Chapter 1: A Break in the Routine

Horizon

“Be a vanguard,” they said. “See the world,” they said. Well, I became a vanguard and I’m seeing the world. Only problem with that is the world is flat. You do see huge swaths of land long before anypony else lays eyes on it. Thing is, all you see is more desert earth and sand, the same distant mountains, and the occasional oasis… The oases are nice, at least.

“Hey Horizon! Got a bogey coming in low and fast. Looks like he’s making a bee-line for our cloud bank!”

And bandits. Can’t forget those… *sigh*

“I’m on it, Sweep,” I reply as I angle myself for a dive.

I flick out my hoof spikes and dive forehooves-first to intercept the intruder. This part of the job would almost be fun if it didn’t make me almost feel sorry for the poor fools trying to raid us. This one doesn’t even have any back armor.

A perfect collision: My foreleg hoof spikes impale the would-be thief, he screams and then gurgles his surprise at getting caught, gets shoved off of my spikes by my rear hooves, and plummets to take a very extended nap in the sand and sun. I shake a bit of bandit juice off of my spikes and flick them back up, another encounter resolved.

Well, that fills this week’s “excitement” quota. Now it’s back to watching dirt, and making sure it doesn’t do anything suspicious. I guess there’s a chance somepony else might go for our clouds, but I doubt there’s another bogey for days. Would be nice if we came across some lost supplies. Happens once in a blue moon, but one time Sweep and I found a skin of te— Now what do we have here?

“Sweep, there’s something on the ground. It looks like a pony. I don’t remember dropping this one. Looks weird, too.”

“How weird?”

“For one thing, I can’t see any wings.”

“Huh. You don’t figure it’s a—”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Whatever it is, it probably won’t last long in this heat. Sweep? Get some nugget to cover my airspace. I’m going in.”

“Wait! What if it’s a siren? Or a succubus? Or a vampire?!”

“Or maybe it’s a leprecorn and it’ll show me to its pot of gold,” I snark with an aileron roll to go with my rolling eyes.

“Really though,” I assure him, “I think I’m safe. It would have burned up by now if it were a vampire. If it’s a siren, it’d have to drag me a long ways before it found a pool to drown me in, and I trust you to save me long before it comes to that. And if it’s a succubus? Well, at least you’d have something interesting to report back about my demise. Maybe I’ll even get her to name a poniculus after you.”

“Okay, whatever!” he said in a fluster, “Just be careful, okay Rize?”

“Don’t worry, Sweep, I’ll be fine.”

And so I begin my downward spiral. Maybe it’ll be nice, picking a pony up off the ground instead of shooting him down there.

Getting closer, I can see the downed pony better. For starters, it, or really she, clearly doesn’t have wings. Didn’t lose them either. No nubs or scars on her back I can see; just never had any to begin with. I guess that coat of hers might be hiding some scars, with how fluffy it is. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Time to land and get a closer look.

Actually, she doesn’t look that bad, aside from being a bit on the chubby side. Not too bulky, either; she’s no rabid ground pounding berserker, that’s for sure. Wonder how she’d look without all the mats and sweat in her fur?

Unconscious, but still breathing, so that’s a good sign. Is there anything useful in those saddlebags?

Wow. These things are a lot bigger on the inside. Salt, ladels, cakes, weird metal contraption… It’s like someone took the entire mess tent and stuffed it in a room. And yet there’s not a drop of water to be found. How’d she even get this far?

Well, better prep her for transport.

Okay. Commandeer her saddlebags so they don’t slide off on the way over, do your best to slip some water down her throat, and take her pointed gold, silver, and purple hat off of her head and put it into her bag so it doesn’t fall off in transit. What kind of characters usually wear hats like that again? Wizards? Explorers?

There was a horn under that hat. Huh.

Today’s looking to be a bit less boring than expected.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

Urgh… how much did I have to drink last night to deserve this? So hot, and my head hurts like… something that really hurts.

I wiggle a bit, to find I’m waking up in somepony’s arms. Huh. That’s… actually never happened before. Oh for the love of Lanthanum, don’t let it somehow be Pierce. Whoever it is is holding me up pretty tight.

Holding me up. That’s weird… I’ll worry about that once my head hurts less.

“Urgh… Stocky, this is the last time I try your salmonberry brandy, honeyjack, and saffron cocktails,” I mumble not quite coherently as my head lolls to the side.

“She’s awake, and she talks. This day keeps getting more and more interesting,” the stallion carrying me muses aloud.

That’s not a voice I’m familiar with at all. A little distressing, but not unheard of. His word choice felt a bit oddly insulting, though, like I’m an animal he just found on the side of the road.

Wait. Carrying. With all four legs. Something isn’t quite adding up here.

It sure is windy here, and turbulent. Where the hay am I? Gee, Spicy, maybe you should actually pry your eyes open and look down to find out.

“Ack! It sure is bright out here.”

Okay. Lots of orange-brown crackly earth and golden sand. Like a dessert I’d invented for the King. Dessert…

Desert. Oh. That’s the Pegasopian Desert below me. Never seen it this close.

Below me.

Below me.

Well. That explains the draft, at least. That doesn’t explain how I’m up here, though. Maybe the stallion carrying me has an idea?

I look back up, and I see some leather, some metal bits, and sweet-merciful-Terra-I-think-those-are-wings.

My eyes snap shut again.

‘Okay, Spicy, take a deep breath. There’s no need to panic. Yet.’

“Excuse me, but are you a p-p-pegasus?”

“Yep.”

“And you’re flying away with me?”

“Also yep.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!”

Chapter 2: Acrophobiagenesis

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Horizon

“Eeyagh!” I shout as I clamp my ears down. “You sure have a pair of lungs, lady. Think you could pipe down?”

“UNHOOF ME, FOUL DEMON! I’D SOONER DIE THAN LET MYSELF BE RAVISHED BY SUCH FILTH!”

Pluck my pin feathers, she’s loud! She needs to calm down.

“Believe me, I have no intention of ‘ravishing’ you. You’re a little on the plump side for my tastes,” I joke, trying to break the tension.

“PLUMP?! You don’t call a mare plump! That’s a word you use… for… food. OH MERCIFUL TERRA, HE’S GOING TO EAT ME-HE-HEEEEEEE!” She starts bawling in terror.

‘Smooth flying there, Rize. Real smooth. Maybe you should try a different tack.’

“No, you’re not going to get eaten, either! You’re starting to convince me that leaving you for dead in the middle of this Terra-forsaken waste is a good idea, though! You didn’t even pack yourself any water. How did you expect to get anywhere?”

That shut her up.

“Has the thought that I’m saving your life ever entered your mind? Snap my wings off, I took a big enough risk already assuming you were some kind of weird, wingless pony with a horn instead of some kind of magical monster that eats ponies’ souls. Not everypony would be so charitable!”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

Oh, right. This isn’t the worst hangover ever; this is just me nearly dying. How in the hay did I mix that up? On the bright side, I guess this means I didn’t do anything too embarrassing before I passed out in the middle of the desert. Except for mouth off to every pony in the Platinum Court and get my rump banished to said middle of said desert.

That, and failing to pack any water in my saddlebag of holding when I knew I wouldn’t just find any lying around out here. And here I thought I was a genius for remembering to pack some cases of the family’s private mead reserve for special occasions.

And then I accused the pe— the pega— the pony who’s currently saving me from death by dessication of trying to eat me or worse.

I am such an idiot.

After a couple of minutes of letting me stew in my own thoughts, he breaks the silence. “So, now that you’re done shouting yourself hoarse, how are you feeling? Looked like you fainted from heat exhaustion, and that takes a lot out of most pegasi I know.”

Let’s see: Headache, confusion, loss of consciousness, excessive thirst… Sounds like heat exhaustion to me. Actually, I’m not quite as thirsty as I’d expect.

“I’m pretty confused, and I’ve got a horn-splitting headache,” I rasp. “I’m not as thirsty as I thought I’d be, though. Did you… give me some water?”

“Yep. I’ve dealt with a few heat exhaustion victims before,” he states professionally. “It’s why you’re being carried so high above the ground: it’s cooler up here. Also why you’re upside-down.”

And I am thankful for that.

“I— I think we got off on the wrong hoof. My name is Amber Spice. What’s yours?”

“Horizon.”

“So, Horizon…” Not the worst name I could come up with. Figures flying ponies would have sky-sounding names, I guess. “Where are you taking me?”

“To the caravan. To my home.”

To the pegasi.

Oh, demonwings.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

The trip back to the caravan is taking a good deal longer than usual, due to this mare’s unusual weight, but it’s finally coming into view. Whatever she is, she’s not built like a pegasus. It’s like I’m trying to fly while holding a pony-sized waterskin. Maybe this is what trying to lift a fully-grown camel by yourself is like?

She couldn’t be part camel, could she? She looks too much like a pony, but she’s heavy like a camel and doesn’t have wings. Then again, camels don’t have horns, either. Probably a worthless line of thought.

She’s not a pegasus, she’s not a camel, so what is she?

That’s a question that can wait to distract me until I’m back at my post.

Whatever she is, she needs a bit more help before she can stand on her own four hooves, and I’m not the pony to do that.

“Amber Spice?” That’s an odd name. What kind of pony names her daughter after food? “We’re coming up on the caravan.”

“Mhm” comes her clipped reply.

Between that, and how she tensed up when I mentioned the caravan, I’m getting the feeling she doesn’t want to see other ponies right now.

Can’t say I really want to right now, either. I can see Merry Weather dispensing water to some foals, so that should keep her occupied. There’s Cloudy, but she looks like she’s too busy reorganizing the cloud bank to notice us. *ugh* There’s Idle Wings hovering by the carding booth, probably looking for gossip. I hope he doesn’t look up.

So there’s Amber’s heat exhaustion, her being in the middle of nowhere without water, her… overexcited reaction to meeting me…

What happened to this mare?

“I gave you some water earlier, but you still need help. My duty in the herd is to go before its face and ward off danger, not to tend to the sick, so I can’t help you.

“I’m taking you to some ponies who can, though. They’re healers: kind mares who are experts in taking care of dehydrated ponies like you,” I say in one of my better reassuring voices.

She responds with a mumbled “Okay” and tries to withdraw a bit further into herself.

“You see that up ahead? That’s the caravan. We’re about to come in for a gentle landing somewhere in the middle of it. I’m going to flip you face-down and gently lower you to the ground. Tell me when you’re ready for me to let go. Okay?”

“Okay,” she tersely replies.

I torque and drop her, she squawks, and I catch her again once she’s right-side-up. We bled a bit more altitude than I was expecting, but we’re still in the air.

We pass through a few clouds of pegasi and over some mixed trains of camels and the odd pegasus mingling with them. A few of the pegasi glance at me and Amber with more than a passing interest, but I’m trying to ignore them as I come in for a heavy landing. They’ll have plenty to prod me about later, but I should be able to put that off until I’m off-duty if I can drop this mare off fast enough.

Speaking of dropping fast, the ground is rising to meet me a little too enthusiastically for my liking.

“Oh fly me to the Sun.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

“Okay,” I mumble.

Rather accommodating for a creature I have to keep telling myself isn’t a dangerous predator just so I don’t panic myself to death. Is panicking to death an actual thing? I don’t want to find out for myself.

I feel a twist, and now I’m falling and spinning through the air really fast. “AAAAaaaAAAAaaaAA-oof!”

‘Okay, you’re safe. That wasn’t a treacherous demon trying to see what your insides would look like as outsides on the desert floor. The flying pony just had to let you go for a little bit so you’d be able to land on your legs instead of your back. Which, in hindsight, would almost definitely have to involve some freefall.

‘Relax, Spicy. You’re being flown in to some kind of hospital so you can rest and recover from almost dying. You’ll be tended to by pega— by ponies who know what they’re doing. Mares who have no interest in taking advantage of your helpless state. No interest whatsoever. None.’

Okay, maybe it would be better if I didn’t think too hard about it and took a look around, instead.

Whoa. It’s like a city, but it’s moving. Canopies being held up from above or below, brown and pastel shapes milling about on the ground between them as they move along…

I’m seeing some scattered groups – colonies? – of pegasi as we fly in. Huh. Feathers. Shouldn’t they look more like bats? How do mammals even have feathers? I guess calling them colonies doesn’t quite fit, then. Something birdlike, maybe? How about a murder of pegasi? No, that’s a horrible choice of words.

We pass a few pegasi shuttling clouds around between clumps. Never thought I’d see clouds up close, and they look interesting. They’re fluffy-looking, but not in the same way my coat is. I guess I could compare it to beaten grease? Except less solid-looking and hazier.

Maybe I could call them a cloud of pegasi? That seems to fit, and clouds don’t sound anywhere near as bad as murders. These ponies have to be my friends for a while, at least, or I’m toast.

Oh some toast would be divine right now. And some salt. A cartload of salt.

I look down at the ground below, and— What in the name of Terra’s generously proportioned rump are those creatures down there? They come in various shades of brown, and they’re shaped kinda like a pony, but different. They’ve got longer necks, longer faces, and this huge hump in the middle of their backs. Many of them, especially the ones with darker hair, have something draped over them that looks like white, billowy bedsheets. It makes them look like walking tents, with their humps serving as a central pole.

Speaking of hair, these creatures are hairy. Not fluffy like me, but coarse and shaggy, like low-quality pelts.

Can’t really examine them in-depth, though, since flying is apparently way faster than walking.

You know, I never really appreciated how fast we were flying until we started getting close to the caravan.

Actually, is the ground supposed to be getting closer that quickly?

“Oh horse apples.”

*WHUMPF*

After several seconds to recover from the ground’s overenthusiastic greeting, I wheeze, “Okay Horizon, I’m ready for you to let go now.”

Gentle landing my furry backside.

Horizon, apparently shaking off his daze, hops off and lands in front of me and begins taking off my saddlebags he’d been wearing, giving me my first good look at him.

Horizon’s got a short, sky blue coat. It’s shorter and sleeker than any unicorn’s coat I’d ever seen, but that makes sense with his flying around in a desert and all. Must be a lot easier to keep clean and straight, too. His mane is in a close-cropped Mohawk, like what I’d expect to see poking out the top of a guard’s helmet. Which makes sense, since poking out of a helmet is precisely what his mane is doing.

Speaking of guards and helmets, he’s wearing what looks like some kind of armor. Why isn’t there more metal? Would it be too heavy? His armor looks pretty sturdy, regardless.

The main feature I notice is a convex saddle made of tightly woven plant stalks with a color similar to his orange-gold mane and tail and to the desert earth. It slopes down towards his sides and away from his neck, and its sides curve around his wings so he has full freedom of movement there.

As a chef, I have plenty of experience trying to cut plant fibers. Believe me when I say you’d have an easier time of convincing him politely to remove his saddle so you can cut him to ribbons than you would trying to actually cut through it. Even a serrated blade would probably just get stuck in there. Maybe a good, long spike could get through it?

And speaking of spikes, Horizon here has a wicked, blood-encrusted pair of them attached to the outsides of his front horseshoes. Let’s not think about where the blood came from. That sounds nice. Those heavy-looking metal shoes on his back legs don’t look fun to get clobbered with, either. Remind me not to make him angry when he’s all suited up. Or ever, really.

Aside from those eye-catching aspects, his armor has some more mundane features, like leather padding on the front of his forelegs and shoulders and an open helmet made of gleaming steel. He looks every inch the pony ready and willing to end some lives.

‘Or to save yours.’

Whatever the case, now he’s talking to a pair of concerned and/or slightly bewildered pegasus mares about me. Yay, attention!

“The creature’s name is Amber Spice. I know she doesn’t have wings and she has a horn growing out of her forehead, but I think she’s some kind of pony. That’s why I’m leaving her here with you instead of with the camels, and that should be enough for now. It was enough for me to pick her up, so it should be enough for you to patch her up.”

Camels. Is that what those shaggy brown humped things are called?

“I do know she has heat exhaustion, and that she’s had a bit too much excitement lately. You two know what to do from here, right?”

“Yes, sir.” the two mares respond in unison.

“Good. One more thing,” Horizon says as he turns to fly off, “she’s rather skittish. Keep her away from other ponies if you can. She doesn’t seem to like them much.”

What are you talking about? I like ponies fine. I’m not some kind of crazy, friendless recluse with a thousand cats, no matter what ponies have been saying behind my—

Oh. Right. Desert. Pony I’ve just met who doesn’t know anything about my social life or lack thereof back on Terra’s Horn.

I need some water, and a nap. I’m more out of it than I thought. Confound this headache.

“Okay. Balmy?” the rose-hued mare with the light blue mane said to the other, “Standard pony procedure. I need you to fetch this, um, mare here a waterskin, and then we can fly her someplace cooler.”

“Alright, Meddy,” the light brown one with the leaf green mane replies before fluttering away.

After the one she called Balmy leaves, Meddy cautiously makes her way towards me.

“Amber Spice. That’s your name, Isn’t it,” she says gently, her phrase more statement than question.

I nod. Seems like an appropriate answer.

“My name is Meddy Vac, and the mare who just flew off to get you some water is Soothing Balm. We’re healers, and it’s our duty to nurse any sick or injured ponies back to health. To do that, though, I’m going to need to ask you a few questions and give you a physical examination. Are you okay with that?”

“Sure,” I mumble.

I could probably use a check-up after the ground’s overwhelming welcome earlier, anyhow.

“Good. Let’s get underway, then.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

So far today I’ve flown in a straight line, dispatched a bandit, and rescued the strangest pony I’ve ever met from certain death. Definitely one of the most interesting days I’ve had in nearly a year, and it’s not even 1100 hours yet. I’ve even managed to dodge Idle Wings before he could corral me and suck away what zest for life I have left with his nosiness.

Yep. Now it’s back to patrolling the barren wastes on the way to the next oasis, keeping the others out of harm’s way.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Or not. Ow. There’s only one creature I’ve met that can rend the sky quite like that, and I’d thought I’d left her in good hooves not five minutes ago. Guess I really can’t trust anyone to do their flipping jobs right.

After making a mad dash to the source of the scream, I come upon an interesting scene.

The mare that I’d rescued earlier, Amber Spice, is out cold on top of a camel. Carlyle, I think. He’s unconscious too, legs crumpled beneath him. And what should I see above them, but Meddy Vac giving Soothing Balm a thorough dressing down halfway down from a nice, fluffy cumulus.

*Sigh*

I think I’m getting an idea of what happened here. Still, I want to hear it from the horses’ mouths.

Chapter 3: Horizon's Scope

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Horizon

After checking Amber Spice’s and Carlyle’s vitals, I fly up to find out how and why in the sunscorched desert those healers knocked out their patient and a passerby.

“What do you mean, ‘just following my orders’?! Balmy, what part of my orders involved losing patients and clobbering camels?”

Meddy Vac always did have a bit of a temper.

Soothing Balm shrugs her shoulders, her face neutral. “It’s not so much you ordered me to drop her on a dromedary, as it is a direct result of following your orders.”

Soothing Balm always gives off an aura of calm under pressure. It’s a great asset for her job, but it’s also a bit eerie when you see the whole world falling down around her ears and she fails to bat an eye. I can see how ponies might think she doesn’t take anything seriously, but you can find the signs she cares about something once you’ve known her long enough.

After looking like she’s about to explode for a couple seconds, Meddy audibly and visibly deflates.

“Okay. Explain to me how telling you to follow standard pony procedure for heat exhaustion led to the current situation.”

“Standard procedure for ponies in heat exhaustion,” she replies, “is to get them some water and then move them to a cooler place for continued treatment. Usually, that place is a high altitude cumulus shaded by another cloud.

She shrugs again. “This pony was apparently nonstandard and thus incompatible with standard pony procedure.”

I facehoof and groan at this, but Meddy’s reaction is more… animated.

“Nonstandard? Nonstandard?!” she shouts, her volume rising as her gestures grow wilder and her face darkens from pink to blood red. “What was your first clue she was ‘nonstandard?’ Was it the bony spike jutting from her forehead? Was it the fact that she weighs more than a pregnant camel? Or might it have been her complete and utter lack of wings!”

“It does look more obvious in hindsight that a pony without wings wouldn’t have much use for cloudwalking,” Soothing Balm stated, “but who ever heard of a pony falling through clouds?”

Huh. Weird. Well, that’s all I needed to know.

“Soothing Balm does have a point, Meddy,” I butt in. “I brought you a strange creature that looked like a pony and talked like a pony, and I told you to treat her just like any other pony. Soothing Balm did so, and that’s what lead to the current mess.

“Really, I’m the one who’s at fault here for not being more clear. I should have warned you that she was probably too heavy to cloudwalk,” I say with my hoof to my face. “That said, would either of you two care to explain to me why you’re up here bickering while your patient is down there?” I ask, tiredly, as I point a hoof at the pony-camel pileup below.

Meddy, her face going from blood red to a pale pink, promptly remembers her duty and drops from the sky with impressive speed before I can continue speaking.

Satisfied with Meddy’s swift response, I turn to Soothing Balm.

“Both she and Carlyle seem fine by the way,” I say to her in a more professional tone, “relatively speaking. I’m no healer, though, so they may still need some looking at.”

“‘Need some looking at’ is putting it mildly,” she says, scanning the scene below. “From the looks of it, Carlyle is going to be holding down a bed in the infirmary for a few days at least. More, if he can milk some sympathy from the healers. Less, if his puns backfire.

“Speaking of looking at,” she continues, “I got a good look at the pony you brought in. I can definitely say she’s a pony mare of some description. Aside from her lack of wings, her horn, her unusual weight, her voluminous coat, and her apparent inability to cloudwalk, she has all the right parts in all the right places. No matter what Meddy says, this mare is no camel. I also sincerely doubt that she’s some kind of siren or leprecorn.”

“I didn’t see any rainbows near where I picked her up, so you may be right.”

“That said,” she says, fixing me with a piercing gaze, “I’ve never seen anything quite like her. Judging by the looks you two were getting as you flew in, I doubt anyone else has either.

“Where did you find such an unusual mare?”

Despite the earlier mishap, Amber Spice is in capable hooves, and I need to get back out to my post. Wouldn’t want some nugget to get hurt covering for me, after all, so I turn in the air to leave. Not before answering her question, though.

“Where did I find her? Among the cracked earth and golden sands of this Terra-forsaken desert, naturally!” I shout over my shoulder as I fly off, feeling puckish.

Puckish.

I haven’t felt that way in a while.

I crack a grin as I gain speed and altitude. Looks like that mare I found is making life more interesting already.

“Hey Rize!” a stallion hails me from below. Pretty close in front, too, so I can’t just pretend I was too far away to hear him. Oh well. Maybe he has something to say that’s worth hearing. Doesn’t happen often, but it does seem to be a blue moon kind of day.

I slow my flight a bit, but I keep going at a good pace.

“What is it, Idle Wings?” I bark. “I’m trying to get back to my post so some nugget doesn’t get greased in my place.”

“Well if it isn’t everypony’s favorite vanguard!” he says, oozing false sweetness. “Looks like you’ve been having an interesting day, and I know some ponies who would just love to hear all about it.”

I guess Idle Wings doing anything not inane was a long shot.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Idle. I was just coming back for some chow. I was, uh, hungrier than expected.”

“Oh ho ho! Rize actually eating? Now that would be some juicy news. Why, nopony’s seen you do that with the sun up since Terry Sails flew off. And please, call me ‘Wings’. All my friends do.

“Fairy Tails,” I correct him. “And she didn’t ‘fly off’.”

“Right. So what could have gotten stoic, world-weary Rize eating again?” He scratches his goatee, flying belly-up. “Might it have something to do with that strange creature he was seen flying in with? Now I didn’t see the creature myself, but from what my sources say, it sounds fascinating.”

I roll so I’m looking into the sky instead of at him. “Not that interesting. I found a pony passed-out in the open desert, so I brought her back to the healers to recover.”

He does half a barrel-roll to re-enter my view. “And then went for an early lunch. Right.

“Now I don’t know about what you consider unusual, Rize, what with all the amazing things you never tell me about from your adventures vanguarding, but I’d never heard of a pony without wings before. And you say it’s a mare? Interesting…”

Aw, camel crap. So much for boring him away.

“Okay,” I say, “so she doesn’t have wings. Don’t think she’d have much use for them if she did, with how heavy she is—”

“Is it true she’s as big as a camel? Sandy said she was big as two camels put together, but I don’t think you could airlift that much dead weight.”

I speed my flight a bit. If he wants to waste my time gathering gossip, he’s going to have to work for it.

“No. She’s a pony-sized pony with a horn and no wings. Can you buzz off now? I’ve got someplace to be.”

“Now that’s just rude, Rize. Sometimes I wonder what Merry Trails saw in a stallion like you. I’m willing to overlook that sort of behavior for now, though, because I value our relationship.”

“It’s ‘Fairy Tails’.”

“Right. So did I hear you right when you said she had a horn? What could it mean?! Is she a djinn? A wizard? Can she grant wishes? Can she read minds? Does she have a hidden pot of gold and jewels? Is that why you rescued her?”

“I doubt she grants wishes, as I’m still here talking to you.” I flip back over and start to pour on more speed.

He darts down into my flight path, forcing me to slow down or crash into him. I choose to slow down, though the alternative is tempting. “Or was it a ‘rescue’ at all? –” *Gasp* “– Rize! You didn’t kidnap her, did you? What would Scary Nails think!”

“Fairy Tails would think I’d be perfectly justified in bucking your head so hard it lands at the next oasis for even suggesting that.” Well, she might have been upset that I’d reduced the storyteller population by one, but she wouldn’t have complained about the week of forced leave I’d probably get for justifiable equicide.

Dear Terra, I miss her.

I take a deep breath, slowing to a near-hover. “Idle, go gather stories elsewhere. I need to get back to my post before somepony dies.

“Now I’m going to start flying back there, and if you cut me off again, I have two heavy steel horseshoes that say I’m not stopping. Understand?”

“Eh, alright.” He shrugs, feathers utterly unruffled. “Catch up with you later! Hope you finish getting over Dairy Pails soon!”

*Sigh*

How in Tartarus is that idiot still alive? I don’t know how somepony like Sweep was ever friends with him.

Maybe now I can get back to work in relative peace.

“HORIZON!” a booming voice blares from above.

Maybe a distant relative of peace, then. Like peace’s third cousin. Sorry, nugget, looks like you’ll have to hold out a while longer. At least you’ll probably fare better than my ears; at this rate, they’ll be dead before sundown.

The owner of the voice – an armored, azure mare with a grayish sky blue mane – plummets directly into my path. She’s got a look on her face that says that I’d better halt rather than dodge around her if I value my status as a living, breathing stallion.

‘Okay, Rize. Just smile and keep cool.’

“Hello, Blue Aegis,” I say, keeping a cordial tone in my voice and everything else out of it. “What seems to be the problem?”

She looks at me as if I’d just sprouted a second head and that new head had just insulted her mother. “Wh-what s-s-seems to be the p-p-problem?!” she sputters. “You brought a xenos, an alien, a perfect stranger into our midst. You don’t even have a clue what it could be capable of. What were you thinking?!”

I let the forced smile slide off my face. “You’re right: I don’t know exactly what she could do. I do know, though, that she was perfectly capable of dying if I didn’t help her. Before I’d found her, she’d already fainted from severe heat exhaustion. She didn’t even have any water packed with her. I get the feeling she never really meant to be here, and yet here she is. As a vanguard, I have sufficient authority to accept refugees I find into the caravan.”

“That thing isn’t a refugee, it’s a liability. Do you remember any of the old stories? Some idiots hang around some pony-like creature they don’t recognize, and then bam!” She slams her hooves together. “Everyone gets devoured in the night like in Homing’s Odyssey, or all of their clouds get burned away like in Plover’s Touch Not the Sun, or it enthralls everyone and makes them its slaves like in Little Lost Siren, or it kidnaps all of the foals, or—or any of a million other horrible things!”

“Or it turns out to be a friendly djinn and rewards its rescuer with three wishes as thanks for the hospitality, like in Saladdin,” I reply.

“You don’t honestly believe Terra would be so kind as to reward us for such stupidity, do you?” she snaps back.

“And do you really think Terra so cruel as to do any of the things you mentioned?” I coolly retort.

“Terra is cruelty, Horizon. Just look around you,” she says as she whirls around. “Is this the kind of place a kind maker would send us to live? Among the coarse sands and cracked earth of the garden she forgot to water? Would a kind creator let her little ponies kill each other over a few clouds, while they scurry between oases so they don’t drink them dry?

“Would a kind goddess take my little sister Fairy Tails away from me by the hooves of kidnappers?!” she shouts, real pain in her voice.

That takes the wind out from under my wings. If there’s one pony in the world who was hurt more by my fiancé’s kidnapping than I was, it was her big sister Blue Aegis. All she wanted was for Fairy Tails and Dust Devil to be happy and safe, and she could have been happy in life. She blames me for failing to protect her sister, and frankly I can’t say she’s in the wrong.

We hover in silence for a minute while she calms down and I digest her words.

“I’m sorry, Horizon,” she says, eyes downcast. “I should treat her memory better than using it as an emotional club.”

I remain silent, and she looks back up at me before continuing.

“I still mean every word I said before that, though. I still think you should have left that creature where you found it, and I have half a mind to fly it out to the middle of nowhere myself—”

“Aegis,” I butt in, “that creature is a pony like you or me. Well, mostly like you or me. I have the professional opinion of two healers backing me up on this, and I’m not about to let you or anyone else harm a helpless mare if I can help it.”

“—but I’ll respect your authority as a vanguard to bring her into the caravan under your protection,” she continues her statement as if she hadn’t been interrupted just now.

I blink blankly a couple times. Not quite the reaction I expected—

“Know this, though: I will be watching that creature like a hawk, day and night. If it does anything suspicious, I will not hesitate to do what is necessary to defend this caravan. I swear upon my honor as a guard, and on my lost sister’s memory.”

—but I really shouldn’t have expected any less. She always had her heart in the right place, at least.

“I appreciate your coming to me with your concerns rather than taking matters into your own hooves right away, and I can definitely appreciate how much you care for the safety of every pegasus and camel in this caravan,” I say, gravely, when suddenly an idea sparks to life.

“You know that really old story, The Commander and the Sheikh? When those two met, the pegasi were tired from fleeing the Great Freeze, and the camels… Well, they helped the pegasi when they didn’t have to, even though they didn’t know each other at all and…”

Aegis quirks an eyebrow.

“What I’m meaning to say is, just try to give her the benefit of the doubt,” I continue, deflating a little. “It could be a good break from the routine.”

“Horizon? I still don’t trust it, and you already have my word that I won’t do anything to harm the creature until it does something to confirm my suspicions. That’s about as much doubt as I’m willing to let a xenos benefit from,” she replies in a level tone as we continue to hover over the outskirts of the caravan. “You never really did answer my question, though. What were you thinking when you decided to bring that strange creature back to us?”

“I was thinking –” I pause for a bit, reflecting. “– that it might be nice lifting a pony from the sands instead of shooting them down into them, for once.”

Her face grows thoughtful for a moment. “I… think I can see where you’re coming from,” she says in a slightly softer tone, before her face hardens in resolve. “If she does prove to be trouble, though, I won’t let you or anybody else come between me and protecting the caravan. I’m not about to let anyone else lose a family member due to your reckless helpfulness.”

And with that, Blue Aegis flies back up to her post to watch over her little ponies and camels down below. That mare looks after the whole caravan like a mother gryphon guards her chicks, or so the stories of gryphons go.

I resume my own journey at a faster pace, even if I’m in a more somber mood. Reckless helpfulness? I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, either. That’s why I’ve stuck with the vanguard thing through all of the soul-grinding boredom and bloodshed. Nopony should have to spend all their time worrying about bandits coming to run them through and steal their stuff, so I figure I should be on the front lines facing unknown dangers instead of them.

‘So why did I save a mare I knew nothing about? To change up the routine? Because it was a fun idea? Maybe Blue Aegis was right. It’s not just my own life I’m taking into my hooves when I take a gamble…’

After a few more minutes of flight I finally spy Aerial Sweep and the nugget. The nugget is one I recognize. A younger, blazing red stallion with a harsh sunlight-yellow mane. Spot Check, I think his name is.

“See anything interesting while I was gone, Spot?” I shout his way.

“No, sir! Nothing interesting, sir! Just the way I like it, sir!” he shouts back once I’m well within speaking range.

“Well,” I say with a mild roll of my eyes, “glad to see you’re still in one piece. The nugget do okay, Sweep?”

“Well,” Sweep says with a shrug, “he did a pretty great job of observing nothing, that’s for sure.”

“A vital skill for any guard to have,” I reply as I nod sagely before turning back to Spot Check. “Congratulations, nugget, you’re dismissed.”

At that, Spot beams, salutes, and bounces along through the air back towards the training group and the caravan.

“Now that…” I sigh and shake my head. “That is a pony who knows exactly what he wants to do in life.”

“I kinda admire his enthusiasm, really,” he replies through half a smile, before it starts to fade.

He continues in a softer voice, “Kinda wish you were still that enthusiastic about anything. Something’s eating you, Rize.”

I open my mouth to brush him off, but he’s faster.

“Something beyond the usual. Your tail’s sagging a little, your wings look like they’re flying through agave nectar, and you haven’t quite looked me in the eyes since you’ve gotten back.”

I glance back at my wings and tail and then look back in Sweep’s general direction. Am I really broadcasting that many tells? Sun above, he’s observant!

“Rize, we’re friends. You’ve helped me through some hard times, and I’ve tried to help you through some of yours as well. Even if you don’t think I can help you, at least let me share the load.”

I turn around to search the skyline, but I keep my ears locked on Sweep’s position.

“Tell me, Sweep,” I say, “what would you have done if the two of you actually saw something while I was gone?”

“I’d have told the nugget to hold back while I dealt with it. No sense in sending in a half-trained spotter to swat bogeys.”

“Or a fully trained one,” I shoot back. “What were they thinking, sending a nugget spotter to cover for a striker? Somepony could have been hurt.”

“It’s hardly the first time command’s made a decision like this, and everypony is clearly still fine. I know this, you know this, and you know I know you know this. That’s clearly not what’s getting down in your mouth. At least, not directly. What’s the real issue here, Rize?” he probes.

“I guess that’s not quite it, then.” I let out an annoyed chuff.

I start flying forward again to take my place in the network of vanguards protecting the caravan, and turn my head to see Sweep fall into formation above me and to the side.

Flying. Just flying forward at the caravan’s pace, scanning the sky above and the ground below; it’s relaxing, really, when I’m in the mood to appreciate it. It helps that I know Sweep has my back, too. He’d catch sight of anything dangerous and let me know about it long before I’d have a chance to see and recognize it on my own. He’s a better wingpony than I could reasonably ask for, and a good friend besides.

Speaking of which, I guess I better answer his question.

“You’re probably right, Sweep,” I say with a sigh. “I don’t think I’m really that worried whether command knows less about what they’re doing than usual. Like you said, we’re still here and so are our clouds.

“I think… I think I’m just worried that I don’t know what I’m doing. I abandon my post so I can scoop some mare – hay, I think she’s some kind of pony – and take her to some healers who don't really know what to do with her either.

“I don’t know, Sweep,” I say as I cast him a worried glance. “What if she’s dangerous? I don’t think she’s a succubus or anything silly like that, but what if she’s a spy for another caravan? Or maybe she’s some great and powerful wizard, waiting to recover and get her power back before enslaving us all? It would make the hat make more sense, at least.”

Aerial Sweep does an aileron roll to reflect his rolling eyes before he replies. “Have you been talking to Blue Aegis again? Because you’re starting to sound like her. That mother gryphon could put a damper on anything.”

“Yeah, she did pin me down and give me some things to think about,” I admit. “She asked me what I was thinking bringing a xenos into the middle of the caravan, and that got me wondering the same thing.”

Sweep does a couple slow, thoughtful barrel rolls around me before he continues. “Way I remember it, Rize, you saved some strange mare’s life. There she was, drying out like a date in the noonday sun, when whoosh!” He dives down before popping back up to keep talking. “You swoop in to save her from becoming pony jerky and take her back to the safety of the caravan to receive the finest medical care you’ll find in this desert.”

“If by finest medical care you mean Meddy Vac and Soothing Balm,” I snark, nearly cracking a grin.

“Finest medical care you’ll find in this desert,” he confirms while nodding mock-sagely. “And if you fail to mention any of these heroics to her, you can bet your wings I’ll find a way to exaggerate them to her,” he says, a devilish grin spreading on his face.

“Urgh. And here I was, hoping to finally get some peace and quiet,” I grumble.

“Relax, Rize. Just trying to lighten the mood a little. Well, mostly,” he says with a wink before continuing.

“Anyway, I saw the two of you talking on your way back to the caravan. Heard some of it, too. Yeesh, that girl has a pair of lungs!” He does a quick loop. “Tell me, did she seem like some spy or a great and powerful wizard to you? Because from what I heard and saw, she seemed a lot more like a scared and confused mare who was out of her element.”

I start a lazy barrel roll as I mull that over for a bit. ‘What did I see? A pony who was better outfitted for a party than she was for desert travel, for one thing. Not exactly the most threatening thing I’ve encountered in these wastes. She was terrified of everything, too, especially me,’ I think with a grimace. ‘Definitely not the attitude of a conqueror.’

“Thanks, Sweep. You always know just what to say to put a pony’s mind at ease.”

“No problem, Rize. Now let’s just put that behind us for now and keep flying until they relieve us for chow” he says, punctuating his couplet with a quick loop.

I nod in agreement as I continue to scan the skyline for friends or foes.

Something about the horizon has always drawn me to it. To peer over it and see what’s out there. I look back at the other horizon behind me, where the caravan is. Where that strange mare is. I get the feeling that the strangeness with her is just beginning.

Chapter 4: Of Aliens (and Alienation) on the Mend

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Silver Lining

“Hey Silver! Did you see that pony Horizon was flying in a few hours ago?” my bestest friend ever asks.

“Sure did, Dusty!” I chirp back. “Didn’t she look weird? She was really hairy, and she didn’t even have wings or anything!”

“Feathers, Silver! I told you to stop calling me that,” he grumbles as he flutters down to the ground in front of me. “My name is Dust Devil, and don’t you forget it!” he says as he sweeps his mane back with a foreleg and strikes a pose.

Ugh. Ever since he got his cutie mark, he’s been trying to act all “grown-up.” Me? I’m totally fine being a little blank flank colt for now. And when I do find my special talent and get my mark, that still won’t be an excuse to be a serious Grumpy Gus all the time.

“Okay Dust Devil,” I say as I roll my eyes, “I saw the weird pony. I think just about everybody else in the caravan did, too.”

“Did you see the horn sticking out of her head?”

That’s new.

“No way! How’d you see that?”

“I was doing some high altitude flight practice with my sister at the time,” he says, trying to sound like it was no big deal being able to fly that well. I’ll get there, someday.

“What could it mean?” I ask, my eyes lighting up in wonder. “Do you think she’s a wish-granting djinn? Or maybe she’s a leprecorn, and she’ll show us to her pot of gold!”

“Nah, Aegie wouldn’t have let her anywhere near us if she were some monster from the sands. You want to know what I think? I think she’s an alien from the stars. You know, like the kind that took Fairy Tails away last year.”

‘You still call your sister Aegie, and I can't call you Dusty?’ I think with a slightly raised eyebrow.

Anyway, I don’t think that’s what the grown-ups meant when they said she’d been abducted. Personally, I think it was changelings. Still, maybe Dusty is right on this one.

“And you think she could tell us where they’re keeping her?”

“I bet she can.”

That would be great! It’d mean getting his big sister and our favorite storyteller back, and it’d let Horizon stop being all sad and sulky. I’ll let this idea stay here a little while longer.

“So what’s the plan, boss?” I ask. “I just know you have one.”

He preens a little before he opens his mouth to start telling me his awesome plan, when suddenly a blazing red and blue meteor slams into the ground beside us. Once the dust settles and and we stop coughing, Dive Bomber climbs out of her crater to join us while a couple of nearby camels give her an annoyed look.

“Hey guys,” she says as she pulls off some kind of… What’s the word… goggles? She pulls some kind of goggles off of her eyes. I wish my mom was cool enough to work with new tech like that. “Looked like you guys were planning something. I want in.”

Dusty spits out the last of his mouthful of sand and says, “Who says we’re planning anything? For all you know, we’re just a couple of honest colts chatting about the weather.” He smirks and waves a hoof and a wing at the clear blue sky.

“Dust Devil, the day you’re not planning something is the day that I clip my wings and grow a hump,” she says with a mischievous grin, then blows him a raspberry. Raspberry is such a weird word.

“Dust Devil was talking about that funny-looking mare Mister Horizon was flying in. He thinks she’s an alien, like the kind that took Fairy Tails away.”

Bomber shoots Dusty a flat look. “I don’t think that’s what they meant when they said she was abducted,” she says.

“I know, but what if it’s true? We could get Fairy Tails back!” My eyes get a little misty. I miss her a lot.

“I…” she says as I put on my fourth-best hopeful face. “I don’t think that’s too likely. Still, she’s got to be something cool. I mean, did you hear her on her way in? I bet she’s some kind of banshee!”

“Aren’t banshees ghosts? She looked pretty alive to me,” I say.

“Yeah, and they don’t take dead things to the healers, either,” Dusty says.

Huh. So that’s where she’s being kept.

“Well yeah, but maybe she’s whatever banshees are before they die,” she says.

“Like a pony?” I say helpfully.

She levels a glare at me and says “You’re impossible. You know that, right?”

Ponies keep telling me that, and yet I’m still here, being me. It’s kinda confusing, really.

“Anyway, Dust Devil,” she continues, “you still haven’t told me about this amazing plan of yours.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

Nngh. Why does it feel like somepony hired an entire percussion section to play under my horn?

I guess under my horn is just their most recent venue: Most of my rest of me feels like it’s been tenderized by their previous performances. I wriggle a bit to probe for injuries, and discover that I’m miraculously unharmed, aside from a bruise shaped like my entire left side. I’m not even very thirsty, and I’m not presently being roasted alive in the desert sun. Maybe they decided not to kill me after all? Was this all part of some bizarre pegasus initiation ritual?

As I gradually awaken, I become aware of a parade of crashes and clangs coming from behind me, making my ears twitch. Sounds like that percussion section didn’t feel like staying confined to metaphor.

Swiveling my ears to listen closer, I can hear some poorly-hushed whispering coming from the “percussion section.”

“What’s this thing?”

“I got nothing. It sure has a lot of metal in it, though.”

*clangshk*

That’s the sound of a triple beam balance being tossed into a pile. I’d almost forgotten what that sounded like. Wait, where did somepony get a triple beam balance?

“Hey Bomber!” a third voice shout-whispers. “These goggles look even nicer than yours!”

“Okay, I’ll admit these are well-crafted,” the second voice grudgingly acknowledges. “It still doesn’t scream ‘Alien Supertech’ to me, though.”

“Are you sure?” the first voice asks. “Most of our metal comes from the stars, anyway. No way somepony would put this much metal in everything unless they were an alien.”

“I don’t know. I just thought alien stuff would be, y’know, flashier,” voice number two whispers with obvious disappointment.

I feel vaguely offended, but I’m not sure why. Sun above, I wish I was better at waking up.

“Hey, look at this!” *piff* “This flashy enough for ya, Bomber?”

“Wow, Bomber,” the first voice I heard squeaks. “That huge gem is even redder than your mane!”

“Triple beam balance, fancy goggles, large, egregiously red gem…”

My eyes slam open in realization as my waking mind finally catches up with my subconscious.

‘Tartarus’s own mead of madness, they’re rifling through my bags!’

This is not even slightly okay.

I creakily roll off of my cushion onto my hooves and stand up, getting a good look at a silver-maned dark gray colt and a grayish-blue filly with a blazing red mane standing next to my saddlebags of holding. Oh, and the piles filled with my supplies, too, not to mention my torch ruby that they’re currently ogling. Dear Lanthanum, don’t let it all be broken.

“It’s… beautiful,” the filly, aka voice number two, whispers reverently.

A dusty-brown colt with a pale orange mane, the apparent owner of the third voice, pokes his head out from one of my bags to say, “Aww, does the tough wittle filly think it’s pwetty? Maybe I can find you some ribbons to tie in your hair, too, while I’m down there.”

“Do you know what perfect gems of this size could mean for my mom’s optics work?” the filly said, perfectly ignoring the brown colt’s comment.

“I can’t say I know exactly what it would mean to you,” I chime in with as much menace as I can manage, “but I can say it means much more to me. That gem was a gift from a close friend, and I would appreciate it if you three would put it back and leave the rest of my things alone.”

Apparently I’m about as menacing as a wet, sedated puppy to these savages at the moment, because as soon as I finish saying that I get slammed to the ground by two tiny tandem flying tackles. Of course they’d both slam into my left side… Thank goodness for that cushion, at least. I look up to see the gray colt staring into my eyes, screwing up the courage to ask a question.

“Are you from the stars?” he asks in wonder, about two inches from my face.

What an odd question.

“Not really. We’re only distantly related, at best. An insufferable lot of ponies, if you ask me.”

The gray colt takes a step back, looking positively bewildered. “Wait, so you’re saying that all the lights in the night sky are ponies?”

“No, you featherbrain,” the brown colt says in exasperation, “It’s just an alien trick to confuse you. Looks like it’s working pretty well.”

“Hey!”

Alien, huh? And the way they’re talking about stars makes me think they don’t think I’m just a funny foreigner. Y’know what? This could be fun! Let it never be said that Amber Spice never tries to make the best of a crummy situation.

“Heh. Alien. I guess you could say I’m not from around here. You could even say,” I say with a smirk, “that I’m not even from your world.”

What? It’s technically true. It’s not my fault if they’re bent on misinterpreting everything I say.

“See? I told you she was an alien,” the brown colt whispers.

Isn’t it adorable when foals think they’re being sneaky? Well, I’ll have to subtract a couple cuteness points for stomping around on my bruised and battered frame, but I imagine this would be super adorable if it were happening to somepony else. Preferably somepony like Pierce the Omnipotent…

Speaking of Captain Sneaky, he chooses this moment to stomp his way up my barrel to stare spikes of suspicion directly into my eyes. “So,” he says in a surprisingly authoritative tone of voice, “what do you know about Fairy Tails?”

Um… what?

“Well, I know enough to tell a tale or two…”

“Don’t play dumb with me, alien!” he says, a fire igniting in his eyes. “You know exactly who we’re talking about. You’re the ones who took her away!”

Oh right. Names. Never have been too good with those. At least most unicorns have the sense to not name their foals after common things. I suppose there was that one filly I knew named Morrow Wine, but she changed it to Tea Total the first chance she got.

Where was I? Oh yes, the brown colt had just accused me of being complicit in…

“What in the name of Australian saffron. Are you, a pegasus, accusing unicorns of–of kidnapping?! Can you even imagine the stir that would cause if anypony even saw a pegasus near—”

‘No, Spicy. No he can’t.’

And now I’ve yelled at a child. Today’s just going swell so far.

The brown colt’s face turns red and he begins trembling, giving the impression of a soon-to-erupt volcano. Lo and behold, he does just that.

“OF COURSE IT WAS YOU! I don’t care how ‘unique’ your orns are,” he shouts, articulating his wingtips to emphasize his disdain, “it had to be aliens like you orns who took her away! Pegasi have honor.” *Stomp.* “Pegasi are honest.” *Stomp.* “Pegasi are loyal.” *Stomp.* “Pegasi are a family.” *Stomp.* “And family don't hurt or steal from each other!”

Well, that got out of horn’s reach in a hurry.

The blue filly with the fiery mane steps off of me and comes around front to face the brown colt.

“Dusty?” she says in a neutral tone of voice, “She’s telling the truth. She has no idea what happened to your sister.”

Then the trembling brown colt, the bombastic, self-assured one she’d called “Dusty,” breaks down in loud sobbing and buries his face in my coat. I wonder when I’ll get a chance to wash it out.

The filly gives me a quick apologetic glance, then shoots the gray colt a look and goes behind my neck (ow) to comfort Dusty. It kinda reminds me of taking care of my little brother Sepia Tone after a bad day, except I’m standing next to myself comforting the colt in front of me who is also on my back… Actually, let’s forget that analogy for now. The gray one just walked up to my face to start talking again.

“I’m sorry, Miss Orn. Dusty lost his sister Fairy Tails about a year and a half ago. He really misses her, and so do we. She used to tell really good stories…”

‘Lanthanum’s honored mother, what have I gotten myself into? These foals have the emotional stability of nitroglycerin, and their outbursts are about as loud and violent. At least they can’t turn me into a potted plant.’

I take a look back at the colt crying into my no-longer-quite-so-luxurious coat and the filly trying to comfort him by hugging him with a wing, and my heart melts a little. Cute little devils… I think I have an idea.

“I might not be as good of a storyteller as your sister, Dusty, but I do know a few good ones. Would you like to hear one?”

Dusty’s only response is to keep sobbing a little softer, but the filly gives me a small smile of encouragement. I turn to the gray colt for confirmation, only to see him nodding enthusiastically. I guess that settles it, then.

“I’ll tell you a tale,” I say in as theatrical a voice I can sustain right now. “A tale from when the world was young. A tale of Terra the Dreaming Goddess, before she began to dream. I’ll tell you the tale of how she came to Tartarus, the great prison, and found it without a warden. I’ll tell you the tale… of the Taming of Cerberus.”

The gray one has his ears perked up attentively. The filly on my back seems to have settled in properly, and Dusty seems to have at least calmed down a bit, so this idea seems to be working. I’m glad; this is one of my favorite stories.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Blue Aegis

‘Don’t you wish you had more time to spend with Dust Devil?’

That colt really needs more of my attention. I’m his mother, his father, and his big sister all wrapped up in one. It’s enough of a job for two ponies. And yet here I am, still going after a year-and-a-half.

‘And yet here you are, doing the same kind of work that robbed him of his father.’

That’s not even true. Daddy was a vanguard on the front lines. I’m on one of the last lines of defense in case anypony breaks through the others.

‘You’d be on the front lines, too, if you really cared about these people.’

I shake my head to get the critical voices to shut up.

Ugh. There’s just no winning these mental arguments. Got plenty of time for them, though. One of the perks of being on the back lines, I guess.

Now that it’s a bit quieter between my ears, I think I can hear… sobbing? Yep, that’s Dust Devil, and he’s crying pretty hard. No amount of outside noise could hide that from me for long. Hold on, Dusty, Sister’s coming!

I rush towards the sound of his sobs, and they seem to be coming from a part of the infirmary. But what would he be doing there, unless— No. Please don’t let this have anything to do with that creature Horizon brought in. Or maybe he’s just upset from seeing some really bad injuries?

Once I get there about a minute later, my suspicion is confirmed. The noise is coming from below the cloud awning they’re keeping that thing under. Now I just need to fly lower so I can actually see what’s going on.

I swear, if that creature has hurt one hair in his mane, it won’t even make it out of the caravan.

There he is! Nestled into the fluff on its… back? That looks a bit more comfortable than I’m comfortable with him being around strange creatures. And there’s the rest of the Tornado Trio next to him, looking attentively at the creature’s face, enthralled… spellbound, even. It seems to be looking over its shoulder at them, too.

I do a quick, stealthy loop over them and come down on the other side for a better view. She is looking at them, and her lips are moving. Is she casting a spell? I fly a little closer to get within earshot, ready to close off my ears and rush in for the rescue if I need to.

“But Miss Orn, in all the other stories Terra was a big pegasus with a magical wish-granting horn, not a unique orn like you,” says the gray colt next to its back. Silver Lining, I think?

The creature replies in a female-sounding voice, “You must be thinking of some other Terra. Now do you want to hear the story or not?”

“Yes, Miss Orn.”

“Okay. So Terra, seeing Tartarus woefully unguarded, set out into the wilds in search of a guardian. She knew the Guardian of Tartarus would have to be brave, loyal, and clever…”

She keeps talking, but I’m flying back to my post and fall out of earshot. I’ve heard all I need to know, anyway.

No threats. No fear. No magic. She hadn’t needed any to make the crying stop.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

“—And that’s why, when you’re guarding the gates of Tartarus, three heads are better than one.”

*Snorrk*

And now there’s a snoring colt nestled into my coat under his friend’s wing. They’re kinda cute, really, when they aren’t charging at you or accusing you of bizarre crimes against equinity. I guess emotional outbursts are about as draining for Dusty as they are for a unicorn. Maybe even a little more-so. I mean, it can’t even be that late in the—

I swear the sun was a lot higher the last time I looked at it. Then again, last time I looked at the sky I wasn’t under some kind of cloudy canopy. Just how long have I been out, today?

“Thank you for the story, Miss Orn. It was very nice,” the polite gray colt says. Well, polite for a colt. He had just rooted through my things like a hog chasing truffles, after all. Sharpened sunspikes that’s going to be a pain to clean up.

“Yeah, the story was nice enough, I guess,” the less polite Bomber says as she withdraws her wing from her snoring compatriot and hops from my back to the ground (ow).

“I’m not ‘Miss Orn,’” I say with a chuckle once I finish wincing. “My name is Amber Spice, and I’m a unicorn. It’s pronounced you-na-corn, though I suppose I am rather unique.”

Sometimes I’m so clever it hurts.

I look at the gray colt expectantly for a couple seconds until a magelight clicks on in his head.

“Oh! We were so busy asking you questions” – ‘and rummaging through my stuff,’ – “that we forgot to introduce ourselves. My name is Silver Lining,” he says, standing a little taller.

“She’s Dive Bomber,” he says as he points with a wing at the blue filly with the red mane and the goggles on her forehead.

“And the colt sleeping on your back is Dust Devil, but we mostly call him Dusty,” he says with a mischievous smirk. “I’d say that we come in peace, but we sort of already tackled you,” he finishes with a sheepish grin.

Huh. Silver Lining sounds more like a unicorn name than what I was expecting. Then again, what kind of pegasus names was I expecting? Throat Ripper? Sky Raider? Slashy McBurnburn? Come to think of it, I’ve seen far more menacing maws on many of my clients back in Unicornia than I’ve seen out here in the desert so far. It’s such a far cry from the mouths full of needles the Unicornia Day pageants had led me to expect that I’m wondering if they even eat meat at all.

“Well, peaceful or not, it’s good to know somepony when you’re in an unfamiliar place. It’s *YEEAHWN* nice to meet you,” I say, really starting to feel the hours I hadn’t exactly been sleeping. “Say, can any of you kids tell me what time it is?”

The filly, Dive Bomber, whips a miniature sundial out of a belt pouch, aligns it with what I can only assume is north, and says “It’s about… camel crap o’clock. Silver, we gotta get going. Dusty’s sister will make our skins into saddles if she doesn’t have him back by sundown. Here: You carry him on your back, I’ll help carry him from above.”

As they set about arranging this curious mode of transport, Silver Lining says “Sorry Miss Spice, but we have to go. Dusty’s sister can be a bit *oof* overprotective. Bye!”

And with that, they take off. Dive Bomber’s wings buzz like a saw in a lumber mill as Silver Lining gallops for all he’s worth.

Surveying the wreckage of my saddlebags, I still can’t quite bring myself to be mad at those three little pegasi. They may not be unicorns, but they’re still kids, and I am a sucker for kids. As wild and destructive as they can be, foals just have this creative spark to them that I find endlessly endearing. Maybe it reminds me a bit of myself. It helps that the little balls of chaos tend to be pretty adorable, too.

Speaking of balls of chaos, it seems like the crowd surrounding my cloudy pavilion is starting to thin out.

Not long after I notice that, a couple of familiar faces descend from the skies in front of me, carrying a waterskin. I guess I am starting to feel a little thirsty after telling that story. I think their names were Meddy Vac and Soothing… Balm… Oh-in-the-name-of-Topaz’s-yapping-dog, no.

“Please not her! I’ll do anything you want. Give you anything you want! I DON’T WANT TO BE DROPPED FROM THE SKY AGAIN!” I scream before covering my eyes with my legs and attempting to withdraw into my fluffy coat in a completely dignified fashion.

“Blistered frogs! I knew I should have swapped you for somepony competent before tending to her again,” I hear Meddy Vac say. “Figures she’d pick now to be awake.”

“While I still say I’m not at fault, I’ll admit it was not the wisest choice to bring me along,” the living bane of my existence says.

The calming breath Meddy takes as she walks up to me is easily audible.

“Hey,” she says in a softer tone, “Amber Spice? We’re not going to drop you through any more clouds.

“Here: We figured you’d be thirsty, so we brought some water for you.”

A little bit reassured, and a little more thirsty, I pull my pasterns away from my face to see a waterskin’s uncorked spigot hanging in front of my snout. I stretch my neck forward, latch onto the spout, and suck down water like a greedy piglet, my terror momentarily forgotten.

“Thanks,” I say a little weakly as my eyes pan the area to keep track of the pegasus who nearly killed me earlier. I spot her poking through the pile of my things those foals from earlier left behind.

“Looks like the Tornado Trio blew through here,” she says, only without any of the energy I’d expect from a natural disaster report.

“Augh! Those rambunctious ne’er-do-wells. What did they do this time?” Meddy whips her head toward Eerie Calm.

“The who now?” I butt in.

She snaps her head back to me.

“The Tornado Trio! Who else would it— Oh right, you’re new here…” she says, bringing a hoof to her face. “The Tornado Trio is what we call a certain group of foals. They’re made up of a grayish-brown colt, a silver colt, and a blue filly with a fiery red mane. They’re curious, they’re full of energy, and they’re about as destructive as their namesake.”

“Sounds about right,” I reply with a sigh. “They don’t seem to have much respect for personal space, either. Little hooves dancing on bruises can be pretty painful, turns out. Heh heh.”

“Speaking of bruises, part of our reason for coming right now is to check up on how you’re doing. As you’ve mentioned, you had quite the fall thanks to Balmy here, and you had been suffering from heat exhaustion besides. Luckily that insufferable ladies’ camel Carlyle broke your fall, so nothing important was damaged, but I still need to physically examine you to see if any problems developed while you were out. Now, how are you feeling?”

“Well,” I say, taking stock of myself, “I’m feeling a lot better than the first few times I woke up today. I was a little thirsty earlier, but I just emptied that waterskin so now that’s fine. My entire left side feels like one massive bruise, though.”

“Hmm. It makes sense that a fall like that would leave a mark, but I can’t see where the bruises are through your thick coat. You may want to get that sheared soon, by the way, unless it’s actually more like a camel’s coat and it’s helping you keep cool. We can figure that out later. Right now, though, I’m going to have to poke through your coat and gauge your reactions visually. Is that okay with you?”

“Sure. Go right ahead.”

This will not be fun.

“Okay. Now if you would please keep your eyes on my face so I can get a clear idea of where the bruising is.”

I comply, and then she starts prodding my side with the tip of her wing. Aside from the occasional flare of pain, it feels weird. It’s like I’m being poked with the side of a broom, but it’s being held there by a system of springs. And the broom is fuzzy.

“Well,” she says, “it’s not a single large bruise; it’s a collection of medium-sized ones. You’re in little danger of dying from internal bleeding, and they should all be healed within three weeks provided nopony does anything to make them worse.” Meddy snipes the other healer with a quick glare.

Knowing my luck, I’ll be sporting this contusion collection for years to come and I’ll be the only one to notice.

“I also checked your eyes and your body temperature, and you aren’t suffering from any serious aftereffects of a concussion. Your head landing on Carlyle’s hump must have absorbed a lot of the shock there.”

“I guess I owe that poor, hapless whatever-it-is—”

“Camel. He’s a camel.”

“That poor hapless camel a thank-you for saving my brain from gravity’s worst designs,” I say with downcast eyes as I gently kick some sand.

“Don’t thank him. He’d take you seriously, and then you’d never hear the end of it.”

Meddy fidgets her wings and taps her right hoof. “Okay, your exam is nearly complete. You’re definitely looking to be in better shape than you were right after your crash, but I still need to know if you can walk. If you can’t, that means I and Balmy will have to carry you again, and none of us want that.”

Did she just call me fat? Or maybe she just doesn't want to deal with a panicky passenger. I mean, I’m not that far off standard unicorn build.

Why’s she looking at me expectantly? Oh, right. Standing up now.

With some creaking and popping of joints long left unused, I cautiously rise to my hooves. “Okay, I’m up. Now what?”

“Now I want you to walk in a circle around your cushion three times.”

I do so, becoming less shaky with each lap.

“Looks like you can move under your own power. That’s good,” she says, looking a little relieved. “Now you may not have noticed from under your cloud canopy, but it’s getting a little late. Not late enough for most people to be asleep, but definitely late enough for them to start thinking about it. I’m not willing to release you from our care with a clean bill of health just yet, so we’re going to keep you under observation for the night. Since you can’t sleep on a cloud bed, this means going to a camel healing tent. It’ll be smelly, but it’ll be warm and it’ll be safe. Let’s get moving.”

“Wait!” I shout as she starts walking. “What about my things?”

A quick chuckle escapes her as she turns her head back to me and says, “They’ve already been taken care of,” gesturing behind me with a wing.

I turn to look, and she’s right. While I had been distracted by Meddy’s examination, Soothing Balm had apparently been putting my bags back in order. She had put them on her back beneath her wings, and there’s not a single trinket still lying in the sand. At least she’s efficient. Maybe a little too efficient.

I walk up alongside Meddy and start following her to the camel healing tents. Speaking of which…

“So, what’s a camel? I’ve seen a lot of them walking past today, and there was the one I crashed into, but that didn’t really tell me much about them.”

“There’s not really much to know about camels,” Meddy says. “They’re big, they’re hairy, they’re kind of smelly, they have toes instead of hooves, they can’t fly or cloudwalk, but they cut through the sands like a pony cuts through the skies. Ponies who aren’t you, at least.

“They don’t need much water between oases, their dung is so dry they can crap into a fire to keep it burning, and their urine comes out as a syrup thick enough to confuse for agave nectar, if you somehow missed the smell. Their coats range between offwhite and dark brown. Aside from that, they’re just folk like me and you. Maybe a bit more like you.”

“Also,” Soothing Balm the Pony Dropper says in her creepily emotionless voice, “camels are known for having cooler heads than the average pony. ‘Pegasi charge in where camels fear to tread,’ as they say. The Commander shouts an order, and you’re in the air, but if the Sheikh whispers a suggestion, you stop and listen.”

“So, the Sheikh is a camel and the Commander is a pegasus?” I ask, checking to see if I’m getting an idea of their social structure.

“Well, yes,” Meddy answers. “The rest of your questions will have to wait, though. We’re here.”

And so, after what appears to have been several minutes of walking and looking over my shoulder, we stop in front of a tent that’s a lot different from what I was expecting. I was expecting your typical triangular prism-shaped green cloth tent with four stakes, and maybe a couple of posts since there aren’t any trees around. You know, the kind a family might take camping in the woods. That’s… not what I’m seeing right now.

The best thing I can compare it to is a ginormous blanket fort, but that doesn’t really do the structure justice. For one thing, it’s huge. It’s about as big as an actual building. For another, it’s white with a big, slightly brownish red cross above its door flap.

“Right where it’s scheduled to be,” Meddy says with satisfaction. “Since we’ve gotten here right as they finished resetting it, we shouldn’t have any trouble snagging a good spot.”

“We?” I ask her as she opens the flap to let us all inside and I cast a nervous glance at Deadpan Murderdrop.

“Well, it’s hard to keep you under observation if we don’t come with you. Unless you mean…” She pauses a bit as her rolling eyes settle on my nervous expression and she smacks her face with a wing. “Soothing Balm, would you please find yourself a replacement and take the rest of the night off? You’re making the patient nervous.”

Zooming Bomb takes off my saddlebags and lazily, yet efficiently, salutes Meddy with a wing before flapping off into the darkening sky. Come to think of it, laziness and efficiency aren’t exactly mutually exclusive. Whatever the case, I’m breathing easier with Balmy the Butcher being elsewhere.

“As I was saying, let’s go inside and get us situated,” Meddy says before stepping back up to the tent flap to hold it open for me.

I could swear this tent is bigger on the inside. It very well might be, for all I know of pegasus magic, but I’ve never seen that kind of enchantment applied to anything much larger than my saddlebags. The first thing I notice after that is the floor: It’s made out of some kind of soft material that feels nice on my frogs. It’s fibrous, like fur, but the fibers seem too densely packed for that. That, and it has an intricate pattern of reds, browns, whites, and tans. I’ve never even seen a creature with that many colors in its coat at once, for that matter.

Actually, no. The first thing I notice is that Meddy wasn’t kidding about the place having an odor to it. It smells like someone tried to set up a distillery inside an outhouse, and I’m suddenly very glad I haven’t eaten all day. It’s also why I happen to be looking so closely at the floor right now. The smell drove me to instantly develop a keen interest in culture and decór, and most definitely did not nearly make me collapse in abject terror. Okay, I may have whinnied a little.

“Go ahead. Pick any cushion you like that’s not already taken and set yourself down,” Meddy says from behind me. “You’ll find they’re a bit oversized for you, but I think you can live with that. That is, unless you want to spend all night admiring the carpet.”

I walk up to a cushion near the entrance and the promise of fresh air and flop down on it. The cushions here are actually pretty nice: they’re even softer than the linen cushions I’ve had stuffed with hair from my own coat. I’ll have to ask them about it later… And speaking of asking questions, Meddy’s dancing from hoof to hoof like she has to use the little filly’s room.

“What?” I ask, wondering what could make her look anxious as Crunch working up the courage to ask me how to start the oven… again.

“So, about Soothing Balm. It seems like you and she got off on the wrong hoof with what happened this morning.”

You could say that. Being dropped nearly to my death by somepony in what I can only guess was an attempt to tenderize me for later consumption can do that to a relationship.

“As her coworker and her friend, though, I have to ask you to give her another chance,” she says, giving off an aura of wounded pride. “I know Soothing Balm comes off as a bit… odd, but she’s not a bad pony. I really don’t think she meant to drop you out of the sky like that. I mean really, who ever heard of a pony that couldn’t walk on clouds? Uh…” she says before noticing the sour look I’m giving her. “Except you, I guess.”

Huh. So pegasi can walk on clouds. As in literally walk on condensed water vapor. That seems like a pretty big thing to miss. It does explain some things, though.

“Okay,” I say, “I’ll give you that this situation is new and weird for everypony involved. Just please, for the love of Terra, ask me before doing something that might only work for pegasi.”

“I’ll try to do that,” she says, back to being professional.

“And one more thing,” I say as my eyes start to fall closed. “What are these cushions stuffed with?”

Meddy blinks a couple of times before answering. “Wool. Woollen batting.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I drift off to sleep surrounded by strange smells, idly wondering what clouds would feel like if I could touch them.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

“I swear, Rize. These double shifts of yours will be the end of me.”

“Then stop taking them, Sweep. Noone is asking you to go beyond the call of duty.”

“You first. Noone’s asking you, either.”

“Heh, fair enough. Let’s get some chow.”

A pair of guards had come to alert us a couple minutes ago that the caravan had stopped, so we could stop working for the night. There isn’t much use for a vanguard when nobody’s going forward, after all.

We swoop down to enter the chow tent. We’re pretty late, so there isn’t much of a line. I grab a pita and spoon some yogurt onto it along with some dates and seat myself on a cushion.

“Hey Rize, wanna split this with me?” Sweep asks, holding up a glass jar of milk in one wing. Before I can even properly nod yes, he’s already grabbed two mugs and started pouring. After that, he grabs a more generous portion of food for himself than what I’d taken and lies down on a cushion near mine.

“What a day we’ve had, eh?” Sweep asks between bites of his pickle-covered pita. “Sent one idiot into Terra’s firm embrace, only to scoop another one out of it.”

“A heavy idiot. I swear she weighs almost as much as the Sheikh’s favorite wife. Hope she recovers soon so nopony has to fly her around.”

“Wait. Did Horizon, captain of seriousness and grave outlooks, just tell another joke? One that didn’t even involve someone dying? Either your stone-faced façade is slipping, or my ears are playing tricks on me,” he says, making a show of flopping his ears about.

“I’d heard somewhere that bad jokes were a good way to drive off smart alecks. How’s it working so far?”

“Not very well. You’ll have to do better than that to get rid of me.”

We eat for a while in silence before I decide I don’t want any more of my yogurt pita.

“Huh. Today must have been special: You finished eating a full three quarters of your pita this time.”

“It’s been interesting, that’s for sure. Here. You want the rest?”

“Sure. You know what they say: To eat well is to live well.”

He munches thoughtfully on the last bits of my pita as I eat the last of my dates, before he speaks again. “Y’know, Rize, it’s looking like you’re taking a turn for the better. Call me a stupid optimist—”

“I often do,” I interject.

“—but maybe a change of pace is what you need to get your head screwed back on straight.”

“So… where are you going with this?”

“Oh, nowhere. I just figure they’re going to need somepony to keep an eye on her, and who better to saddle with that responsibility than the schmuck who brought her in in the first place?”

“You can’t be serious. I’ve already got an important, not to mention dangerous job keeping our forward skies clear of bandits. I’m not about to pawn that job off to some nugget who can’t even fly straight in their armor yet so I can go play babysitter.”

“Command will figure something out; they always do. Besides, who knows how dangerous your new friend might be? For all we know, she could be some kind of shapeshifter biding her time so she can cast some kind of mind control spell to enslave us all. Who knows what fell magics she could use that horn of hers for?”

“Sweep, you said yourself that she didn’t exactly seem like the conquering type,” I retort, rolling my eyes. “Besides, her horn doesn’t look sharp enough to pierce a pita, much less a pony in armor. Her two best plans of attack would likely be to scream her foes into submission, or to sit on them. Somepony else can take care of her fine; our front line needs me more.”

“Our front line that maybe sees a couple bandits in a week. You’re not wrong, though; we’ll probably be fine if you don’t take that responsibility for yourself,” he admits, idly twirling his mostly empty mug of milk. “I’m sure Blue Aegis would be more than happy to personally deal with the dangers she represents.”

Ugh, Terra smite me with her mighty wings. Oath or not, Blue Aegis is jumpier than a shrew five feet from a fennec when it comes to xenos. One wrong twitch, and Amber Spice will be dead before you can say “Blood in the sand.” Besides, maybe keeping watch over such a “dangerous” creature myself will get Aegis off my back.

I drain the rest of my mug before saying, “Okay, okay, you manipulative pile of horse apples, I’ll volunteer first thing in the morning. See you tomorrow, Sweep.”

“Good night to you too, Rize.”

I step out of the chow tent, about as well-fed as I feel like being, and take off to locate a good place to sleep for the night. One nice thing about my job as a guard is being permanently assigned to cloud detail. The idea is supposed to be that somepony on cloud detail would wake up and help if a nearby night guard got into a fight, but I don’t see that happening. Not even I sleep in my armor and weapons, so the most I’d be able to offer in a fight would be an unarmed flying tackle.

Still, even if I do get murdered in my sleep, at least I’ll have slept well.

After finding a good cloud to “guard,” I fly back down and disrobe, storing my arms and armor in my sack.

Sweep. Sweep always knows the right feathers to tweak to steer me where he wants. On the short term, anyway. He’s great at reading people, especially ponies, and he uses that talent to get people to help themselves as he sees fit. It’s a grating habit, but it usually turns out all right. Usually. Wish he wouldn’t go at everything sideways all the time, though.

I probably would have volunteered to look after Amber Spice regardless, once I’d muscled past my objections to letting some nugget fly into harm’s way in my place. They have to get hooves-on training somehow, right? Amber showing up is easily the most interesting thing that’s happened to this caravan in a long time, and she hasn’t even really done anything yet.

The moon is bright and high in the sky, dimming the stars with its pale glory, and the night guards are out in force as I fly back up, unburdened, to the cloud I chose before. It’s a bad night to be a bandit, and a good night to be part of the caravan.

So today I ran into something out of a fairy tale. A strange mare in strange clothes with a horn growing out of her head. Those stories talked about wizards and magical creatures with horns. The older ones usually ended poorly, but the newer ones didn’t always. None of them ever mentioned how heavy those creatures were, though.

Something out of a story is unfolding, and I’m going to be in the middle of it. Isn’t that something I always wanted as a colt? To charge into the unknown and be the star of my own tale? Who knows, it might even turn out more like one of the newer ones. Fairy Tails always liked the newer ones better.

Now, properly situated atop my cloud, I start to drift off to sleep, looking forward to the stories tomorrow might bring.

Chapter 5: Culture Shock and Awe

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Chapter V: Culture Shock and Awe

Horizon

“Rise and shine, Rize! You’ve got an interesting day ahead of you.”

It’s a good thing I’m a bit of a morning pony, or Sweep would have had an unfortunate training accident a long time ago.

“What, in the name of Terra, do you mean by ‘interesting’?” I growl as I pull my muzzle out of my cloud.

I’m not a perfect morning pony, especially not before dawn is even threatening to happen.

“I wanted to be sure to run into you before you got going. As for what’s interesting, there’s been a change in your schedule~,” he replies, sliding into a sing-song voice at the end.

“Is this about foalsitting Amber Spice?”

“Who?” Sweep replies, wrinkling his brow.

“Our new guest that I scooped up out of the desert. That’s her name, apparently.”

“Yeah, it’s about her.”

“Why are you telling me now? Didn’t I already agree to volunteer to ‘guard’ her last night before I crashed out?” I ask, tweaking my wingtips for emphasis.

“Yeah, but when I floated the idea to the commander last night, he kinda expanded upon what your duties would be,” he says, scratching behind an ear with a hoof.

“He doesn’t just want you to keep trouble and her separate, he also wants you to show her around the caravan. Y’know, to familiarize her with her new home and so that you might impress her with our mighty caravan’s mighty might,” he says, flexing as he slips into a ridiculous attempt at basso.

I flop the rest of the way out of my cloud and let my wings bite sky. It’s a lot easier to deal with shenanigans when I’m airborne, since at least then I know we’re getting somewhere.

“So let me get this straight: Last night you flew over to Commander Cloud Buster, told him about our new guest and suggested my name for foalsitting duty, and then he spontaneously decides that I need to give her the grand tour so she’s too busy making starry eyes to make any real trouble. Does that sound about right?”

“Yep! That is almost definitely how that went down.”

I have my doubts, but I know better than to dig too deep.

“Well, Sweep, I’m glad we got that sorted out.”

Sweep does a half loop to end up upside-down above me.

“Regardless of how this may or may not have come to happen, Rize, you can’t ignore the opportunity. She’s a new face, she seems to trust you at least a little, she doesn’t know a thing about us, and we know next to nothing about her. It doesn’t hurt that she’s kinda cute, either, in a fluffy sort of way.”

“Says the pony who thought she might have been a succubus—”

“That was one time!” he says with an accompanying aileron roll. “And besides, I was nervous from being on patrol.”

He rights himself and flutters back down to my level.

“What I’m trying to say is, you should take this chance to relax and have some fun. You and I both know she’s the only new, interesting thing this caravan has seen in ages, so you should really get a kick out of learning more about this mare of mystery, whatever the hay she is.

“Besides, how much harder could being a tour guide be than giving a class of nuggets the orientation?”

I give him an eye and aileron roll, and he counters with a raspberry.

“Okay, Sweep, you win for now. People keep telling me to take a day off, anyway, so maybe this’ll get them off my back. I’ll even try to have a little of this ‘fun’ you speak of.”

“Sounds good to me. You have fun foalsitting Amber Spice while I pluck my own wings over foalsitting some nugget. Clear skies!”

“And favorable winds,” I reply, and he flies off into the sun as it creeps over the horizon.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

I don’t generally remember my dreams, aside from a vague sense of how weird they were. I’m kinda thankful for that, really, as the idea of thinking with all filters removed is a little bit terrifying. Sure, I’ve sometimes awoken filled with inspiration for a daring new dish, but I’d just as soon not know what, um, interesting circumstances led to said inspiration. That said, I’d rank last night’s dream as about a seven out of ten on the weirdness scale. Growing bat wings and flying around, sucking ponies’ brains out through their ears is definitely above the average level of strangeness, but it still doesn’t hold a candle to whatever led me to put together that cake that was a scale model of Terra’s horn, complete with individual houses.

What I’m waking up to probably qualifies as a six.

“C’mon, Amber, it’s time for you to wake up. Not even Carlyle managed to sleep in this late.”

My eyes creak open, and I swear half the grit and sand in this Terra-forsaken desert found its way into them while I slept.

I’m pretty sure morning ponies don’t actually exist. Anypony who claims to be a morning pony is lying for the sole purpose of garnering more hatred for themselves, probably so they can use said hatred to fuel their evil dark magics.

Anyhow, strangeness. On opening my eyes, I see an undulating sea of coarse hair in various shades of brown and beige, rustling this way and that. If I had to guess, I’d say that they were all camels. I’d also guess that camels have no concept of personal space. Or of personal hygiene.

“Augh. Why do all the camels here smell like they’ve been trying to ferment dung into brandy? I’m a little surprised that didn’t wake me up on its own,” I say to Meddy Vac, who’s struggling to hold back a case of the giggles.

Hay, it’d still beat the past few times I’ve woken up recently. Today’s already a big improvement over yesterday.

“Snrk. That’d be because they’re camels, and because we don’t allow perfumes in the healing tents. If a camel needs to come in here, they’re doomed to smell as Terra intended. Not that that stops Carlyle from flirting with the healers, somehow,” Meddy says, her eyes rolling a little in amusement. “You kinda get used to it, though. Eventually.”

I don’t think I’m about to “get used to it” in the next few seconds, but I might find a way to hurl on an empty stomach if I don’t scram in the next minute. I grab my bag in my mouth and make a break for the exit and the fresh air outside, only stumbling a little over the occasional camel.

“Air!” I shout with a gasp. “Sweet merciful Terra, air! I haven’t appreciated air like this since the time Stocky pranked me into sniffing a vial of concentrated ammonia.”

A passing camel child blows a raspberry at me. What do you call them? “Foals” doesn’t quite sound right… Whatever, I can figure that out later. As for right now, I’m hungry and I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. Might as well start with some kind of food.

As I’m rummaging around inside my saddlebag of holding for an oatcake (or maybe two, as I am pretty hungry), Meddy joins me outside the tent and addresses me.

“Well, Amber, it looks like you’ve got a full day ahead of you. One of the people in charge decided that you need to be shown around the caravan. Your tour guide should be showing up soon, but I have to split.”

One of the more sane ponies I’ve met recently and the closest thing I have to an ally right now starts to walk away.

I let out a sigh.

“Well, I guess I can’t go keeping you from doing healer-y things. That is where you’re headed, right? I mean, what other reason could you have for leaving me alone in a strange place like this?”

“Nah, today’s my off-day,” she says with a wink. “Not quite sure what I’ll do, but some R&R does sound nice after the week I’ve had.”

She spreads her wings, preparing to take off.

“All the same, if you have some kind of emergency, just holler. I’m sure someone will hear you, with the pair of lungs you’ve got.”

And with a parting smirk, she blasts off into the mostly clear blue sky.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

Have some fun. Have fun foalsitting, more like. Sweep, you are just so hilarious. Granted, I’m babysitting the most bizarre xenos any of us have ever seen, so it’s bound to be more entertaining than a typical vanguard patrol, but this post also has a social aspect to it. I just know that I’m going to have to interact with a lot of people I normally wouldn’t be able to stand, all in the interest of playing tour guide for our new guest.

I suppose it could be worse. They could have assigned Blue Aegis to this post.

Flying above the cracked, sandy earth, the shaggy, brown bodies of camels, our dwindling cloudcover, and the occasional bleached-white tent, I finally spot my target standing impatiently outside the camel infirmary tent, fidgeting and bouncing antsily from side to side. She’s really not that hard to spot, what with her being bright orange with red hair. Time to swoop down and get this cloudburst started.

Have some fun.

In fact, let’s mix things up a bit. Go for a nice forward, friendly greeting.

I swoop down towards her and land a couple of feet from her face to say, “Hello, Amber Spice. I’ll be your glorified warden and tour guide for today!”

“Gackh!” says Amber Spice as she rears back and falls over. Not quite the reaction I was going for, but it wasn’t boring.

“Would you like some help up? You can’t see very much of the caravan from down there.” I offer her a hoof. She accepts it, and I catch a pungent whiff as I pull her to her hooves that hints that I must have really startled her with my little stunt. It’s not exactly easy to lift her to her hooves, either. What’s she been eating?! I know I’ve met lighter camels.

Actually, what has she been eating?

She’s stopped the antsy bouncing, but now she’s looking an entirely different sort of uncomfortable.

“Well, I guess I don’t urgently need to know where the little filly’s room is anymore, heh heh…” she lets out in a shaky voice.

“Uh, the what?”

And with that, her face jolts from dying of embarrassment to straight-up perplexed.

It’s like we’re twins.

“You know, the powder room.”

“No, I really don’t know,” I say, and I see a little bit of her perplexity morph into frustration.

“The lavatory? The bathroom? The water closet?”

I give her a blank, uncomprehending stare, while her frustration grows on her face with every mysterious item she checks off of her list.

“The privy? The outhouse? The toilet?”

I just keep standing there staring, communicating my bafflement to her with my eyes.

“WHERE’S A MARE GOT TO GO TO FIND A PLACE TO PEE AROUND HERE?!”

Every camel within a hundred or so yards starts staring at her, and she crumples slightly under their gaze.

“Oh, is that all?!”

I burst out laughing. I can’t help it. It’s just so out-of-the-blue… It takes about half a minute before I can talk again. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.

“You can just – *snrk* – go anywhere, so long as you don’t get it on anything. If you’re feeling particularly civic-minded, I guess you could try bottling your urine for lant, but that tends to be a lot easier for stallions.”

“Well, I’ll, uh… just try not to get it on anything then.”

She stamps a hoof almost effectually on the rough, gritty ground after a couple seconds and continues. “So! I think you said something about being my tour guide, and I’ve been standing out here, alone, waiting for my tour guide for the past several minutes. I’ve already had breakfast, so why don’t we get started?”

I see little reason why not.

“Do you have any other burning questions that need answering before we get going?” I ask, my face having fallen back to an almost neutral cast.

She scuffs her hoof in the grit and fidgets indecisively for a moment before she replies. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but morbid curiosity demands it: What is lant, and what sorts of things do you people do with it?”

“Lant? It’s just aged urine, but it has a lot of uses. Cleaning, bleaching, fulling,” I say, counting applications off on my primaries, “fertilizer—It’s useful stuff, even if the smell is a bit strong.”

And then I see her coat go from amber to some really light orange I don’t know the name of, and I crack up again.

Have some fun.

I think I’ve just found myself a hobby.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

This day has not gotten off on the right hoof. Waking up in the stink house wasn’t great, but my morning just wasn’t going to be complete until I peed myself and shouted what could only sound like a string of nonsense words for half the caravan to hear. And best of all, Captain Chuckles my “tour guide” is having the time of his life feeding off of my embarrassment. If he hadn’t just saved my life yesterday, I’d have already tried to beat him within an inch of his. I know I’m asking questions that every foal here probably knows the answer to, but is it really so difficult for him to do his sunscorched job without snickering?

At least I managed to eat breakfast without incident.

Well, I did manage to find out from Horizon that ponies tended to make their ways to the back edges of the caravan when they wanted to defecate, so that’s another function of daily life here that I’ve managed to figure out. Go, me. Woo.

“And if you look to your left,” Rize supplies, “you’ll see a herd of sheep and their shepherds.”

I take a look to my left, and I see a herd of those creatures I’d mistaken for ground-bound clouds on my way into the caravan. I have officially found creatures that are fluffier than I am. Now that I’m closer to them and not flying above them at breakneck speeds, I can see that they’re not really all that cloudlike at all. They’re the wrong color, for one thing. Their fluff is more of a warm, sandy off-white than the cool gray of a cloud. I’d say they’re shaped like fuzzy eggs with legs. Interestingly enough, some of them have horns. As in horns, multiple. Curved, black horns spiraling out from their skulls above dull, black eyes.

“Sheep are useful for a number of things. They provide materials for everything from tents, to waterskins, to pillows. They occasionally even make it to the chow tent.”

“Uh huh,” I say, affirming that I’d at least heard him.

We continue to walk in a lazy, quiet spiral through the caravan until we come up on another point of interest.

“And on your right, you’ll see Terra’s Tabernacle, where her priests tend to her eternal flame, et cetera. Some people go in there to pay homage to Terra a little more directly or personally. It’s also one of the only places in the caravan where fire is easy to come by, so cooks and the like need to get their fire from there daily.”

I look, and I see a very square tent that’s a little bit larger than the infirmary tent I spent the night in. It’s the same bleached-white color that seems to be the theme around here, and it has a collection of vents in its domed roof leaking narrow wisps of gray smoke into the sky. As I look, a pegasus exits the tent with a firebrand in his mouth.

I hadn’t really been that into the formal worship of Terra before my banishment, but it might be nice to have some kind of touchstone of traditions from home. Besides, in case she’s keeping one eye on us as she dreams like some ponies say she does, I’m not about to turn away any sort of help I can get.

“Excuse me, Horizon,” I say, “can we take a look around inside? I’d just love to see how you people worship the Dreaming Goddess.”

“I, uh, don’t see why not,” he says, stumbling a bit as he suddenly corrects our course.

We enter the tent, and the first thing I notice is how… plain it all is. I’m not quite sure what I’d been expecting of their place of worship. Maybe some gold inlays, perhaps some tapestries, or a statue or two of Terra at least. What I see instead is the same bleached-white tent walls, a pulpit at the head of the room next to a dormant brazier, and a tall, folding wall of wooden dividers blocking off a portion of the tent into what looks like a separate room. Well, that and the ridiculously tall poles supporting the oversized tent. The whole place has a faint spicy, woody smell to it, and I can see smoke rising from behind the dividers.

“Over here,” Horizon proclaims with the air of one reciting from a fact sheet, “we have the outer tabernacle. This is where we hold weekly services honoring Terra and binding Chaos so that Terra may have a more restful slumber. We also hold a number of festivals in here throughout the year.”

We walk on over through a gap between the dividers and the outer wall. It turns out there are actually two walls of dividers a few feet apart adjoining to opposite walls, forming a hallway with a doorway on each end. As we reach the far end of the hallway, Horizon grabs a small stick from a nearby bin in his mouth and holds it out to me. I quirk an eyebrow.

“You want the full experience, don’t you?” he somehow says with perfect clarity around the twig he’s brandishing at me.

Well, when in the Pegasopian Desert…

I take the proffered twig with my mouth, since that’s apparently how one does such things here, and my nostrils are assailed by a much stronger version of that slightly spicy, woody smell that permeates this whole tent. It’s not an unpleasant scent, but boy is it strong. It’s giving me a bit of a tickle in my nose, actually.

“And here,” he says in that same, almost enthusiastic voice from before as we walk through the next doorway, “we have the Sanctuary: The home of Terra’s Eternal Flame. Brother Cyrus! Brother Caspar! I have brought with me one who wishes to make an offering to the Dreaming Goddess.”

On entering, I see two camels dressed in white bedsheets and funny little round white caps standing a short distance away from a brass brazier. Said brazier is burning with a healthy, golden flame, providing most of the light in the room. The camels almost manage to hide their shock at seeing odd little me.

“Hello foreign, fluffy, horned pony,” the taller of the two camels says. “I am Brother Cyrus, senior priest of our Lady Terra. I and my junior priest, Brother Caspar, tend to the eternal flame and make sure it never goes out. I understand that you are here to pay homage to Terra of the Water and Flame, and this is good. Now, what might your name be?”

I try to say “Amber Spice,” but it doesn’t quite come out right with this extremely aromatic twig in my mouth.

“An auspicious name!” the shorter camel, apparently called Brother Caspar, exclaims. “Come now, please, and place your cypress sprig in the brazier.”

I attempt a solemn walk up to the Eternal Flame to place this stupidly fragrant cypress twig, but the tickle in my nose grows until I’m right about to place the twig in the fire and—

“Ahhh-CHOOOfff!”

*BONNGKRSHHFFF*

Have you ever slammed your snout into hot metal? No matter what your friends may tell you, it is not a fun experience.

That said, on taking a quick look around the room, I am clearly not the one having the worst day here. The priests have gone completely pale, their mouths hanging open in shock. Even Horizon appears to be somewhat aghast. And on the sandy ground in front of me is an overturned brazier along with a mess of flaming coals spewed across the floor, some of them dangerously close to the wooden dividers forming this room’s walls.

“AAAAAAAHH!” I scream as I spring into action, kicking sand over the flaming coals to douse them.

I stand over the scene of destruction for a few seconds, panting, until Brother Caspar speaks up.

“You… You destroyed it. You snuffed out the eternal flame,” he says, weakly.

Oh horse apples baked into a pie. I better fix this, fast.

“The flame that brings us light and life… that does work for us in the day and warms us in the night…”

I work to uncover the doused fuel with my hooves and sweep it into a pile, careful not to burn myself.

“The symbol of Terra’s own life-giving love that she left for us, to aid us as she slumbers… snuffed out in a cruel twist of fate.”

*snrffl*

It wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped, trying to find the scattered, sand-covered fuel in the near darkness left by the extinguished flame, but I think I’ve found enough. I right the brazier with my hooves and scoop up the fuel in my still weak telekinetic grip, one piece at a time, until all of the wood I’ve located is back in the brazier.

“Do not worry overmuch, Brother Caspar,” the other camel says. “This won’t be the first time we’ve had to start a fire with naught but the sacred flint and steel.”

I find the sprig of cypress and toss it in, too. It’s thin, spindly, and dry as Outta Stock’s sense of humor. It should do for kindling.

“While I will admit that it is rather… inconvenient,” he continues, “it is far from the end of the world. Why, I hear that this one pegasus is working on a way to—”

I concentrate on that stupid stick, willing a part of it to heat rapidly, and I push.

*Foooosh*

Back to its old, golden glow. That worked a little better than expected. And it turns out it’s a lot easier for me to deal with the smell of cypress when it’s on fire. Who knew?

“Okay. I am so sorry for upsetting your eternal flame there. It’s mostly back to the way it was, now, so hopefully you can all forgive me and forget this ever happened.”

And then I open my eyes and actually take a look at the people I’m speaking to. The camels’ eyes are wide and sparkling with… awe?!

Brother Caspar breaks the silence first, speaking rapidly to Brother Cyrus. “Did you see what has come to pass, Brother Cyrus? How her horn glowed azure, and the fuel in the brazier burst into flames? It’s a miracle!”

“Indeed, Brother Caspar. You were right to note her name as auspicious!” He turns his head to me and exclaims, “Ember Spires, truly you were sent to our caravan by Terra herself to share with us her loving warmth!”

What.

“Yes. Praise be to Terra, for sending one so infused with her holy light into our midst!” Brother Caspar chimes in.

Whaaaaat.

I turn to face Horizon, hoping for some answers or at least something less uncomfortable and out-weirding. I find him on the ground in the hallway, writhing in a fit of silent laughter.

Well, at least his reaction is less bizarre.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

We’ve been going around for a couple hours now. And I’m running out of easily accessible things to show her. I get the feeling that she’s not out of things to show me, though, even if she hasn’t really been trying to.

For example, casually lighting things on fire. With her horn. I’ll admit, the idea that she could conceivably ignite my flesh from a distance is slightly terrifying. Then again, I don’t know that she can do that exactly. Maybe she can only light up tiny, flammable things, and can only use her powers to lift a few pounds of material at once. Yeah, and maybe the mess tent will have something interesting to eat, rather than the same-old pita bar.

Actually, lunch sounds pretty good right now.

“You know what, Miss Spice? We’ve been moving around long enough, I’d say it’s about time I introduce you to the local eats.”

For the first time since I’ve met her, she actually looks a little bit excited.

*Greeeombrll*

“And from the sound of your stomach, you’d say so too.”

And then it was gone.

Not quite sure where else I would take her for food, I guide her over to the mess tent.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

You never really appreciate how much you just know until you find someone who just doesn’t. I would like to thank you, Amber Spice, for giving me something to measure myself favorably against.

“So,” she says, poking at her pita as if to awaken it so that it might tell her its secrets, “what is this flat, bread-type thing? More importantly, what am I supposed to do with it?”

“That, Miss Spice, would be a pita. It is food, and you’re supposed to eat it. It’s not quite a full, balanced meal on its own, though, so we usually pile on other foods we call ’toppings,’” I say, gesturing with a wing at the toppings I’d laid out in bowls around her pita. “I wasn’t sure what you would like on yours, so I’ve given you some options.”

“Oh, so that’s what these are all for!”

Everything is so new to her. It’s almost adorable.

“It just occurred to me that your not having wings might make applying your toppings difficult. Would you like me to help, or—”

“No, no, I’ve got it.”

And then her horn lights up with a shimmering, sky-blue aura and the various toppings float up off of the table, each bowl engulfed in a similar sky-blue aura. Because that’s something she can do. Right. One of those things that could make life more interesting.

As she’s making her toppings hover around in a circular formation, passing different ones under her snout one at a time to sniff them, I take a look around to see only a couple of gawkers attempting to scrape their jaws off the ground. It’s a little bit of an off hour for lunch, so the mess tent is emptier than usual.

“So,” I ask, “how are you doing that?”

“Doing what?” she says as she continues to make her food blatantly ignore Terra’s grasp.

“You know, that thing with the floating toppings moving every which way. Some ponies might find it a little spooky,” I say, pointing out a gaping pegasus.

“Well, I’m not about to stop. I don’t see how anything halfway civilized would get done without it.”

I guess that’s how she’ll be able to deal with high dexterity tasks without the help of wings.

“I wasn’t really asking you to stop. I just mean that people tend to get uncomfortable about things that they don’t understand, so it might help you to fit in here if you helped us understand what you’re doing.”

Or at least help me keep Blue Aegis from flattening her whenever her horn starts to glow.

“Oh it’s not much. Just basic pony telekinesis. Er, unicorn telekinesis. It’s one of the simplest things a unicorn can do with magic. You just channel…”

Her constellation of condiments stops swirling and drifts back down towards the mat as she trails off.

“Huh,” she continues, her face scrunching in perplexity. “I’d never thought of how I’d explain magic to somepony without a horn. How do you people get anything done out here without it?”

“Oh, we seem to muddle through somehow,” I say, flexing my wing that’s closest to my side of the mat.

“Right, I… I suppose you do,” she says with a frown, which slowly morphs into a mad grin. “Anyhow, there’s food to experiment with!”

And with that, several bowls of toppings leap back into the air in groups. Pairs, trios, and eventually quartets of ingredients dance under her snout as she sniffs at each combination and makes a face that says yea or neigh to each one. I glance past her fascinating if a little unsettling display to see that the one other person in the chow area, our little pegasus gawker, had buzzed off at some point.

She finally hits upon an… interesting combination of toppings and piles them on her pita. Dates, feta, and olives? Well, I’m not about to stop her.

A couple of hopeful, probing bites and a… significant chomp later, she clearly regrets her decision.

“Blegh. That smelled a lot better than it tasted. Still, it’s hardly the worst meal I’ve ever concocted. I’m about ready to try again,” she says as she makes the remaining offending toppings float off of her pita and settle into one of the now empty bowls, “but first I need something to wash the remains of this last iteration down.”

She focuses her eyes back on me and asks, “Is there anything to drink around here?”

I pour a cup of milk from a pitcher and offer it to her, and then set to work building my own pita. It’s kinda weird that I’ve built up more of an appetite walking around today than I normally would have after a full day of pulling guard duty in the caravan’s forward skies, but here we are.

She takes a sip from her cup, quirks her mouth, and then slugs back the rest of her milk, finishing with a gasp.

“So, what is this beverage? It’s so smooth. I’ve never tasted anything quite like it before.”

I swallow my bite of pita, and I look at her like she’s from another world (which, for all I know, she might be). “It’s milk. Camel milk. I guess they wouldn’t have that where you’re from, but you can’t tell me you’ve never had anything like it.”

At that, her face turns thoughtful.

“Milk, milk, milk… That actually does sound—” And then her expression twists into dawning horror.

Ooh. This should be fun.

“Are you meaning to say,” she says, drawing herself up to a sitting position, “that I just drank… lactation meant for some camel’s child? What kind of barbaric place is this?!”

“Oh, that’s nothing compared to what you just ate before that. That crumbly white stuff you were piling onto your pita was a cheese we call feta…”

She locks gazes with me, and her eyes widen as my lips curl into a smirk.

“It’s what happens when someone takes milk from sheep and leaves it out to rot for a couple months.”

As she pales and starts to sputter like a kettle that’s about to boil, I lose it again. I laugh uproariously.

“Oh,” I wheeze, “you should see the look on your face…”

And then I see the look on her face, and it’s not the same one she was wearing the last time I looked. Her face had gone from yellow-green to red-orange, and her eyes had narrowed to slits.

And her horn’s glowing, and there’s a brigade of bowls floating menacingly at her sides.

Oh, flying pegasus plops. I think I may have pushed her a little bit too far.

Bowl after bowl of pita toppings fly at me as I stare numbly at my doom.

Huh. That ended up hurting less than I’d expected, but more than I’d hoped. It’s not going to be fun getting the agave syrup out of my coat, either.

Such a terrible, terrible waste of perfectly good olives.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

“Arghle… Fffygdjs… GRAAAH!”

In my deep and broad experience with anger, I’ve found that it does some paradoxical things to your vocabulary. When you’re in a bloody-minded rage, your vocabulary practically sublimates into a garbled haze of conceptual gas. Once your rage has crystallized into a proper seethe, though, it all comes back and then some. You find that you know words and phrases that you have no memory of having heard before, or at least that you’d swear up and down to your mother’s face that you’d never heard before and had absolutely no intention of ever saying to another pony so long as you should live.

That said, I’m sorry, Mom, but this is just that important to me.

“WORDS! I don’t have enough of them to properly describe this situation, your behavior, or your probable parentage and ancestry, but may Terra rot my horn from the inside if I don’t try anyway!”

He’s just staring slack-jawed straight ahead at me, the various toppings I’d just pelted him with slowly dripping and sliding down his coat. It’s definitely a better look on him than uproarious schadenpferdic laughter ever was.

“Horizon, I am having a bad day, and I have you to thank for it. You said you were supposed to be my tour guide. Well congratu-pony-lations, you’re the worst soap horned tour guide I’ve ever had! Ever! And I know terrible tour guides. I used to live in a gouging palace! At least the ones back home had the decency not to mock their charges to their faces.

“Yeah. Today’s just been a fizzling barrel of laughs for you, hasn’t it? I’ll admit it might have been a little funny that I didn’t know how people eliminated waste out here in the desert. I never would have guessed that it involved giving the waste a suit of armor and sending it out to harass innocent mares.

“And then there was the thing with the fire and the incense and the sneezing, and now apparently I’m the spark spewing harbinger of Terra’s return to wakefulness or something, which is not how I want to be introduced to anyone. You weren’t helpful there, either.

“That stuff, I’m fairly sure I could have gotten over soon enough. If the day had ended there, I probably would have only held a grudge against you for a couple of days at most. But no, you son of a horse, you had to cross the line. You had to go and ruin food for me. And for what? A cheap laugh?! When I say you are the most pointless stallion I have ever come across, I am not talking about your sad lack of a horn!”

I take a few deep breaths to rein myself in slightly before I continue.

“After all of this, there’s something I don’t get. Why did you even bother to save my life in the first place?” I say, squeezing all of my bitterness into my voice. “Was it so that I could be your personal jester? Your private fool? I know it wasn’t out of decency, a sense of hospitality, or the kindness of your cold, shriveled heart.

“I just have to ask: Am I surrounded by barbarians, or is it just you?”

Having unloaded on him, I’m feeling… marginally better.

I turn away from Horizon abruptly, only to freeze when I see what’s behind me. It appears I’ve attracted an audience. A cloud of pegasi is clumped at the entrance to the mess tent. Some of them are even hovering to get a better view.

“Oh come on, Sky!” a voice from the crowd shouts. “I thought you said she was glowing and making stuff fly around like a dust devil.”

“Well it’s not like she’d be doing that all the time. Maybe she’s busy freezing him in place with her dark magics?”

“No, that’s vampires. She’d have burned to a crisp by now if that were the case. My salt says she’s a siren. Did you hear the set of lungs on that girl?”

“This far from water? Camel feathers!”

“Aww, I thought she was going to turn Horizon into a newt.”

“A newt?” I reply, baffled. I have no idea what that is, but transforming him into anything but a slightly more pummeled pegasus is more advanced than anypony but the highest level unicorns could handle.

“So that’s why you’re all here?” I say, still smoldering from my rant. “For a show? Maybe you’re looking for a good laugh like Chuckles the Wonder Colt over here. Go on ahead, laugh it up! You lot aren’t the first to laugh at Amber Spice, and you probably won’t be the last, either!”

Amid the sudden silence of the horse flies, there’s a jostling moving through the crowd. A noisy jostling.

“Move it! Stand aside, I’ve got a patient in there I need to deal with. Unless you want an express trip to the infirmary, get out of the way.”

It is weird to see a crowd ripple in three dimensions.

“About flipping time,” a familiar voice says as its owner emerges from the cloud of pegasi clogging the doorway.

Meddy? Now there’s a friendly face! Or, at least, one that isn’t jeering. Whatever. Any roof will do in a storm.

“Meddy! You came back! Wait a minute, what are you doing here? Isn’t this your day off?”

“It is,” she replies, “which is why I’m here at all. I heard a disturbance while I was taking a leisurely flight around the clouds and dove in to investigate. I think I’ve heard enough of what’s going on to tell that you’re having a bad time.

“Please,” she says, sweeping her wings out and away as she bows, “allow me to apologize on behalf of this caravan for hosting you so poorly. Please accompany me through the rest of today, so that I might make amends.”

Wow. I really wasn’t expecting anyone to care how I felt, at this point.

“Sure! Anything to get away from this creep,” I say, gesturing at Horizon with my horn.

“Let’s go then, Ms. Spice. Somepony has to show you proper pegasus hospitality, and somepony seems like they’ve forgotten what that is.”

And so we leave him, his expression still frozen in the same shocked look from before, as toppings and condiments continue to drip and slide down his coat.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

As I’m brooding on a cloud at the end of the day, Aerial Sweep finally drops in.

“Hoo boy, Rize. They do not make nuggets like they used to, let me tell ya.”

“Mmph. They pair you with Spot again?”

“Well,” he says, deflating a little, “it looks like you’re back to your gloomy old self again. I’m going to take a flying leap of deduction and say today’s tour didn’t go so well. What happened?”

“I happened, Sweep. Heh. I tried to take your advice and have a little fun with it.”

I give him the blow-by-blow of today’s events.

“Hold that hover for a sec,” he interrupts as I’m telling him about our adventures in the fire temple. “She can move things with her mind? That… Well, I guess that narrows down what she could possibly be, a little.”

“She’s no succubus, I’ll tell you that. She said something about teleki-whatsit being basic to unique orns, whatever that means.”

As the recap continues, Sweep seems less and less happy about what he’s hearing. He waits until I’m done before he’s ready to buck me with both legs.

“So let me get this straight,” he says. “You have this incredibly skittish mare who can at the very least move objects with her mind and considers that to be a basic flippin’ skill and can perform only Terra knows what other feats of magic, and you make it your life’s mission to cheese her off?! That’s not what I had in mind when I said you should have a little fun with your assignment today.”

Great. Even Sweep’s outraged. And he has every right to be: He could punch me right in the muzzle, and I wouldn’t have the right to stop him. It’d be no worse than I deserve.

“Do you even have a sense of self-preservation anymore?”

Is that… a tear in his eye?

“I’d hoped we were past this, Rize…”

And suddenly, I find myself wrapped in his arms and wings.

END OF PART I

Chapter 6: Sweep Away

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Amber Spice

I might have only been out here for about a week so far, but I’m already starting to get a feel for the different kinds of terrain they have out here in the desert. I even have some preferences!

There are more-or-less three kinds of terrain I’ve seen in the Pegasopian Desert: There’s cracked, dry earth with a covering of parched grass that could have maybe been arable land in a past life, there are areas full of rocks of various sizes, and then there are areas filled with something that I’d never experienced until very recently: sand.

Sand is terrible.

In case you’ve never seen sand up close before, it’s like this: Imagine gravel. A pile of rough, scratchy little rocks that it’s nigh impossible to find a stable footing on. Now imagine that those rocks have spent the last several millennia beating the ever-loving horseapples out of each other so that now each one is impossibly tiny and yet is still just as rough and scratchy. Except now, there’s more of them. On top of that, since they’re so tiny, they get everywhere. My poor, abused coat is probably forty percent sand by volume by now, and sixty percent by mass.

I’d be of half-a-mind to shear it all off, if it weren’t both still quite lovely and the only thing between my skin and the blessed Sun’s scorching rays. Also, it keeps me warm at night outside of the smell-tacular tents.

But sand. I’m putting it second to Pierce the Omnipotent on my list of things the world would be better off without, with Princess Topaz a close third.

Sand, boredom, and dehydration are my three main enemies right now. The sand I can’t really do anything about aside from whine about it, and I’ve already done that. The tribe has apparently been really good about husbanding their water supply, so they have enough water to spare for me whenever I ask for a refill. One of the mares in charge of disbursing water, Merry Weather, is nice to me, even if she does like to joke about how often she sees me. So yeah, dehydration isn’t a huge danger, even if I am trying to drink less.

Boredom, now that’s the real problem. I haven’t really had anything to do since I arrived in this desert except survive, and that action item has been more-or-less trivialized at this point. Occasionally I get to tell the Tornado Trio a story, but that’s not exactly something I get to spend all day doing.

This is a dangerous situation. The last time I was this bored, I got branded a mud-pony-loving heretic and banished to a civilization-forsaken desert. I’m not eager to have a repeat performance.

Speaking of repeat performances…

“Hey there, Spicy!” the yellow-and-peach Merry Weather says. “How’s the family?”

“You know perfectly well that my family lives on distant Terra’s Horn, and that I’ve had no contact with them,” I say.

“Well who’s all the water for, then? I mean, there’s no way that all of this is being slurped up by just one pony.”

“Okay, you’ve got me,” I say with a dramatic eyeroll. “I’m actually trying to grow a second head so I can finally find some intelligent conversation around here, and the process takes a lot of water out of me.”

She looks at me as if hoping to actually find signs of a budding second head, and I give her a raised eyebrow.

“That was sarcasm,” I say. “I can’t grow a second head, and I wouldn’t want to if I could. Magic doesn’t work that way.”

“Eh, not with that attitude,” she says while doing that weird pegasus flying arm shrug instead of a sensible horn-waggle. She seems only slightly disappointed that I’m not actually sprouting a second head, which is an improvement over what happened with the last few people I got myself into similar situations with. You’d think I’d learn to rein in the sarcasm about my abilities with a bunch of people who haven’t had a clue what a unicorn was for the last three centuries, but it’s not an easy habit to break.

“So you came here for a refill, right?” she says through her ever-present, unflappable smile.

“Yes. Yes I did.”

She lands on her cloud and beckons me over with a wave of her hoof, and I float my open waterskin up to her. She grabs it with a wing and plunges it into the cloud, swishing it around a good bit to make sure it fills up.

I’d say that the novelty of magic had worn off for her rather quickly, except I’m not sure she was ever bothered by levitation in the first place. When she first saw me do it, the only reaction I got was her saying “neat” and then filling my waterskin like she’d been living with unicorns her entire life. Rather refreshing, really.

“So,” I say, dragging my hoof in a circle in the sand, “what’s a bored mare to do around here?”

And then she bursts out laughing, somehow keeping control of my waterskin the whole time.

“Hooo, boy. Now that is a dangerous word, Ms. Spice. My little colt Silver learned pretty quick not to say that around me.”

She lifts my waterskin back out of the cloud, caps it, and catches a glimpse of my unimpressed glower.

“Of course,” she says, “That fairly easy for me to say. I get to talk to a fair number of ponies, doing my job, and I have a job to do besides just talking. You, on another hoof, have just been freeloading and wondering what to do between meals, I suspect. Not that I or anybody else would blame you for that. You did just get scraped off the desert floor pretty recently, after all.”

She retracts her wing from the waterskin as she sees it become enveloped in my blue levitation aura.

“Most people around here pass their time doing something that contributes to the welfare of the caravan,” she says. “Not meaning to call you lazy, but I figure doing something to repay our hospitality would get your mind off of your boredom.

“Now I’m no stranger to strange marks,” she says, pointing a hoof at the obviously broken wing depicted on her flank, “but I can’t seem to make sense of yours. My first guess was something to do with growing flowers, but that doesn’t really strike me as being your thing. Was there anything you did for a job or a hobby back on Terra’s Horn with all the other ‘unique orns’?”

I twitch. She winks.

“I suppose it’s not the most obvious cutie mark,” I say with a sigh, turning my head to look at the saffron flower adorning my own backside.

“Anyhow,” I continue, “I was the Royal Chef.

“That is,” I add on seeing her uncomprehending expression, “I was in charge of cooking meals for the King, the Princess, and the rest of the royal family.”

“Well that does sound fancy,” she says, curling into what looks like an unfairly comfortable position on her cloud. “I guess that means that flower on your flank must taste pretty special.”

“Eh, the flower itself tastes alright, I suppose, but it’s the stamen that’s really special… Maybe I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Fair enough.

“So, you’re a bored cook. I’ve seen scarier things,” she says with a mock-shudder, “but not by much. Do you think you’d like to try plying your trade here in the caravan? It may not be a magical crystal palace or whatever unicorn kings live in, but it’d keep you busy. And besides, I hear the guards’ mess is always looking for help.

“Plus,” she added with a smirk, “they have their own water cloud right outside.”

I give her a slight scowl for that last jab, but it fades quickly when I take in what she’s just offered. I could have a chance to work with food again! It would be weird, alien food that I hardly know a thing about, but aren’t strange new foods what I’ve wanted all this time? Maybe I could even get started on that project…

“So, when can I start?”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

The food here is actually pretty interesting, once you manage to ignore that a lot of it had passed through somebody’s udders at some point. It’s certainly more flavorful than anything I’ve eaten this side of saffron.

As for the cheese and yogurt, I just have to keep telling myself that it’s not so different from fermenting fruits and grains into drinks, but with things becoming more solid instead of more liquid.

It’s perfectly safe, and doesn’t smell terrible at all! Well, maybe it smells a little funny. But it’s still food, not refuse. It’s not even the smelliest thing in the room.

“Uhm…” someone decidedly smellier says.

That someone is Carver, the head (and, before I walked in, only) cook of the mess tent. Carver’s coat is a dull sort of reddish brown, and about one quarter as fluffy as mine, which matches the description Merry’d given me to a T. Right now, he seemed to be trying to muscle up the nerve to talk to the strange unicorn who’d waltzed into his kitchen unannounced and started playing with his ingredients behind the counter.

Camels, I’ve noticed, seem to have one of three reactions to meeting me. The first and most common reaction is the sort of politeness I wish had been ingrained in certain royals’ behavior. The other two types of reaction seem to spring from the, uh, incidents surrounding my “tour”. The second type of reaction is the sort of awed reverence I somehow inspired in those priests, and type three is a cagey wariness, like I was some sort of unstable alchemical experiment liable to coat them in caustic soda and broken glass if they so much as breathed wrong. All three of these feel both slightly uncomfortable and yet oddly appropriate.

“I would like to say, Ember Spires” – ah, type two, then – “how honored I am that you have graced my humble kitchen with your, ah, radiant presence.

“But, erm, what, if you will allow me to ask your, er, illustriousness, are you doing here?” he asks, warily eyeing my Blade of the Banished as the smooth section of its outer crescent ruthlessly slices through a pickle. “Not to, heh, suggest that a bearer of flame cannot come, go, and do as she pleases. No ma’am.”

And a hint of type three, as well. Joy.

I stop slicing pickles and banish the blade, turning to face Carver. It now occurs to me that walking into someone’s kitchen like I own the place might not give the best first (or, perhaps, second) impression, and I will need to be in this camel’s good graces if I want to work with food. Eye on the prize, Spicy.

I suppose there must have been a time where I wasn’t the master of whatever kitchen I surveyed…

“Oh. Sorry, Carver, I did not mean to usurp your kitchen. I’d heard that you needed help in the mess tent. How may I be of assistance?”

I give him my best, widest subservient grin. Judging by his lack of a reciprocal patronizing smirk, I may be out of practice.

…Or maybe it’s that he’s too busy staring at where my knife used to be to notice.

I step into his line of sight. “Ahem! No, I did not make the knife disappear just now. I only banished it back to my saddlebags.”

By way of demonstration, I summon and banish the Blade of the Banished a few more times.

“See?” I say. “Nothing to get worked-up about. And I can only do it with the knife because it’s been bound—”

I notice Carver shakily raising a—huh. I guess they’re not really hooves. A foot? Anyhow, raising a foot like a schoolfilly who’s scared to ask to go to the bathroom.

“Yes, Carver?”

“Um, do you b-banish the sinful like that, or do you have to –” *gulp* “– bind them first?”

“Oh, I wish I could banish people. I can think of a couple of ponies I’d send straight to Tartarus if I had the opportunity.”

And then I notice that Carver is cowering. Great choice of words there, Spicy. Top-notch situational awareness, too.

“No, Carver,” I say with a sigh, “I can’t banish people. As I was saying earlier, I can only banish my knife because it’s been magically bound to my saddlebags. And you can’t” – as far as I know – “bind living creatures to things. I’m not here to smite you; I’m here to help.

“So, Carver, what can I do for you?”

“Ember Spires,” – still the wrong name, but he’s obviously stressed and this is progress – “would your holiness, um, please go out front to the counter while your humble servant prepares the food?”

Oh, Terra flatten it with her mountainous plot!

“No! You are not my servant. I’m the one ser—”

Noticing the barely restrained terror on the camel’s face (and a slight intensification of his odor), I take a calming breath to rein myself in.

“Actually, fine. I’ll serve out front, while you cook back here.”

As I walk out of the kitchen and into the mess proper, I hear him mutter, “Dear, sweet, merciful Terra, I thank thee for not smiting this unworthy, sinful flesh this day…”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Aerial Sweep

“Come on, Rize. You’ve gotta eat something,” I say as we’re flying back to the caravan at sundown. “I can understand eating just two meals a day when pulling double shifts –” my stomach voices its dissent. I can’t seem to get it to understand “– but one? That’s just not enough.”

“’Mnot hungry,” he lies.

“Skyplops you’re not. You’ve been ‘not hungry’ for dinner for the past week. Look at yourself,” I say, flying some quick horizontal circles around him. “You’re moving like a fly through agave nectar. You can barely outpace the caravan the last couple days.”

We keep flying at a tortoise’s pace for a couple minutes, silent, before he finally speaks up.

“Just a drain on resources. Less I drain, the better.”

“No,” I counter, flying in front of him to poke him in the chest, “you are not a drain on resources as long as you’re doing your duty. And part of that duty is to eat regularly so that you’re in top form. You’ve been lucky we haven’t run into any bandits lately, or you’d be just another corpse littering the dunes. You’re no use to anyone dead.”

“Lucky. Right. Maybe if I weren’t a waste of water I’d agree. As it stands…”

“No, you’re not a waste,” I say with a sigh. I’d had this conversation with him before, but not in a long time. “You have a friend, and he seems to think you’re worth at least a little water. Some food, too.”

“Would this friend kindly buzz off, so I can get back to drying out and blowing away?”

“Golden rain, Rize, stop wallowing! Do you have any idea how much this hurts to watch a second time? Maybe if you’d get outside your own feather-stuffed head once in a while, you’d notice that there are people who care about you! Yes, people. As in more than one. Terra’s tears, some colts even look up to you!”

I take a deep breath.

“Y’know what, Rize, just flop down on a cloud somewhere. I’ll be back in a bit with some food, and you’ll eat it if I have to force it down your throat.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

The mess is unusually crowded for this hour. It’s not quite flying-room only, but none of the mats are entirely unoccupied, either. There’s even a bit of a line to get to the food.

I hate being forceful with Rize. With anyone, really. It’s just… Well, when I want to influence things, I prefer to guide others and help them think my ideas were really their ideas all along. I don’t like being involved in conflicts.

As I make my way through the line, I overhear a few snatches of conversation.

“You’re just complaining because you wouldn’t know the difference between milk and tzatziki sauce.”

“Huh. Never would have thought to put feta inside a date.”

“I’m just saying I like to make my own decisions when I’m off-duty, and that includes food.”

“I think I’ve heard this story before. When do the bowls start singing?”

“I bet that glowy stuff is magically delicious.”

As I get closer to the front, I can see what everypony’s talking about. Bowls – and sometimes individual pieces – of food are dancing through the air, wrapped in shimmering azure auras.

And in the middle of it all is Amber Spice, the flame-colored mare that Rize scraped off the desert floor a week ago, horn wrapped in that same blue glow.

A pegasus swoops down on one of the floating olives, snapping it out of the air. Amber Spice shoots her a quick glare before turning her attention back across the serving table.

“And there you go,” she says as ingredients finish streaming into a floating pita that then wraps itself, “an olive feta pita wrap. Now don’t let go of it or you’ll spill.”

“Um, thanks?” the pegasus who was just served says, still blinking like he’s not convinced he’s still awake.

“You’re welcome. Now move along.”

I can’t really blame him. The whole place has a sort of dreamlike quality to it, where weird things happen in a matter-of-fact fashion and nopony cares enough to question it.

And speaking of dream logic, it looks like I’ve found my way to the front of the line.

“Amber Spice!” I say.

Her eyes briefly widen.

“Huh. Not many people get my name right out here. How do you know me?”

“You are kinda the only pony I’ve ever heard of with a horn growing out of her head. Well, outside of stories.”

“I suppose that does render me rather unique.”

I give her a polite chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” she asks, cocking her head.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were making a joke about your being a unique orn—”

She slams her hoof into her face and lets out a ragged sigh.

“It’s one word, and it’s pronounced ‘you-nih-corn’. I swear on Terra’s earth-rattling snores, you people all have your ears on backwards.

“Anyhow, you’re in line for dinner, so what do you want? I’m offering three wraps: feta-stuffed dates, feta olives, or dates and olives. No, you can’t have olives, feta, and dates on the same wrap; that doesn’t work. If none of those sound good, then you’re welcome to try to scrounge up some food wherever else pegasi eat.”

“‘Feta olives’ sounds good. I could really go for something salty after the day I’ve had.”

A wry grin inches onto her muzzle as the ingredients, along with a small heap of salt crystals, take to the air. “A stallion after my own heart. So, what’s eating you? Pretty mare tell you she’s not into stallions? Staring at the same stretch of sand and sky all day taking its toll?”

The way she talks kinda reminds me of Merry Weather when she’s behind the bar.

“Actually, it’s—”

That same mare from before filches another floating olive.

Amber Spice calls a bizarre crescent-shaped blade into existence, brandishes it, and bellows, “I swear, you buzzing nag, if you pull that stunt again, I WILL CUT YOU!”

Well, she’s certainly a pony not afraid of being direct. I may suck at it, myself, but I’m getting an idea…

The blade guards the rest of the olives as they file into the pita. She wraps it up and floats it over to me.

“Here you go: a feta olive wrap. Even if it’s A FEW OLIVES SHORT of what it’s supposed to be. Enjoy your meal, sir.”

“Thanks. This smells amazing.

“Actually, can I get a feta-stuffed date wrap, too? I’ve got this friend who’s been really down lately and hasn’t been eating. I figure maybe one of your creations might be able to cheer him up.”

Her face glows briefly with poorly suppressed pride. Looks like my aim was true.

“Well, since you asked so nicely…”

Dates, presumably stuffed with feta, rush into a yogurt-tracked pita, thankfully unmolested. I’m not eager to see more blood in the sand anytime soon.

“Hope your friend feels better soon,” she says as she starts to float the new pita over to me.

“Aw, horseapples,” I say, looking at my occupied wing in chagrined disappointment. “I have no clue how I’m going to fly both my and my friend’s meal up to him without spilling. Maybe if I… No, full pockets. But what if I… No, that’d send dates everywhere. Though if I tried to hold both in my mouth—”

“No no no, no, no. Don’t blow a seal over it, I can solve this easy enough. Besides, this would be a good excuse to see somepony in need appreciate my work.”

“Really? You’re sure you’re not too busy over here?”

“Hey, Carver?” she shouts, leaving me partially deafened. “I need to go make a delivery, and I think that’ll be it for me tonight. See you tomorrow!”

Turning back to me as I flop my ears back and forth in an attempt to clear them, she says, “Eh, you’re practically the last in line, and I figure you horse fl— er, pegasi had to survive somehow before I showed up.

“That, and –” she leans over the counter so she can whisper “– I don’t want this getting out there, but the head cook is convinced that I’m some kind of avatar of Terra sent to ‘smite him for his sins’.”

“Well, you’re not, are you?” I whisper back.

She just snorts in response and pulls back.

“Well,” she says, grabbing the first pita back from me with that glowy blue stuff, “he’s your friend. Lead the way.”

That felt kinda tingly. At least, I think it did…

As we leave, I hear a mare behind us say, “Pay up. Those flying olives didn’t taste any different from the regular ones.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

“Something just occurred to me, ” I say as we make our way through the mostly deserted path to the cloud bank. “I’m helping you and your friend, but I don’t even know your names. It’s hardly fair that you already know mine and have me at a disadvantage.”

The lightish-grey pegasus whose flight I’d been following flips upside-down to look at me, while he continues to fly in the same direction as before.

“Oh,” he says, “sorry about that.”

He rolls to right himself, drops to walk beside me and says, “My name’s Aerial Sweep, and I’m a guard, in case you hadn’t figured that out already.”

“Well I don’t think I’ve seen anypony at the mess who wasn’t, so that’s fair.”

We continue walking for a minute in the quiet gloom before I speak up again.

“So, who’s your friend? Is he a guard, too?”

“Actually, yeah. Depressed-looking blue and tan guy named Horizon. Most people who know him call him Rize, though.”

Horizon?! My horn’s aura flickers and flares a little when I hear his name and I barely resist the urge to throw his wrap on the ground and grind it into the contemptible sand beneath my hooves. Destroying food this good would be criminal, so giving it to him would be the lesser of two evils.

Doesn’t mean I can’t give him a piece of my mind while I’m at it, though.

“Oooh, I know that face,” he says, biting his lip. “You’ve met him, haven’t you.”

“You could say that, yes. You could also say that he’s a self-absorbed flying horseapple, or that his taste in humor is lacking.”

“Ffffffff— Yeah… He must have really pinfeathered things with you earlier.”

Going from my limited-but-growing experience with pegasus profanity, I’d say that’s pretty accurate.

“Look,” he continues, “he obviously did something very stupid—”

“He ruined food for me,” I hiss acidly.

“Very, very stupid,” he says, eyes wide and wings snapping out. “I would like to note that ruining the idea of food for a cook is pretty tasteless.”

Aerial Sweep tucks his wings back in and sighs. “Rize has been my best friend since before we could hover, so I know him pretty well. He’s always been a bit impulsive, but nobody would ever call him a bad guy.

“Point is I really care about him, and I haven’t been able to get him to eat more than a few pickle slices in nearly a week, and I saw your food at the mess tent and saw how good it looked and hoped that it might be enough to—”

I shove a hoof in his mouth to stem the flood.

He may be turning to naked flattery to get what he wants, but he seems to honestly care for that loser.

And said loser did technically save my life.

I look into Aerial Sweep’s eyes and notice they’re watering. Ugh, he’s even worse than my brother Sepia.

I extract my hoof and say, “Fine. I can set aside our differences long enough to make sure your friend gets a good meal. One snide remark, though, and he’s getting force-fed. At high velocity.”

“Thank you, Miss Spice. That’s all I can really ask for.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

‘Golden rain, Rize, stop wallowing! Do you have any idea how much this hurts to watch a second time? Maybe if you’d get outside your own feather-stuffed head once in a while…’

Lying on my back on a cloud with my wings spread-out, flopped-down where Sweep had left me with those words.

Guess I hadn’t thought about what this looks like. I mean, I don’t like to watch somebody feeling sorry for themselves, and watching me whine about being a worthless and terrible pony can’t be much more fun.

Maybe if I smiled more…

My lips creak into a rictus, before giving up and falling back to a neutral position.

No, let’s not get too crazy here.

…

Maybe if I said nice things to people, it’d feel nice? Or at least feel something. Well, it’s probably worth a try.

‘More of a try than you gave to save Fairy Tales, anyway.’

Shut up! The elders said that wasn’t my fault. The Sheikh himself forbade me from trying to do more.

And besides, that’s… in the past.

…

Whatever. Just… say something nice to the next person you see. Something about them. Something to get outside your own head.

“…should be coming up on where I left him.”

My ears twitch. That’s Sweep, but who’s he talking to?

I tuck a wing and roll onto my belly to peer over the edge of my cloud. In the moonlit gloom, three points are shedding light like blue torches: two hovering pita wraps, and one orange horn. Well, I guess I’ve found my target.

“Hey, jerk!” the horn’s owner yells. “Come down and eat this food so that your friend here doesn’t cry!”

Sweep’s blue-illuminated hoof impacts his face. I can hear his sigh from here.

“No, it’s okay,” he says. “I can just fly them up one-at-a-time from here. Rize doesn’t have to move.”

“No, Sweep,” I croak, “it’s fine. I can still fly.”

I sluggishly flap my way down to the ground in front of them.

Y’know, I think this is the first time she’s seen me without my armor.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

He looks nearly skeletal. Almost like those sickly bat-winged demons from the U-day pageant, but without most of the threatening bits. This isn’t the work of one week’s starvation.

“So,” he says, his eyes nearly smiling, “how has your day been?”

I haven’t been asked that question in a long time.

“Well…” I say, my gaze drifting up to the emerging stars. “For starters, sand is terrible…”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

I’m not sure what I expected when I asked that question, but it probably wasn’t a detailed account of her adventures throughout the day.

“…and then the mess tent cook – I can hardly believe this myself – prayed as I walked out, thanking Terra for not making me smite him!

“Tell me, does this look like an agent of Terra’s wrath?” she asks, prodding her fluff-shrouded chest.

On occasion.

“Not usually, I would think,” I reply.

Still, it’s a lot more interesting than listening to myself mope.

“…So then I got to thinking, ‘Spicy, you fiendishly clever mare, it seems you have some time alone –” her hoof shoots up and out in a sweeping gesture “– with the food! Surely you can come up with something interesting to do with all of this foreign stuff, or what’s that flower on your flank for?”

“What’s a flower have to do with food?”

“Oh ho ho ho… What’s a flower got to do with—”

Her hoof impacts her skull so loudly I’m a little worried she’s chipped her horn. “Right. Desert. Suffice it to say that saffron is the best spice ever, and that it comes from a flower grown in a valley by Terra’s Horn. Aaanyhow, I was experimenting with the food Carver was bringing out, and…”

I look down to the pita wrap I’ve been holding in one wing. I’m still not really hungry, but she did come all this way…

I take a bite.

The fluffy, yogurt-slicked pita gives way, revealing the syrupy-sweet, crystalline dates within, which then burst between my teeth in a salty, tangy explosion of feta.

I take another bite and chew slowly, trying to savor the flavor, when I notice she’s stopped talking and is looking at me expectantly.

“So,” she says, a self-satisfied grin on her muzzle, “what do you think?”

“Wow,” I say, and take another bite.

Chapter 7: Histories and Herstories

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Blue Aegis

“Come on, Aegie!” my little brother says. “If we don't get there soon, Miss Spice will start without us.”

“All right, I’m coming,” I say as I stretch out my limbs before a small yawn escapes me. I’m used to sleeping a lot more on my off-days, since there's not really much I want to do.

But today was important. Dust Devil had been insisting that I come with him to hear Amber Spice’s stories since a little after my last day off so we could listen together. And have something to talk about.

The way Fairy Tails used to.

That thought in mind, I finish peeling myself off the cracked earth I’d been sleeping on to hover next to him. “Lead the way, Dust Devil.”

He cracks off a smart salute and buzzes high into the sky, spins for a second to track down his fire-maned quarry, and uses the spotter hoof sign meaning he sees something on the ground he wants me to check out.

I chuckle, and obligingly fly in the appointed direction. Ever since he got his cutie mark, it seems like he’s spent every waking hour bothering some guard or other to teach him things like that. Well, except for the time he spends playing with his friends or listening to stories.

I wish he would spend a little less time trying to be so grown up.

He swoops down to join me. “Come on, Aegie! Faster!” He zips behind to give me a push. “Why are you so slow today?”

I swat at him with my tail, but he dodges easily. I let out another yawn. “It’s nothing. Just fly on ahead, since you're in such a hurry. I'll catch up soon enough.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

“Today’s story is going to be a little bit different,” the fiery xenos says. “Instead of the myths and fables of the ancient past I usually tell you, this time I'll tell you one that's a bit more recent and, well, more down-to-earth. I'm going to tell you a story about Unicornia, where all the unicorns live. Does that sound good to everypony?”

She scans the small crowd gathered here – the Tornado Trio, me, and Dive Bomber's mother Shining Glaze – and gets looks ranging from my polite ambivalence to Dive Bomber's burning curiosity.

She smiles a bit wider, some of the earlier nervousness falling out of her grin.

“Alrighty then, let's begin…

“Once upon a time in the magical land of Unicornia, not so long ago, there lived a happy little chef.”

Dive Bomber's wing shoots up, and Amber Spice points at her with a shaggy hoof.

“Miss Spice,” she asks, “what's a chef? Is it some kind of animal, like a sheep? I bet it's something fluffy.”

Amber Spice chuckles softly before answering. “No, Bomber, a chef isn't some kind of animal, though some of them can be pretty fluffy. A chef is like a cook, but they have other cooks serving under them and they rule the kitchen like a king rules his castle. Inside of the kitchen, the chef's word is law, and everypony works together under their direction to produce scrumptious feasts on a daily basis. Well, as scrumptious as food got in Unicornia.

“Now, this happy little chef wasn't really all that happy. In truth, she was more than a little bored, which is a dangerous thing for anypony to be. You see, her special talent was for coming up with novel dishes – that's ‘new kinds of food’ – and she'd already tried making every dish she could think of. So this little chef did what anypony else would do in her horseshoes, and asked her mother for help…”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

“Talking to the other unicorns wasn't any help, and neither was looking to the world around her. She still had one place left to look, though: the Royal Archives. Yes, Silver?”

“What's an arc hive? Is that where you keep some kind of lightning bees?”

Amber Spice's eyes boggle a bit.

“Yeah. Lightning bees sound pretty cool,” Dive Bomber chimes in. “They must take really special equipment to handle.”

“How come you never told us about them before, huh?” Dusty asks.

“Because there aren't any, sillies! An archive is a place where old books are kept.”

We stare at her, united in incomprehension.

“So ponies can read them,” she continues, starting to look unsure.

“You know, reading, writing, words on parchment or paper… None of that means anything to any of you, does it.”

The slanted frown on her muzzle is making me feel like I just kicked a particularly fluffy lamb instead of failing to understand a string of nonsense words.

Shining Glaze raises a wing, and Amber Spice wearily points at her. “I use markings called numerals to help me keep track of measurements and calculations. Is that something like what you're talking about?”

And Amber Spice's eyes light back up like blue flames.

“Yes! Writing is like numerals, but for words and stories. Some of these ‘stories’ are about the past and are called ‘histories’, and those are very important to a lot of unicorns and the Royal Archives were full of these. But the Little Chef was there for another sort of story. One about how to put together foods to make new meals nopony had ever taught her. That nopony had seen in centuries. These stories are called ‘recipes’, and the Little Chef would find one that day that would shake her mountain home of Terra's Horn to its roots…”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

“And then, when she turned back to the stove, *FSHHOOM*, the grease caught fire! So then she flung water at it, and *KOSHHHHHHHHE*, it exploded in a brilliant pillar of golden flame! Needless to say, the Little Chef was quite surprised.”

The unicorn's story had certainly been… educational thus far. And more than a little strange. She said a lot of strange words, and would need to stop frequently to explain things in the beginning, though that happened less and less often as she went on.

I'd heard tales of distant magical kingdoms before, usually with a strapping young pegasus as the hero on a journey to slay its wicked sorcerer-king and bring honor and justice to the land. Fairy Tails had always preferred to twist these stories in her telling. The hero and, say, the king's daughter would fall in love, and she would use her magics to help the hero overthrow her corrupt sire. Then the hero and the princess would rule the magical kingdom together in peace and happiness.

I didn't care much for her changes, but Dusty loved her stories. Up until the raiders took her from us, that is.

“But the Little Chef had what she needed: a way forward. A way for her to make the world a tastier place. She was finally back in harmony with her cutie mark! But that isn't the end of her story, not by a long shot…”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

“And you'll never guess what they all did next,” she says, clearly prompting her audience to submit guesses.

“They celebrated how a unicorn improved upon a method long thought perfected by the barbarian tribes, showing how much ‘better’ they were?” Dive Bomber says.

“They declared her a witch and burned her!” Dusty declares with a little too much enthusiasm.

“They all agreed that the food was good and kept eating, no matter where the idea came from?” Silver Lining supplies.

“Nope! Though I liked yours, Bomber. They all puked on the spot.”

“EWWW!” the Trio shouts together, before breaking into laughter.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

“…and then after the sorcerer, the undercooks, and her best friend had all finished testifying, it was time for the Little Chef to take the stand and speak for herself.”

All three of the foals are watching the unicorn like little hawks. Even Shining Glaze is watching with interest as the wait for Amber Spice's next word continues. Amber Spice, meanwhile, is starting to look a little lost in thought.

“So?” Dusty says, ending the silence, “What did she say?”

“Did she tell the stuffy old graybeards that they were bad and wrong, and that new things and progress are good?” Dive Bomber asks.

“Did she ask them to judge her and her food on their own merits, and not on where they came from?” Silver Lining asks.

Amber Spice gives her head a quick shake. “Sorry about the pause. It’s just that we’re coming up on an important part of the story, and I want to make sure I tell it right.

“Now, the Little Chef walked up to the stand and looked up into the mirrored galleries of the Platinum Court and saw the ponies seated there. She saw the vile sorcerer, the haughty princess, the faithless undercook, and many more enemies than anypony should have. She looked again, though, and saw something else. She saw her loving parents, her best friend, and so many faces she'd brightened with a good meal. Taking heart from what she saw, the Little Chef opened her mouth to speak.

“‘Honored members of the Council of Graybeards, hear me! I am not a great and powerful wizard. I am not a revolutionary. I'm not even dissatisfied with my job. I am just a simple mare with a simple dream: to use my talent,’ she says, pointing to her cutie mark, ‘to make the dining room a better place. I love my king, I love Unicornia, and I love my family, and I want to make all of their lives better the best way I know how: by giving them new foods. If that means taking an obscure method from a tome in the Royal Archives, improving upon it, and making it my own? Then so be it.

“‘If that means that I am no longer fit to live on Terra's horn,’ she said with a sniff,” and so does Amber Spice, “‘then so be it. Lock me away, banish me if you must. Just promise me this one thing: that my contributions to unicorn cuisine will not be lost with me. I lay my fate at your hooves, your honors.’

“For a few seconds, there was complete silence in the gleaming courtroom. Then, the Judge spoke up.

“‘Thank you for your testimony,’ he said. ‘The Council and I will now adjourn for deliberation.’ And he and the rest of the Council left to do so.”

“Miss Spice, what does ‘debliteration’ mean?” Silver asks.

“‘Deliberation’ means… Well, it's like arguing, but more thoughtful. Ponies coming together to make an important decision.

“Anyhow, the deliberation lasted several minutes. A few times, raised voices were heard through the great plated doors.

“And then the doors slowly swung open, and the Council appeared.

“‘Little Chef,’ the Judge said, ‘We have come to a decision. You have been found guilty of elevating arts that were below us, and of loving Unicornia more than life. For your crimes, you are hereby sentenced to run the Royal Kitchens until the end of your days. This session of the Platinum Court –’ he banged his gavel ‘– is hereby adjourned.’”

“And so the Little Chef got to go back to her kitchen and cook to her heart's content, and she had everything she ever wanted. The end.”

“Well,” she says after the ending has had a few seconds to settle, “what do you think? I haven't had a chance to try out that story before.”

“I think the Little Chef and her best friend should have gotten married!” Silver Lining says, making Amber Spice's eyes widen. “He sounded really sweet.”

“I'll, uh, take-that-under-advisement!” she stammers. “Anypony else?”

Dive Bomber raises a wing again, and Amber Spice calls on her.

“I'm not sure I like the ending. She worked so hard, and all she got was her old job back? I think you should make her the new princess, or something.”

The unicorn looks like she's about to say something, but Dust Devil beats her to it. “No, I think I get it. Sometimes all you want is for things to go back to the way they were before, because things were good then.”

“Yeah, but the way things were before wasn't that great. She was bored stiff, remember?”

“Well,” Shining Glaze chimes in, “I thought it was a pretty good story, if a little unorthodox in execution. You should come to one of the story circles tonight and see how a pegasus does it. I hear Star Chaser's gonna be telling a good one over by the Tabernacle. A newer one, too, so it shouldn't be too depressing or scary like the ones Blue here seems to love so much.”

I twitch at the sudden jab, before noticing her wink. “They're not depressing,” I say, “I just think that stories should teach something, and that the world is a dangerous place.”

“Yeah, but you only need so many stories telling you why you shouldn't stick your wings in the fire before you get the hint,” she says, rising to leave. “Speaking of learning stuff, hey Bomber! How does helping Momma with her work sound? I think I'm getting really close to getting my teleskopos to show images right-side-up…”

Hearing that, Dive Bomber buzzes off after her through the air.

“Wow. Bomber says you can see through one of those things for miles, but it's always been upside-down and blurry. I'm coming too!” Dusty says, and then darts off after them.

“Thanks for the story, Miss Spice. We all appreciated it,” Silver Lining says before turning to gallop after his friends. “Hey guys, wait up!”

After a couple seconds, I turn back and walk over to the unicorn.

“That's not how that story really ended, is it,” I say softly, and her face falls.

“No. No it isn't,” she replies. “But what really happened wouldn't have made for a great story for foals.”

“Maybe it would have” – I gently shrug my wings – “maybe it wouldn't. I'm no storyteller. But my sister was, and she always liked to say that all of the best stories are true in some way. Even the ones about magical kingdoms.”

I turn my head to see Dusty and Silver Lining fading into the distance, and turn back to Amber Spice.

“I can't say I know what it's like to lose my home, but I can say that it really sucks to lose your family. Even if they're still alive.

“I'm not usually much for conversation, but if you need to talk and I'm off-duty… You've been good for Dusty. I think he needed some more peaceful stories with happy endings, so… thanks. I… I've got to go.”

I turn and fly away, so I can be alone with my thoughts for a while.

As I do, I hear a faint thanks on the wind.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

“I'm still not sure how you managed to drag me here,” Horizon says. “I haven't been to a story circle since –” he bites back a wince “– in months.”

I let out a sigh. “One of these days,” I say as we take our seats near the small, fragrant fire, “you will tell me what keeps making you bite your tongue. It's no good to keep your troubles bottled up like that.

“That said, it was actually pretty simple: I threatened to withhold your dinner until you agreed to accompany me here. You got a whiff of what I was holding, and your resolve sublimated like dry ice in a furnace.”

He raises an eyebrow and says “I knew what a few of those words meant.”

“Eh, I've been practically joined at the hip to an alchemist for the past several years,” I say as I waggle my horn. “Over time, I guess that seeped into my language. Anyhow, I just meant that your resolve to not go didn't last long at all when good food was on the line.”

“That's what I don't get. A couple of weeks ago, I'd have said you were threatening me with a good time. What happened?”

“Well obviously, you'd just never had good food before I came along. Now hush; I think he's starting.”

As I spoke, a light-maned pegasus stallion with such a deep blue coat it was nearly black swooped out of the sky to land in the circle by the fire.

He clears his throat, and begins to…

It's not really singing, and it's not exactly what I'd call chanting either, but… Well, it has some kind of rhythm to it.

“Once in a land so far away
The sky held different stars,
There dwelt a pony maiden fair
Beyond the ken of ours.

“Her father was a wicked king
But his heart was not lead;
If anypony did break hers
He'd surely strike them dead!”

“Well,” I quietly say to Horizon, “that's certainly a way to start things off. This should be interesting.”

In return, he baps me on the head with a wing.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

“She wished to part, agreeable-like;
He did not lack for charm.
But if her father thought her hurt,
The colt would come to harm.

“She hatched a plan. A devious plan.
Proud would it Father do.
For if her not-so-love were ‘dead’,
Her sire's ire would be too!”

“Eh,” I say to Horizon, “it's hardly the craziest scheme I've heard. Hay, I've had crazier schemes.”

“Schemes for keeping you parents out of the loop on your love life?” he replies.

“Heheh… Not as such. Let's just say I had a friend with a taste for elaborate pranks, and I had to keep up.”

“Well regardless,” he says, shifting his weight into a more relaxed position, “Star Chaser is still setting things up. We're not even close to the good part yet.”

I raise an eyebrow. “But we've already been here half an hour.”

He raises an eyebrow in return. “You can spend way longer than this telling me about your day.” The eyebrow falls again. “Besides, it's usually worth the wait, at least with Star Chaser or F— her.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

“The beast released its final breath;
The Polymorph was dead.
His anonymity secured,
He would now keep his head.

“Let’s hear it for this stallion true!
Here truly was a card.
He left us these immortal words:
A clean break-up is hard.”

There's applause from around the circle as Star Chaser bows. It's not much different from applause back home, except there are some ponies above us clapping their hooves together atop the Tabernacle cloud bank, and there isn't anypony letting off low-key pyrotechnic spells. I give him a few appreciative stomps as well.

“Okay, that was actually pretty good,” I say. “Got to say, though, wings for shadow puppets is cheating.”

“Says the literal magical unicorn.”

“Fair enough,” I say, as ponies start to get up and go their separate ways. “Wings aren't nearly as useful for… Idunno, lighting things on fire, I suppose.”

I peel myself off the ground and attempt to shake some loose sand out of my coat, and turn to walk Horizon back to his cloud bank. I hate sand so sparking much.

“So,” I ask, “does everypony here tell their stories in verse like that? With the rhyming and the meter and the tortured word choice?”

That last bit actually got a snicker from him, and I may have smirked a little.

“No. I mean, it's common enough that I hear it about a fourth of the time, but it's by no means mandatory. Some ponies say they do it because verse is easier to remember than straight words, but I think they do it to sound more like the old stories. More ‘respectable’.” He makes air quotes with his wings, which is actually pretty weird considering that I learned today that they don't really have a system of writing. At least, they don't anymore…

“And yeah,” he continues with a shallow smirk of his own, “some of it can sound pretty tortured. Star Chaser, though, he's something else. I don't think the guy has said something out of verse since he got his cutie mark.”

“Huh.” I look up at the stars for a bit in silence. “Well, that’s good to hear. I don’t think I could keep my second job as foalsitter if rhyming were a requirement. Come to think of it, that has got to get annoying to listen to after a while.”

“You'd think that, but his wife still looping adores it. That was her in the crowd with the flat black mane.”

“Huh.”

We continue in silence for a couple of minutes, and we're back at his cloud bank.

“So Horizon—”

“Call me Rize. It's what my friends… er, friend calls me.”

“Well, I guess you can call me Spicy, for the same reason. Anyhow, I couldn't help but notice you've been almost talking about a certain mare several times tonight. Her name wouldn't happen to be Fairy Tails, would it?”

He freezes, like he's been turned to marble.

“I heard about her from her little brother, Dust Devil,” I start to babble. “He tackled me the first day I was here and then accused me of making her disappear, heh heh. He… seemed to think I was some creature from the stars?

“Well, the Tornado Trio keeps telling me how great she was at telling stories, and tonight seemed to be reminding you of somepony even more than usual, and you started saying a name that started with an ‘F’, and talking about 'her’, and if you're not okay talking about her right now oh sunscald I'm talking too much how-do-I-shu—”

Horizon, or “Rize” I guess, raises a hoof in the universal gesture of shushing, ratchets it back to his chest, and lets out a long, sighing breath.

“She is— was my fiancé,” he says, “until about a year and a half ago, when –” he lets out a quiet sniffle “– I really don't want to talk about it right now.”

Aw, fizzle.

“Well, you really should talk about it sometime with someone, and my mom was a bartender so I know a thing or two about listening to ponies’ troubles. Trust me, you will feel better after opening up about it, just a little, and listening is the least I could do after the whole ‘saving my life’ thing. Even if you have made a complete plot hole of yourself a few times since then.”

I quirk my lips into a brief smirk again, but he doesn't really reciprocate.

“Well,” I continue, “what if I told you the story of how I ended up so far from home? I kinda told the Tornado Trio a, uh, slightly modified version of it today and passed it off as fiction, and it's been helping me put things into context. So, I tell you mine sometime, and you'll tell me yours?”

Rize's frown deepens for several seconds as he appears to mull it over. “Alright. You… You may be right. And I would like to hear that story sometime, just not tonight. Sometime later, then?”

I let out a smile that's only slightly nervous, before I start talking again. “Alright then, it's settled. One of these days, we'll get together to tell each other about our tragic backstories. Just you, me, and a bottle of my family's prized amber mead.

“Speaking of tragic backstories, Dust Devil's other sister, Blue Aegis came—”

“She didn't try to stab you, did she?!”

“Wait, what? No! Despite my initial, eheh, trepidation on joining this lovely caravan, I don't think I've ever actually been in danger of stabbing. Blue Aegis was there with her brother to hear my story. Saw straight through it, too. She actually offered to talk about it with me if I caught her during some downtime. I… think she might have been crying.”

Now it was Rize's turn to boggle.

“I, uh… I've got nothing,” he says. “I don't want to go into specifics, since she's apparently decided to be friendly now, but trust me when I say this is a complete about-face on her opinion about you.”

“And this erstwhile opinion included stabbing?”

“Maybe?” he says through what appears to be his please-for-the-love-of-Terra-drop-the-subject grimace. So I oblige.

“Well, alright then.” I turn to leave. “I'll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Sure. Good night, Spicy.”

I stop in my tracks. It has been so long since I've heard those words.

I let a genuine smile come to my face.

“Good night, Rize.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

“Y'know,” Sweep says as he does a barrel roll around me, “I can hardly remember a time you've looked less glum. Sands, I think I've even heard you use sentences bigger than three words.”

I give him an aileron roll. “You're hilarious, Sweep.”

“That I am.” He bobs up and down in an affirmative gesture.

“Well,” he continues, “I don't mean that you look ecstatic or joyful – I wouldn't even recognize you then – but now at least you look like a serious guard rather than a freshly animated corpse. What happened?”

I fly up to the little smart alec and give him a sour look. “A corpse? Really?”

“That and worse! I have been holding these in for so long, Rize, you have no idea. For a good while, you looked so skeletal you could have passed for Death himself if we could find you a cloak.”

I let out a low growl.

“But really, Rize, what's new? I'm not even needing to slow down for you at all today.”

‘He’s been… Actually, that's not really all that surprising, come to think of it.’

“Well, I guess it's been a combination of good food, strange company, and trying to get outside my own head for once.” I sweep my gaze across the cracked earth before us. “Or maybe it just feels like I'm back in unfamiliar territory, where I belong. Can't say for certain.”

“Well, whatever the cause,” the manipulative little buzzard says, “it’s good to have you back.”

We fly on, ahead of the caravan, in silence for a few moments.

“Hey Rize! Take a look at your nine o’clock.”

I tweak my gaze a bit to the left to see what's got him excited.

“Huh. Green. Haven't seen that color outside a pita in weeks.” I let my words hang there for a few wingbeats. “I guess we're finally getting close.”

END OF PART II

Chapter 8: Definitely Maybe Not a Mirage

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Amber Spice

“If I squint, I think I can see some blue and green in the distance. It's not just a mirage, is it, Merry Weather? I can't really get the kind of vantage point you pegasi can.”

“Huh. I'd tell you ‘Not with that attitude’, but I don't see even you growing wings through sheer force of will,” she says as she absently refills my waterskin. “That said, no, it's not a mirage. That out there is the Southwest Oasis. One of my favorites, truth be told. It's got the biggest still, so I can afford to be a lot freer with the firewater in my other job.”

“That's good to hear. I've been wanting a good drink for weeks, but it's never quite felt like the right occasion to break out the mead I brought with me. I mean, once I run out of it, it's gone…”

I trail off in thought as I take my refilled waterskin back from her. Running out of things isn't something that I like thinking about much. Half the reason I tried to become the Royal Chef in the first place was so I could get relatively unfettered access to saffron. But out here, I can't just badger some undercook to search the pantry or put in a requisition if I don't have enough oats on-hoof. For the next almost-year, at least, I'm going to have to learn to make do or do without.

“So, uh,” I say, looking back up to her as she lounges on her somewhat depleted cloud, “what is an oasis, exactly?”

“Oh, it's only the thing we've been marching towards for the past month. You didn't think we kept moving all the time, did you? Where did you figure the food came from?”

I give her a horn-shrug. “I guess I just never really thought about it. I was kind of preoccupied.”

“Even when you were bored stiff?”

“Especially when I was bored stiff.”

She gives a shrug of her own, in the pegasus fashion. “You are an interesting pony, Amber Spice.”

She rolls onto her back, continuing to look down at me. “Come to think of it,” she says, “being two weeks out from either oasis, you were about as close to the middle of nowhere as you could be while still being on a caravan route. Lucky you, huh?”

“Uh, yeah. Lucky me.” About two seconds pass before I decide that that's another thing I don't want to think too much about. “You still haven't really answered my question, though.”

“Oh, right. Well, an oasis is a patch of green and blue in the middle of the desert, usually perched atop an underground river or aquifer. That's pretty-much a hole underground with a lot of water in it.

“What that means for us is we can be a bit more free with our water use. We can grow crops, bathe, or even play in the water if we want to. I know my Silver loves that.”

I give my shoulder a sniff, and it wrinkles my nose. I'd stopped noticing my smell after the first week, but stars do I miss daily baths. My once pristine, fluffy coat is kind of a greasy mess of mats, too, which is something I'll rectify at the first opportunity.

It's… It's nothing some shampoo, conditioner, and a good deal of brushing won't fix.

That's not the only thing she mentioned, though. “So, uh, what kinds of crops do you grow there? I've seen olives, pickles, and dates, and you have to make those pitas out of some kind of grain, but do you grow anything else? Or do you only grow food you can preserve easily? I don't think I've seen anything good for fermenting, unless you count cheese…”

“Hmm…” She flops onto her back again in thought. “I can't say we do much with fermenting pomegranates, but grapes and peaches are the pita and yogurt of the distiller's art. We grow both of those there. Some people ferment wheat or milk, too, but I've never had a taste for the stuff.”

The only food I recognized in that sentence was milk, and I'm going to continue not thinking about it or the brewing thereof.

“So, uh, what's a peach?”

“What's a peach?” she says before flying a quick loop and landing back on her cloud. “Only solid, squishy evidence that Terra loves her children and wants them to be happy!

“Oh Spicy, you'll love peaches. They're big, orange, and fuzzy, and they take a lot of water to grow. Kinda like you, come to think of it. And they are just so sweet and juicy! Which might, idunno, make them kinda messy for you to eat? They're totally worth it, though. You'll see.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

Sweep and I touch down in the early afternoon, beneath the shade of the orchard's date palms and peach trees

“As ‘nice’ of a thing it is for you to do, I don't want to catch wind of your snapping up any guards’ shifts this time. You've done your job, so rest!”

I only wince slightly at the veiled accusation. “You won't. I'm done trying to work myself into an early grave, remember?”

“Even if some cloud-hugging lazybones asks you nicely?” Sweep says, quirking his mouth into his signature horse-apple-eating grin.

“I'll tell him to try giving a camel flying lessons, and then get back to me.”

“Ha!” Sweep hops up to snatch a ripe peach from a nearby tree. “I'll hold you to that, Rize. After all, anywhere you go, I go, and I'm looking forward to many long years of sitting on clouds heckling youngsters in our future.”

He tears into the peach like he hasn't eaten in weeks, which, since he hasn't had anything but pitas, milk, and whatever the caravan could preserve from previous stops, is sort of true. I grab a peach of my own, lie down, and start eating.

‘I wonder what Spicy will do with these…’

“So,” Sweep says, already done with his peach, “If you're done rendering yourself a complete social outcast for the moment, whatcha gonna do now?”

“Hadn’t really thought about it,” I say between mouthfuls of sweet, juicy peach. “Maybe I'll check on the Tornado Trio, see what kind of trouble they're getting into. Dust Devil hasn't tried to bother me at work in a while, and I'm starting to miss those little sand flies.”

“Any plans involving a certain peach-looking mare?”

I squint at him. “Who are you—Oh. Right. Amber Spice. I guess she does kind of look like a peach,” I say, looking down at the remains of mine. “I guess I could stand to show her around, since she's probably never been to an oasis before. Maybe make up for the last time I gave her a guided tour.”

‘Come to think of it, I have no idea what her old home on Terra's Horn was like, aside from “colder”.

‘Maybe it's time I took her up on her offer to exchange stories…’

“Hello? Rize? You in there, buddy? Need me to organize a search party?”

I roll my eyes and kick some dirt at him. “No, just thinking. You should try it sometime.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

I wouldn't have dreamed of taking a cold bath back on Terra's Horn, but here I am.

I mean, I could have just magically heated the water in my collapsible tub myself – heating spells have always been pretty easy for me – but—

“Oooh,” I say with a slight shudder while slipping into the water. “This is nice.”

I can practically feel the weeks of grit and grime floating away already, even if I know it'll take actual surfactants and scrubbing before I make any appreciable progress there. ‘Actually…’

I stand up, water cascading from my thick, matted coat, and look down to see the bottom of the tub already starting to resemble a riverbed. *Snrk*. “At this rate, the tub will need a bath of its own when I'm done.

“Ah, what can you do,” I say to myself as I pour some shampoo into my coat and start massaging it into a proper lather.

This was a lot easier back when I had servants. The invasion of privacy was annoying at first, but sunspots was it nice to not need two mirrors to be sure I got everything. Still, I managed without them for most of my life…

That said, it doesn't take me all that long to find the old rhythm. I start whistling a familiar tune as my thoughts begin to wander.

'How did you survive three weeks without a bath?’ I come across a particularly nasty mat in my coat and start teasing it apart. ‘And did you seriously forget to brush that entire time?! Oh well. We're fixing that now, anyway.

‘So, Spicy, what are you going to do now? Work at the mess tent a little less, probably, since there'll be fewer guards and more cooks while we're here at the oasis…

‘Now who do I ask if I can have a peach?’

As I'm using a telekinetic scoop to rinse some conditioner from my mane, I look up to see some familiar little faces peeking over the edge of a date palm frond. Three of them.

“What? You've never seen a mare bathe before?”

Silver Lining falls to the ground with a soft, rustly thud, while Dust Devil and Dive Bomber flutter down softly on losing their grip on the leaf.

“I'm fine!” he assures us.

Turning her head from Silver Lining to me, Dive Bomber says “Well yeah, but usually they bathe in pairs in one of the ponds, and preen each other's wings afterwards.”

“And they don't usually dump mysterious potions in their hair,” Silver Lining chimes in while disentangling himself from a viney plant laden with huge, purple berries.

“Yeah,” Dust Devil says, narrowing his eyes. “What were those for?”

As much fun as it would be to take this opportunity to mess with them, I've got a bath to finish.

I submerge myself once more before stepping out of the tub and shaking myself vigorously. Then I start casting a heating spell at the base of my coat and mane to help the desert air absorb the rest of the water from my hair.

“Those ‘potions’,” I say, using my forehooves to mimic pegasus wing-quotes, “were shampoo and conditioner. The first was to clean away dirt and grease, while the second was to keep my hair healthy and soft.”

I stop channeling the heating spell, confident that the desert air can take care of the rest, and reach into my bag for my brushes.

It's a shame I'd never found an excuse to break them out before now. Their yellow-orange and pastel yellow bristles would have been good reminders of home…

As I'm pulling my diamond-shaped hairbrush towards my mane, I find there's a wide-eyed filly attached to it.

I goggle at her.

“Is— Is that… real gold? Used to make a hair brush?!”

“Well not pure gold,” I say while very lightly trying to shake my mane brush loose from Dive Bomber's grip. “It's only three-quarters pure. We could have gone purer, but Mom thought I should have a brush that would last.”

Dive Bomber refuses to be dislodged, using her wings to remain stable in the air. “You must have been a really important unicorn. I've only ever seen sheikhs and commanders wear gold, and you have a whole hairbrush made of it. Sandstorms, not even my mom can get her wings on gold, and working with fancy metals and glass is her job!”

Huh. Come to think of it, almost all of the metal I've seen here has been in weapons and cookware.

“Um, Dive Bomber?” I say. “Could you, maybe, hold onto my hairbrush a little less tight? If your mom has taught you anything about gold, and I suspect she has, then she's told you that gold is soft and easily damaged, and this hairbrush is important to me.”

She's still latched onto it, scanning its every inch with impossibly wide eyes.

“And then there's the fact that it's a hairbrush, it's my hairbrush, and I am possessed of copious amounts of hair in imminent need of brushing.”

No dice. She's still glued to it like Outta Stock after one of my better lab pranks. “It's… so beautiful…”

‘Maybe if I try heating the metal so she drops it? No, bad Spicy! She's just a filly. This calls for a softer approach.’

“This hairbrush was a gift from my mother, to remind me of her while I'm away. The fact that it's made of gold isn't nearly as important as who it's from.”

She finally looks up from her prize to meet my eyes.

“I'll… let you look at it later, if you want,” I continue. “Just as long as you promise not to damage it, or melt it down, or use it to dig for buried treasure.”

“Um, okay. Sorry, Miss Spice.”

There's a word I've picked up recently: ‘sheepish’. At first I thought people were comparing my voluminous coat to that of the livestock, but what it really means is an expression displaying contrite chagrin. That's the look Dive Bomber is wearing as she releases my hairbrush and flutters back to her friends under the date palm.

“Ha!” Dust Devil says as I try to brush my mane and tail into some semblance of order before they completely dry out. “The way you keep latching onto anything shiny you see, you'd think you were part dragon.”

“You're hilarious, Dusty” she shoots back.

“Y'know, that would explain a lot,” Silver chimes in, counting off on his primaries. “The colors, the obsessions with speed and metal, the temper…”

“RRAAAAAAARGH!”

“Look out, Silver. She's trying to breathe fire at us!” he shouts as he rockets away, cackling as Dive Bomber pursues.

“Hey guys, wait for me!” Silver Lining shouts as he gallops after them.

I hear some faint chuckling on the wind, and turn to smirk up at my new verbal sparring partner. “Enjoy the show, Rize?”

He alights a few feet to my left, and produces a fuzzy orange ball from a pouch with his wing.

“It was an alright performance. Excellent props, but the soliloquy could use some work.”

I let out an amused snort. “Since when did you know the word ‘soliloquy’?”

“I was engaged to a storyteller at one point, and I would listen to what she had to say.”

“I'll try not to faint from that shocking revelation.”

He tosses the orange fuzzball back and forth between his wings.

“So,” I say, “you seem a lot more energetic today than… well, ever, really.” And he mentioned his fiancé without so much as wincing. “What's different?”

“Well, I'm not tired from a full day of flying or a year-plus of self-loathing, and I'm finally in a place where I can enjoy good food and good company. Speaking of, welcome to the Southwest Oasis. Have a peach.”

He tosses the peach to me, and I catch it with my telekinesis and bring it to my mouth to take a bite.

He goes on to say something about another tour, and about making up for past blunders, but I can't really hear him over the experience of the sweetest, most fragrant, and juiciest food I'd never expected to find in the desert.

“Oh…” I moan. “I'm going to be able to do so much with these…”

Chapter 9: Can't Go Chasing Fairy Tails

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Horizon

“I see you enjoyed the peach.”

By which I meant that she’d mauled that poor, defenseless peach carcass like a coyote that caught a lamb by itself, complete with sound effects and juice-soaked muzzle. A little disturbing, really.

“Oh. Yes. Yes I did.” Amber Spice blinks, then brings a pastern to her damp muzzle and pulls it away wet.

She turns and dunks her face in her somewhat murky, frothy bathwater and swishes it around. Once she’s apparently satisfied, she pulls her head back up and lights her horn as steam starts to waft from her freshly cleaned muzzle.

“Merry Weather wasn’t kidding about peaches,” she says. “The flavor, or the mess.” Her face turns thoughtful. “I guess I should slice them up with my knife first in the future…

“But Rize!” she says, turning her attention back to me. “It’s good to see you. This is a lot earlier in the day than usual. Don’t you have lots of vanguarding to do?”

“No, I’m off of guard duty for the foreseeable future. When we’re not moving, there’s no real ‘van’ to guard.” I give her a wing-shrug.

She’s never had problems interpreting pegasus gestures, even the ones with wings. Come to think of it, I’ve always understood the little gestures she makes with her horn. She’s talked about having trouble reading camels, and I’d bet peaches to kumquats they have the same problems with her.

“Fair enough,” she says with her own weird horn-waggling shrug. “But… what are you going to do with your day, now that you’ve run out of vans?” She blinks, her eyes widen, and then her horn lights up and her golden hairbrush floats up to her mane and starts trudging through it. A moment later, a wood-rimmed oval of glass-coated silver floats up from her bag to join it.

“Oh, you know – or maybe you don’t… Stuff like lending a wing where it’s needed, enjoying fresh fruits and vegetables, making sure the Tornado Trio don’t light anything too important on fire, offering tours of the oasis to strange mares… Maybe I’ll see if the mess tent needs help. You always seem to be having adventures over there, and I’ve been kinda starved for that lately.”

“Heh. Now there’s a thought,” she says. “‘Hey Rize, what’s taking you so long to chop up those cucumbers? Don’t you do this sort of thing all the time?’, or ‘Uh, Rize? Could you clear away these worshippers for a second so I can get this food out to the counter?’, or better yet, ‘Aw, Rize, stop being such a baby. It’s only a little fire!’”

She lets out a snort of laughter, and I can’t help but grin along with her, even as I raise a hoof in protest. “To be fair to me, though, my job generally involves a lot more stabbing and kicking than actual chopping.”

“Hmm. Stabbing… That kinda gives me an idea,” she says as she finally tugs her hairbrush free of her frizzy mane. It actually looks pretty nice once all the mats are out of it. Like a big, rusty cumulus. “You see, you guys don’t really have utensils as I know them, and I’ve been feeling pretty constrained by the resulting need to have every meal be something you can fit into a pita or else something you just” – her face wrinkles in disgust – “stick your face in like a common animal.”

I raise an eyebrow, and she completely fails to notice.

“So now I’m thinking,” she continues as she sets down her golden hairbrush and picks up her rectangular, wooden one and sets to work on her tangled coat, “what if I served the food speared on some kind of spike? Stars, what if I cooked them on one? The small size and open airflow would make cooking evenly easier, which could mean less cook-time and less drying out…”

It’s fascinating to watch her mind work, but I figure it’s time to pull her back to reality once I notice she’s been brushing the same patch of coat for the past minute. I cough, and then point at her brush once I have her attention, and her grin turns briefly sheepish as she moves the brush to another patch.

“Sorry, I guess I got carried away,” she says. “Still… do you have anything to add? I don’t know whether I’d have the skewers made from metal, or wood, and I’d like to get a local’s perspective on which would be more feasible.”

“Hmm. Shining Glaze seems to like you, so you might be able to get some metal skewers from her, but it would be a real longshot to get enough from her to serve the entire mess tent. It could work with your cooking idea, though, as long as you’re okay with scraping them into a bowl after. Wood would be better for your serving idea, but I’d worry about them catching fire” – I catch her grimacing at that – “so you’d probably have to soak them or something. Not likely an option when we’re underway, but we are stopped at an oasis right now.”

“Good points, I suppose.”

She cranes her neck and twists her back to try to catch her tail’s reflection in her shiny, flying oval, and then deflates.

“Oh, sunspots. It’s going to take me hours to get all these mats out. I knew I should have packed more than one mirror. Unless…” She turns her head back to me, wearing a sheepish expression and floating her hairbrush towards me. “Rize, could you do me a huge favor and help brush these mats out of my tail? That’s something friends do for each other around here, right?”

‘Sort of?’ I start to reach for the floating brush with a hoof, then my mouth, before finally settling on a wing as my best option for gripping the awkward diamond-shaped golden brush.

“Close enough,” I say with half a shrug as I walk around back and sit down to get into position.

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Blue Aegis

Not long after sunset, I hear some voices below my clouds.

“So that’s the grand tour, and without my getting pelted with food this time.”

My ears and then eyes turn to lock onto the source of the conversation: Horizon and Amber Spice. Those two have been spending a lot of time together lately, and the friendship’s been good for him.

“First of all,” she replies, “you started it. Second, you had it coming.”

She sticks her tongue out at him.

They keep walking through the date palms. Towards me.

“Well, there she is.” He sweeps a wing at me. “Not sure why you wanted to find the world’s biggest grump with wings, but that’s your business.”

“Liar,” she says. “You know full-well why.”

She turns to shout up at me. “Hey, Blue Aegis! Can I call you Blue? Aegis is kinda hard for me to say. Anyway, Rize and I were about to swap tragic backstories over a couple bottles of my mom’s extra-special, saffron-infused mead, and I thought you’d like to referee.”

“And besides,” Horizon shouts (but not as loudly), “your shift ended an hour ago and you know it.”

Well, I did say I’d listen if I was off-duty, and I am off-duty…

I flutter down to join them so we don’t have to shout.

“Okay, I’m in. And yes, I suppose you can call me Blue.”

“Alright, let’s get going!” Horizon says with more bravado than he apparently feels. “I know where to get some cushions and dishes that won’t be missed, and Spicy here can start a fire anywhere.”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

The food had been acceptable. It hadn’t been amazing, but then again it hadn’t been made by Amber Spice.

The drink, on another hoof…

“This might be the best wine I’ve ever had,” I say. “You say you made this out of honey?”

“Yeah, and a few other things. My mom makes the best mead on Terra’s Horn. And anywhere else, apparently. I’d really like to tell her that someday.”

We let that sentence hang in the air for a few seconds as the fire crackles to fill the silence, before Horizon speaks up.

“What I don’t understand is, why all this trouble over a cook and some pastries?”

“Hey, give me a little credit, here. I wasn’t just ‘some cook’; I was the best spark-spewing cook on Terra’s Horn! Royal Chef to their Majesties themselves.”

“That’s impressive and all, but it doesn’t exactly sound like the sort of person you exile to make an example of. Sweep you under a rug and keep you out of the public eye, maybe, but exile? Why did they think you were such a threat?”

She closes her eyes for a moment in slightly inebriated contemplation before speaking up again.

“Y’know, maybe things aren’t going so great at home as I’d thought back then. You’ve got to understand: Our whole culture is based on the idea that unicorns are the best and the brightest that the world has to offer, and that the royals are the best of that. Being as close to royalty as I was on a constant basis had already pretty-much disillusioned me of that notion. I meant almost every word I said during that show trial. And the ponies I’m meeting here…

“Well, you remember how bad I said Pierce the Omnipotent was? I had to assume that every single pegasus and earth pony was worse than him in every way. Otherwise, the world couldn’t make sense.”

“Well, that would explain how you acted when we first met,” Horizon chimes in.

“Yeah. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“Well,” I say, “you seem to be doing pretty well for someone who’s had their world flipped upside-down and everything they worked for stripped away. How do you do that?”

She blinks a couple of times, and then a slightly sad smile grows on her face. “Maybe… Maybe it’s because, deep down, I never really believed in all that.”

Even the fire’s crackling seems subdued.

“And that, Horizon,” I say, “is why they thought she was dangerous enough to exile.”

We each contemplate our mead for a while, and then Amber Spice speaks up.

“Okay, Rize, now I’ve told you my story. What about yours?”

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Horizon

It all happened one year and seven months ago. Fairy Tails and I, we were engaged to be married. The big day was about a month away at that point.

We had both been pretty stressed about the looming wedding. Excited, but stressed. Between everypony we knew (and more than a few camels as well) pestering us at all hours about it… Well, Fae suggested we take a day or so to get away from it all.

And I knew just the place.

“Are we there yet, Rize, Honey? I think my wings are about to fall off.”

Fairy Tails wasn’t built for soaring. She had… smallish wings. A body made for dancing, and the way her mane fluttered when she twirled through the air…

“Just a little longer, Fae,” I shouted back to her. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

“This had better not be one of those things where ‘it was all about the journey’ or, I swear, I will make you sit through the entire thirty hours of the Ipposiad. Every. Last. Ver—”

Her breath caught as a bit of green and blue peeked over the edge of the world.

“Wait, Is that what I think it is?”

“That, and more!” I shouted, diving down to our destination.

A few palms bearing wild fruit, a small, shaded pool, and just the cutest little lizards you could find… It was perfect. A tiny oasis off the beaten track, known only to me and Sweep. Or so I’d thought at the time. And now I was sharing it with her.

We landed next to the pool. Well, I landed. She alighted.

She twirled, slowly, taking it all in. “Wow. This place is magical! I half-expect a djinn to spring forth from the pool to offer me a wish.”

“What if one already had, the last time I was here?” I gave her a cheesy grin.

“Then they would have been gravely offended that I wasn’t there, and probably turned you into a tortoise in a fit of pique. Djinni are like that, you know.” She stuck her tongue out at me.

“A sexy tortoise, though.”

“Yeah. One with impressive hangtime when I kicked it hard enough.”

At which point she gradually collapsed in a fit of giggles before throwing us both into the pool.

She never would have let that comment go. It would have become a little joke between us, where one of us would bring it up casually when the other least expected to make them squirt milk out their nose. That was how things were between us.

After we’d played in the water a bit and splashed each other with our wings a few times, she looked at me thoughtfully. “Really, though,” she said, “what would you have wished for? Assuming you trusted the djinn.”

I paused for a moment, then said “You already know the answer to that.”

She smirked. “Yes, but I like to hear you say it. You can be a real bard when you put your heart to it.”

“All right, then. I would have wished that the two of us could spend the next hundred years exploring the world and uncovering its stories together, and the next hundred after that retelling them.

“And the next two-hundred doing it all again.”

And then she darted forward and kissed me.

We spent most of the day like that: in the pool or lying down and eating wild fruit, talking or resting, neither of us even thinking about flying when the most important thing in the world was right in front of each of us.

As dusk was falling, I was staring into her eyes as she watched the sunset. Beautiful, pale pink eyes you could get lost in. So lost in that I didn’t notice any whuff of wings in the distance, or the clack of the blackjack on the back of my head as I lost consciousness.

I could never forget what I saw, though. As the wonder in those beautiful pink eyes transformed into fear.

When I came to, it was fully dark. Just me and the moonless stars…

—_(\\_/\_//)_—

Amber Spice

“At the time, I thought I could still hear her screams in the… in the distance. But Fairy Tails and her captors were hours away by then, and… I was just so tired, and I had the biggest headache I’d had in my life.”

“You’ll have a bigger one tomorrow if you don’t remember to drink some water once in a while,” I butt in. We’d already gone through one bottle of my mom’s saffron-infused amber mead, and were working our way through a second. It’s good stuff, only for special occasions. This certainly warranted it. This Fairy Tails pony sure sounded special.

I want to give him a hug and let him nestle into my mane until the pain goes away, but maybe that’s just the booze talking. It is very good mead.

“Right. Thanks.” He takes a sip from his water glass before he continues. “So, that’s the story of how I lost the love of my life, and Blue Aegis lost her sister.”

The three of us are silent for a moment. Rize looking up at the full moon, Blue Aegis looking down into her drink, and I staring through Rize.

“So,” I say, “how long did you try to look for her?”

“I wanted to try, so hard,” he replies. “I asked the Commander for permission, and maybe some guards to help, but I had no idea what direction to search.” He lets out a sigh. “He told me to talk to the Sheikh about it.”

His lips curl in disgust, and he takes another sip of mead to wash the taste of the memory from his mouth.

“The Sheikh told me that Fate and Terra had decreed that Fairy Tails’s time among us was at an end, that she had moved on to bless another caravan with her stories, and that I was powerless to fight that.

“And, well –” he shrugs his wings expansively “– the rest is history.”

“Loop Terra,” Blue curses. “What has she done for anyone, anyway?”

Silence reigns for another minute, before I speak up.

“Y’know, I think… I think Terra doesn’t quite work that way.”

Their ears slowly perk up.

“I mean, I didn’t pay that much attention to her, except for the stories, but… But I think in her dreams, she wants us to be happy. But we have to take charge, and make that happen for ourselves. I mean, if she just gave us everything, it wouldn’t be the same?”

My statement hangs in the air awkwardly for several seconds, before it apparently lands.

“Maybe there’s… something to that,” Rize says.

“Yeah, maybe,” Blue chimes in.

A moment later, as I move to refill everypony’s glasses one more time, I have a flash of drunken insight.

“I propose a toast.”

“A what?” Blue asks, her muzzle wrinkled up.

“A toast,” I say, realizing I have a little bit of cultural education to do. “It’s a way of using alcohol to celebrate something or someone in particular.

“You hold up your glass, kinda like this –” I wobblily raise my glass in my drink-addled telekinetic field “– and then you say the person or thing, and something great about them. And then when everypony has said something, you all drink.”

“We have a… a custom kinda like that, too,” Blue says. “Libations. ‘Tswhere you pour out a glass for… someone you miss. I like it. ‘Tspoignant. But I’ve already poured out enough wine for Fairy Tails to pickle her liver; let’s try this unicorn thing.”

I nod, then focus and lift my glass again. “To Fairy Tails! The greatest storyteller in the world.”

Blue Aegis lifts her glass, cupped in a wing. “To Fairy Tails! A better sister than anyone deserves.”

Rize thinks for a few seconds, then straightens himself and follows suit. “To Fairy Tails! A mare of hope.”

And, satisfied, we drained our glasses.

Desert Spice

by Bugsydor

Chapter 1: A Break in the Routine

Chapter 2: Acrophobiagenesis

Chapter 3: Horizon's Scope

Chapter 4: Of Aliens (and Alienation) on the Mend

Chapter 5: Culture Shock and Awe

Chapter 6: Sweep Away

Chapter 7: Histories and Herstories

Chapter 8: Definitely Maybe Not a Mirage

Chapter 9: Can't Go Chasing Fairy Tails