we could disappear, but she was going to have to move like Nightmare Moon was on her tail to reach it in time.

The only way the interspersed memories of normal life fit was if I was under her power during the raids, I realized and it all finally fit. So why was I still helping her even after all of this and all of that? "Stockyard Syndrome." I said in reply to the question she'd asked hours ago now.

"Yeah, that's what I figured too." She said, gasping for breath but not missing a beat, "You going to stop now?"

No, I wasn't. Maybe you don't cure Stockyard Syndrome just by realizing you have it? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. In case it's too obscure I should say that this comes from meat eating species who used to imprison animals in pens and fatten them up for the slaughter. Invariably the imprisoned animal would come to identify with their captors, even going so far as to help them against their own best interests. In modern usage it's been applied to abductees identifying with their kidnappers.

If we could make the train I'd just have time to think, a chance to decide. But then my whole life that's what I've had, time to think and it had never got me anywhere had it? When I'd been forced to act, that's when things happened, I guess that's right in the definition isn't it? Maybe thinking was overrated and it was time to act, and yet...

Here I was doing the wrong thing again and I knew it and every part of me wanted to stop running and turn her into the authorities, to give up this whole stupid chase. But I wouldn't, I seemed stubbornly bound to the path to perdition when even she would see the sense in giving her over. What if that's my single, defining personality trait?

...and this is just how bucked up I am without mind control I thought with a stifled snort. I'd managed to get a weak jog out of her, pushing and urging on the sweaty, gasping old mare and we'd made it into town. We were scrutinized under suspicious stares by the Germane tourists on the balconies of their A-frame cafes and condos, but we had a train to make so there was little to be done about it. A foreboding shadow cut through the bright, cold mountain sunshine and slid across us, then left. I looked up too late to see it's source. I can't say just what it was that made me notice that one in particular when so many ponies were flitting around, but somewhere inside I knew that brief flicker spelled doom for us.

The train station lay just ahead and the engine was still taking water. I couldn't believe our luck, "We made it!" I said enthusiastically as Mom wheezed and gasped, still being driven forward, but then she screamed in startled pain and collapsed to the ground, "C'mon, get up, we're almost there!" I said desperately but with pain and desperation in her eyes she rolled slightly to show me a short arrow that had embedded itself in her shoulder. I hadn't heard it, but I could hear the "Thock!" of a bowstring being drawn back over the pawl for another shot.

I turned and faced the shadowed corner of the cute timber framed station that hid our assassin. I cast the newly remembered spell and my eyes lit bloody and bright. I took a defensive stance, widening out as if to hold an assault by force of muscle but I cast my pitiful shield spell instead. I raised up a wind and blew a small dust storm into the shadow. I must have looked properly intimidating because ponies ran screaming from the immediate area.

The pegasus was not intimidated. His powerful wings negated the wind and sent it right back at me to buffet my shield twice as strong. In the lee of my shield Mother, gasping and grunting in pain, sang out the first few notes of the siren song, but couldn't go any further. I had forbidden her to use the spell on me and though I wasn't her target I would have been collateral damage so her hooves were tied. I would have reversed it but a tiny vindictive streak in me liked that she was helpless for once and I was the pony in charge. I wondered if she actually knew what was happening to her since she'd apparently never been afflicted with her own spell.

I stood my ground and waited for the pegasus to make his move. He advanced with his crossbow leveled. It was one of the one hooved variety that was held up on a shoulder strap. I'd done archery long enough to recognize the broadheaded arrow. Certainly not a field point, this was serious business here.

"Bucking hay!" Mother hoarsely cried, "It's a damn reunion!"

It took me a several seconds longer than it should have to realize what she meant. I was focused on the weapon. Without the uniform and hat, with his mane cut short and his coat filthy I hadn't recognized him at first, but when I did I came to attention, let my shield fall and saluted him, "Cap'm." As soon as I did he let the shot fly from his crossbow and I had to bring my shield back to deflect it. It was a close call, "Daddy! What the buck!?"

"Swirly? Wow, I thought you were your mother when you called me Cap'm! Damn, I'm sorry Swirly, you sound just like her." My father said, "I should have known when you put up a proper shield spell, but don't blame me, you're both the wrong color."

I'd forgotten about the dye. It amazed me that even after all these years Mother had recognized him right off. He was over sixty now and his charcoal mane had acquired more than a little grey. His light grey coat hadn't changed much but his age showed clearly in the wrinkles around his sapphire eyes. He was all in a lather, having undoubtedly searched that ski town, at least in part, before chasing us here. I couldn't help but notice he'd cocked and reloaded his crossbow and was advancing towards us. Shield still in place I moved to put myself firmly between him and mother who was still groaning and fussing with the arrow. She had it in her teeth and was trying to pull it painfully loose. He gave me a puzzled look, "Swirly, it's over, I know what she's done to you but it's over now. Are you...okay? Has she got the spell on you?"

"I'm fine, she doesn't and it isn't over yet." I answered, "One way or the other we'll be getting on that train."

"Huh. Really? You know she's nuts, right?" He incredulously asked, dropping the crossbow to point at the ground.

"Yeah, she really is and the horseapples she pulled ought to be punished, but she's still my mom and at least she was always there for me instead of staying for a couple months then running off to the sea for years at a time!" I screamed at him and he took a big step back, "I mean weren't we worth sticking around for? Wasn't I? I mean, what, did we smell? If you'd been there you could have stopped her and it wouldn't have all had to end this way!"

"Wow, just wow. Listen to yourself Sea Swirl. You're justifying protecting her by blaming me for not protecting you from her and you say you're not under her spell?" He huffed, "Why don't you ask me again why I wasn't there for you for more than a few months at a time?"

I paused, but not knowing what he was getting at I asked, "Why were you at sea so bucking much?"

"I can't say." He said simply and it took a moment to sink in. I dropped the shield, turned to glare at mother but she simply wasn't the aloof and mighty monster she'd been before. She was an exhausted and pitiful thing, tears of pain streaming down her face as she weakly worried the arrow that had spilt a yard's diameter worth of her blood beneath her. Celestia knows why she sent him away. Maybe she didn't want him prying into her own ventures or maybe she just couldn't abide his company for too long at a time. Any way around it she'd simply come up with another selfish way of stealing a little bit of my foalhood away from me and the reason really didn't matter all that much.

But he was right. It was over. He'd spent thirty some years wandering the sea but I could finally free him so I sang out the second song and released him.

He smiled a huge grin, his old eyes sparkling for a second before Mother was on him with that gory crossbow bolt in her hooves. She struck him three times in the chest and leg before I started singing the siren song to quell her.

She turned on me and bucked me full force in the mouth, knocking me sprawling on the ground, mind all in disarray. There was a crowd gathering around, spectating, not raising a hoof to help. I rose to a kneel and tried to sing again through my numb, blood slicked mouth. The two clicks I heard turned out, when I looked down to the cobbles, to be teeth.

They can be fixed, I reasoned madly, but there's a kind of permanence to loosing teeth as an adult. Crimson eyes and a crush of magical power only go so far towards scaring a full grown mare. The most disturbing nightmares I've ever had all start the same. I prod a tooth with my tongue and find it to be wobbly and instead of leaving it alone I keep poking at it until it falls out. Then I usually check others and find them poorly rooted as well and by the time I wake up I'm in a blind panic and usually can't get back to sleep without checking them over and giving them a good midnight re-brush. Lost teeth are a reminder of lost vitality, of mortality and impending death.

I rose swiftly, my ears ringing and my vision blurred. I had a concussion, too, I thought, I needed to end this now. The time to think was done and now I simply acted.

Do something, even if it's wrong.

Mother had harried my father with her meager weapon so effectively as to put him on the ground, hooves before him to protect himself from her vicious slashes. He was groping for a weapon of his own but having been freed once more she began the siren song.

I ripped the street apart with my magic, a swarm of rounded cobbles orbiting me I began to pelt her with them. She shied from the hail for only a moment, then grabbed up the discarded crossbow and fired it at me. I tried to block it but she was too fast. The bolt hit me in the throat, a searing pain such as I'd never imagined, but I seemed to still be breathing so I pressed the attack, putting as much force as I could behind each five pound lump of stone. She fell quickly and once more tried to sing. I would have called her a one trick pony had there not been an arrow preventing easy speech.

I bombarded her but she wouldn't stop, she was but a second away when I thought to cut the magic off at it's source and battered her horn directly with a stony lump. That stopped her dead, but it wasn't enough. My own time to wrap this up was running short. I trotted up to her, twisted her head so that her horn was against the cobbles and with a sharp blow I snapped it off.

Then in an act of purest cruelty I powdered it between two stones.

She screamed out in a rage and I right along side her. Taking a pegasus' wings or a unicorn's horn were the most taboo things that could be done by a pony. It would have been better to kill her, it would have been more honorable for us both. Celestia knows I'd tried to help her, tried to see it her way and she'd betrayed me every step of the way.

I wanted to kill her.

I've wanted few things in this world as much.

I held a big hunk of jagged rock above her head, rage building inside me. I pictured the splatter. I pictured it finally being over and done with.

For Dad.

For Cappy.

For myself.

I frustratedly sighed and shunted the rock aside.

In the end, regardless of what I've done or what I have been, I am not a killer.

The Germanes were not happy with us. From their perspective we'd appeared out of nowhere in a peaceful mountain town, terrorized the population and left them to sort out the mess as well as our medical care and imprisonment. For all the bluster and sabre rattling of a half century ago the country had become even more pastoral than Equestria and they really weren't equipped to deal with us properly, especially since the farther they looked into Mom's trail the more corpses they turned up. Even so they balked and stalled so that it took a month and a half for the Princess to secure our extradition.

Father was alternately thrilled that he was free of the song and depressed that it had come to this.

I felt freer than I'd been in years. I paced my cell in agitation, but not in circuitous self flagellating thought. I felt a great many of my issues to have been resolved, though in a more tactile way than therapists generally employ.

Mom was catatonic. That's fine, I didn't have a lot left to say to somepony who only answered in lies.

Georgia visited often. It turns out she had been searching with my father, but she'd stayed to finish searching the town and so had missed out on the action. It was good to have her near, but my conversational skills weren't the greatest as I was still healing from a nasty arrow wound. (Germane dentistry, however, seemed to be superb and I'd had a full set of teeth restored before the swelling went down from their loss and it was just as well, I most earnestly planned to do more smiling in the future than I had in the past and had made a good start on it with both Georgia and my Father present.) When they finally shipped us off I invited her and she promised she'd visit Ponyville as soon as she could. This adventure had taken up all her leave for the year or she would have tagged along having already been there once.

It turned out that Father (Guiding Light by name with a lighthouse cutie mark) had turned up in Ponyville after Wave Crest had told him where I'd gone. He spoke with half the town and was about to just come over to Eagleland and start searching, but a certain griffon showed up looking for a dog that knew the killer's scent. That would be Georgia and Cappy, respectively and the gospel I'd written had given her the idea.

She met my father while he was booking an airship for Eagleland and they got to talking and found their goals to be the same one. Once they were here they tracked down Mother's accomplice just before he was to drop off the bags. With a game of 'I can't say' they parsed his motives and relieved him of his burden. Odds are that he was quite happy about it. He would have ended up dead had he made his rendezvous. The details of her scheme were lost as he couldn't tell them about it very directly.

There was meant to be a trial, but apparently Siren Song pled guilty to everything and even enumerated a whole host of crimes she'd never even been suspected of. The harshest penalty available was given to her, imprisonment in stone for an indefinite term. In the history of Equestria only six creatures had been sentenced so. One had been sentenced in absentia and never been turned up and one had been Discord.

She looked so small and so frail standing on the platform, squinting at the sun directly overhead, legs shackled. Her look of defiance appeared weak and petulant as she glared out over the assembled crowd. The Princesses stood on either side of her and Twilight Sparkle, freshly crowned an alicorn herself, stood by her teacher's side.

All of Ponyville showed up to see the sentence passed. I do actually mean quite literally all of Ponyville. Most of Cloudsdale and some of Canterlot besides. At first I cursed them for gawking at the spectacle that was to be my Mother's demise, but I realized something. They crying, they were all so sad. All the things she'd done were public knowledge but all of Ponyville had counted her as a friend and had simply come to see her off and mourn her loss together. Their love and forgiveness is the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen.

The Princesses spoke to her sternly, but then Princess Celestia nuzzled her and whispered something in her ear. Then she must have asked if she had anything to say because she shambled to the edge of the stage.

I craned neck to hear.
She'd refused all visitors since she got back and it was said she barely spoke at all.

I hadn't had a chance to say goodbye.
She scanned the crowd, found me and looked me right in the eyes, shattered horn between her crimson irises, with a genuine smile she made her final utterances.

I didn't hear her last words or see the sentence passed upon her. I broke down weeping, the clock chimed once for the hour and I turned to leave. The Cap'm was in the crowd somewhere, but this was not a thing we wished to share, reunions aside we were still both intensely private ponies and wished to be alone with our grief for a time. The Ponyvillians I passed each gave me their condolences and offered their shoulders to cry on and their helping hooves in my time of need and I was glad for all my old friends.

It was a month on and for the time being I had resumed my pet food career so as to keep Peachy Sweet's rent paid up. Father was staying in town for my sake but had plans to retire as soon as he figured out what circumstances he would most enjoy. "Something by the sea. That's as far as I ever seem to get planning it." He kept telling me.

I told myself that I was coasting until the longest day of the year when I'd meet up with the whale near my old lighthouse, then I'd start a new life in earnest. It wasn't procrastination this time, either. I had an idea and several things to sort out still.

I had ended up with Mother's pile of exceedingly valuable kindling and had just started to try to figure out what it was. Apparently she owned some property and held various accounts in other countries. The way she was I just hoped I wouldn't end up getting sued over unpaid taxes or fraud or some such thing. That's what I expected given her history. I was deeply engrossed in researching it when somepony knocked on the door.

It was the little yellow and red filly from Sweet Apple Acres, Applebloom. She had a basket with her, "Selling fillyscout cookies?" I ventured.

"No Ma'am. It's a puppy." She said brightly.

"Well...I don't really need a puppy, I'm leaving for the coast soon and I like to travel light." She wilted a bit, then perked back up.

"Well this ain't just any puppy. We gave the others away but Granny said to save this'un for you." She uncovered the fuzzy little bugger, he was a big pawed black mutt with a white streak up his nose and floppy ears, "He was the biggest of the litter. Turns out Winona thought more've Cappy's company than y'all expected." She said with an embarrassed chuckle.

My first thought, they learn early on the farm, don't they? Second, it was Cappy's son and they saved the biggest and probably dumbest one for me. I poked him gently in the belly and he yowled at me, then proceeded to lick my hoof and melt my heart. "Well, I guess it wouldn't be so bad to have another dog."

Applebloom smiled a big sweet smile, set down the basket and took off at a clip. I was stuck with him now. I yelled my thanks after her and she turned to wave her hoof, then continued on home, I smiled, thinking how neighborly that had been of her, but then I'd known their family for years and Ponyville was such a friendly little town things of that sort were not uncommon. It was the whole acting like a decent pony thing that a large part of the East coast lacked.

Thinking about it, I guess I knew nearly everypony in town and was friends with most of them, I'd been here long enough, I supposed.

But also I hadn't, and that struck me as quite odd, but I didn't think much about it just then, I had a brand new puppy to show around so I went to find Lyra. She wasn't home, but Bonbon promised to send her my way when she got back from running errands after she cooed over the cuddly fuzzball herself.

Walking around town with a new puppy on your back is a good way to get stopped by absolutely every single pony in the vicinity. He got fondled and petted by every hoof within a half mile, but he seemed content enough for it. I was doing a sort of 'I've got a new puppy' prance as I happily greeted all my friends. My smile faltered when the proprietor of the antique shop trotted up to me to admire my new puppy.

"What's the little guy's name?" He asked and stroked his ruffled fur gently.

"I hadn't really thought of one yet, I just got him an hour ago." Internally I debated but finally chose to apologize, "Hey, about that little incident with the glitter, I'm real sorry about that. I hope it wasn't too much trouble..."

"Oh, don't worry about that." He interrupted, brushing my concerns off with a good natured chuckle, "It forced me to give the shop a long needed tidy and I can't really hold you responsible for things your mother did, can I? Besides, I still owe you for finding that colonial wash basin for the Rich's manner, it tied their whole project together, gave it a sense of authenticity."

I was going to say that I had no idea what he was talking about, but then I remembered that it had been one of mom's stories about her time in Ponyville. She'd found this washbasin in the janitor's closet of a hotel that was being demolished and she'd pointed it out to Dusty Treasures who in turn sold it to Filthy Rich for an exorbitant sum. Filthy gave it a place of honor in the period correct restoration of one of his mansion's guest rooms, which is a step up from being a mop sink as it had been for the past hundred years. It was funny that I remembered it as if I'd lived it myself and it was only with direct scrutiny that I realized it wasn't something I'd done.

Maybe that was understandable, having heard the story before, but why would he confuse my mom and I? I would have asked, but I sure didn't want to correct him and start a fight. We said our goodbyes and I went back to the boarding house.

The new puppy was eagerly engaged by Peachy Sweet's foals. They romped around the parlor laughing while the adults sat at the kitchen table. Keen Edge and Peachy Sweet were seated side by side, holding hooves like teenagers. He'd recounted his part in our recent adventure when the reserves had discharged him and she'd been clingy ever since, having realized how close she actually may have come to losing him.

He'd gone back to blacksmithing (I'd thought him a woodcutter this whole time from the axe cutie mark.) and was thinking of taking over the business as Old Blacky had been making noises about retiring. There were several thriving shops in town already but someplace like Ponyville could never have too many blacksmiths. Those prospects are what we were discussing when Lyra showed up.

"Bonbon said you were looking for me, and something about a dog?" I called for Peachy Keen to bring in the puppy. The little guy was worn out from all the attention he'd been getting. He yawned and fell asleep as soon as Lyra cradled him to her chest. "Oh he's adorable! Does he have a name yet?"

"No, not yet but I kind of have one in mind." The question brought up another that'd been bothering me so I mentioned the antique store owner and the odd feelings I'd had surrounding him mixing me up for my mother, "How long have I been in Ponyville, how long have we been friends?"

"Oh, for years and years." Peachy said, "Why I was just a little filly when you moved to town and you stayed right in the same room you're...Oh, but then you only came here half a year ago, didn't you? Huh, I could swear..."

"No, now she was here when I joined the reserves. You recommended me and she took me on even though I was actually too young and the extra bits are how we paid for the wedding, remember? She was one of the bridesmaids." Keen Edge recounted.

"I remember that," I said with a grin, it was a happy memory, "But I was still living in the lighthouse then. I wouldn't be old enough to be a military commander anyway and if I was then why am I not now?" I reminded them reasonably.

"Huh. That's weird," Lyra joined in, "I was a bridesmaid right beside you, but we only just met when you smashed my Lyre case, too. It's like both things are true."

"Okay, who framed that clerk who works at Sofas and Quills and made him confess to being a pimp and killing that guard?" A terrible foreboding rising.

"Siren Song did that. It was in all the papers and everyone rallied around him when they exonerated him. You're not trying to say you had something to do with that, are you?" Keen Edge asked.

"No, no. Nothing like that, I just wanted to make sure that's the way you remembered it." I sighed, "I thought this was over but I'm going to have to do some more work to sort it out. In the meantime it's probably best not to tell anypony, it just raises questions. I'll head to the library and start researching it tomorrow."

"Sea Swirl! It's been a while." Twilight Sparkle greeted me. I was still a little peeved that she and the other Elements of Harmony had skipped out on the search after Mom left with me from the Monastery, but I can understand why they'd done it.

"Hey Twilight, I have an experiment I've been meaning to do, but I need some help with it." She nodded enthusiastically. Twilight Sparkle was a mare as obsessed with knowing as I used to be, but while I'd scrutinized myself to learn about the world she learned about the world as an analog for understanding herself, "I need to have my magic suppressed so I can sing the siren song without it effecting anypony. If you're willing then you can transcribe the words?"

She gave me a strange look, but shrugged, seeing no harm in it, "Sure. I've got an inhibitor ring around here somewhere. Let me find it and we'll get started."

After a protracted and chaotic search the ring was turned up and installed upon my horn. I tried to cast a spell so as to verify it's function and found it to be properly nullified. "Ready?"

"Ready." Twilight replied and I sang the song. She wrote the words out, as I had, phonetically, then she stared at me in a mindless stupor.

"Oh, hay. Twilight, are you hypnotized?" She didn't answer so I asked her to tell me her most embarrassing secret.

Without hesitation she replied, "Sometimes I fantasize about Princess Celestia. I know it's wrong, she's been like a second mother to me but I just can't help but think about that beautiful white flank and how I'd like..."

"Stop! Oh, Luna stop!" That kind of thing's perfectly natural but for modesty's sake I'd rather pretend not to know about it. I told her to forget we'd had this conversation, sang the releasing spell and she came back, "Did you feel anything?"

"No. Was I supposed to?" She looked worried.

"Oh, um, no, but I just wanted to make sure." I said and she came over to take the suppressor ring off my horn. She scrutinized my horn after she'd removed it and I couldn't tell why.

"What is that? An inscription?" She asked, turning her head sideways to get a better look at my horn, "It says 'Siren Song was Here!' Well that's a pretty bucked up thing for her to have done, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it really is." I agreed, I didn't know she'd done that, but I knew instantly when she'd done it. I looked over her transcription and copied it down for authenticity's sake, "Well that's all I needed, thanks for your help!"

"Hey, there is one thing I've been meaning to take care of, the Princess asked me to, but honestly I've been putting it off." I braced myself for bad news, "It's about your Mom. She'd been living out of the reserve base office but she actually owned a house and since she named you in her will it's yours if you want it. She owed back taxes on it, quite a bit, but if nothing else you should check it out because her effects have been moved there." She hoofed me a document which turned out to be the deed to the house with a key taped on, "Also there's a bank account she had her paychecks from the reserve deposited into, so you'll want to look into that, though I doubt there's much in it."

In the afternoon my Father and I looked through the house. Though it had a key it wasn't locked but had survived it's abandonment unmolested in spite of that. The roof was good and though it was old, the furniture was serviceable. The taxes and penalties amounted to a full fifth of the houses value so it was no small thing to take on. There was little of Siren Song herself in the house. Heaped in the living room were boxes that contained her uniforms, name plate and small library from the reserve office. There were paints, bushes and a blank canvas, but no paintings, I was disappointed to see. The other bits and pieces had clearly come with the house, they didn't fit her, and I wondered how she'd come by it.

I didn't want to leave Peachy Sweet's yet and didn't have the cash to pay the taxes so I told my Dad that he could have it if he wanted it. Even with the tax bill he'd come out better than paying rent because he'd recoup his loss and more when he sold it. He agreed and promptly moved into the house.

When I came to visit a week later he was taking papers directly from one of Mom's file boxes and wadding them up with the intent of using them for kindling in the fireplace, "Hey, now those are tax receipts, you've got to save those for three years in case there's an audit, and that one's insurance on the house, if you burn that and the house burns down you'll just be out on the street with nothing."

"Bah, you know I can't stand all this bureaucratic scribbledy gook." He said and when I told him he had to save them anyway, he stuffed the papers back in the box and shoved it towards me, "You want it, you keep it." Then I had even more of my Mother's papers to look through, but I put the whole mess aside, Mom's tangled legacy would be there when I got back. I had a date on the coast with a griffon and a whale.

Author's Note:

Guys, guys. I'm sorry about Cappy, alright? Have a puppy. Puppies make it all better.

Comments

[Jonathon Smythe]

...I'm still a little upset about Cappy, but the puppy is a good start. Keep it up!