> Sweet Nothings
>  by Golden Tassel
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Parturition
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

A mare is dead, a foal orphaned. This is the price I paid for love.

With the heavy steel door closed behind me, I was left all alone in the pitch darkness of the world outside. I lay down, closed my eyes, and waited for the wasteland to claim me.

I waited to die. But as I would eventually come to understand, I had only just been born.


***


A light came on in the distance. At first it was only a dim glow, but it grew brighter as I watched it. Then suddenly it became a blinding glare. Even when I closed my eyes, I could still see the glow through my eyelids. The light was warm. I felt its glow on my face, and it slowly spread down over me.

I didn't know what it was, if it was some element of the wasteland there to claim me, or if perhaps I had died and not yet realized it. But the warmth of that light made me conscious of the coldness of the stone floor beneath me. I stood up and peered at the light through squinted eyes. Curiously, I began moving toward it.

I was in some kind of corridor—no, the stable had corridors; they were straight and orderly, and they had been constructed with purpose. This floor . . . this ground I walked on was uneven, as were the walls and ceiling above me. I was in a tunnel, a canal that bridged the sealed world of the stable with the open wasteland.

I emerged out into the full light, and as my eyes became adjusted to it, I saw at last what that light was: the sun, cresting over the distant horizon. It was the dawn, the birth of a new day. The sky was awash in brilliant red and orange hues, and below it, before me, was the wasteland.

And all of it was so very empty.

I stood above the wasteland halfway up the side of a mountain, into which the stable, where a dozen generations before me had lived their entire lives and never seen the light of day, had been built. Everything I had ever known, everything I had ever cared about . . . my whole world was behind me. And ahead was an empty, lifeless void where the only movement I could see were small tufts of dust that became swept up in the wind, danced around in the air briefly, and then disintegrated into nothing.

I glanced back at the mouth of the cave that lead down to the stable, and I briefly imagined running back there to pound against the door and beg and plead to be allowed back in. But I knew that would be futile. So I steeled myself with the certainty that the stable was left a better place without me.

My wings bristled and spread out at my sides as I looked ahead at the wide open world. The stable had been constructed to allow sufficient room for pegasi to fly along corridors, or up and down between levels by way of the atrium which ran the entire height of the stable. But I knew in that moment—as I stood there on the side of that mountain with my wings outstretched, feeling the natural breeze under my feathers, feeling how the fine control muscles adapted the shape of my wings all on their own to fit the changing winds—I knew that the stable had not been enough room for a pegasus. I hadn't had any idea of the very simple wonder that I had been deprived of my entire life.

So as I launched myself out into the open air and glided out over the barren, dusty hills, I resolved to leave it all behind me: I would simply forget about it all. Accept that I had lost what I loved most of all, and move on with my life. I had no idea where I was going, only forward.

I could never go back.

> Don't Talk to Strangers
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I fell.

One moment I was soaring casually, held aloft on seemingly nothing but the warm rays of sunlight that shone down upon me. And then in an instant, the wind's tenuous embrace was broken, and I was falling. I fell toward the earth below, plucked right out the sky. I had dared to defy gravity, and it now aimed to pummel me into the ground to remind me that I had no place in the heavens above.

A snare had caught my wing, twisted it into an unnatural angle and held it pinned to my side. I gave nearly all my breath to a panicked scream as I plummeted helplessly toward the ground. The wind rushed past me with a deafening roar while I spiraled out of control, and I had to fight for each breath. Blood rushed to my head and made my vision hazy to the point that I could only distinguish sky and ground as alternating light and shadow tumbling across my field of view.

My good wing managed to bite into the air and pull me out of the dive into an awkward, utterly graceless corkscrew descent. I sucked in a deep breath, and tried desperately to keep myself stable while the world righted itself around me, and the throbbing pressure inside my head subsided. As I neared the ground, however, my wing lost purchase, and I stalled. I dropped the last few yards at a shallow slope, and I was carried forward only by my lingering momentum as I crashed into the hard-packed earth.

Clouds of dust swirled up all around me as I tumbled over and over again until I finally came to a rest, lying uncomfortably on top of my tangled wing.

With a heavy groan, I pushed myself up enough to roll onto my other side, bringing some small relief to my wing as circulation returned to it. I simply lay there, panting for a moment before I tried to free my wing, and I got my first clear look at what had snared me.

I'd been caught by a long cord with weighted spheres at either end. It had wrapped two full times around my torso, and the ends had then twisted together to hold me. Struggling against it had only tightened the ends, and I had to pull them with my teeth, constricting the cord around my chest, in order to untwist them.

"He came down over this way!" a voice called out from somewhere over one of the hills I had landed among. Not long after, the figure of a pony appeared on the hilltop. "Down here!" she called.

I finished untangling myself from the bolas and stood up as she ran down the hill to meet me. She wasn't alone, and I suddenly found myself surrounded by a half-dozen ponies. All of them looked to be in poor health, and they all carried various dangerous-looking implements with them—knives, a sledgehammer, and other things . . . the mare in front of me wore heavy-looking iron boots around her forehooves. Given the bulk in her shoulders, she looked to be very practiced at wearing them.

Among them was a unicorn, smaller and leaner than the rest. He looked to be about my own age. His coat was a pure white—or it surely would have been if not for the dirt and rust-colored stains that mottled it. A number of scars further marred his coat, mostly on his forelegs and shoulders. Strapped across his back was a sword. While the others closed in around me, he stayed behind them, stalking back and forth, while he regarded me through one eye.

"What a lousy catch, Trapper!" the mare before me shouted as she smacked the pony next to her with the back of her iron-shod hoof. He stumbled aside and rubbed gingerly where she had hit him. "He's got nothing on him but that fancy shirt," she said, referring to my uniform: a standard-issue pale blue shirt.

"It's not like I could see what he had on him that far away! I got him down in one shot though. Don't blame me if he ain't got nothing."

The mare loomed closer over me. "Hey, you was flying through our turf. You gotta pay up. So come on. What you got?"

"I don't have anything," I whimpered. "I'm sorry. I didn't know this place was yours. I'll just leave. I won't bother you again. I promise."

She and her friends laughed at that. All except the unicorn at the back. He continued pacing slowly. There was a curious elegance and rhythm to his movements, almost as if he were dancing.

"You don't seem to get it," the mare said as she put her iron hoof on my chest and pushed me back half a step. "You gotta pay with something. So think real hard about what you can come up with. If you don't have something, we're gonna have to beat it out of you."

I trembled, kneeling before her. "Please! I have nothing! I'm all alone! I don't know where I am or where to go!" 

My pleas were again met with laughter, and I looked up at the mare in front of me as she raised her hoof, preparing to bring it down on me. Then suddenly the laughter stopped, and she stood stock still. Protruding from her throat was the tip of a sword.

The sword pulled free of her neck and her lifeless body crumpled to the ground in front of me. Behind her stood the unicorn with his bloody sword hovering in his crimson magical grasp.

All around me there were sounds of movement, yells, curses, and screams. But I simply knelt there in the middle of it all. All I could see was her bloody throat, and his joyful smile.


***


Someone was shaking me. "Hey! Snap out of it!"

I blinked and pulled myself away from that gory scene. Looking up, I saw that unicorn standing next to me. His sword was back in its sheath, and he was covered in blood, though none of it was his. He smiled at me.

"There you are. Don't look so upset; I just saved your life."

He'd done it for me.

Slowly, I stood up. My legs were shaky at first, but I got them under control.

"You . . . killed her," I said breathlessly. "But wasn't she your friend?"

He shrugged. "I wouldn't go that far; I've only been running with her gang for the last few months. No, I haven't had any real friends in years—not for as long as I've been out here. But for you . . . for you, I'd lay waste to a hundred friends."

I shuddered at the thought. But he had saved me. And as I glanced back down at the lifeless body on the ground, I realized I had to help him now.

"We need to hide the body," I said.

"Hide the body?" he repeated with a laugh. "Why in the world would we need to do that?"

"So nobody can prove what happened. So you won't get in trouble for it."

He stared at me blankly for a moment, then erupted in laughter once again. "Oh, you really have no idea, do you? There's no law out here, brother. Nobody cares that she's dead, and nobody cares that I killed her—except for maybe the rest of the pack I chased off, but they're probably more upset that all of them together couldn't handle little old runty me." He did a short celebratory dance. "I chased them off for now, but when they're done licking their wounds they'll come back for us, so we should get moving."

He started walking, and I—having nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and knowing that I couldn't stay there—I followed him.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Day," I said.

"Just Day?"

"Lucky Day . . ." I mumbled reluctantly.

He chuckled. "Yeah, I'll bet you've heard all the jokes ten times over by now. My name's Rake. I've been waiting a long time to meet you, Day."


***


The sun had set, and Rake and I sat on opposite sides of the small fire he had built out of dead tree branches and ignited with a magical flame from his own horn. I watched him silently through the flickering flames while he casually poked at the fire with his sword.

He looked up, his eyes meeting mine through the orange flames that danced between us. "You've been quiet," he said. His lips drew back into a smile. "I can see it in your eyes though: you're full of thoughts, questions. You've got a spark of intelligence in you that most of the riff-raff out here lack."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. "Thanks?"

Rake laughed. "You're even polite! I miss that. We're alike, you and I; we both come from civilization. Look at you: you're still clean as a newborn foal!" He stood up and moved around to my side of the fire, and then sat down next to me. "Where are you from, my little pony?"

I leaned away from him slightly, a little unnerved. I looked down at my forehooves and fidgeted with them.

"It's a big underground shelter built inside a mountain. We just call it the stable."

"Stable . . ." he whispered the word, and his face lit up in a broad grin. "What a perfect name for a civilized society: stable. Everything's static, always stays the same, never falls apart, and every day is exactly the same as what came before. But here you are in the un-stable—the chaotic, crumbling wasteland where you don't know what tomorrow will be; you may find food and shelter, you may be attacked, or maybe you'll trip on a rock and break your neck." Rake leaned in toward me, uncomfortably close with his broad, toothy grin. "Tell me: what are you doing out here?"

I squirmed and looked away. "I . . . I was exiled."

Silence followed, and after a moment I turned back. To my surprise, Rake was looming over me, and his eyes seemed to glow with excitement. "What for?" he asked. "What did you do that was so bad as to warrant throwing out of your safe little home for?" He seemed as though he already knew the answer, and he just wanted to hear me say it.

I sighed and mumbled, "Murder."

"We really are the same," he said in a whisper of barely-restrained glee. "You come from an underground shelter; I came from an ivory tower far away from here. We had our own little pocket of civilization there—our own stable—with walls and guards to keep the rabble out, law and order to keep us in. But just because we're 'civilized'"—he gestured quotes around the word and said it with a sneer—"doesn't mean it's all sunshine and rainbows." He grinned. "I see the look on your face; you know what I'm talking about.

"For me," he said, "it was my sire. He came at me when I was just a little colt—didn't even have my cutie mark yet. I fought, I cried, I begged him to stop, but he told me to be a good boy and stay quiet. When nobody complains, everything is perfect, right? If there's a problem, it's because you're the one making noise about it. Just shut up and—"

"And get along." I didn't mean to say it out loud, but what Rake was saying was so familiar, so terrifyingly familiar, that it brought my voice out as if in some instinctive need to harmonize with him.

"Exactly! You get it! And you're here now, so I know you'll understand: I killed him. I rammed my horn right into his throat. He bled all over me. And when I went for help, they threw me out for being a troublemaker—I was clearly too dangerous to be around civilized ponies like them; if I had wanted a nice, safe home, I should have stayed quiet like daddy wanted." He laughed. "So what about you? Whom did you kill?"

"N—nobody . . ." I turned away again. I didn't want him to see me fighting back tears.

"Oh come on. You were exiled for murder, same as I. Somepony's dead now. So who is it?" He leaned in closer to me. I could feel his breath on my neck. "You can tell me. We're the same. Don't you see? We're brothers."

I wheeled around and pushed him away. "You are not my brother!" I shouted.

Rake had fallen onto his back when I shoved him. He lay there, looking up at me. He still had that eager grin on his face that he'd had ever since I'd first told him about the stable.

"Okay. I get it," he said calmly as he rolled onto his side and propped his chin on his forehoof. "It's all been a big shock. You're not ready. I was the same way when I was first born into the wasteland."

"Stop. Just stop," I said as I moved around to the opposite side of the fire from Rake and lay down there. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

Rake kept talking while I drifted off, though. "We're more alike than you want to admit," he said. "You're scared because you see in me what the wasteland will turn you into. You can try to fight it—I did at first. But the wasteland won't nurture you. And if you want to survive—and, like me, you wouldn't be out here in the first place if you didn't—you'll eventually have to accept that your old life ended the moment you set foot out here. But remember this: The worst that could happen is behind you now; you've been born—that's the most traumatic thing you'll ever go through. One moment, you're safe and secure, all warm and loved, and the next thing you know, your entire world crashes around you and forces you, kicking and screaming and covered in blood, into a new life. Whatever comes after that is nothing by comparison.

"Happy birthday," he added in a whisper.


***


Tired as I was, and despite my best efforts to fall asleep, I found myself turning over restlessly on the cold, hard ground well into the night. After some time, I rolled onto my back and simply stared up into the dark abyss that was the night sky. Cold and featureless, it loomed over me, and I imagined it reaching down with inky black tendrils to carry me up into the void where I would simply cease to exist.

But as the campfire died down, as its glare receded, and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw little points of light in the sky. They appeared gradually to me, first only the brightest ones, but slowly, as the fire went out, fainter ones began to appear until the entire night was full of them. I had never seen the stars before.

They were beautiful. And I found myself no longer imagining the sky as an empty void that would swallow me whole, but instead as a comforting blanket that had been cast over me, which I could wrap myself in for protection.

"You're shivering."

Rake's voice startled me, and I sat up to face him. It took me a moment to realize it, but he was right: I was shaking in the chilly air. He poked a hoof at the charred remains of the fire. "There isn't enough wood around here to keep a fire going all night," he said as he stood up and moved around toward me.

I edged away from him as he sat down at my side. "W—what are you doing?"

"You're cold. We should huddle together for warmth," he said with a grin. "Don't worry, I won't bite . . . not unless you want me to." He chuckled, and I forced a laugh with him, but I had the distinct feeling that he wasn't completely joking. "Shh. Just relax," he said as he leaned against my side.

He was warm, and my shivers abated briefly at his touch. Slowly, I settled back down to the ground, and Rake did the same alongside me. He wriggled a bit, rubbing his side against mine as he got comfortable, and then I felt his head nestle in against my neck.

"You smell clean," he mumbled softly. "I miss that smell."

I shifted uncomfortably at that, but there was something strangely comforting about feeling his body against mine—something beyond the simple warmth it provided. In a way, Rake felt familiar. He hadn't been completely wrong when he said I was afraid that the wasteland would turn me into him. But lying there with him, under that blanket of stars in the night sky, I found a moment of comfort, of something familiar and oh-so precious to me. And despite any misgivings I had, I wanted nothing more than to cling to that familiar comfort.

I glanced up at the stars one last time, and closed my eyes.

> Look Both Ways before Crossing the Street
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rake and I continued walking in the morning. I had no idea where we were going, and I doubted if Rake had anywhere in particular in mind; he strolled along as I might have while going for a walk around the stable's atrium.

Every so often, I'd hear the loud, faroff crack of a gunshot. The sound seemed to come from all around us, and distant echoes lingered in the air as ghostly reminders of that initial sound that had lasted only a fraction of a second.

I had tried looking around for the source of the gunshots, but I couldn't even tell what direction they were coming from. When I looked to Rake though, I saw that he was simply continuing his leisurely stroll. So I tried to not worry about it—he had to know better than I would if we were in any danger.

After some time had passed, when I had started to tune out those gunshots, Rake came to a stop and said, "We're being followed."

"Where?" I asked as I glanced over my shoulder nervously.

"Sniper. Somewhere out on the horizon. She's been stalking me for weeks."

"How can you tell she's after you?"

"Because," he said as he turned to face me, "that last shot clipped my ear."

My eyes went wide as I saw: the tip of his right ear was missing, and blood ran from the jagged edge down the side of his face and dripped off his neck.

Another crack thundered through the air, and I dropped to the ground, covering my head with my forehooves. Rake laughed down at me.

"Relax. She's not gunning for you. And if she wanted me dead already, I wouldn't be standing here talking about it. There's no use cowering like that—the shot would hit you before you heard it." He put a hoof to his bleeding ear and flinched. "I know that for a fact."

Cautiously, I stood up and started looking around the horizon. I still didn't have any clue what to look for. It was a futile effort, and I knew it, but I couldn't simply stand there as Rake was. "You know who it is?" I asked.

"I know what she is," he answered. "She's not a pony. She's a reaper—Death's own agent, here to remind me that my days are numbered. Death comes for everypony eventually. He's the only thing that you can count on out here or anywhere else."

"But how do you even know it's a she? I mean, have you seen her?"

Rake shook his head. "I don't have to. And she's smarter than that—I'd kill her first if I could see her. It would have to be a she, though. Lots of ponies have tried to kill me, but they all made the same mistake: they let me get close." His horn lit up and he floated out his sword to make a few slashes and stabs through the air at imaginary—perhaps remembered—adversaries. "No. The only one who could ever kill me would have to do it from far away—the complete opposite of how I fight: I'm fast. I feel my heart racing. I get blood on my hooves. And they all see me coming." He returned his sword to its sheath. "The one who kills me will take her time. It will be cold, calculated. She'll hold her breath and slow her heart when she kills me. And she won't dirty her hooves with my mess. It'll happen when I least expect it. It would have to be a she—everything else about her is my exact opposite, so that must be too."

I stared at him. "Rake . . . I . . . can't you do something to stop her?"

He took his hoof away from his ear and looked down at his bloody hoof. "I'll die eventually. And I'll be powerless to stop it when it happens. It'll probably be painful. If I'm lucky, it'll be quick." Rake closed his eyes and leaned his head back as he took a deep breath in, and let it out in a calm, relaxed sigh. He smiled. "Until then, I'm alive."

Rake began laughing loudly as he danced around me in a circle, adding little bounding leaps and twirls. "I'm alive! I'm alive!" he kept shouting. "And I have you to thank for reminding me!" he called out to the horizons. "My sweet little angel of death! My one true love! Oh, how I long for your kiss!"

"Rake! Stop it! Y—you're scaring me!" My ears drooped, and my wings bristled as I backed away from him slowly.

He took another slow breath and smiled at me. "Death can come at any time. We've only got the here-and-now we can know for sure that we'll be alive for. So let's enjoy it while it's here: I'm alive! You're alive! This is the best time of our lives because it's now! Don't you feel alive?"

While Rake delighted in knowing that his death was coming but not yet here, I was left feeling as though mine had missed me; my reaper had passed over me and left me to roam the wasteland in a state of limbo. Only an innate sense of basic survival kept me going.

"I feel more hungry than alive right now," I said.

As if on cue, Rake's stomach groaned in agreement with me. He shrugged and started walking again. "Well, we'd better keep moving then. Food isn't going to come find us."


***


We kept walking for most of the day. Those far-off gunshots rang out every so often, but increasingly rarely as we continued, until I could almost forget about them—maybe it was just a stray shot that clipped Rake's ear, and we weren't really being stalked. It was easy to convince myself of that.

I had to stop frequently to rest; my hooves were beginning to crack. And though I was clearly slowing Rake down, he didn't seem to mind. He knew exactly what I was going through, he told me; it would take time, but I would learn to live again in the harsh outside world.

I could have taken flight to take the strain off my hooves, but Rake told me to conserve my energy, and he had a point. Flying took a lot of energy, and I was exhausted, hungry, and thirsty in a way I had never felt before; I had heard the expression—and had even used it myself on occasion—"dying of thirst," but after at least a full day since my exile without anything to drink, I realized what it actually meant, and I dreaded to think what would happen if we didn't find some water soon.

So it came as no small relief when we reached the crest of a hill and came to a stop as we looked out at what lay ahead of us: Down the hill and across an old, cracked, and pothole-ridden road was a small collection of buildings.

We couldn't see movement down among them, but the place had an appearance of life to it: there were stacks of wooden crates in front of one building with a faded sign proclaiming "general store," and next to one of the other buildings was a patch of tilled soil in which small clumps of plants managed to grow.

Rake stopped me before I even started to move toward it. "I know what you're thinking: it looks inviting, doesn't it? Well, thinking like that will get you killed."

I stepped back. "So what do we do?"

His horn lit up with his red aura and his sword floated out at the ready. "You wait here. I'll go in and check it out. When it's all clear, I'll signal for you to come down."

"Wait. You're not going to hurt anyone . . . are you?"

"If I have to." He shrugged. "Which is probable. Most ponies need some convincing before they part with supplies, and usually a lot more convincing when only one pony's asking for them."

"Y—you can't! I mean . . . can't we just talk to them? Ask them for help?"

Rake turned to face me. His look was grim. "There's no room for trust out here. We take what we can get, and if somepony else gets hurt, then too bad, but it's us or them. I'm here now only because I made a habit of choosing myself over others. And you did the same, in case you've forgotten. Is it right? Is it fair? No. But this is the world we live in now, not the ivory towers we used to."

I stood there, mouth agape, but with nothing to say. I was tired and sore and dehydrated. And though it made my stomach twist into knots to think that Rake might hurt or even kill somepony just to get me some water, I wasn't in a place to argue with him. So I closed my mouth and lowered my head with a sigh as I sat down to rest my hooves.

Rake made his way down the hill and then broke into a gallop toward the settlement. He reached the middle of the road, and then suddenly he collapsed. It was like watching a marionette with its strings cut—his whole body simply went limp all at once. And a couple seconds later, I heard the crack of gunfire.

"Rake!" I screamed as I ran out to him.

His neck was a mess. Blood bubbled out through the hole in his throat. His eyes locked onto mine, and his mouth moved as he tried to say something, but he only managed a sickening gurgling noise from his throat. He stopped trying to talk, and instead drew his lips into a smile just before his eyes rolled back. I watched as the light went out of him.

And then I was alone. I stayed there, kneeling over him, just staring down at his face and the empty smile left on it. Even as his blood pooled around my hooves, I didn't move. I had been following him. Without him, there was no place for me to go.


***


I might have stayed there with Rake until I myself died of dehydration or exposure, except that somepony else showed up. I hadn't even heard her hoofsteps as she approached. A shadow passed over my face, and I looked up to see her: She was expressionless, and her eyes were cold. She wore a brown leather duster, tattered and muddy as was the rest of her. Her dirty mane hung off either side of her neck in tangles.

Her horn was lit up with a bright green aura which carried a long rifle in the air beside her. She held it pointed at me.

"Get up," she said.

I did as she told me, and she slung her rifle across her back. Without ever taking her eyes away from mine, she stepped around Rake's body while carefully keeping her hooves out of his blood. She wrapped her aura around his sword and took it off him.

"Start moving, little bird," she told me. And I moved toward the settlement at her direction.

> Get a Good Night's Sleep
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had been locked inside a small shack. It was dark; the holes and cracks in the walls through which small rays of sunlight filtered in were my only sources of light. Not that there was anything to see. It did at least give me a sense for the space of my confinement, though.

I was left alone in there all day. I didn't bother trying to escape; the wood looked flimsy, and I probably could have simply kicked the door open and made a run for it, but there was nothing for me out there—it could be no better than where I was. So I stayed. I huddled in the back corner and waited quietly. What I waited for, I didn't really know. I only waited.

When night came, my cell became pitch black. It was as though that inky abyss that I had seen in the sky the night before had returned to come down and embraced me with its cold, amorphous emptiness.

I tried to sleep, but only tossed and turned and shivered all through the night.


***


The morning came, and with it the first rays of light pierced through the darkness I had been wrapped in. The light hurt my eyes, and I turned to face the corner to hide from it. But I couldn't escape the light.

The door opened and the sun came flooding in. I turned my head to look. Squinting against the blinding glare, I could make out only the silhouette of a pony.

The figure entered and closed the door behind itself. Everything went dark again until my eyes readjusted to it. My visitor was an older stallion. His mane was thinning, and he had a gaunt face with sunken eyes.

"I ain't never seen two raiders all by their lonesome," he said at length. His voice was raspy and guttural, and he slurred a little as his tongue and lips slipped against gaps in his teeth. "You boys come here to scout us out, hmm? You got friends waiting for ya? Speak up, boy."

"I'm not a raider," I wheezed. My throat was dry. I bowed my head and splayed my ears. "There's nobody else. I'm alone. I'm sorry we tried to attack you. I didn't want to, but we were hungry and thirsty. So thirsty . . ." I looked up at him pleadingly. "Water . . . please . . ."

"You think I got water to spare? Certainly not for no damn raider who'd just as soon kill me an' mine to take it. If you wanna keep breathing, you'd best start telling the truth."

"I am! Please, I swear! I'm not here to hurt anyone!"

He snorted and turned back to the door. Again the light blinded me, and I raised my foreleg to shield my eyes from it as he stood in the doorway, looking back in at me.

"We'll get what we need out of you. You just sit tight, little bird."

And then the door closed, and I was alone in the dark.


***


The door opened, and I was again blinded by the light from outside, which had only grown in intensity since I had first been visited. The door then closed with a loud slam, and while my eyes were still readjusting to the darkness, I rose to meet my captor. But before I could even see, I was shoved bodily back down to the ground.

"Don't you look me in the eye, you raider filth!" The voice was different—a mare's. Her tone was gruff and teeming with contempt.

"I'm sorry!" I whimpered hoarsely as I kept my eyes down and put my forelegs up to guard my head.

"You ain't sorry enough!" she bellowed. "Stand up. I said stand up!" She punctuated her demand with a kick to my ribs when I didn't get up fast enough for her.

I had barely gotten to my feet when she charged me. She pinned me up against the wall and pressed her face close to mine. I struggled weakly, gasping for breath as she choked me with a foreleg pressed against my throat.

"How many of your raider friends are out there, roaming around looking for an easy target?" she asked, showering my face in her rotten breath and spittle.

"I don't . . . I'm not a . . . can't . . . breathe," I choked out.

I began to feel dizzy, and was near to passing out when the mare released me. I collapsed to the ground, coughing as I took in deep breaths of the stale air. As I tried to hold myself upright, I felt aware of her presence looming over me. And just as I began to catch my breath, she pulled me up by my foreleg and hurled me against the far wall, where I crashed against it and crumpled back down to the floor. I didn't try to get up again. I only lay there, breathing as steadily as I could manage, and waited for the next blow to come.

But it didn't. I shielded my eyes once more against the blinding glare as the door opened again.

"You think about that for a while, little bird," the mare said as she closed the door.


***


While waiting for the next round of interrogation, I could only lie on the cold, hard-packed dirt floor and watch the small rays of light that filtered in through the cracks in the wood as they slowly moved from one side of the shack to the other over the course of the day.

It was late in the evening, almost when those rays of light would vanish and leave me in complete darkness until morning, when I heard hoofsteps. Then one of the rays of light flickered. I sat up and faced the door, and I waited.

And nothing happened.

I saw one of the rays from along the side of the shack go dark, as though obstructed. It was from one of the larger gaps where the corner of a wooden plank was missing. When I turned to look at it, I heard a small gasp and the obstruction moved away.

"H—hello?" I whispered cautiously. "Is somepony there?"

There was silence for a moment, and then the ray went dark again. "You don't look like a raider," came a voice. It was a young voice—a colt's—filled with the insatiable curiosity of youth and the calm absence of fear that accompanies such innocence.

"I'm not a raider," I said as I moved closer to the wall.

"Ms. Grift says you are. Says you and another was fixin' to raid us 'fore she killed the other and caught you." He paused. "Papa says raiders have teeth like knives, and they got ugly scars all over, and they got mean things for cutie marks, like skulls and blood and stuff."

I put on a big, toothy smile. "My teeth aren't sharp. See? And I hardly have any scars. And look at my cutie mark"—I turned to the side—"only a puzzle piece."

A soft humming came from through the wall as the boy apparently took some time to consider the evidence presented to him before declaring, "Okay. You're not a raider."

I breathed a sigh of relief that someone finally believed me. I told him my name, and he told me his. "Do you have your cutie mark yet, Slate?" I asked.

"Not yet." His answer didn't sound embarrassed, nor was it tainted by impatient anxiety. He was still quite young, and with plenty of time to figure out what he would be. "Papa says he'll let Ms. Grift teach me to shoot to see if I have any talent for it. Says he'll be real proud if I get a bullseye or crosshair or something for a cutie mark."

I reached up and put a hoof against the wall that separated us. That was no way for a little foal to be growing up. I felt my heart sink down into the pit of my stomach. I wasn't in a place I could do anything about it, though.

With my jaw trembling, I said the only thing I could bear to say in way of encouragement to the curious little boy, "I'm sure you'll find what's right for you."

There was a pause, and then he said, "I have to go now. Bye." Dim light shone through the small hole again.

"Wait!" I cried out, and the boy's shadow returned. "I . . . I'm so lonely here. Please don't go."

He hesitated. "Momma's calling. She'll hit me if I don't come home right away."

Cringing, I pressed my face against the wall and sighed. "Go. Go on then. If she gets mad, tell her it was my fault. Tell her to punish me instead for keeping you."

He didn't say anything more. I heard only the rapid beat of his hooves as he scampered off home.


***


It was later that night when the mare from earlier stormed into the shack, nearly knocking the door off its hinges as she flung it open. I stood up in alarm, but before I could say anything I felt her hoof against the side of my face. My head wrenched to the side, and I stumbled over onto the ground. Instinctively, I curled into a ball, and she started kicking me, mostly in the back, which was already bruised and sore. She rolled me over and stomped on my gut once before she finished. I nearly passed out, choking for breath with the wind knocked out of me. I would have thrown up if my stomach hadn't been empty. As it was, though, the dry heaving only made it harder to breathe.

The whole time she never said anything. And neither did I. We both knew why she was there. And after she left me, coughing and gasping, spitting blood from a split lip, I slowly drifted off to sleep.

It was the most restful sleep I'd had since leaving the stable.

> Always Tell the Truth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I awoke sometime the next day. My back ached and protested every movement I made. The taste of blood lingered in my dry mouth, and I felt nauseated as I pushed myself up into a sitting position. My split, swollen lip stung as I smacked my lips in an effort to get some saliva flowing in my mouth.

It was then that I noticed the pony sitting in a chair in the corner of the shack. She was the one who had taken me here, the one who killed Rake. Ms. Grift, Slate had called her. She didn't move, didn't speak. She only sat there and stared at me.

"Wh—" I winced and gingerly held a hoof to my lip. "Why?" I asked hoarsely.

She remained still for a moment before her horn lit up with a bright green aura, and she floated a bottle of water over to me. I took it and began to greedily drink it down, stopping only when my rehydrated throat seized and I doubled over in a coughing fit. It passed, and I drank the rest of the bottle in smaller sips.

"What happened to you, little bird?" she asked, pointing a hoof at my split lip.

"N—nothing. I fell down," I answered in reflex.

"You fall down a lot, don't you, little bird?"

I looked across at her in the dim light. Her face was expressionless, as though it were only a mask.

"What do you want from me?" I asked her.

She didn't answer, only kept staring at me.

"Why . . ." I grunted as I stood up, "why did you take me here? Why did you kill Rake? . . . Why not me?"

"Why not me?" she echoed. The corners of her lips drew back into a faint smile, though the rest of her face remained frozen. "Did you want me to kill you instead? Your life for his? Or do you only wish I had killed you too so you wouldn't be left to ponder why you should be so lucky?"

"I—"

"Snipers aren't like any other kind of combatant," she said without giving me time to answer. "When you're up close and personal there's at least a chance the other guy can know you're there and fight back. And when he fights back, then it's you-or-me and there's a sense that whoever comes out on top deserved it. Or even in a firefight—and especially if there's a lot of you shooting—it can be hard to be sure who shot whom."

She shook her head slowly. "But a sniper isn't like that. A sniper crawls on her belly a mile away while you go about your daily business completely unaware. She watches you through her scope, learns your habits, learns how you move; your head bobs to the left slightly"—she made an exaggerated nod of her head—"when you put weight on your left foreleg; it's slightly shorter because you broke it when you were little which stunted its growth briefly."

Suddenly self-conscious, I rubbed my right fetlock over the part of my left leg where, as she had correctly described, it had been broken when I was a colt. "How can you know that?" I asked, more than a little afraid to hear the answer.

"Sniping isn't just about good aim," she continued, ignoring my question. "Over such long distances, you have to know how the winds change, how the air gives the bullet lift. It takes a few seconds for the bullet to travel the distance, so you can't aim right at your target—he won't be there anymore. You have to know where he will be, and you have to know it better than he does.

"When I look through my scope, I see the future, and then I make it happen." Slowly, she stood up from her chair. Her eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, holding me fixed under her gaze. "Why are you alive, little bird? You're alive because your death was not in the future I saw. Your friend's was. That's all."

She walked toward me slowly, and I felt as though I were shrinking under her. Her eyes filled my vision, and I couldn't turn away. I could barely breathe as she stared at me.

"And so here you are, little bird. You're all alone, alive, but for no reason. 'Why?' is a question you should ask yourself, little bird. Why do you still live? Why do you choke down a bottle of water when all that will do is prolong a life you have for no reason?"

"I . . . I have . . . I'm not . . ." I stammered.

Dizziness gripped my head, and then I felt the ground rush up to meet my face. I lay there for a while, and although I knew the ground to be cold and hard, I had the sensation of floating, as if I were curled up on a soft cloud in the warm sun, drifting lazily through the sky. But my eyes were open, and all I saw was darkness all around me, dim little points of light that hovered in the background, and those eyes that stayed fixed on mine.


***


I groaned and sat up slowly, holding a hoof against the pounding headache in my temple.

Grift was sitting in her chair in the corner, watching me.

"Do you know what a lie is, little bird?" she asked.

"It's when you say something that's not true." I winced a little as the sound of my own voice aggravated the pounding in my head. 

"So when a little boy tells his mother that he's late for dinner because the prisoner made him late, that would be a lie?"

"No," I answered. "It's true. It was my fault. I asked him to stay. I shouldn't have."

"And when the boy says the raider threatened to break out and kill his family if he didn't stay?"

"He . . . said that?"

"Would that be a lie?"

I grimaced and bit my lip. "It doesn't matter. I . . . I'm the one to blame, not him."

"Careful, little bird." Grift leaned forward in her seat and locked eyes with me once again. "Lies like that are how you lose yourself."

"It's not a lie!" I pleaded.

"Please," she snorted. "You think I can't see a lie like that from a mile away? I know lies. Everything I say, everything I am—lies. All lies." She sat back and drew her lips into a faint smile. "Why do you wear this mask, little bird? Why did you let her beat you like that?"

"He didn't deserve it," I mumbled.

"And you did? What did you do that was so terrible as to warrant a beating like that?"

"It doesn't matter. He's just a little kid! I'm bigger. I can take it. So he shouldn't have to. He never should have had to . . ."

"So many masks you wear, little bird: raider, murderer, protector, victim . . . how many more will you wear? And how many masks do you let others put on you? Masks may be comforting, empowering even, but what happens when you find that you can no longer take off your masks?"

Grift stood up and moved to the door. She looked back at me over her shoulder. "We are what we pretend to be, little bird," she said as she opened the door and left.

I had to shield my eyes from the blinding glare of light from outside. A minute passed, and my eyes slowly adjusted until I could see that there was nobody to stand in my way; Grift had left the door wide open, and after I took a quick look around the shack to confirm that I was alone, I cautiously approached the doorway and looked outside.

The dry, dusty air of the wasteland was still and quiet.

I lingered there on the threshold for a few minutes. Glancing over my shoulder, I looked back at the darkness behind me. It was somehow inviting, comfortable. My life in that darkness had had a certain sense of stability to it. My world was small in there. I had come to understand my place in it, what was expected of me. Ahead, though, was the wide open wasteland. To venture out would be to once again give up everything I had come to know about my own life, my place in the world. If someone had been there to tell me to leave, I would have without question. I didn't need to know where to go, only that I was unwanted where I was. But there was no one. I was alone and uncertain. Control of my own future rested in my hooves, and I could only fidget with it nervously, as though it were a delicate sculpture, and if I handled it wrong I would smash it to pieces.

"H—hello?" I called out hesitantly.

No response.

In the back of my mind, I heard Rake's voice repeating something he'd told me around the campfire on that first night: "You've already been born; whatever is yet to come can't be any worse than that."

Slowly, I walked out into the daylight. I circled around the shack, and my eyes casually wandered across the other buildings around me. They were simple one-room structures, constructed in haste with obvious little expertise. I began peeking through windows and doorways, but each building I looked in was empty. Only bare walls and dirt floors remained. All was quiet; nothing moved.

Then I came to the last building on the edge of the small settlement. It was the one with the garden next to it that I had seen from the hilltop. Only now I saw that the garden was overrun with nothing but dead and dying weeds.

That building was not empty. Inside it were the long-dead skeletal remains of a family—two adults and one small child. They were huddled in the far corner where dark brown stains streaked the walls and pooled on the floor.

A chill ran up the back of my neck as I cautiously stepped inside their home. Above them there was a scrap of paper, held to the wall by a rusted knife. I felt myself drawn toward it, but I stopped dead in my tracks when I got close enough to read it. That chill on the back of my neck became searing-hot, as though I could actually feel Grift's aim settling upon me there. I turned and ran as fast as my aching, starved body could carry me.

"I'll be watching you, little bird," the note had said.
> Come In out of the Rain
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Was it all just a dream?

How long had it been? Three days? Two? Four? I couldn't tell anymore.

Maybe that was it—it was all just a bad dream. I was still sound asleep in bed, warm and comfortable, and soon I'd wake up and everything would be exactly as it always was. And it would stay that way forever.

Or maybe I actually had died the moment the stable's door closed behind me. Maybe everything since then has been my own personal hell. I was cold and alone in a barren wasteland that went on forever and sapped more of my will to continue with every step I took.

Or maybe I was alive. Somehow, that sounded worse to me. The infertile earth below me beckoned, invited me to lie down and let it claim me. Grift had been right: there was no reason that I should be alive. I didn't belong there. I didn't belong anywhere—I was a puzzle piece cast adrift in the wind, carried away from the rest of the puzzle. A piece that would never find its place again—the one and only place in all the world where it had ever fit was lost to it now.

How long had I been walking?

I stopped, stood still. Below me was the cold ground. Ahead was the sun, nearing the horizon; it set the sky ablaze in bright orange and red hues. I squinted against the light, and I raised my foreleg to block out the sun.

"Don't you feel alive?" asked a voice in my mind. It was Rake's. I imagined him out in front of me, silhouetted against the setting sun.

He's dead.

He had known how he would die, and who would kill him. He just hadn't known when. But he knew it would come eventually, and he lived every moment in the present because it was the only time he was certain he would have. More than that even, he took joy in knowing that his death was coming, because that only meant it wasn't there yet—it reminded him that he was alive.

I kept walking. I had nowhere to go, only forward, but that was enough.

I was alive.


***


I followed my vision of Rake into the slowly setting sun while clouds rolled in overhead. I followed him through the growing darkness until we reached a small village, abandoned in ruin. The rows of old, decaying houses looked to me as the carcass of some great beast that, despite all its ferociousness, had still succumbed to death in the end. The rotting wood houses were all that remained of it now—bones slowly turning to dust over the years of neglect.

And I was a vulture, there to pick over whatever meager scraps might still cling to those weathered bones.

I pushed on the door to the first house I saw that still had a roof over it. The door fell off its hinges with a loud thud, throwing up a cloud of dust around it. The hardwood floor underneath it creaked as I entered.

Inside the house, I saw the living room on my left. It had the typical amenities: plush carpet, a large sofa with matching armchairs arranged around a coffee table, and bookshelves along the walls. The carpet was black with mold. The sofa and chairs were likewise covered in fungus. And the books on the shelves had all disintegrated into piles of mush.

The kitchen was on my right, and I headed in there. The floor creaked with each step I took, and before I even reached halfway into the kitchen, I found myself falling. The floor gave out and dropped me down into the cellar. The house then buried me under its own rotting carcass as it fell in after me.


***


I could barely move. Dust stung my eyes, and I could only blink to try to flush it out. Not that there was anything for me to see; I was in darkness under the debris.

I heard movement—hoofsteps and the dull clatter of wooden planks being tossed aside.

"Help!" I called out. That one cry was all I could manage, though; the weight pressing down on my chest made it too hard to breathe in deeply enough for another yell.

"Where are you?" came a muffled reply.

I was able to move my foreleg enough to bang my hoof against the debris. I heard movement, hooves scrambling over the pile on top of me.

"I'm coming! Hold on! I'm here! I found you! I'll save you!"

I kept banging until the weight started shifting off of my chest. I sucked in a deep breath, and immediately began coughing as the dust stung at my parched throat. The debris covering my head was lifted away finally, and I looked up into a bright white light shining down on me. My eyes adjusted, and I saw that it was a small flashlight on a headband, worn around the head of a mare. She was looking down at me, her eyes fixed in a distant stare, as though in a moment of waking up from a pleasant dream only to see that dream shattered.

"Hold still," she said after clearing the expression from her face with a shake of her head. "Let me finish getting you out of there." She continued pulling rubble off me until I could finally crawl my way out from under it.

I limped over into the corner of the room and sat down there while I tried to settle my cough. The mare started toward me, and I shrieked, "What do you want from me? Leave me alone!"

"Easy . . . easy. I'm not going to hurt you," she said, holding her position. I had a better look at her then; she was a bright blue pegasus, and her mane and tail were black with white streaks running through them. She had her mane in one long braid that hung off the side of her neck by her shoulder, and she wore what looked like a uniform. It was a navy blue with polished metal buttons, and she had a silver shield pinned on it. She carried heavy saddlebags stuffed to the brim, and at her side was a rifle at the ready on a harness across her back.

She reached into one of her bags and pulled out a canteen. "You look like you need some water. Will you let me bring it to you?" she asked, holding out the canteen.

I glanced back and forth between her and the canteen. Cautiously, I limped out to meet her. I took the canteen from her and carried it back to my corner where I opened it with trembling hooves, and started sipping at it slowly.

"Thank you, ma'am," I said hoarsely.

"My name's Starry Night," she said. "What's your name?"

"Day. Lucky Day, ma'am." I finished off the water, and clutched the canteen tightly while I watched the mare—Starry—from my corner. She kept her distance.

"Are you all alone out here? Where do you come from? Are you lost? Do you need help getting home?"

I shook my head and clenched my teeth. "I can't go back. I don't have a home."

"What happened? Were you attacked?" When I didn't answer, she reached back into her bags and pulled out a small packet. "You look hungry," she said, holding it out to me.

I looked at the packet and felt my stomach groan at the promise of food. I started to reach for it, but then hesitated. Starry put the food packet on the ground and backed away from it.

I took the opportunity to reach out and grab it before quickly retreating back into my corner. I tore into it with my teeth. Inside was a dry brick of corn meal. It was completely bland, but I devoured it as the best meal of my life.

After I finished licking the crumbs out of the wrapper, I saw Starry watching me quietly. "Thank you, ma'am," I said. "I haven't eaten since . . . a long time."

"I can tell," she said. "And please, call me Starry. Are you ready to tell me what happened to you? I want to help."

I looked down at my hooves. "I was exiled."

"Did you do something wrong?"

I gritted my teeth and shook my head. "I had to do it. I didn't have a choice."

"It's okay. Just tell me what happened."

"It doesn't matter," I said, sighing. "I can't go back." I looked back up at Starry, and I could see that she wasn't about to just let it go. So I told her, "I killed . . . I killed someone."

The moment following my admission stretched on in silence. Rake had been excited to hear why I had been exiled. Everyone else I had met so far probably wouldn't have even cared; from all that I had seen up to that point, it seemed to be a given that everyone out here was a killer. But there in that dark basement, there was this mare—there was Starry, and she was different.

"You had to do it?" she asked. "Were you being attacked? Were you trying to protect someone else?"

"Please, ma'am. I don't want to talk about it. It was horrible. There was so much blood . . . everywhere . . ."

"It's okay," she said. "Where are you from? You're not from around here, are you?"

I told her about the stable—that we spent our whole lives underground, and never even saw what went on outside. "I've never been so hungry or thirsty in my life," I told her. "I'm scared. I don't know where to go or what to do. I don't even know how I'm still alive."

"You've been through a lot. Just take a minute and calm down. It's okay. You're safe with me. Think you can manage a short flight after you've rested for a bit? I know where we can get you more food and water and a warm place to sleep tonight."

Shaking, I asked, "Why are you helping me?"

"Protect and Serve," she said, pointing to the shield on her uniform. "It's what we live by back at Precinct One-Seven-Three."

"Is that where you want to take me?"

"It's not," she said hesitantly. "It's all the way out in the coastal ruins—several days from here by wing, and I . . ." She cleared her throat. "I can't go back there . . . yet. I'm on an important mission. But there's a place nearby where I've been staying. I'll take you there, okay?"

It took me a minute to consider her offer, but I nodded. Starry was the nicest person I had ever met. Somehow, that didn't make me feel completely at ease with her, but after all I'd been through, and how everyone else had treated me so far, I knew she couldn't be any worse. At the very least, I had a direction to follow. That would keep me moving forward for a while.

I was stretching out my wings to see if I could manage a short flight when a loud boom sent me diving to the ground with my forelegs drawn over my head. It was Grift, I was certain of it. She was out there, stalking me as my own personal reaper, just as she had done with Rake.

"It's alright," said Starry. "It's only thunder. It can't hurt you."

Thunder. It was a word I had only ever heard in school when learning about how the outside world used to be. But for the first time I had heard actual thunder. And I heard it again as I opened my eyes to look up through the hole in the ceiling that I had fallen in through, and I saw the dark sky flash white briefly, followed only a few seconds later by another loud rumble. As I sat up slowly, it began to rain. And then it poured.

Starry looked up at the rain and sighed. "We can't fly in this. Best we can do is to find some shelter for the night, and tomorrow we can head out."

"Don't we have enough shelter here?"

Starry shook her head. "Half this house fell in on you. The whole thing is probably still unstable. We need to find something that'll last through the night. Let's get you out of here."

"Do you need help getting up?" she asked over her shoulder as she spread her wings, poised to fly up through the hole.

I gave my wings a few test flaps. "I'm alright, ma'am."

She nodded and launched herself up through the pouring rain. I followed, and we were both soaking wet before we even set foot on solid ground. We ran up along the street, looking for somewhere safe to spend the night.

"Here!" Starry called, and she lead me over to a small alley between two houses. A wall had fallen away from one house to lean against the other. We crawled in under it hastily. "What do you think? Looks sturdy enough for tonight," Starry surmised as she looked up at the wall leaning over us.

"Well, at least if it does collapse, it won't be as bad as an entire house," I agreed as I looked it over.

Starry took off her bags and her rifle harness and piled them under the low end of our shelter while I lay down against the wall of the neighboring house. It had been a hot day, but the dark was cold, and dripping wet as I was, I began to shiver.

"Here," said Starry. I looked up to see her standing next to me, and that she was offering me a dry blanket. She was shaking nearly as much as I was.

"What about you?" I asked.

Starry only shook her head and thrust the blanket toward me. "I'll be alright. You need it more."

I thanked her and took the blanket. It was tattered and dusty, but it was soft and helped stop my shivering. I watched Starry as she returned to her bags and pulled out a metal flask in her shaky hoof. She took a long draught from it, and then breathed out a relaxed sigh. Her shivers calmed after a few moments as she lay down and continued to sip from the flask. 

There was a brief flash of light from the sky above, and I heard Starry start counting quietly, "One one-thousand . . . two one-thousand . . . three—" She was cut off by the loud boom of thunder, and was silent until the next flash when she started counting from one one-thousand again.

"Ma'am? What are you counting?" I asked.

Starry kept counting until the next crash of thunder before she answered, "I'm counting the seconds between the lightning and thunder. The longer it takes to hear the thunder, the farther away the lightning was." She glanced over at me. "It's not bothering you, is it?"

"No, ma'am. I was just curious."

She nodded slowly and took another drink from her flask. "When my son was little, the thunderstorms scared him. So I used to sit with him and we'd count together. It kept him calm and made him feel safe to know how far away it was." Starry closed her eyes and laid her head down on her forelegs. She continued to mumble to herself until eventually she slumped over onto her side and began snoring loudly.

I looked out into the darkness and waited for a flash. "One one-thousand . . ." I began counting.

I had always liked listening to the rain in the stable's atrium. The sprinkler system at the top would, on a regular basis, shower the orchard below. I loved the sounds it made: Near the top it was a slight hiss with a metallic squeal as the sprinkler blades spun to spread the water out. Halfway down it was almost silent. And at the bottom, leaves rustled, and rivulets of water dripped off them and through the grated ceramic floor into the soil underneath.

In my free time, I would sit under one of the trees and simply listen to the rain. Sometimes a leaf would fall down, and I would watch as the water collected in it drop by drop. Thinking about the rain in the stable actually brought a small smile to my face as I sat there in our little shelter, listening to the downpour. It made a sound like the hiss of static that would crackle across the stable's P.A. system just before an announcement. But this hiss was more than momentary; it droned on with no announcement to follow it. I kept waiting to hear the overseer's voice to remind me that I was a vital part of the civilization, that I had to get along with everyone else so everything would function right. But I didn't have anyone to tell me that anymore.

I felt a strange, calm sort of dissonance about my situation. Cold, bruised, soaking wet, and alone—save for the passed-out mare across from me . . . the stable was all but a distant memory . . . and I felt fine. Life as I'd known it was over, but it was only a matter of accepting that and moving on. I'd be okay.
> Wipe Your Feet
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The morning came, and I awoke to the first light of a new day being cast upon me. The rain had ended during the night, and the sky was clear and bright with vivid red hues along the horizon. A thin mist hovered above the wet ground and made our surroundings seem as though they were only the tops of vast structures poking through the clouds high above. All around us there wasn't a sound to be heard, nor a hint of motion aside from the slow, gentle swirling of the thin mist.

Peaceful and magical as the scene all around us may have been, I had been wandering for long enough to know better than to expect it to last long. Starry had said she would take me to where she had been staying, and I was eager to go somewhere safe. I looked over at her; she was still fast asleep, sprawled out in rather unflattering pose.

I approached her cautiously. "Starry, ma'am?" I pushed on her shoulder gently.

Starry's eyes snapped open and she sat upright, banging her head on the low ceiling of our shelter. "Ah! Son of a . . ." she muttered as she rubbed her head while squinting. "Ugh . . . what's going on?"

"Sorry to wake you, ma'am," I started to say, but Starry held up a hoof and shushed me.

She groaned and lay back down, covering her head with her forehooves. "Keep it down, will you."

I tried again, keeping my voice to a whisper, "Sorry to wake you, ma'am."

"Starry," she muttered.

"Starry. Sorry. It's just that I think we should maybe get moving. It's light out now and—"

Starry held up her hoof and hushed me again. "Shut up, kid. Just . . . shut up a minute." She sighed and groaned softly as she slowly sat up again, keeping one hoof across her face to block out the light while she fumbled around her uniform's pockets for her flask. I sat there quietly and nervously chewed on my lip while I waited for her to tell me what to do next.

She managed to get her flask out and took a drink from it while keeping her eyes closed. After taking a few slow breaths she peeked at me through one eyelid. "My head's killing me. Can you get me the aspirin bottle out of my saddlebag?"

Opening my mouth to answer, I caught a brief glare from Starry and only nodded quietly before leaning over to rummage through her bag. There was a lot of seemingly random junk in there, most of which I wasn't even sure how to describe. I didn't have to dig very deep, though—the bottle she asked for was close to the top, and I pulled it out for her.

Starry snatched it out of my hooves before I could offer to open it for her, and she popped the cap and shook out a tablet into her hoof then chewed it and washed it down with another draught from her flask. She sat there with her eyes closed for a minute before capping her flask and the bottle and putting them away.

Opening her eyes all the way, she took a deep breath and smiled at me. "Thank you, Day. Come on," she said. "Let's get moving."


***


What Starry had called a "short flight" turned out to be an all-day flight. It would have been a faster journey, but I had never had to fly for more than a few minutes at a time inside the stable, and so we had to stop and rest frequently. I was also still exhausted from my time alone in the wasteland before Starry had found me, which slowed me down further.

Starry never seemed to mind, though, and she regularly checked with me if I needed to stop, and she kept her eyes out for safe places to land. She shared more of her food and water with me to keep me going, and eventually, when the sun had made its way across the sky and began casting rich purple hues over the distant horizon, we came in for a final landing.

Starry called it a town, but it seemed as vacant as everywhere else I'd seen so far. There was one large building surrounded by a couple dozen small shacks that looked to have been hastily thrown together from assorted scraps of wood and metal sheets. All of them appeared to be vacant. The large building, however, which we set down in front of, did have an appearance of life to it. I could see a warm yellow light shining through cracks in the walls and around the boards that had been nailed up over what had once been large picture windows all across the front of the building. The second floor looked to have been built more recently than the rest of the structure, though with more care and expertise than the surrounding shacks. Above the door was a broken neon sign whose dim letters read "Mum's Diner."

I followed Starry as she lead the way inside. The interior was spacious, though filled with tables and chairs, with booths arranged along the walls. At the back were two doors, one of which was behind a counter that sectioned off that corner of the room. The place was empty except for a dusty-brown earth pony who sat in one of the corner booths. He was slumped over the table, passed out, with several empty glass bottles scattered around him.

"There you are!" sang a pleasant voice. I looked to see a vibrant green unicorn mare enter from the door behind the counter. Her blue and white mane was styled into long curls that bounced as she reared up to put her hooves on the countertop and smiled at us. "I was starting to worry y'all weren't gonna make it back. Ooh! And you brought a new friend with you!"

Starry took up a seat at the counter, and I sat next to her. The mare behind the counter, who introduced herself as Chrysanthemum, already had a bottle and a glass floating out in her chartreuse aura. She filled the glass and set it down in front of Starry, leaving the bottle as well, and then she turned to me.

"How about you, hon? You look like you could use a stiff drink too."

I shook my head. "No . . . I'm fine. Thank you, ma'am."

She laughed. "Ma'am? Oh, honey, don't be so formal with me. Just Chrys will do fine. We're all friends here. Just don't go and think you can start using your pretty looks on me. I can tell you and Starry got something special going on between y'all."

Starry choked briefly as she nearly spit out her drink with a barely-stifled laugh.

"Wait. You mean . . . you think . . . me and Starry?"

"Well of course! You two belong together, and I should know—it's what I do," Chrys said, getting down off the counter and turning to the side to show off her cutie mark: a pair of roses, their thorny stems curled together around their petals in the shape of a heart. "I'm a matchmaker."

"Matchmaker?" I asked skeptically.

"Well, what did you expect? A talent for hitting on cute young stallions?" She winked. My ears blushed.

Chrysanthemum's giggling stopped abruptly when the lights inside the diner flickered, then went dark. Everypony was quiet for a moment before I heard a resigned sigh from Chrys. "Well, guess the power's out until I can get somepony to fix the generator again," she said, her face illuminated by the soft glow of her chartreuse magic as she levitated several candles and a matchbox out from behind the counter. She pulled out a couple matches, skillfully manipulating them in her aura, struck them, and then lit the candles two at a time while she arranged them around the diner.

"Generator?" I asked.

"Yeah. This old hunk-o'-junk portable spark reactor I picked up in a trade years ago," Chrysanthemum said as she blew out the matches. "Why? You know something about fixing 'em?"

"Well, we had a spark reactor back at the stable; it provided power to run the whole place. I used to work in maintenance, and during my downtime I liked to study it, but I've never actually laid hooves on one . . ."

"They only let the senior engineers work on that?" Starry asked. I looked over at her; the flickering candlelight cast a warm glow across her face and made the shield pinned to her uniform twinkle.

I shook my head. "It wasn't that. It just never came up, is all. That reactor has run perfectly since it came online. Nopony even really thinks about it anymore. I just liked spending time learning about it because it looked like a really challenging puzzle, especially since I couldn't actually touch the pieces."

I saw Chrysanthemum's smile shining in the dim light. "Well, here's your chance, then. Come along, I'll show you where it is so you can get to wor—"

"Hold on a second there," Starry interrupted, tapping her hoof on the counter. "Day, you should always agree on payment before you do work for somepony."

"Oh, Starry, hun, you honestly think I'd try to take advantage of him?" There was a brief pause while Starry gave Chrysanthemum a look that seemed to say "are you seriously even asking that?"

Chrysanthemum laughed. "Well, maybe, but can you blame me? There's so much to take advantage of. Isn't that right, stud?" She winked at me. "But it's true: let's be professional about this." She leaned over the counter in front of me, propping her chin up on a forehoof. "So what's a handsome stallion like you charge for his services?"

My ears blushed. "I, um, I don't know . . ."

"Hmm. Okay, here: you get my juice flowing," she said in a sultry tone, "and I'll set you up with a week's worth of food and water. How's that sound?"

Trying to ignore her innuendo, and not really having any idea if that was a fair amount, I glanced over at Starry. She gave a small nod, so I accepted. "Alright. I'll get your juices flow—" I realized my slip, and instantly my face flushed hotly. Starry nearly choked on her drink again as she started laughing. "The juice—power! I'll get the power . . ." I tried desperately to correct myself, but between Starry's raucous laughter and Chrysanthemum's cheeky grin while she simply stared at me, I knew it was too late to take it back. I slumped onto the counter, hiding my face under my fetlocks. "Just show me where the generator is," I mumbled in resignation.


***


While Starry stayed at the bar, Chrysanthemum showed me to the spark generator. It was outside, around the back of the diner. After checking to make sure I had everything I needed, she left me to take care of it on my own, leaving behind a set of tools she was letting me borrow.

And then I was alone. I sat down and, for just a minute, simply listened to the silence. The air was still. There was no sound of fans echoing through air ducts, no mechanical hum nor squeals. No other ponies. It was never so quiet inside the stable.

I had the faintest twinge of fear in the back of my head that there might be some kind of monster out there in the darkness. Something stalking me, waiting for the right moment to strike. But I put that thought out of my mind with a shake of my head. The settlement around Mum's Diner was wide open; if those sorts of things lurked around here, they'd have some kind of defenses set up. And Chrysanthemum would have said something. And if Grift were stalking me as she had with Rake, there was nothing I could do about it.

Taking a deep breath, I turned my attention to the generator. It had certainly seen better days, but it was basically the same as the reactor in the stable. This was a lot smaller, and probably never meant to last this long, unlike the stable's reactor, but it operated on the same principals, so I was sure I could figure it out.

It had been easy to dismiss the fear of monsters lurking in the darkness. What ended up being much more terrifying, though, was when I opened up the generator. I realized that, despite all the studying I'd done, this was all new to me. I wasn't sure if I could do it, and afraid that if I couldn't, it would mean I'd be useless out here. If I was useless, there wouldn't be a place for me. If there was no place for me, where would I go? What would I do? I wondered if Starry would even still want me around.

The first several minutes I spent just sitting there, staring at the generator's internals. Then I started worrying what would happen if somepony came out to check on me and saw that I hadn't even started yet. I almost started wishing for a monster in the darkness. But I took a few deep breaths and focused on the task in front of me. I could do it. I just had to look at the puzzle. The first step was always to take it apart. So I started taking pieces out, laying them on the ground around me in a careful order, keeping all the bolts and screws and fastenings arranged so that they'd all go back in exactly the same place as they had been.

As I got deeper inside the machine, I started finding where seals had worn out and where belts had gone slack. The generator was in bad shape. There were no spare parts to fix it with, so I had to make do with the pieces as they were. Where seals had broken, I replaced the parts without them, fastening bare metal together as tightly as possible in hopes that it would reduce the leakage. I moved other parts by bending the frame they were mounted on in order to keep the belts tight. I did what I could to make the worn out parts fit together as seamlessly as possible.

In the end, after I closed everything up, I realized how silly it had been to be afraid of working on it. It had been my job for years back inside the stable. I had known what I was doing. I had only needed to remember that.

I ran my hoof along the casing, marveling at all the work that had gone into making such a thing in the first place, and then I decided to see if I'd gotten it working or not. The thing squealed, clunked, and groaned when I turned it on. It was a tired, pained noise, far from the steady hum of the reactor back in the stable. But it ran. For a brief moment, I actually smiled as I listened to it running. I'd gotten it to work. Even if it wouldn't last more than a few weeks, if that long, it was better than nothing.

"I can do this," I said aloud to myself, breathing a sigh of relief.

I felt a sense of pride in my work. It was one of the few things I'd actually enjoyed in my stable life. Unlike the other engineers in maintenance, who'd often show up late, leave early, and would only go out on service calls when they felt like it, I spent as much time as I could doing work. It felt good to fix things, to put them back together into a complete whole. Almost nopony else seemed to appreciate that as I did . . .

> Stay Where I Can See You
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The lights were back on inside the diner, and Chrysanthemum had already put the candles away by the time I returned from repairing the generator. She and Starry were busy trading, so I set the tools down on the counter and sat quietly next to Starry, watching them barter over the assorted salvage that Starry had apparently collected in her bags. In the end, Starry offloaded her collected scraps for a couple bottles of scotch, a few gallons of water, and a supply of ammunition.

I watched as Chrysanthemum lifted the items she had accepted in trade with her chartreuse aura and quickly sorted them into each of a few bins she had behind the counter. Curious, I asked, "What are you going to do with all that? Does it have some value to you?"

"Well, they're not really worth anything to me," she explained. "But they're worth something to somepony. There are some traveling merchants who come through here every so often, and I trade things like these to them for food, water, ammo, and other supplies to keep the town alive. They carry it off with them, and, presumably, somewhere along their routes, they meet somepony that actually needs this crap." Everything had a place in the wasteland, apparently. Even the seemingly useless pieces of garbage. Chrys levitated out a pair of saddlebags loaded down with more water and a couple dozen of those packaged food rations that Starry had shared with me. "Thanks for getting the generator running again. Here's your payment, as agreed. I'm throwing in the bags since you don't have any and you'll need it to carry this much around. If you ever want more work, you know where you can come," she said with a wry smile and a wink.

"Thanks. I'll, um, keep that in mind," I said clearing my throat. Starry and Chrysanthemum shared a brief laugh, which I tried to ignore. Something else she'd said had caught my attention, however.

"What did you mean about 'keeping the town alive'?" I asked.

"There's no real source of food or water around here. If it weren't for me and this diner, there'd be nopony here," Chrys explained.

"You mean you built this town?"

Chrysanthemum laughed. "No. I only inherited the diner after Mum passed on. That wasn't her real name, by the way, just what everypony called her on account of the diner's sign: a tradition I don't intend to continue." She stressed that point with a glare. "And she only moved into it as a place for herself. But when she started renting rooms for traveling merchants, it became a regular stop for them. Soon other wanderers started putting up their own shacks nearby; there are a few city and factory ruins in the area, and they made their livings by bringing that stuff back here to trade to Mum who'd trade to the merchants." She smiled. "Mum took me in when I was just a little filly, orphaned and wandering alone. I didn't even have my cutie mark yet—not 'til after I started setting up dates between the townsfolk." She let out a wistful sigh, looking around the diner slowly. "That's when it became a real community, y'know."

I glanced around at the empty diner. "So where is everyone?"

"Well, I know it doesn't look like much now, but that's only because they're all out scavenging. Just you wait 'til they all come back with their hauls. You'll see how alive this place really is. Especially when one of the traders come through," Chrys answered with a cheerful smile. "But what about you, hon? You look like you've been having a pretty rough time on your way here. You need a warm bed to sleep in? I know you don't have anything to trade for it aside from the food and water I just gave you, and I ain't about to go and start taking that back; wouldn't be fair." She leaned across the counter at me and batted her eyes. "Maybe we can find some alternative payment."

"Day can share my room for now," said Starry after she finished off her drink.

"Ooh! Sounds like fun. I know you two will make a perfect couple!" Chrysanthemum snickered.

My ears blushing, I slid out of my seat and followed after Starry. She didn't respond to Chrysanthemum, and only headed for the door at the back of the diner and started up the stairs that it led to.

"Don't worry about being too noisy! I'm a heavy sleeper!" Chrysanthemum called after us. I tried my best to ignore her and hurried after Starry.

At the top of the stairs was a short hallway with a couple doors on either side. Starry went to the door right by the landing. I noticed that the door had a half-dozen extra locks installed on it. A quick glance over the other doors in the hallway revealed Starry's room to be the only one so thoroughly secured.

"Don't worry about Chrys," she said quietly while she started unlocking the door.

"Huh?"

"What she said about us as a couple. She's been trying to set me up with somepony since I first got here." Starry stifled a short laugh. "She's a nice mare, but she moves fast. You don't have to take her too seriously, though." She finished unlocking the door and led me inside.

Starry slipped off her saddlebags and tossed them onto the bed in the far corner, then unfastened her rifle harness and let it drop to the floor. Meanwhile, I stood still in the doorway, my jaw slacked as I just let my eyes wander around the room. Virtually every inch of every wall was covered with various documents—notes, blueprints, maps, and the like. Some things were marked or highlighted and had barely-legible notes scrawled alongside them. Strings of different colors ran between the pins that held up each document, creating a network of connections that spanned all across the room as if to parody the web a spider might weave if she were in the midst of a fever dream, or psychedelic nightmare, or both. I couldn't make sense of any of it. My eyes were drawn in every direction at once with no obvious starting point. I almost felt dizzy trying to take it all in.

"What . . . what is all this?" I asked as Starry ushered me inside so she could close the door and lock it.

"I'm . . . looking for someone. Someone very important to me." Starry paused and took a long sip from her flask. "I'm looking for my son. He went missing a few years ago." She looked around at the walls with all her notes and maps strung across them. "This is all the work I've done to try to find him."

"What happened to him?" I asked as I approached one wall and looked over the notes there. Many lines had been scratched out and rewritten several times with layers of corrections written in a dozen different inks. I couldn't make sense of anything written on it, but I assumed that Starry could read it. I couldn't find a single scrap of paper on the wall that hadn't been similarly covered over in corrections.

"I don't know," Starry answered solemnly. "I just woke up one day and . . . and he was just . . . gone." She was quiet and took another drink from her flask. "I think he was kidnapped. Possibly to be sold into slavery somewhere, but he must have escaped because when I picked up his trail, it turned away from all the known slaver settlements."

I turned my attention to one of the maps. It was a very old map, depicting great cities which no longer existed. Starry had traced out a long, meandering path that ran from one end of the map to the other. Here too she had layered corrections on top of corrections on top of notes until most of it had become unreadable.

"Shouldn't he have gone back home after he escaped?" I asked while trying to make sense of the map.

Starry sighed. "He's lost. It's my fault for never teaching him about the world, so he has no idea where he is or where he's going. But he's been surviving," she said, her voice ending on a note of cheerful hope. She came over to stand next to me and put her hoof on the map, slowly tracing along its lines. "I'll find him. He knows I'm looking for him—he leaves clues for me sometimes."

"What's his name?"

Starry smiled. "Second Chance. He likes to go by just Chance." She let out a small laugh and turned to look at me. "He'd be about your age by now. He's smart—like you. I bet you two would make good friends."

Starry stood there smiling at me silently for a moment before she sighed and took out her flask for another long sip. "After I find Chance, I'll take him back to Precinct with me. You can come too. You'll like it there; it's relatively peaceful, and we could really use a mechanic like you."

My ears perked up at that. "Are you close to finding him?"

"Closer than ever!" Starry said excitedly. She upended her flask to drink the last few drops from it. "But let's not get too eager—I've been close before, many times, but something always happened to make me lose his trail, and then by the time I picked it up again, I find that he's moved on already."

"I want to help," I said.

"Help?"

"You saved my life—and not just by digging me out from the rubble; you gave me food and water, and you helped me find shelter. You brought me here where for the first time since I left the stable, I don't feel afraid for my life. Your son is out there . . . helping you find him is the least I can do."

Starry looked at me silently for a minute before she said, "It's dangerous. You'll be safer if you stay here."

The thought was tempting: I could simply stay at the diner and help Chrysanthemum maintain the place, perhaps even improve it, in exchange for food and a room. But I remembered what Rake had told me.

"I've already been through the worst that could happen to me," I said. "I want to help you find your son."

Starry's gaze became steely. She sighed and returned to her bags. After digging through them for a bit, she came back with something that she held out to me. When I asked what it was, she answered, "It's my backup revolver. Compact, lightweight, bite-grip trigger. Be careful; it's loaded."

I stared at it in her hoof. I had heard about such things in the stable; it was an artifact from when ponies stopped getting along with each other. It was dangerous. "I . . . I can't take this," I said.

"If you're going to come with me, you'll need to be able to defend yourself, and I need to be able to count on you to back me up. It's okay if you're a bad shot—if you can make someone think twice about coming out from behind cover, that can give me time to get around him. If you want to help me, I need you to take this."

I considered that for a moment before nodding and carefully taking the gun for myself.

"Don't be afraid of it. Just remember two things: don't aim at anything you don't intend to shoot, and don't fire unless you're prepared to kill someone. Okay? We'll see about getting you some more ammo and a proper holster for it later. For now, you can keep it in the saddlebags Chrys gave you."

I nodded and stowed it away in my bag, hoping that I wouldn't need to retrieve it anytime soon.

After that, Starry gave me her spare blanket—the same one she'd given me the night before when we took shelter from the rain—and directed me to the upholstered armchair in the corner to sleep in while she took the bed. She collapsed into it with all the grace of a rockslide, and began snoring almost immediately.

The chair was comfortable—more comfortable than anywhere else I had slept in the past . . . however many days it had been since my exile. With Starry's blanket wrapped around me, and with my head on the chair's padded armrest, before I closed my eyes I looked out over at Starry and I whispered:

"Goodnight." 

> Be Careful; the Woods are Full of Wolves
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was the next morning. Starry and I were preparing to head out to continue her search for her son. I left most of the rations Chrysanthemum had given me in Starry's room to lighten the load I was to carry.

Starry took down one of her maps, spread it out on the table we sat at. She explained where we would be going while Chrysanthemum busied herself with organizing her stockpiles of trade goods behind the counter.

"The only place around here I haven't looked yet is this forest. It's not far from here, and based on a couple flybys I've made, it looks like there's some kind of abandoned village in there."

"That's a dangerous place. You shouldn't go there," Chrysanthemum spoke up.

Starry looked from Chrysanthemum to me and frowned. "I'm sure we can handle whatever's in the forest."

Chrysanthemum shuffled around on her hooves. "Then . . . then at least let me help guide you."

"You know your way around there?" Starry furrowed her brow.

"Y—yes . . ." Chrys stammered. "I used to date one of the merchants who came here to trade with Mum. Sometimes I traveled with him, and he made his route through the forest." She bit her lip. "It's been a while, but I'm sure I can help y'all avoid the dangers in there. And 'sides: the townsfolk won't be back for another couple days yet. I could stand to get out for a while."

"How much does your guidance cost?" Starry asked.

"Oh, don't worry about it, hun," Chrys smiled. "Consider it a favor since y'all have been such nice company."

"Alright." Starry nodded. "Thank you, Chrys. We'll be happy to have you along." She brushed a few stray hairs out of her face. "Alright, let's get ready and head out, then. We've got a long way to go."


***


The forest appeared as a dense wall of trees that somehow always seemed to be just ahead of us but never got any closer. The wall only grew in height until the towering trees loomed over us while still never seeming to draw any closer. Even as we'd pass one tree, then another, then a few more, the forest always seemed to be out on the horizon.

And yet, when I glanced behind us, I realized that it ran across every horizon, and suddenly we were deep in the forest, having entered it at some point along the way, but where exactly that point had been, I couldn't remember. It had simply crept up and surrounded us without our knowing.

There were no birds, no small animals—or large ones for that matter. Just trees as far as I could see. The sky above was just barely visible through the high boughs, where most of the leaves still clung to their parent branches. Underfoot were dry, decomposing leaves and scattered branches. The sound of those leaves and branches crackling and snapping under our steps was broken up every so often when a gust of wind would roll through the forest, and the tired old trees would sway and creak, as if threatening to crash down on us.

"Keep your eyes out for movement among the trees," Chrysanthemum cautioned us as she led the way. "The best thing we can do is try to . . . to avoid . . ." She stopped for a moment and put a hoof to her forehead as she cringed.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

Chrysanthemum gave a vigorous shake of her head and took a deep breath. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Um." She looked around, her ears twitching. "Do you hear that?"

Starry and I both stood still, craning our ears around. But all I heard was the slow creaking of the trees.

"Hear what?" Starry asked.

Chrysanthemum shook her head again. "Nothing. Just a . . . ringing—ringing in my ears. It's Nothing. Come on. Let's not waste time." She set off again, a slight hurry in her step

I exchanged a glance with Starry, concerned that something might be wrong with Chrys, but not knowing any way to help. Starry shrugged a little. "Come on," she said. And we pressed on deeper into the foreboding wilderness.

"Are y'all sure you don't hear that?" Chrysanthemum asked again after a short while.

Starry and I both shook our heads.

"Do you wanna stop for a rest?" I suggested. "We've been walking all morning. Maybe—"

"No," Chrysanthemum answered curtly. "Thank you. No. I . . . I think we should keep going. We don't want to stay here any longer than we need to."

Starry glanced over her shoulder, her ears perked up. We all stood silently until Starry moved in closer to us, whispering, "I think we're being followed. We should definitely keep moving. Stay on your guard. Day, where's the pistol I gave you?"

"It's in my saddlebag."

"Well, get it out."

"But I—"

"Don't argue with me. Do it," she said sternly. 

I closed my mouth and nodded quietly as I reached back into my saddlebag and dug out the pistol which Starry had given me the night before. I tucked it into the front pocket of my stable uniform, within easy reach, and Starry nodded in approval.

Chrys floated out a pair of small pistols from her own bags. They wavered slightly as she held them in her chartreuse aura. She winced briefly and shook her head again. "Let's keep moving."

Every dry leaf and every snapping twig seemed to get louder, letting the entire forest know where we were with every step we took. If there were monsters lurking among the trees, they surely knew that we had intruded. The forest felt somehow alive and as if it were very much aware of us. But for all I could see, and for all I could hear, we were alone. There was an aching feeling in my stomach, a gnawing little doubt that ran up my spine to scream in my ear: "There is something out there!" It was like being stalked by Grift all over again, except this time I felt as though she were not the only one.

As we continued further, Chrysanthemum began to stumble and waver from side to side. Her magic imploded, dropping her pistols to the ground, and she stopped to lean against a tree. She gave a dry heave and let out an agonized gasp.

"Chrys, what's wrong?" Starry asked, moving toward Chrysanthemum's side, but keeping her eyes and ears scanning around us.

"Dizzy," Chrysanthemum groaned. "Like knives in my ears." She gave another dry heave.

"Day, help her up. We're going back to the diner," Starry commanded.

As I approached Chrysanthemum, I suddenly found myself lying on the ground. It all happened so quickly that it took me a moment to process what had happened: Somepony had thrust me aside after dropping out of the trees and landing between me and Chrys.

With a flick of his hoof out from under his cloak, he threw some kind of green, glowing powder into Chrysanthemum's face while I was just getting back on my hooves. Chrys instantly fell back, choking and gasping for air, and I . . . I just stood there. I watched her writhing on the ground. 

Starry was quick to act, however, and rushed toward the cloaked figure. She took a swing at his head, but he ducked under her hoof.

"Stay your aggression," came his voice from under his cowl. He hopped to the side nimbly as Starry rounded to kick at him with her back hooves but she missed again. "Your friend is gone; fiend unmasked. Look, see for yourself." Again he dodged Starry as she tried for a flying tackle, but she caught only a pile of dry leaves and twigs.  The cloaked figure stood over Starry and pointed his hoof.

I looked where he pointed, back at Chrysanthemum. What I saw . . . 

Chrys looked completely alien. She had a black, leathery hide; solid, opalescent blue eyes; and long, sharp fangs that stuck out from the corners of her mouth. Her horn had a similarly dangerous-looking hooked shape, and in place of the long, bouncy curls of her mane, there was instead a short, straight, silky gray mane. Delicate, gossamer wings protruded from her back, buzzing and twitching erratically.

Starry had stopped trying to fight the cloaked figure as she too looked back at Chrysanthemum to see what she had turned into. We were silent as we watched her. She stopped choking and slowly sat up. And that's when she looked down at herself and saw what we saw.

"No . . ." she gasped. "No . . . no!" She looked up at us. "I—I can't—I'm not—" She faced the cloaked figure. "You! What did you do to me?" Chrysanthemum cringed, and her horn flared chartreuse, but only for a moment before the aura imploded. "What did you do to me!" she screamed.

"Your true face revealed; your masquerade uncovered," he answered, stepping forward slowly. "Prey on us no more." He pulled back his hood to reveal his striped visage and eyes that boiled with an intent . . . an intent I'd seen before. I'd seen it in the eyes of security ponies inside the stable.

Never interfere with security; just keep your head down and get along.

Everything I'd ever known told me to stay out of it—to just let it happen and move on, forget about it. But as I looked down at Chrys, as she lay there cowering helplessly, with tears rolling down her cheeks . . .

"Wait! She's our friend. She's done nothing wrong!" I pleaded with the cloaked zebra.

He stopped and turned to face me, his head tilted to one side. "I didn't think ponies spoke our language. But that changes nothing." He pointed a hoof at Chrysanthemum. "Do you see what she is?"

"I see that she's afraid!"

"What are you?" Starry demanded, looming over Chrysanthemum.

"I'm Chrys! The same Chrys you've always known!" she pleaded. "Starry, please! I'm me—I'm still me . . . I've always been me . . ."

"She is a monster. I must keep her, however. There are more to find," the zebra said.

"I'm not a monster!" Chrysanthemum cried, burying her face in her hooves. "Not a monster . . . not a monster . . ."

"Stop! Both of you!" I shoved past the zebra and Starry to stand between them and Chrysanthemum, my wings flared out. My temples pounded with every beat of my heart. Each thundering pulse was like a loudspeaker inside my ears: "You have to get along. . . . It's important to get along," it rang, commanding me to mind my place, not stand in the way, and to let Security do its job. Inside the stable I would never have dreamed to stand between Security and somepony I barely knew. But seeing Chrys like that—like a small, innocent, helpless little foal . . . I fought against the pounding in my head, the pounding which told me to stand by and just let them do what they wanted. I had to protect her.

"I won't let you hurt her," I said. With the way my heart was racing, I felt as though I might pass out. It took all the effort I had just to keep my knees from buckling.

Starry, to my surprise, backed up a step. Her eyes were wide as she stared at me. The zebra didn't back off, though. "She feeds on my tribe!" he shouted. "She—her kind, feast; we suffer. I will see it end!"

"No! I don't! It's not me!" Chrysanthemum yelled back. "I . . . I'm not part of . . . that . . ."

I glanced back at her over my shoulder and watched as she shakily got back on her hooves. "Part of what?" I asked. "Chrys, what's he talking about?"

She looked around cautiously and trembled. "We're not safe here. Please, I'll . . . I'll tell you everything, just . . . we can't stay here." She cringed as her horn flared impotently again. "And I need my magic! I can't . . . I can't be like this. I feel . . . wrong."

The zebra hesitated. He lowered his eyes for a moment before he reached under his cloak and brought out a small cloth rag. "Wipe away the dust; magic will come back to you. But betray us not."

I took the rag and turned to face Chrysanthemum. She tried to reach for the rag with her magic, but it again imploded on her. "Here, let me," I said, reaching toward her, but I hesitated when she ducked away from me. "It's alright, I won't hurt you," I reassured her.

She took a shaky breath and nodded, closing her eyes. I sat down in front of her and got a closer look. I could see the green powder that the zebra had hit her with. It sparkled like glitter in the dim light that trickled through the forest canopy. Gently, I started wiping it off her face. She grimaced, and I wasn't sure if it was because of my touch or if maybe the powder was hurting her, but as I got to her horn and cleaned the little green flecks off of it, her face relaxed.

I sat back and smiled at her. "I think that's all of it. Can you use your magic now?" I asked.

Chrysanthemum opened her eyes and looked at me. She blinked a couple times before her horn shimmered with her bright chartreuse aura. Her magic flashed around her, and she stood there, looking as she always had, with her vibrant green coat and her blue and white mane styled in long, bouncy curls. She looked down at herself and let out a sigh. "Thank you, Day," she said, smiling back at me.

She winced suddenly, putting her hooves to her ears. "That noise! Make it stop!"

"What noise? What are you doing to her?" I turned around to face the zebra.

From under his cloak, he brought out a small polished stone, set with a yellow gem and with arcane runes etched into it. "It must be the effect of the repellant talisman I made. She's the first I've seen react to it."

"So turn it off!"

"It can't be turned off. Not without destroying it."

"Do it!"

"It's the only one I have. It took months to make. We'll need it to find others like her: the ones who have been tormenting my tribe."

Behind me, Chrysanthemum let out an agonized groan.

"It bothers her only when she wears her mask. She can go without it."

"Chrys?" I turned back to her. She was doubled over, clutching at her ears as she writhed on the ground. "Chrys, if you change back, it'll go away."

"No!" she yelled through gritted teeth. "You don't . . . understand." She spat out her words between pained gasps for breath. "This hurts . . . but that other . . . body feels . . . wrong! I can't!"

"Suffering like this, you can end it any time. Yet you endure—why?" The zebra looked Chrys over with a skeptical gaze.

Chrys forced herself to stand so she could look the zebra in the eye. "If you had to spend your whole life trying to escape what you were born as . . ." She grimaced, and for a moment she looked ready to pass out. Her normally vibrant color had turned pale, and beads of sweat ran down her face and neck. "What would you suffer just so you could be yourself?"

The zebra was silent for a moment, and then furrowed his brow. "Whispers in my ear. You who could be anything, how can I trust you?"

"Please, sir," I said, my head bowed and my ears splayed. "Chrys has been kind to me since I met her. She's helped others, and she's helped me. Please, don't make her suffer."

Behind me, Chrys lay back down. She clutched at her stomach as convulsive dry-heaves wracked her body.

The zebra looked at me, his eyes wide in shock. After a moment, he glanced down at the talisman in his hoof. He sighed and dropped it on the ground, then stomped it under his hoof. The gemstone cracked with a small flash of light.

Almost instantly, Chrys's pained groans stopped, and I watched as she shakily got back to her feet. Her color returned slowly as she wiped the sweat and tears from her face. After a few slow breaths to steady herself, she looked up at me and smiled. And then she hugged me.

I winced slightly as she threw her forelegs around my neck and nuzzled my cheek. "Thank you," she whispered then looked over at the zebra. "I'm so sorry for what they're doing to y'all." She took a deep breath, and I felt her embrace tighten around me briefly before she let go. "I said I'd tell you everything, and I will. But we have to go somewhere safe first."

"Somewhere safe indeed," he replied. "Follow me and do not stray. We'll go to my home."

"Hold on, now," Starry said as she pulled me aside. "Day, you know we can't go around solving everyone else's problems; we have our own to deal with."

I looked up at her. "But, ma'am . . . Starry . . . this is our problem, isn't it? Chance was here, wasn't he? There's something out there, and Chrys is the only one of us who knows anything about it."

"So let her stay and deal with it. We'll go back the way we came and . . . and we'll try to find where he went next." Starry sighed and pulled out her canteen for a drink. "It'll be a setback, but it's not like it'd be the first time."

I fell back a half-step. "Just . . . leave?" I glanced back over my shoulder at Chrys. She stood cautiously away from everypony else, with her back against a tree. I felt a tightness grip my chest like a claw pulling on my breastbone. "We can't just abandon her! She's our friend!"

Starry took another sip. "I don't even know what she is anymore. And we certainly don't owe this zebra anything."

I backed up another half-step. I felt as if I were going to be sick. No matter what I did, it would mean losing somepony: If I went with Starry, we'd leave Chrys behind. If I stayed with Chrys, Starry would leave me. I'd already lost everything from the stable, I had just started rebuilding my life outside, and now I was about to start losing it again.

My legs tingled with hundreds of little pinpricks, and I struggled to keep my breathing steady. After a glance over my shoulder at Chrys, I gave Starry my decision. "I can't leave," I told her. "I won't leave." I sighed and hung my head, knowing that I'd be moving on without Starry.

"Day . . ."

I looked up at Starry. The shield on her uniform glinted in the cold, sparse light that filtered down through the trees.

She took another drink from her canteen. "Alright, Day." She sighed and approached the zebra. "I'm looking for a pony who might have come through here recently. If we help you, can you help us?"

"This, I do not know," he answered with a shake of his head. "Masked hunters live in shadows. Your friend will explain." He nodded toward Chrys, and then continued, "Make hunters hunted; make free my tribe, only that—" He stomped his hoof. "Will make clear your way."

Starry gave a slow nod. "Okay . . . that sounded enough like a 'yes' to me. Lead the way. Come on, Day; let's get moving. Chrys, or whoever you are—"

"Starry, please! I'm still me. I'm the same Chrys you've always known."

"You'll go ahead of me where I can keep an eye on you," Starry said with a note of finality in her voice. Chrys didn't argue. She hung her head and took her place behind the zebra while Starry and I followed behind her, and we started walking through the forest again.

During the walk, the silence was broken only by a few brief moments of conversation. The zebra introduced himself as Kijiba. And Starry remarked how strange it was that I could speak the zebras' language. Zebras made up a large portion of the stable's population, I explained; everypony there spoke both languages fluently. Perhaps it was the just the mood we were all in, or maybe Starry thought better of asking more about the stable, but whatever it was, the conversation ended there.

> Keep Making That Face and It'll Get Stuck That Way
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a while of traveling deeper still into the forest—all the while, glancing over our shoulders and listening for another ambush—the dark, stoic trees that loomed all around us gave way into a clearing. The light of day was a welcome sight as we emerged from the forest canopy's shadow.

The clearing was populated with a number of huts built from wooden boards and thatched roofs. The huts looked old and poorly maintained; on every one of them I could see mold growing on rotten wood and holes in the thatching.

Each hut had its own small—I hesitate to call it a garden—they were more like small patches of tilled soil where meager amounts of various wheats and grains grew amid tangles of weeds. The village was quiet and deathly still, such that the slightest movement caught my eye as we passed along the outskirts: From behind a broken window shutter, a zebra foal's curious eyes peeked out to watch us before his mother pulled him away into the shadows. Another zebra glared at us from behind his small plot of crops. His face was gaunt, with dark shadows under his eyes. Through the stalks of grain he was tending, I could see that his body was practically emaciated, as though he could barely grow enough to feed himself.

There were other villagers about, but those who didn't retreat into their homes greeted us with the same cold, spiteful glares. Yet it didn't seem as if our presence had at all interrupted their normal activities; it was as if their whole lives were spent exchanging looks of pure contempt and barely-restrained malice toward one another.

"Do not pay them heed," Kijiba said. "Their stares are as much for me," he continued, "as they are for you."

"Why?" I asked.

Kijiba didn't answer right away. I almost thought he was ignoring the question before he spoke up. "I am . . . unwelcome. Traditions, I follow not. So they think me mad."

"Why don't you leave?" Starry asked.

"And where would I go? This has been my only home. Here is all I know," he answered bitterly. "My home, my people; even being unwanted—" He glanced back at us over his shoulder. "Could you leave your home?"

Nopony said anything more, and Kijiba continued leading us in silence. But I had to wonder about my own home—or, rather, the fact that I didn't have one anymore. What Kijiba had said was right; even unwanted, I could never have simply left. It had been the circumstances that had forced me to leave, and I would give anything to go back. Well, almost anything . . . I couldn't take back what I'd done. It had been too important, and I couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't done it.

I just hadn't expected I'd have to live with myself after I had done it.

I had to leave my old life behind and find a new one for myself. In a way, I had died when the stable door closed behind me, but instead of passing on, I was left to wander the wasteland as a ghost, lost and searching for . . . something. I needed to accept that my life had ended in order to move on. Or as Rake's voice in the back of my mind reminded me: I had been reborn.

And I tried to move on. But somehow it seemed as if the wasteland were always conspiring to remind me of what I'd done . . . of what I'd lost.

As we walked on, we passed by a mare, but unlike the other inhabitants of the village, she didn't keep her distance and instead approached me. She wasn't old, but her face was wrinkled, and her mane drooped listlessly over one side of her neck. Her left eye was bruised and swollen shut, and she favored her left foreleg as she walked. Her good eye caught mine, and I stood still while she came closer until her face was right in front of mine. I grimaced at the smell of her breath but held still in her gaze.

"What is this that, with my eye, I do see? Some little bird, fallen out from his tree?" The mare scowled at me. "Fly home, little bird, back home to your nest. For you, do you not think, that would be best?"

"I . . . can't go home," I told her. "They won't let me come back."

Her wrinkled brow furrowed as she glared at me. Without saying anything more, she simply snorted and pushed her way past me.

I stood there in a bit of a daze. Something about the encounter with that mare had felt very unsettling, and left me with a cold shiver running down my back. I snapped out of it when Kijiba came back to get me.

"Is something the matter?" he asked.

"That mare," I said, pointing toward her; she hadn't yet gotten very far with her limp. "She . . . was telling me to leave."

Kijiba looked past me at the mare. He harrumphed. "Ignore her. Her husband disappeared a few days ago. Right after she got that limp and black eye."

My eyes went wide at that. "Are you suggesting her husband did that to her? And that . . . she . . ." I leaned in closer to Kijiba and lowered my voice to a whisper.

"Did she murder him?"

Kijiba's eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips, taking a moment before he answered. "It's not safe to talk here. Let's keep moving. We can speak more freely at my home."

I nodded, and we continued on.


***


Kijiba's hut was noticeably different from the rest of the village. It was built into the hollowed out trunk of a massive old tree, had no outward signs of decay, and not only did he have what I would call a proper garden, but there was also a flower garden with an entire rainbow of colors growing in it.

Inside the tree was only a single room. The air was thick with the scent of moldy pages, mixed with the fragrance of dried flower petals. 

The room was crowded with all four of us, but there was space enough to move around comfortably, if only barely. Starry stood beside me nearest to the door while Kijiba sat down by his table, and Chrys stood in the center. Our eyes fell on her.

"Just what the hell are you?" Starry demanded.

"I'm . . ." Chrys chewed on her bottom lip and sighed. "I'm . . . a changeling. I can turn myself into almost any animal."

"Not just animal, but any pony she wants. Her disguise—perfect." Kijiba was quick to add.

Starry's eyes narrowed. "So was there another pony out there who looked like this? What did you do to her?"

"It's not like that! This is me! Just . . . me."

"So you've been tricking us the whole time. That line you fed us about traveling with a trader through this forest? That never happened, did it?"

Chrys looked away.

"And I bet that cute little story about Mum taking you in wasn't true either."

"No! That was true! I never lied to you before!"

"You were always lying to us! You let us believe you were a pony."

"I am a pony!" Chrysanthemum cried.

Kijiba cut Starry off before she could yell at Chrys again. "You wear this mask; you wish you were pony. A lie tells the truth?"

Chrys choked back a sob and wiped her fetlock across her nose. "I've lived almost my whole life like this—like a pony."

"But you're not a pony," Starry countered. "You don't even have a real cutie mark. It's fake, just like everything else about you."

"I wanted a cutie mark as much as any filly or colt does! I tried so many things, hoping desperately that maybe if I was good enough at one thing, I could get a real cutie mark like everypony else. That if I just wanted it hard enough, that it would make me a real pony." She let out a sound that was something caught between a cry and a laugh. "That never happened. But I really do have a talent for matchmaking. Starry, you've seen the ponies at the diner: every couple there was put together by me, and none of them could be happier."

She looked up at Starry. "You remember Scrap Yard and Rubble, right? Remember how sweet her laugh is? Oh, and he had such a great sense of humor! It was like nothing in the wasteland could ever take away his smile." She closed her eyes and let out a wistful sigh. "I set them up together when I was just a filly. When I watched them share their first kiss, I felt something—a chill, a tingle; it was like opening my eyes for the very first time. I almost broke down crying in front of everypony in the diner when I looked back and still didn't see anything on my flank." Chrys sobbed again then took a deep breath and looked up at us. "That's when I accepted that I'd never get the cutie mark I knew I was supposed to have. So I made this one up." She turned to show her flank. "Two roses, entwined together in a heart. Because all I want to do is bring ponies together in love. Is that so wrong?"

The room was quiet except for Chrysanthemum's sniffling. I found myself questioning what it really meant to be a pony. If she lived as one, thought of herself as one, was I in any position to say otherwise? As she was, she was indistinguishable from any other pony. If that didn't make her a pony, then what did?

While Starry seemed, at best, unconvinced, I decided then that if Chrys said she was a pony, I would believe her. 

"I don't understand." I turned to Kijiba. "You said there are others like her, and they feed on your tribe?"

He nodded. "I read in my books; masked monsters that feed on love. They feed, and we starve."

"No, that's not what they're doing to you." Chrys wiped the tears away from her eyes. "There's no love in the air here. It tastes foul. Others like—" She grimaced and bit her lip. "Others like . . . me could never survive here."

"But the books—"

"Were printed ages ago. These changelings here have adapted to a world where bitter emotions flourish." Chrys paused, turning her head to look at each of us. She knew the question we all undoubtedly had on our minds, and with a sigh, she answered what went unasked. "I was born during the early days of the war. I don't remember much from back then, just overhearing my parents talk about plans to wait it out. We were just going to go to sleep for a while—a torpor." Tears began welling up in her eyes again. "The last thing I remember is my mother singing to me to sleep. . . . I can't even remember the song. . . . And then I blinked and she was gone. And so was my whole world—everything, all of it, just gone! All in the blink of an eye! And I was still just a little filly."

Chrys closed her eyes tightly and stifled a sob through gritted teeth. "I woke up here, in this forest, looking up into the eyes of a queen with her hive buzzing all around me. I can hear them now—their shrills and chitters are everywhere, all around us. They were watching us when you exposed me, and now they know I'm here!" She collapsed onto the floor and buried her face under her forelegs as she cried. "I'm sorry! I thought I could lead you around them so they wouldn't find us, but it's too late!"

"Chrys." Starry stepped forward, looming over her. "Chrys, look at me. This is very important: what do they want?"

Chrysanthemum lowered her hooves away from her face. Her eyes were bloodshot. "They want me back," she sniffled. "She wants me back—the queen. I ran away when I was still little. The air here—I can't stand it. They keep the villagers on edge and feed off your hate for each other."

Starry pulled out her flask and took a long drink from it. She looked down at Chrys who was still sobbing on the floor. "I assume," she said, pausing to take another drink, "that we won't be able to simply leave now, will we?"

Chrys shook her head.

"Wonderful." Starry gave an exasperated sigh. "You got us into a real mess here. So what are we supposed to do about it?"

"We have to fight them," Kijiba answered. "My people will believe me; now that I have you."

"No!" Chrys sat up. "I never want to change back ever again. Certainly not so you can trot me out on display and turn the whole village against me."

"We don't really have a choice," Starry said. "The four of us are hardly an army."

"And neither is this village," Chrys argued. "You saw them out there, how they live—they're sick and hungry, and I can taste the malice in the air. Can't you? A single changeling can have them all entranced before they even know what's happening—" Her face turned pale. "I hear them getting closer! They'll turn the whole village against us when they get here." She gulped. "The only chance we have is if we go and talk to the queen."

"What? Just walk right up ask them nicely to let us go? That's a terrible plan!" Starry stomped her hoof as her wings flared out. She tipped back her flask and finished off its contents, leaning her head back as she tried to shake out that last drop.

"If I can talk to the queen . . . if I agree to stay with her willingly . . . she might let you and Day go."

"And what of my tribe?" Kijiba asked. "Hunters do not give up prey. I'm left with nothing!"

"I'm sorry! I don't know what else to do! If you hadn't exposed me, maybe we could have gone unnoticed, but you had to go and hit me with that damn powder—"

The same thought struck us all at the same time, and we turned toward Kijiba. "Do you have more of that powder?" Starry asked. "We can use it to incapacitate them so we stand a chance."

"I used what I had," he answered. "More ingredients, I have; but supply is short."

"Then make what you can," said Chrys as she wiped her eyes again. "If we use it on the queen, if we can defeat her, then the hive will be lost without her. All they've ever known is her will. They won't know what to do."

"And how do we know we can trust you?"

Chrys looked as though she were about to start crying again as she faced Starry. "I guess you don't. But it's the only chance we have. And if we don't go out to fight them soon, they'll come for us. They'll take you and they'll put you in trances and make you live out your worst nightmares over and over again until all that's left of you is an empty husk, and then when your soul is empty, they'll feast on your body. It's what happens to everyone who's ever gone missing from this village."

She turned to Kijiba. "I'm so sorry. Please believe me. I was never any part of it. What they do . . . I'd sooner starve than become a monster like them."

The whole time, I sat silently in the corner. I could hardly imagine anything more monstrous than what Chrys described.

As Kijiba set to work making more of the powder he had used on Chrys, Starry continued interrogating her for anything that might be useful in planning our attack, and I sat quietly, trying my best to hold my stomach down. It twisted into knots inside me and filled me with dread as I looked down at the pistol tucked into my front pocket. I was going to have to use it. I'd have to kill, almost for sure. I didn't want to. It was one thing to kill somepony in the heat of the moment, but I was going to be part of a plan to murder someone. Even if she was a monster, I felt sick at the thought. But what choice did I have?

I just had to put on a strong face and be the pony everypony expected me to be.

> Don't Let the Bedbugs Bite
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Day, are you alright?" Starry asked quietly as she sat down next to me.

"Y—yeah. I'm fine."

"You sure? You look like you're about to be sick." She reached toward me, but I flinched away.

"It's nothing. I'm fine."

Starry sighed as she took out her aspirin bottle and shook out a tablet into her hoof. She paused, looking down at it; she was trembling. She shook out a second tablet and then swallowed them both with a long sip from her flask.

"It's alright to be scared, Day," Starry said after a moment. She wasn't shaking anymore. "I know this isn't easy for you, but we're in enemy territory right now. And we're only going deeper from here—right into the heart of it. From what I got out of Chrys, we can expect them to try to mess with our heads. We won't be able to trust what we see or maybe even what we think or feel. So I need to know I can count on you to follow my instructions."

My eyes stayed fixed on the pistol she'd given me. I knew what she was getting at: she wanted me to be a killer.

"I won't lie to you," she said. "If I had the whole town of Precinct with me, I still wouldn't want to go up against these . . . creatures. But we're here, and we don't have any other options, so when things get hairy, I need you to be brave for me, okay?"

What a sweet nothing. Hadn't I "been brave" enough already? But I didn't have a choice, did I? I had a mask to wear: the mask of a soldier. I had to fight against others—others who would have just gone on living as they always had if not for me. This forest wasn't my home—I'd felt it almost since the moment we'd arrived: I didn't belong there; it wasn't my place. But here I was, drafted into a war against monsters in their very home among the shadows, and who grew stronger by feeding off those who didn't get along—those like me.

I'd always been a good pony. I got along. I never wanted to hurt anyone, only to keep my head down and live my life quietly as I always had. I had to be exiled for murder to become a killer.

I felt sick. But as I looked over at Chrys, I remembered that my exile had shown me what I was capable of—that I could wear any mask I needed to, if it meant protecting someone I cared about.

I looked down at my gun, then back up at Starry. "I'll do what I have to do," I said.

With my assurance that she could count on me, Starry went to watch the outside through a small window cut into the door. Kijiba was still busy mixing and grinding various dried plants. And Chrys was huddled against the back wall all by herself. Her eyes were puffy and her cheeks were wet from crying. She glanced up and saw me looking at her.

My first instinct was to turn away, pretend I hadn't seen her like that so she could pretend she hadn't been seen. But when I looked away from her, I felt something . . . a knot in the pit of my stomach. I couldn't just leave her like that.

"It's alright," I said softly as I moved over to sit near her. "Nopony's going to hurt you."

"Thank you." Chrys sniffled as she wiped a fetlock across her cheeks. "That's sweet of you, but that's not really what worries me."

"Well . . . what, then?"

"You wouldn't understand." She looked up at me, then glanced over at Starry briefly. "Well, maybe . . ." She sighed. "Everything I knew as a child . . . everyone I loved  . . . it all just vanished in the blink of an eye. I lost my whole world and—" She choked. "I never got to say goodbye. It was just so sudden. Everything was fine when I went to sleep, but when I woke up, it was the worst day of my life. Maybe I should have known it was possible—even expected it just a little, but I just wanted to believe everything would work out okay."

Chrys was quiet for a moment before continuing. "Ever since then, I've just been doing whatever I could to replace what I lost." She smiled a little. "I was lucky to find Mum. She took care of me as her own. If it hadn't been for her, if I'd stayed with the queen here . . . maybe I could have survived, but I needed a mother to love me so I could thrive."

Her eyes welled up with tears. "I . . . I remember my mother singing to me, but no matter how hard I try, I can't remember the song." She closed her eyes tightly, blinking the tears out. "I've never felt this alone before. It's like . . . like . . ."

"Like falling?" I offered. She tilted her head as she looked at me. "It's like you're falling, and everypony around you has no idea because the wind is choking you so you can't scream. And you're afraid to grab onto anyone for help because you'll just drag them down with you. And if you did, they'd just fight you and kick you away to save themselves. You're falling, but the ground never gets any closer. Just . . . falling forever . . . with nobody to hold you . . ."

"Hun . . ." Chrys stared at me, her mouth open, and her eyes wide. She looked as though she were about to start crying again when Starry called our attention.

"We've got movement outside."

Kijiba moved to the door and looked outside. Almost immediately, he turned pale. Quickly, he returned to his workbench and poured what little powder he had made into two small cloth satchels. "My tribe is coming," he said gravely as he turned to face us. "Our time to prepare is done. We cannot stay here." He gave one satchel to Starry and kept the other for himself.

Starry motioned for us to leave, and Chrys and I got up. Chrys stopped me on the way to the door, though. She looked into my eyes. "Day, I . . . whatever happens out there, please try to remember: Starry and I are your friends. We'll never do anything to hurt you."

It seemed like a strange time to say something like that. But I gave a nod anyway, and, after holding my gaze for a moment, Chrys went ahead of me, and I followed her out of the hut.

Outside, I saw the rest of Kijiba's tribe—all of them. Every single zebra in the whole village: young, old, even those who looked deathly ill. Their tired, emaciated forms shuffled toward us, ponderous and unceasing. And with beady, vacant eyes tinted pale green, they glared at us, through us. They trampled their own gardens without a single faltered step, all in a mindless march against us who had intruded on their collective. No, not mindless, for they were possessed of a single mind, intent on violently stamping out the unwelcome disruption of the status quo.

Chrys gasped. "They're here already. They have everyone entranced."

"Let's get moving before we end up like them," Starry said.

I was grateful to not have to fight them. It would be one thing to kill to protect myself from somepony who was going to kill me, but those villagers weren't themselves—they didn't really want to hurt us. It was just whatever mind control the changelings had forced on them.

Chrys lead the way into the forest, and the rest of us followed quickly. Into the dark shadows we galloped as fast as the dense trees would allow, which wasn't very fast, but we were able to lose sight of the villagers soon enough.


***


The trees swallowed up nearly all of the day's light. It may as well have been an eternal night in the forest. Starry had her headlamp, but she said using it would give away our position more than it would help us see. We had to rely on letting our eyes adjust to the dark woods.

"Do you even know where you're going?" Starry whispered.

"I can hear them," Chrys answered quietly. "They're all around us. Just stay quiet."

"We're walking into a trap."

"They had us trapped as soon as they knew I was here. All we can do is try to catch them off guard and—"

We all stopped abruptly, and I began looking all around for signs of anything moving among the shadows. But all I saw were the shadows themselves.

I felt a chill run down my spine. Something had changed about the forest, but I couldn't tell what it was. The trees were the same stoic, looming pillars. The canopy was the same dark blanket, keeping the forest shrouded away from the sky above. The air was as still as ever.

My wings bristled as I felt a sudden realization stand up and scream at me from the back of my mind. I tried to ignore it, deny it at first. It wasn't possible! It couldn't be. If it were true—what that would imply . . .

I looked down at my hooves as I took a shaky step forward, and I watched as my hoof came down on a small, dry twig. I felt it snap under me, but that was all—I only felt it. I didn't hear it. The air was perfectly calm; not even the slightest sound carried through it.

"S—Starry . . ." I whispered. No answer. "Starry?" I turned my head to look at her, but she wasn't there. Frantically, I wheeled around. Kijiba and Chrys were gone as well. I'd gotten separated, but when? How?

"Starry!" I called out. "Starry! Chrys! Kijiba!" My chest heaved with each shout, but even with all the air in my lungs, my voice felt small and pitifully insignificant among the stony trees. I could barely hear myself.

The air itself was choking me so I couldn't scream. I turned around and around in a dizzying panic, desperately searching for any sign of life in the dark woods. My screams for help were swallowed up in silence before they could even reach my own ears, and I nearly passed out from a lack of breath.

Then I heard something, like a crinkle of leaves underfoot, and I thought I saw a shadow moving through the trees out of the corner of my eye. It could have been anything, but in that moment I couldn't imagine anything worse than the choking silence and the dark emptiness of being all alone. So I ran toward it.

Leaves and twigs crushed silently under my hooves as I bounded through the forest, weaving around trees which grew closer together the further I went. The trees became a dark, towering wall of bark and silent contempt, but still I could see something moving just beyond them. I pressed on, taking any path I could find through the trees until I found a gap in the wall that I could squeeze through.

I emerged on the other side in a small area where the trees were much less dense, and I found myself with whom I'd been chasing.

"Starry!" I gasped. "I was all alone and—"

"Shut up, you sniveling little worm!"

I blinked, my ears drooping. "S—Starry? Wha—"

"I said be quiet!" Her hoof hit my cheek like a bolt of lightning, and I fell to the ground. Dark spots floated across my blurred vision, and for a moment my whole world was reduced to a ringing in my ear and the taste of copper in my mouth. As focus returned to my eyes, and I staggered to pick myself up, my eyes turned up to see Starry looming over me. I nearly froze at the sight of her hoof drawing back for another strike. Reflex took over, and I collapsed back onto the ground, throwing my forelegs over my face for protection.

"Starry, please! I'm sorry!" I whimpered.

"You're a pathetic, useless excuse for a pony. What good are you?"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Whatever I did wrong, I'm sorry!" I cringed and tightened my forelegs over my face while the rest of my body curled up and tensed, waiting for her to hit me again.

"'I'm sorry!'" she mocked. "All you do is whine. You can't do anything for yourself. I should just leave you to die on your own."

"No! Please! I don't want to be alone!" I uncovered my face to reach out and grasp at her forelegs. She took the opportunity to hit me again, this time catching me in the ear. I rolled over with a loud yelp, clutching at the side of my head. It felt like an ice cold knife had been jammed in my ear.

"You're worthless!" She hooked her hoof under the collar of my uniform and lifted me up to face her. "I don't have time to care for a little foal like you." As she sneered, her eyes flashed a bright green and I felt my hind legs grow weak.

I wanted to kick and scream and run away, but those eyes held me still. Her eyes glowed brightly, and all I could hear were those words: "pathetic," "useless," "worthless" echoing in my head. I couldn't even feel the stabbing pain in my ear anymore. I was trapped in the back of my own mind where those words drowned out my screams to myself to get away. Those words pressed in, suffocating me.

Dark shadows rolled in all around me, seeping out from between the trees like a black fog. All I could see were those glowing green eyes. Even as I felt my body crumple under me as I was dropped onto the ground, the image of those eyes stayed fixed in my mind. Get up! Run away! Escape! I screamed at myself, but my body was completely numb, paralyzed. I had the sensation of moving, as if being carried, and slowly, those eyes that had burned themselves into my mind began to dim until I was left completely alone in the dark.

> Bad Dreams Can't Hurt You
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slowly, I opened my eyes; I was alone.

I looked down and saw that under my hooves was the steel plating of a corridor. I looked up: The trees were gone, replaced by matte gray walls. I instantly recognized the corridor.

I had to run, had to get out. I turned around and started to run, but skidded to a halt as I almost immediately ran into a door, a door that couldn't have been there, and yet there it was. I wasn't in the corridor anymore; I was in one of the living quarters. And I knew the door in front of me. It was her door.

I turned around again to flee, but I found myself inside her room. Everything was exactly as I had left it: her lifeless body on the bed, the sheets soaked in blood. Streaks of blood were splattered all across the wall and even dripped from the ceiling.

Again, I turned in a desperate attempt to escape, but this time I was stopped by Starry as she stepped through the open doorway.

"So this is what you're hiding," she said in a casual, almost disinterested tone.

Words caught in my throat as I backed away from her. Her eyes shone with a baleful green light, and she slowly advanced toward me, backing me up against the bed.

"What's the matter? Afraid to defend yourself?" She snarled and raised a hoof back to strike me. I couldn't even flinch away, her glowing green eyes held me paralyzed.

"Stop! You're hurting him!" a voice called out. It sounded far away, muffled, as though I were listening to it through a tank of water.

Those bright green eyes looked away from me briefly, then back again. The room around me faded into darkness and so did the glow of those eyes. Once again, I was alone in the dark.

"Day!" that voice called again. It was closer. "Day! Open your eyes, Day!" I felt a hoof on my cheek.


***


I was dizzy. My ear was still ringing from when I'd been hit. A stabbing pain shot through my neck as I tried to move, and my eyes snapped open as I let out a pained gasp.

"Chr . . . Chrys?" I groaned, seeing her there in front of me. It had been her voice that I'd heard.

"Shh. Don't try to move. Just hang on. I'll get you out of this. I promise," she whispered through a forced smile to reassure me, but as I moved my eyes to look around, my heart sank like a lead weight inside my chest.

All around us were changelings. Their eyes gleamed in the shadows between the trees and in the boughs. The air hummed with their shrill chittering and hisses. And I was helpless before them; my legs were wrapped up in a sticky green slime, trapping me as much as their stares had.

I looked around and saw Kijiba there with me. His eyes were tinted green and he was just staring off into space. Two changelings stalked around him in slow circles, hissing and baring their fangs at him between fits of what I could only assume was laughter—a high-pitched warble that made my skin crawl. Kijiba seemed oblivious to their threats and cackles. He only swayed unsteadily on his hooves with that vacant stare on his face. They hadn't even bothered to restrain him as they had with me.

"Please! They're my friends!" I heard Chrys plead. She was kneeling, begging to a dark form in the shadows.

Two bright green eyes hovered over Chrys in the darkness. "What do you need friends for, little one? You have us now. You know we missed you dearly ever since you left us. But that's alright. We won't punish you for it. You were just confused. Isn't that right?"

Chrys glanced at me over her shoulder, then back into the shadows. "Y—yes . . . I . . . I'm sorry. I promise I won't run away again. Just, please, let my friends go. They won't cause any trouble. I swear."

"You know we can't do that, sweetheart. We have to think of the swarm first, you know. The swarm is what keeps you safe, keeps you fed. You know that, don't you?"

"Please! I beg y—ahh!" Chrys tumbled over with a loud cry of pain when a hoof came out from the shadows and struck her.

"Now look at what you made me do." The figure stepped closer, out of the darker shadows to where I could barely make out her shape in the darkness. Twice as tall as any pony I'd ever seen, her dark hide, like the other changelings, made her almost invisible in the shadows. Her mane and tail shimmered ever so faintly in the sparse light that filtered down on her. 

"Why do you have to be so selfish? Haven't we done enough for you? We found you, woke you up from your slumber, gave you a home, a family, and let you join in our feast. Is this how you repay our kindness?"

Chrys climbed to her feet and stood tall as she faced the queen. "I'll never stay with you!" she screamed defiantly. The buzzing and chittering around us quieted, and all the glowing eyes in the dark were on Chrys. She glanced in my direction, and her expression hardened. "Only if you let my friends go. Only when they're safe will I let you keep me."

The queen laughed. It wasn't the chilling warble I'd heard from the others, but more like a warm belly laugh. "Oh, little lost daughter, we don't need your permission to keep you." The queen's horn, long and wickedly jagged, glowed with a bright green aura. "Now, let's get you out of that unnatural pony disguise."

A ring of green flames rose up around Chrys, and I heard her scream as it closed in around her. It flashed brightly, and then it was gone. When my eyes readjusted to the darkness, I saw Chrys on her knees again, shivering in her naked black hide.

"Look at you," the queen sneered. "How could you have tolerated that oppressive costume for so long? We've let you have your fun little rebellion, and now it's time to come back to us and be a good girl."

Chrys struggled to stand, but the queen pushed her down again.

"Tsk. So weak, child. You must be starving. Here: we'll let you be the first to feast on this . . . creature." The queen turned toward Kijiba. Her eyes glowed, and his shone in response. Slowly, he walked over to her.

"This thing has been a nuisance for us for quite some time now. Those damned books it found; it thinks it can fight us. We saw what it did to you, poor child—that powder that stole your magic, and that infernal noisemaker. We're ever so grateful that you convinced it to destroy that thing for us."

"It wasn't for you!"

"Silence, child. Remember what this creature did to you. It humiliated you, had you at its mercy. It would have held you captive and done unspeakable things to our precious little daughter."

"He was only trying to protect—"

"He?" The queen laughed again. This time her pitch ascended into a shrill warble. The entire forest echoed her laugh in waves. "Sweet little child. This creature doesn't deserve such recognition." Her eyes glowed brightly as she stared down into Kijiba's. "See how simple it is to control? Such a beast isn't fit for more than being food for the swarm.

"What a pitiful little creature, isn't it, child?" The queen turned her gaze back to Chrys. "We've been waiting for the day we could get rid of this. We're glad you could be here for it. Don't you see, child? This game you've played of pretending to be a pony; it's over. It's time to come home, dear."

"Chrys!" I managed to call out to her, though it felt as if my chest were about to implode from the effort it took. I could barely breathe.

"It looks as though your little pet found his voice," the queen said. "We thought you might like a chance to get back at this creature which exposed you, but we've seen the way you look at your pet. Go on, child, indulge yourself: feed on him if it makes you happy. He's hiding a lot. See what you can tease out of him." The queen helped Chrys back to her feet and pushed her toward me.

Chrys looked at me, holding my eyes in her gaze. Her face had gone completely blank, as if she'd given up, given in.

"Chrys, please!" I begged as I struggled against the sticky green slime that held me.

She blinked slowly as her horn began to glow. "Trust me," she whispered. Chartreuse magic flashed around her, and she opened her eyes, staring into mine as she stood before me as Starry. She reached a hoof toward me, and I flinched back, but the sticky green muck around my legs and torso gave me nowhere to run. I opened my mouth to say something or maybe to scream, but my voice was lost as she held me captive in her glowing eyes and . . .

She kissed me.

Her forelegs wrapped around my shoulders, and she pulled herself close against me. I felt my whole body shiver, and then suddenly everything felt quiet, still. The forest and changelings around me faded away. I was weightless, floating in warm, white light. I felt somepony holding me, but it wasn't Starry anymore. I saw . . .

I saw my mother.

"Shh. It's okay. Mommy's here. I love you, my Lucky Day."

Choking back a sob, I gasped and clung to her tightly, burying my face in her neck. "I'm sorry, mommy," was all I could say.

And then she was gone. I was cold and alone again, and Chrys was there in front of me, in her pony form again. She was crying. I stared at her breathlessly. Blinking, I felt tears roll down my cheeks.

"I'm so sorry," she said quietly, her voice trembling.

"What are you doing?" the queen demanded.

Chrys turned away from me, and her horn shone brightly with her chartreuse aura. The whole forest was aglow with her light.

"You do not hurt my friends!" she yelled.

Her magic grew brighter and brighter, and then a blinding flash burst forth from her horn in all directions. I felt a warm tingle as it washed over me, and then my legs gave out, and I collapsed onto the ground as the green muck that had been holding me disintegrated. I was too weak to stand on my own. All I could do was stare out into the darkness, trembling in shock from what had happened.

There was yelling, buzzing, stomping of hooves, all swarming around me. I couldn't move. I wasn't even sure I was breathing. Even the gunfire sounded distant and muted as though my ears had been stuffed with cotton.

All I could see or hear was the lingering vision of my mother saying she loved me. She was my whole world.


***


"Day!" someone called out to me. "Day!"

I felt something around my shoulders, and then the whole forest began moving around me. The ground dragged under my hooves. Somepony sat me down. Her face was in front of me, but I could only look through it. My whole body was completely numb. More than just that: I felt completely disconnected from all my senses.

"Day!" the face was calling out to me.

Her forelegs wrapped around me tightly, and my head rested on her shoulder. Somehow, I became vaguely aware that it was Starry holding me. When did she get there? I wondered somewhere in the back of my mind.

"St—Starry?" my voice mumbled.

Slowly, I felt my body coming back to me. Then, in a rush, I gasped in sharply. My heart was pounding inside my chest, and I quickly scrambled away from Starry.

"Don't touch me!" I cried.

"Day, Day, it's okay!" Starry said as she backed up from me. "You're okay. It's safe now. Look. See? They're gone."

I looked around. The eyes that had watched us from the shadows were gone. Their shrills and chitters were gone too. The air reeked of blood and burnt flesh. Starry was sitting in front of me. Her braid had come completely undone, and stray hairs clung to her sweat-soaked face and neck. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, but she was smiling at me.

"What . . ."

"What happened? We got separated. It was hard, but I managed to stay a step ahead of their mind games. Heh. Lucky for you." She spoke at a frantic pace. I could barely keep up with what she was saying. "You're safe now. She's dead. I killed her. I killed the queen. Chrys was right; without her, the rest all scattered. I'm so sorry. I never should have brought you here. This was all my fault. It's okay now, though. You're safe. I saved you."

Starry paused to take out her flask and aspirin bottle; she quickly downed a couple tablets and stood up, fanning her wings at her sides. "Don't worry: I told you I wouldn't let anything happen to you. I told you, didn't I? I promised, and I wouldn't lie to you, Chance." She winced, and immediately corrected herself, "Day. I wouldn't lie to you, Day."

"Starry—"

"What is it, Day? Are you hurt? What's wrong? You're safe now. Don't worry."

"Starry, I just . . . I need a minute," I said quietly.

"Oh. Of course. I'll just be over here, securing the area. Okay? Okay. Just yell if you need me. Okay? Oh, and here: they took your pistol away, but I got it back for you." She held it out to me.

"Okay," I answered, nodding to her as I reluctantly took the pistol and tucked it into my pocket again (not that it had done me any good so far).

My legs were still shaky, but I managed to stand up on my own. As I walked, I glanced over to see Kijiba slipping away into the forest; back toward his village, I assumed.

I turned away from everypony to look out into the dark forest, away from what I was sure was a bloody and gruesome battlefield. I didn't need to see any of it. I'd seen too much already.

Part of me fought to hold on to the memory of that strange vision I'd had when Star—when Chrys kissed me. Another part wanted to just let it fade and forget about the whole thing. All I could do was sit there, alone, away from the others, biting my lip as I struggled to keep from breaking down and crying like a little foal.

The sound of hoofsteps let me know somepony was approaching. Sucking in a deep breath and wiping the stray tears out of my eyes, I did my best to hide the turmoil I was going through. I didn't want to drag anypony down with me.

"Are you alright?" Chrys asked as she sat down next to me. I kept my head down and shuffled over a little bit to make room for her.

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" She reached a hoof toward me. "You don't seem—"

"Don't touch me!" I screamed and recoiled as she put her hoof on my shoulder. Even I was shocked by my reaction, but at least Chrys backed off. "What . . . what did you do to me?" I asked, breathing raggedly. My chest felt heavy.

Chrys was silent for a moment before answering. "I fed off of you," she said. "I'm sorry. It was the only way I could challenge her. It's . . . not supposed to hurt . . ."

"I saw . . ." The words caught in my throat.

"You saw what you wanted to see. Or . . . what you needed to see."

My chest burned as I fought to keep from hyperventilating. "D—did you . . . s-see . . . ?" I asked, turning my head to look over at her, though I couldn't bring my eyes up to meet hers.

She sighed quietly and shook her head. "No. I can only taste emotions. I don't read minds. Whatever you saw, it was for you alone." She paused. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Clenching my eyes shut, I shook my head vigorously. It was a lie, and I knew it. But what else could I do? There was nothing to talk about. My life in the stable was over. All I wanted to do was just accept it and move on with my new life.

"Just . . . just leave me alone."

"Day . . ."

"I said leave me alone!"

Quietly, she left. And I was alone.

I keep trying to just put it all behind me. But it keeps getting dug up.

What Chrys had said earlier, about needing a mother to love her . . . she has no idea just how lucky she really was. And then to go and—and . . . plant that dream in my head . . .

I'm falling, falling with no end in sight. I wonder if I'll ever hit bottom. I almost wish for it, just so I can stop falling already.

Nopony understands. I could explain it . . . but they wouldn't be able to fix anything. At best, they'd just fill my ears with sweet nothings because that's all you can do when you can't actually help someone—tell him that everything will be alright; lie to him and tell him it's not his fault.

Starry's over there, taking more aspirin. It doesn't look as if it's helping much, but at least the changelings never got her like they got me. If she survived even half the things they'd put me through, she still wouldn't understand. And not Chrys either, not after what she did to me. Even Kijiba . . . whatever they put him through, he still hasn't had to do what I've—

"Starry? Starry! Day, I need help!"

"Wha . . . Starry! What's happening?"

"She's seizing! Dammit! I wasn't watching. How many did she take?"

"How many what? Aspirin?"

"Aspirin? Day, those are amphetamines!"

> Don't Do Drugs
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Amphetamines were a kind of stimulant drug, Chrys explained to me after she cast a spell on Starry that stopped her convulsions—a paralyzing spell, she had said. It was the only thing she could think to do, if nothing else than to just keep Starry's seizure from hurting her any further.

"I need to go get help," Chrys said. "You stay here with Starry while I go find Kijiba."

I knelt down next to Starry, looking over her. She was on her side, completely limp, though her eyes stayed open and stared straight ahead, fixed as though they were watching some faraway horror. Spittle frothed at the corner of her lips.

"What do I do?" I asked, glancing up at Chrys.

"Just . . . keep her company. Make sure she doesn't stop breathing," Chrys answered hesitantly before she turned and galloped off into the woods.

I looked down at Starry again, and for a while all I could do was sit there and watch her chest rise and fall with each breath. I wanted to reach out to her, hold her, but I was afraid. I feared that if I touched her, it would only hurt more if—if she . . . didn't make it.

I fought back tears. I couldn't start crying. I had to be strong. I had to do something, but there was nothing to be done.

One of Starry's saddlebags had come open while she had been seizing. Its contents had spilled out all around her. So, for lack of anything else I could do to help her, I started gathering up her things and putting them back into her bag. Among them, I found her aspirin bottle.

The bottle had been a lie the entire time. I gritted my teeth as I stared at the faded, benign label on the bottle and thought about the poison that had been inside it all along. It made my wings bristle and my mane stand on end to think about how stupid I had been.

And in that moment, I felt a sudden, primal urge within me: There was one thing I could do. I didn't have to think about it, or worry if it was the right thing to do—doing it was the only thing I could do. And even if it were wrong to do it, I wouldn't care. I threw the bottle into the darkness, where I heard it crash through the branches and land somewhere out there where I couldn't see it anymore, where it would stay lost.

As soon as it was gone, I felt weak again, as I had after Chrys had fed off me. My heart was racing, pounding inside my chest, but it was a distant sensation, as though it were not my heart, not my chest. I sat down and watched over Starry in numb silence. The near-total darkness that had pervaded the forest was somehow seeming to dissipate. But the dim light that filtered in to replace it was cold and brought no comfort as I stayed there with Starry, watching her ragged, irregular breathing.

"Please don't leave me," I whimpered quietly.


***


"Day?" I heard Chrys calling out to me through the trees.

"Over here!" I yelled back.

Chrys came crashing through the woods, gasping for breath. Kijiba followed shortly after. He carried a large cloth bag over his shoulder.

I moved out of the way to give Kijiba room to work as he knelt down beside Starry and began examining her.

"Is she okay?" Chrys asked as she sat down next to me, still panting.

"I don't know. She's still breathing, at least," I answered. 

Kijiba examined Starry briefly. "A grave condition," he said as he sorted through the contents of his medicine bag. "Poison runs deep in her veins. Her body must purge." He produced a small vial from his bag. It contained a viscous, dark fluid. He opened Starry's mouth and carefully poured a single drop onto her tongue. It took only a moment for her to start heaving. She threw up, but there wasn't much; it seemed that scotch and amphetamines had been the only things in her stomach. A half-dozen small white tablets, half-dissolved, lay on the ground in front of her once she finished.

"Is she going to be alright?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"A rough road ahead," Kijiba answered as he pulled a bundle of leaves from his bag. "She'll get worse before better." He plucked one of the leaves from its stem and put it under Starry's tongue. "But your friend is strong."

After a few moments, Starry's eyes relaxed, losing that faraway stare and slowly closing. Her breathing steadied, and I let out a relieved sigh.

Kijiba stood up and approached me. He gave me the bundle of leaves and told me, "Put one leaf under her tongue every few hours for the next day. Then whenever she starts shaking."

I nodded and tucked the leaves into my saddlebag.

Kijiba helped us carry Starry back to his hut where he then helped us fashion a stretcher so Chrys and I could carry her all the way back to the diner. Chrys asked if he would be safe and offered to let him come with us.

Kijiba said his place was there, though. He thanked us for killing the changeling queen and driving out the others. He feared that they might come back, and knew that his village would need his help defending against their return; with their influence gone, the villagers would listen to him now.

After saying our final goodbyes and thank yous with Kijiba, Chrys and I set out with Starry on the stretcher between us.

I envied Kijiba. He had a place where he belonged. His picture was complete, with all its pieces set in their places, while mine was on the verge of falling apart all over again.

We walked back to the diner in silence. I was still reeling from the dream she had put me through, and my envy of Kijiba mixed with that to give me an uncomfortable longing for home—for the home I used to know, when I was just a little colt, and when everything was simple . . . when I could cry when I was sad.


***


We arrived back at Mum's Diner well after sunset. The night was dark, without even a trace of moonlight penetrating the clouds above. But the diner's generator was still working, so we had light and warmth inside.

We carried Starry upstairs and, after searching through her pockets to find the keys to all the locks she had installed on the door, got her inside and set her down on the bed.

Chrys and I looked at each other. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally, and Chrys didn't look much better. Of course, Starry was the worst-off of all of us, and we couldn't rest just yet.

I held Starry up while Chrys used her magic to unfasten Starry's harness and set it aside with her bags. We then had to get Starry out of her uniform, which was permeated with sweat and grime, before we could finally lay her back down and let her rest properly. In the course of searching her pockets and getting her gear and clothes off, we found half a dozen flasks on her. All but two of them were empty.

Chrys went around the room, looking through the desk drawers, under the chair cushions, and under the bed. She collected another two flasks and four bottles of scotch, as well as two other "aspirin" bottles.

"Day?"

Chrys put her hoof on my shoulder, making me flinch. "Sorry. I didn't mean to—" She sighed. "Why don't you take off your uniform too. I'll wash it for you along with Starry's."

Looking down at myself, I realized just how dirty my uniform had gotten. It even had stains of Rake's blood in it. It had been barely a week, but the wasteland had already covered the once bright blue of my stable uniform with dull, dark, reddish-brown stains. Suddenly, all the blood and death I had seen in that short time played back in my head.

"Day?" Chrys asked again.

"Oh, um, sure," I answered, shaking my head to clear those gruesome images away. I pulled down the zipper and started taking my uniform off, but it caught on my wing. I ground my teeth and started wrestling with it, but that only seemed to get me even more caught up in it.

"Hold still. Let me help," Chrys said softly. "I won't touch you, I promise," she added hastily as I glared at her. It took me a moment, but I sighed and gave her my consent. Chrys circled around behind me, and I felt the warmth of her magic against my back as she took hold of my uniform. Slowly and carefully, Chrys worked my uniform off. Then she gasped.

"Day, you're covered in bruises. What happened to you?"

"It's nothing," I answered quickly while stepping away from Chrys and turning so she couldn't see my back. "I—I fall down a lot is all."

Chrys stared at me, still holding my stable uniform in her magic. "Day, those bruises are shaped like hooves. Did somepony beat you? Who would—" Her eyes widened and she gasped. "Day . . . oh, Day . . . I'm so sorry. If I had known, I never would have—"

I cringed and backed away from her. "No."

"Day, it's alright. You're safe here."

"No." I backed up further, right up against the wall.

"It's alright. I understand now. You were—"

"Don't say it!" I snapped at her. "Don't you dare!" I suddenly felt completely naked and exposed in front of Chrys, as though my entire shameful life had been laid bare in front of her. She had no right to see that side of me. She had no right to say she understood what I'd gone through.

"It's alright. It's not your fault," she said timidly while keeping her distance.

"No!" I screamed at her. "You don't get to tell me what is or isn't my fault! You don't get to plant dreams in my head and then go and tell me it's alright! Don't tell me it's alright! It's what everyone always says, but they only ever say it when it's not alright. I don't want to hear your sweet nothings. It's not alright, and you can't make it that way just by saying it is!"

"Day, I'm only trying to help—"

"Get out!"

"Day—"

"I said get out!" I kicked the wall behind me and felt the wood crack under my hoof.

Chrys hesitated only briefly before she gave a slow nod and made her way out the door, collecting Starry's uniform and her flasks, bottles, and pills along the way. As soon as she was across the threshold, I ran over, slammed the door, and turned all the locks. And then I collapsed against the door. My face and ears burned, and I could hear the pounding of my own heartbeat.

I was on the verge of tears but I remembered that it was about time to give Starry another one of those leaves. I stood up, let myself forget about everything else, and after I had put a new leaf under her tongue, I moved the armchair closer to the bed. I climbed into the chair and got as comfortable as I could in it, with my chin resting on the arm so I could watch over Starry.

I may have dozed off briefly once or twice, but it was hard to tell. Time was standing still inside that room. It was only Starry and I and her mosaic constellation tacked up all across the walls. I remember feeling so excited about helping her search for her son. But the search had only led to more heartache instead.

I wanted to give up. I couldn't bear to go through that kind of torture again. I wasn't cut out for what the wasteland would put me through. I didn't know where else I could go or what I could do, but whatever it was, I'd have to do it alone, I decided. As long as I was alone, nopony else could hurt me.

> Take Your Medicine
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was not very long after I'd given Starry another leaf when there was a knock at the door. I pretended not to hear it.

The knock came again. "Day?" It was Chrys. I felt my heart start racing. I tried to just ignore her.

"Day, I'm—" She hesitated. "I'm leaving some food and water, some clean blankets, and your and Starry's uniforms out here. I'll be downstairs if you need anything." There was silence for a moment before I heard her hoofsteps moving away from the door and back down the stairs.

I didn't go to check what she left for us right away; I wasn't hungry or cold, Starry was still asleep, and I didn't really want to get up anyway. After a while, though, I did climb out of the chair and made my way over to the door. I opened it slowly, taking my time with each of the locks.

There were no locks on doors inside the stable. At least, not on any of the living quarters. Security had locks on the detention cells, of course, and the stable door itself was really nothing but a giant lock on the whole stable, but that was it. I had never locked myself in before—I'd never been able to, and there had been a certain feeling of comfort in locking the world out.

I turned the final deadbolt and opened the door. The hall was empty save for the food, water, blankets, and our uniforms. I brought them into the room quietly and then closed and relocked the door, though I only bothered with one of the deadbolts; it had felt good to lock them all when I had chased Chrys out, but now it just seemed excessive.

I threw one blanket over the armchair and pulled the other one over Starry. Chrys had gotten the stains out of my uniform, but the colors were still severely faded.

I climbed back into the armchair and settled down to watch over Starry. But I suddenly felt restless. My legs ached as though I'd just run a marathon, and no matter how I stretched out or curled up, I couldn't get comfortable. All I wanted was to quietly care for Starry, but the only thing on my mind was Chrys.

Part of me started imagining her coming back into the room. I imagined her pleading for forgiveness, saying anything and everything to try and convince me that she was sorry. And from there, the daydream split in two: In one version, I yelled at her—I told her that she had no right to do what she did, and that nothing she could ever say or do would make up for it. She'd given me an impossible dream, a dream that showed me everything—the only thing I ever wanted. But it was only that: a dream. And that dream hurt. She had teased me with a vision of joy and happiness as I had never felt before, only to devour that joy herself and leave me with only the emptiness of knowing that I had glimpsed something I would never have.

And yet . . .

In my imagination's other version of events, I accepted her apology. I knew she didn't intend to hurt me. I couldn't blame her for it. And even though that didn't make it hurt less, I wanted to pretend as though it did. I wanted to hold her, cry with her. And as I let my imagination run with that vision, I thought of asking her if she could give me another dream, but one that wouldn't hurt. The warmth and comfort that I had felt, if only ever so briefly when she had fed off me, had been wonderful.

I closed my eyes and rolled over, finally getting comfortable. With my head leaning back, I let my imagination wander. I thought about what kind of dream I might have that would give me that—the good without the bad, the joy without the pain—what kind of dream I would ask her to make so vivid for me. Would that make up for what she did? Was I just deluding myself, just looking for something to make myself feel better? Was it even anything she would agree to? I didn't know. And as I let my daydreams play out in my head, I didn't care either.


***


The rest of the night went quietly. Chrys never came back, though I found myself wishing that she would. I didn't know if it was because I wanted an excuse to yell at her or if it was for something else; I tried not to think about it.

I didn't sleep at all. I kept thinking about how, only a few days earlier, everything in my life had been completely normal—the status quo, as it has always been. And then I had woken up one morning and it all had simply fallen apart; my entire life had shattered to pieces, and I had been left all alone with no place to fit in. And here it was about to happen all over again.

I didn't want to wake up to find that something had happened to Starry while I had been asleep. So I stayed awake for the entire night, watching over her.

It was early in the morning when I heard Starry groan, and I looked up to see her rolling over in bed. She covered her eyes with one foreleg while she hung the other one off the side of the bed and blindly fished around with it, looking for something.

"Starry?"

She winced. "Not so loud." Her voice was strained, and she panted as though out of breath. "Where're my bags? My head's killing me. Can you get my aspirin bottle for me?"

I hesitated. In my naivete, I had simply assumed that Starry would wake up and everything would be fine, that she'd be all better. But it couldn't be that easy.

"Day?" She asked again, "Aspirin? Please?"

"I . . . I'm sorry." My voice trembled. "You can't have any more."

Starry sat up at that, though she seemed to immediately regret the movement as she clutched her head and groaned. "What . . . what do you mean? I . . . I need it. My head's killing me."

"Starry, what's the last thing you remember?"

She slumped over and let out a pained moan as she peeked out from under her fetlock. She spotted her bags in the corner and slowly started crawling her way out of bed. Starry tumbled onto the floor and continued crawling toward her bags.

"Starry?"

"The forest," she murmured. "We got separated somehow." She paused for a moment. "How did we get back here?" She reached her bags and started digging around in them. "Day," she asked after a moment, "where is it? Where's my aspirin?"

"Chrys took it," I answered.

"What!" Starry clasped her hooves over her ears at the sound of her own voice.

"Starry, you . . . you overdosed. You nearly died."

She forced a laugh through gritted teeth. "Day, that's silly. You can't overdose on aspirin."

"Starry, I know it wasn't aspirin. Chrys told me."

"What does that bitch know?" She started crawling toward me. "Day. Do me a favor and go get it back for me? I need it." She reached a hoof out to me. She was shaking terribly. "I need it."

I bit my lip. "You need to rest, Starry. Kijiba gave me some leaves to help with the shaking. Just let me help you back into bed and I'll give you one and—"

"I don't . . ." She cringed and lowered her voice. "I don't need any damn leaves. If you want to help me, then get me my pills."

"No, Starry. You're sick. Please, just get some rest—"

"Fine! Don't help me!" She pushed herself up onto her hooves and started for the door.

"Starry, no!" I rushed to catch her as she stumbled toward the door.

"Let me go!" She screamed and started trying to push me away.

I held her tighter, and she bit my foreleg. We stumbled, crashed back against the side of the bed, and slumped to the floor together where I held her down. Starry kicked and bucked and screamed at me, but I wouldn't let go. Eventually, her kicks settled down to only shaking and her screams turned to sobs. She just kept repeating: "I need it. . . . I need it. . . . I need it . . ."

After she settled down, I helped Starry back into bed. She was mostly dead weight, but at least she wasn't fighting against me. Her whole body felt cold, but she was sticky with sweat. I got out another leaf for her and told her to hold it under her tongue. I wasn't sure if she understood me, or if she just didn't have the mind to do anything else with it, but she held it there while I pulled the covers over her. A few minutes passed and Starry's shaking subsided. Her eyes closed, and she fell asleep.


***


For the rest of the day, I continued to keep watch over her. She'd wake up every couple of hours or so. I tried giving her some food, but she couldn't keep down anything other than water, which I gave her plenty of. I had to hold her head up for her while she drank.

Starry was rarely lucid while she was awake. When she did have the presence of mind to talk to me, she'd try to convince me to get her pills for her; she was too weak to fight back when I told her no. Most of the time, though, she'd just mumble incoherently until her tremors would come back, so I'd give her another leaf, and she'd fall back asleep. Thankfully, her tremors weren't as bad and were coming less frequently as the day carried on.

I lost track of time like that. There was no ticking away of seconds, minutes, hours; there was only the tense quiet between Starry's fits which marked the passage of time.

It was late at night, but it could have been a week, a month, or even a year later for all I could tell. I certainly felt as if I hadn't slept in a week. And whatever sleep Starry was getting, it wasn't restful. She twisted and turned, and shivered in a cold sweat most of the time.

I had kept the lights off ever since she had woken up that morning. It seemed to help her sleep and to stay calm during those brief periods of consciousness.

Somehow, even without any windows in Starry's room, it had grown darker. And it was in that night's darkest hour that Starry began mumbling in her sleep. It wasn't anything I could make out, but as I watched and listened, she started thrashing about. The blankets tangled up around her legs, and Starry sat upright, her eyes wide open and mouth agape, frozen as though about to scream.

She sat there for a moment and looked around.

"Starry?" I got out of my chair and leaned over the foot of her bed.

Her eyes found mine in the darkness and she scrambled across the bed toward me. "Day," she whispered as she reached a hoof toward me. She hesitated when I flinched away, but I saw the look in her eyes: she was terrified. So I leaned in toward her and let her put her hoof on my cheek. "Day, I was so lost without you." She shivered and started crying softly. "In the forest. I saw . . ." She wrenched her eyes shut and shook her head vigorously, as if trying to rid herself of an image she couldn't bear the sight of.

Her eyes opened and fixed on mine again. "They tried to make me think you were dead. You're here, aren't you? Please tell me this isn't another dream. Are you hurt?"

"I'm . . . I'm here," I answered. "You saved me." I felt my chest tighten. "I almost lost you, though, Starry. You . . . you poisoned yourself."

She turned away from me and let out a trembling sigh. "I . . . I had to. The . . ." She cringed at trying to say it. "Those . . . pills were the only thing that let me see through the horrible things they showed me. You had just vanished and I was running around, trying to find you. And I stumbled over your body . . . you had been crushed. And . . . and then y . . . you got up . . . and you started telling me it was my fault, but that you were better off dead, and I shouldn't worry about you."

Our dreams had been tailored so they could feed off our worst fears and memories. In my dream, Starry had beaten me. In hers, she had gotten me killed.

Slowly, I climbed up onto the bed and sat next to her. "Starry . . . how did this happen?" I asked. "How did you end up . . . like this?"

"What do you mean?"

"The pills, the drinking . . . why are you so afraid of . . . losing me?"

Starry looked at me, right into my eyes, and I saw the tears welling up in hers. She blinked and they began to stream down her cheeks. "You remind me of my son," she said with a trembling lip. She reached a hoof toward me and brushed it against my cheek as she smiled briefly. Then as her smile faded and her eyes stopped watering, she took her hoof away from my face and stared out at the wall ahead of her. "I can't go through that again."

"I don't understand . . ."

She looked back at me, and I saw in her eyes a silent, despairing plea. I moved closer to her, close enough that I could hear her shallow, trembling breaths.

"I took him salvaging in the city ruins," she said. "The building we were in collapsed on us. Help came, and they dug me out first. Chance wasn't far from where they found me." Starry paused and rocked back and forth slowly. "He was . . ." She winced and gritted her teeth.

"You don't have to say it," I said.

Starry shook her head. "No. I've avoided saying it for too long. I've been hiding behind euphemisms like 'he's gone' or 'I lost him' and I can't bear it anymore." She sucked in a deep breath and blurted out, "He's dead!"

The whole room became silent in the wake of that admission. It was a fragile silence that shattered as Starry's face contorted, and her eyes closed tightly as she let out a loud, sobbing wail. "I was supposed to take care of him and protect him, but instead I got him killed!" 

"Starry . . . I . . ."

"You're sorry? It wasn't my fault? There was nothing I could have done? These things happen? I'll get over it? I've heard it all, Day. For weeks it was all anyone could say to me. What else can you say to someone in my position?" She sighed and sniffled as she wiped the tears from her eyes. "I got so sick of hearing it. So I just put on a smile; I resumed my duties, and I told everyone that I was fine."

Starry sat there quietly sobbing for a while. She chewed on her lip as she stared ahead blankly. "I wasn't," she said at length. "I wasn't fine. Lying to everyone like that—lying to myself about it . . . it ate away at me. I couldn't sleep. So I started drinking. At first it was only at night; I'd drink until I passed out. But the hangovers got worse and worse. So then I started drinking in the morning, and then while I was duty . . . until it was the only thing that could get me through the day.

"I'm sure everyone knew about it, but nobody ever said anything about it to me. Even when I started screwing up, they'd cover for me most of the time, but even when I did get reprimanded, they never said anything about my drinking. But I knew I couldn't keep it up; eventually they'd confront me about it, and I didn't want that. So I started taking pills to keep me alert."

Starry took in a deep breath and smiled. "Oh, I felt incredible! I was on top of everything." Then her eyes opened and she looked down at the floor. "I don't really remember how I ended up thinking Chance was still alive. But that thought was even more addictive . . . it became the only thing I had to keep me going." She waved her hoof around at the walls and the mosaic of notes and maps she had covered them with. "This is all a lie. It's a lie I wrapped myself up in so tightly that I actually believed you were Chance under all that rubble. I really did. I thought I had found him. After all these years, I was happier than I've ever been. And then I saw that you weren't him and . . ."

She sighed again and turned to face me. "I'm so sorry," Starry said as she leaned over and hugged me. I hugged back as she began to cry openly again.

I didn't know what to say, and I wasn't completely comfortable in her embrace, but I could tell that she needed it, and I even found a certain comfort in her warmth myself. So I didn't pull away, and we just sat there. I let her hold me, let her rest her head on my shoulder, and we stayed like that until I felt her go limp against me; she'd fallen asleep. 

Carefully, I laid her down on the bed and pulled the covers over her. For the first time since I'd known her, she actually looked peaceful while she was sleeping.

> Don't Stay Up All Night
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not long after Starry went back to sleep, I left her room to go downstairs.

It was well past midnight at that point, but the lights were still on, and I heard movement. As I came out the door at the bottom of the stairs, I was struck by the smell of beer mixed with sweat. There were a couple of ponies I hadn't seen before passed out in booths along the wall, and Chrys, looking tired, but still smiling, was going around, collecting bottles and glasses in her aura while simultaneously wiping down the tabletops.

Chrys looked up to see me. Her eyes lit up briefly, but then her smile faded and she lowered her gaze back to the table she was cleaning.

"Everything alr—I mean . . . how's Starry?" she asked.

"She woke up this morning. She was in bad shape for a while, but I think the worst is over," I answered as I took a seat at the counter. "What happened here?"

"Townsfolk came back from their salvage run," Chrys said as she moved behind the counter and sorted her collected trash. "Was a big party to celebrate. Next time a trader comes through, we'll be able to stock up on enough food and water for a month, or at least as much as he's carrying." She dropped her rag into a bucket of dirty water and turned around to face me.

I looked down at my forehooves resting on the counter. "Is that a lot?"

"Yeah. This was a good haul. Sometimes this place is empty for weeks at a time when they don't bring back enough trading stock in a single run."

"That's good," I said.

"Yeah."

We were both silent for a while before Chrys asked, "How about you? Are you . . . how are you doing?"

I sighed and shook my head slowly. "I don't know. I just feel . . . tired."

"I can give you a place to sleep," Chrys offered.

"I don't want to sleep. I just . . . I need something to do."

There was a pause. "Are you trying to suggest something?"

I glanced up at her. "Huh?"

For the first time, Chrys was the one blushing instead of me. "N—nothing." She cleared her throat. "Is there something I can help you with?"

Again, I sighed and looked back down at my hooves. "I don't know."

Things were silent again until Chrys set a bottle of water down on the counter and slid it across to me. I looked up at her; she was smiling, but only a little. "On the house," she said softly.

I took the bottle and had a couple sips from it.

"Day, I'm . . . I know you don't want to hear me say I'm sorry, but I don't know what else to say. If there were some way I could make up for everything, I'd do it, but I don't think there is such a thing. I don't want to hurt you, but please, I need to explain what I did—I think I know why it hurt you so much."

I grimaced and started to turn away.

"Wait. Please. I promise I won't say anything about . . . about that. Just, please, hear me out."

Hesitantly, I turned back, though I kept my eyes on the counter and idly rolled the bottle back and forth between my hooves.

"I made a mistake about you and Starry," Chrys said. "About setting you two up together, I mean. I'm right that you two belong together, but I was wrong about how. I thought you two should be lovers, but after what happened in the forest, I see now: the love between you two is the kind between a mother and son."

I blinked and looked up at her. I was sure I had heard her correctly, but it didn't make sense.

"Whatever you saw in the feeding dream, I'm so sorry. It's not supposed to hurt like that. It's just that, I . . ." Her ears folded back and again she blushed. "That was my first time doing it. I don't know how to control the dream, and I had the wrong idea about how to inspire it, I . . ." She stopped and took a deep breath. Her eyes looked into mine, and I felt her hoof rest on top of mine. "I only wanted to make you feel loved."

Chrys leaned forward over the counter, and she kissed me. And I didn't pull away. At least, not right away. Her lips were warm and soft, and I felt her hoof lightly rubbing mine. It all just felt so nice. But then fear crept into my mind and I leaned back. I stared at her. Her eyes sank, and she drew her hoof back. "You're afraid of me," she said. "I . . . I don't blame you. I'm a monster."

"Wait," I said as I reached out to put my hoof on hers. "You're not a monster. It's not you I'm afraid of. It's me. I'm scared that . . ." I glanced back over my shoulder at the ponies sleeping at their tables. "Is there somewhere more private we can talk?"

Chrys motioned for me to come behind the counter with her, and she lead me through the door at the back. The room beyond was a stockroom, with various supplies organized onto shelves, but was also apparently where Chrys slept. She had a bed in the far corner, and a small vanity table next to it with a cracked mirror and several small boxes carefully arranged around it.

I sat down on the bed beside Chrys and looked across into the mirror, at our reflections; the single, long crack that ran jaggedly down its length divided us from each other.

"What you said, I . . ." I sighed. "Starry said that the amphetamines made her feel invincible. But they didn't actually make her invincible. And that feeling nearly killed her. You said you wanted me to feel loved, but is that all? Only a feeling? When you fed off me, I felt loved, but I knew it wasn't real. That's what hurt so much. I just . . . I don't want to see some illusion. When you kissed me just now, I felt like . . ."—I bit my lip—"like it was you, really you."

I gazed at her through her reflection in the mirror. "And I liked that. But I pulled away because—because I don't know . . . I was afraid that I might try to use you just to make myself feel better."

Chrys gently leaned her shoulder against mine. "What if I said I'm okay with that?"

"I'm not," I answered. "I don't want to get back at you. I don't want to whisper sweet nothings in your ear. I want . . . I don't know what I want."

"Do you want to kiss me again?"

I looked at her directly, into her bright eyes, and I felt a smile cross my face. "I think so . . ."

"You think so?" Chrys giggled.

My ears burned as I blushed and stammered, "I—I mean, I guess—I—"

"Shh." She smiled at me as she put her hoof on my lips. "I'm only teasing, honey." She took her hoof away slowly. "If you wanna kiss me, then just kiss me. If it makes it easier for you: I'd like it if you did."

Somehow, my blush faded almost instantly. Chrys had a way about her—a shine in her eyes, a soft, inviting tone in her voice, even the slow and careful way that she moved. It took me a moment, but I worked up the courage to lean over, and I pressed my lips against hers. She pressed back, and we stayed like that for a while. Our lips parted, but only barely. I felt her breath against my lips as I gazed into her eyes.

Then she put her hoof on my chest and slowly slid it up to the collar of my uniform. "Is it alright if I take your uniform off?" she asked softly.

"W—why?" My first thought was to pull away from her, but something in the way her eyes held mine made me feel safe, or at least safe enough to wait for her answer.

"I want to look at your bruises," she said. "You keep them hidden from everypony else. I want to be somepony you can show them to."

I fidgeted. Her request made my heart beat a little faster, but I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened my eyes, she was still sitting there with her hoof on the zipper of my uniform and her eyes looking up into mine, waiting for my consent.

I gave a slow nod, and she slid closer to me while she unzipped my uniform. She reached under it with both forehooves and carefully slipped it off over my shoulders and wings and let it fall. I sat there, shivering, though not from cold, while Chrys moved around to sit behind me on the bed. I felt her hoof brush ever so lightly against my shoulder, and then along the back of my neck. Slowly, my shivering subsided.

"Do they hurt?" Chrys asked.

"No . . . not really. They're all at least a week old," I told her. Then I felt her hoof run along my spine, and I gasped.

"Was that okay?" Her voice carried a slight chuckle with her question, as though she already knew my answer.

"Y—yeah . . . that felt . . . nice."

Her hooves began kneading up and down along my back. I started to feel weak, and she got me to lie down on my belly; then she continued her massage. She was slow, gentle, giving me a kiss on my neck, holding her hoof against mine, or even just backing off for a moment to let me breathe when I needed it.

We fell asleep together in each other's embrace. Her warmth and kindness were a comfort that I hadn't realized I had been missing.


***


It was late the next morning when Starry came downstairs. Her mane was braided, and she was wearing her uniform again. She found me assembling a radio out of spare parts. I was explaining to Chrys how each component worked as she watched me putting it together, and we were nearly finished when Starry sat down at the table with us.

"It was just something I thought I'd try doing to pass the time while you were still sleeping. I don't know if it'll pick up anything," I said as I explained what I was doing to Starry. "But if I can get this working, I can make a transmitter as well, and with two of them, we can stay in contact with the townsponies while they're out salvaging, maybe traders too."

Starry smiled at me. It was a strange sort of smile, as though she didn't really understand what I was doing and was only humoring me, but at the same time it gave me the feeling that she was proud of me for trying. I had never felt as if I had made anyone proud before.

"Well, is that it?" Chrys asked with a note of excitement in her voice.

"Just about," I said as I put the last few components in place and closed it up. With a little bit of trepidation, I flipped the switch.

A familiar voice came on through the radio. It was small, frightened, and lonely:

Day? It's Sweets. We need you. Something's happened. You're the only one who can save us. Please, Day, come back. The overseer agreed to pardon you. Hurry. We won't last long without you.

The air was silent for a moment before the message repeated—a recorded distress call on a loop.

Day? It's Sweets. We need you . . .

I couldn't take my eyes off the speaker, but I didn't need to look up to feel Starry and Chrys staring at me. I trembled.

"My little brother . . ."

> Welcome Home
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My little brother was in trouble, and I was the only one who could save him.

Starry had to hold me back as I struggled to rush out to save my little brother. Between her and Chrys, they managed to convince me to calm down long enough to realize that I couldn't go unprepared. Once she was sure that I wouldn't bolt, Starry went upstairs to get my saddlebag for me.

I sat back down at the table and put my hoof on the radio; it had been turned off, but I could still hear my little brother's voice; it was burned into my ears, crying for my help.

Chrys put her hoof on top of mine. "The message said you were being pardoned. Does that mean . . . you won't be coming back?"

"I . . . I don't know. I wasn't really thinking about that part." I closed my eyes and nuzzled her with a heavy sigh. "I guess so. I mean, it's safer in there. And I'll be with Sweets again." I opened my eyes to look at Chrys, and suddenly I realized . . . "I won't see you again, will I?"

She nodded solemnly. "I guess not; I can't go with you on this. My home is here, and I wouldn't know what to do in the stable anyway." Chrys rubbed my shoulder gently. "Do you regret knowing me?"

"I . . . I don't know," I told her. "Last night was . . . I mean . . . I kind of hoped we could do that again. But . . ."

"But your little brother is more important. Don't worry; I understand. I can tell how much you care about him. I imagine you'd move mountains if you had to for him, and nothing—not even wild raiders—could hold you back."

I ran my hoof along the radio some more. "You're right. I would do anything for him." Chrys put her hoof on top of mine again, and I lay my head on her shoulder. "I'll miss you," I said.

She kissed my forehead. "I'll miss you too. I'm glad that I got to know you, even as brief as it's been. You stood up for me when I needed you, and you gave me the strength to protect you when you needed it. I have a feeling that whatever you're about to face will be hard for you—as facing my past was hard for me, but I'm happy for you. You have a home you can finally go back to, and somepony who loves you waiting for you there."

"If it's not too late already." I grimaced; that message could have been playing for days before I had heard it. It might have been all that was left of my little brother—just a lonely cry for help echoing across the radio waves.

"Try not to think that way, honey," Chrys said. "If it's too late, then getting yourself all worked up about it won't help. But I want you to know that you've got a home here in case . . . in case things don't work out."

I shuddered to think what could go wrong, but I tried not to dwell on it as Chrys suggested. "Thank you," I told her.

She smiled and kissed me while she ran a hoof along my back. I closed my eyes and returned her kiss, and for that brief moment, I felt calmed. Our lips parted and I gazed into her eyes. Despite how hurt I had felt when she had fed off of me, despite having to leave her behind, I still cherished the comfort she had brought me in the end.

"Alright, Day, let's get moving," said Starry from behind us. I turned to see her wearing her saddlebags and rifle harness while she held out my bags to me.

"You're coming with me?" I asked as I took my saddlebag from her and slipped it on.

"Of course." Starry smiled. "After everything you've followed me through, I can't just let you go it alone from here. I'll help you, your brother, and your stable however I can. I owe you my life. It's the least I can do."

My heart was racing. What I would find back at the stable? Would my little brother be in danger? Everything that had been done to me since I had first been born into the wasteland paled in comparison to what I could only imagine was to come. But I was no longer the helpless newborn that I had been then, and I had friends to support me now. I would protect my little brother.


***


Starry was able to identify some landmarks on one of her maps that matched places I had wandered during my first few days out of the stable. Based on that, she was able to identify which mountains I had come from, and I was sure that once we got close I would be able to find my way back to the stable entrance, back to that dark cave I had emerged from.

I flew as hard as I could push myself. My wings began to ache before we were halfway there, but I ignored the pain. I had too much on my mind to let sore muscles distract me. Foremost in my thoughts was always my little brother. I would do anything to protect him.

The whole time we were flying, I kept glancing at Starry as she kept pace alongside me. I knew I should tell her about what had happened in the stable—explain to her why I had been exiled. But I couldn't bring myself to say it out loud. I was afraid of what she would think of me, of what she might try to say. What could she say? Every time I tried to imagine telling her, I saw the feeding dream that the changeling queen had given me. I knew that it hadn't been Starry in that dream, but the image had been so real that even now I couldn't help but see her looming over me, sneering at me for what I had done.

When we reached the mountain and landed just outside the cave, she stopped me. "Are you sure you want me here for this?" she asked.

Both my wings were burning from exhaustion. I had a cramp in my side, and I could hardly breathe after the flight. But without a moment's hesitation, I answered, "I wouldn't be here without you. Whatever's in there, I'm sure I'll need your help."

She smiled at me and nodded. And together, we stepped into the darkness where I had first emerged from, helpless as a newborn foal.

We didn't have to go far before I could tell that something was very wrong; the stable door was wide open. Inside, only the emergency lighting was on.

"Hello?" I called out as I stepped across the threshold and back into the stable which had once been my whole world.

"Hold it right there!" a voice called back from the doorway across the room. A shadowy figure rose up behind a makeshift barricade. A faint orange glow shone around his horn and around the grip of a baton that floated next to him. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"I'm Lucky Day," I answered. "I heard the distress call. What happened here?"

"Who's that with you?"

"She's my friend, Starry Night. What's going on? Why is the door open? Is my brother okay?"

"I said stay put!" the guard barked as I started to move toward him. After a moment, when he was satisfied that I wasn't coming any closer, his magic aura picked up a small two-way radio. "Sir? The exile's here."

There was a brief silence, and then the radio answered, "Hold him there. I'm on my way."

"Please, can you tell us what's happening?" I asked again.

"Sit down and shut up, exile. I was told not to talk to you, so let's all get along here, alright? Unless you want me to come over there and help you remember where your place is."

"Don't you talk to him like that," Starry said. "He's here to—"

"Starry, it's fine. We'll just wait." I sighed and sat down.

Starry came over next to me. "Day, aren't you worried about your brother? I could barely hold you back earlier. Now you're just going to take this?"

I looked up at her; the shield pinned to her uniform glinted in the dim light. "Don't argue with Security. We all have to get along," I said. Something felt strange as I said those words. It had been a reflex. I felt as though my mind had been wrapped up in a warm blanket, equal parts comforting and constricting. I shook my head to loosen it. "I—I am worried, Starry. But . . ." I looked around at the emergency lights, the open door, the security pony behind his overturned table. "I think I know what's wrong here, and I think he's safe—for now, at least."

My ears perked up at the sound of hooves running down the corridor. "Hey, kid! Stop! You can't—" the guard yelled, but was cut short when a young unicorn colt ran into him, knocked him over, and bounded over the barricade.

"Day!" The colt came scrambling toward me. "I'm so sorry!" he wailed as he reared up and threw his forelegs around my shoulders.

I hugged him back tightly, wrapping him up in my wings. "Shh. It's okay. It's not your fault."

"I missed you so much, big brother!" He buried his face in my neck.

"I missed you too," I whispered softly as I nuzzled his mane. "Everything's going to be alright. I'm sorry I had to leave you, but I'm here now."

Sweets leaned back to look up at me, his eyes wet. He smiled and let out a small laugh. "I knew you'd come back."

"Sweetie Pie," called a voice. His tone was strong and authoritative, but not forceful; it was the kind of voice that was accustomed to being heard and obeyed—to getting what he wanted without having to ask twice. "Get away from that monster. Come here at once."

I felt Sweets tighten his embrace as I looked up to see the overseer standing in the doorway. The guard beside him was just getting to his hooves and brushing himself off.

"He's not a monster! He's my big brother!" Sweets yelled back at him.

"Sweets! You can't . . . argue with the overseer," I reminded him, gently trying to push him away so he wouldn't get in trouble, but he only held me tighter.

"Oh, come on, can't you let the boy spend some time with his big brother?" Starry stepped up toward the overseer. "They clearly missed each other."

The overseer tilted his head forward and furrowed his brow as he looked at Starry over the top of his glasses. "And who are you? I didn't authorize anypony else to enter the stable."

Starry stood up proudly. "Starry Night. I've been—" She paused as she glanced over her shoulder at me briefly. "Day and I have been helping each other."

Lifting his gaze, the overseer adjusted his glasses and harrumphed. "Well, Miss Starry, I don't know about you, but I'm of the opinion that children shouldn't be in the arms of murderers."

Starry pursed her lips and then glanced over at me briefly. "Day told me he killed somepony, but I'm sure it was—"

"It was murder," said the overseer. "And murder is murder. We don't tolerate that kind of behavior in here."

"He's not a murderer!"

"Sweets. Shh," I hushed him and nuzzled his cheek. "It's okay. I did it to protect you."

The overseer noisily cleared his throat. "If you're quite finished, I didn't allow you to come back here out of the goodness of my heart so you two could have a teary-eyed reunion." His horn lit up with a pale white aura as he moved the overturned table out of the doorway and motioned for us to follow him. He stopped us, though, as Starry approached. "I'm taking enough of a risk letting him back in here. What makes you think I'm about to allow a complete stranger into my stable?"

"She's my friend," I said. "She can help." My personal assurance didn't seem to carry much weight with the overseer as he silently glared at me over the top of his glasses. "It's the primary spark reactor, isn't it?" I guessed. "That's why you called me back—you need help fixing it."

"How could you possibly know that?" The overseer narrowed his eyes at me.

"The emergency lights, the open door . . . the stable is running on battery power, and when it runs out, you'll have to abandon the stable." I surmised. "How long do we have?"

He pursed his lips and harrumphed. "The reactor malfunctioned a day and a half ago. From what I've been told, we have enough power to last through the end of tomorrow. Sweetie Pie was very insistent that only you would be able to fix it in time."

"Day knows the reactor better than anypony in the whole stable!" Sweets said proudly. "I remember you showed it to me once, Day! You could name every part I pointed to! Nopony else ever even goes down there. They're all just scratching their heads looking at it now. C'mon! Let's go see it, and then everypony can see how smart you are!" He bounced up and down at my side, and I put a hoof on his shoulder to calm him down.

The overseer rolled his eyes. "Given the lack of progress so far, I'm inclined to believe him if for no other reason than you couldn't possibly make things worse. Provided"—he added hastily—"that you don't go and turn the rest of my stable into an abattoir."

"I'm not here to murder anypony," I said to the overseer with a wince. I took a deep breath. "Let's not waste time. If you want to save the stable, don't turn down extra help," I said, indicating Starry.

He shifted his gaze to Starry and looked her up and down. His expression softened a little and he gave a slight shrug. "Fine. But you must relinquish your weapons," he said to Starry. "Security will return them to you when you leave. And you will leave as soon as power is restored."

Starry glanced at me, and I gave a slight nod. She agreed, and handed over her harness to the guard stationed at the door.

"Come along now," said the overseer as he led the way into the stable, and we followed.

As we came out through the security checkpoint around the stable entrance, we passed along one of the balconies that overlooked the central atrium. Starry gasped as she looked out over it. Even in the dimness of the emergency lights, we could see nearly the entire core of the stable from where we were on the top floor. Roughly one square kilometer in size, the atrium ran the height of the stable, with the orchard at the bottom and open air all the way to the ceiling six floors above it. The residential quarters ringed around the atrium, enough living space for as many as five thousand ponies, though the stable was deathly quiet; emergency procedure was to keep all the residents in their quarters.

I had never seen the stable look so empty before. Even late at night, there was always somepony around, usually others like me who worked late shifts, but sometimes a couple out for a romantic evening in the atrium, or a mother taking her newborn foal for a walk to put him to sleep. But it was all so empty now. And yet it somehow seemed smaller than I remembered it; the safety railings along the balconies looked like prison bars, casting long, dark shadows in the harsh contrast of the emergency lights.

The overseer, having noticed Starry's amazement at the scale of the stable, started telling her all about how marvelous the stable's design was, and how much of a privilege it was to oversee it as his father had before him.

I might have paid more attention to their conversation as he escorted us down the stairs toward maintenance and the reactor room, but I was too busy listening to my brother tell me about his cutie mark.

"I got it just a couple days ago!" he said as he stopped for a moment under one of the emergency lights to show it off: a black chess pawn set in stark contrast against his pure white coat. "Isn't it amazing?"

"It sure is," I said, smiling. "I'm so proud of you, Sweets. I wish I could have been there to see you get it. I guess you needed to find someone more challenging than me to play against, huh?"

His eyes sank suddenly. "I'm sorry, Day. I didn't want you to miss it. It just kind of happened."

"Sweets . . ." I knelt down next to him and nuzzled his cheek. "It's okay. I'm still proud of you. And I'm here now, so after we fix the reactor, we can celebrate it together. How's that sound?"

He looked up at me and smiled. "Really? You mean it?"

I smiled back at him and nodded. "Of course. Now come on," I said as I lifted him up onto my back; he hugged his forelegs around my neck. "Let's go fix the reactor so we can have that celebration already."

> Stand Up to Bullies
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The reactor hadn't simply malfunctioned; it had been almost completely dismantled. Pieces of it were scattered all across the room. Of the dozen-or-so engineers in the room, about half of them were in the middle of fondling various parts as though they had never seen a pipe fitting before. The other half—all the senior engineers—were seated around a table at the back of the room, playing a game of cards on top of the reactor schematics.

"What happened here?" I gasped.

Nopony answered me. A few glanced up at me but quickly averted their eyes when they recognized me.

The overseer cleared his throat, bringing everyone to attention. He reminded them of who I was and why I was there. Nopony said anything, but I saw a number of them glaring at me. "Well, I leave you to it," said the overseer. "I'll return later to see what progress you've made." He turned to leave. "Come along, Sweetie Pie; let's get you out of the way."

Sweets was still riding on my shoulders, and I felt him squeeze around my neck.

"Sweetie Pie," the overseer repeated as he looked back at us over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed.

"I want to stay with my big brother!" Sweets cried.

"That choice isn't up to you. Now come here."

"He won't be in the way," I spoke up. "He can even help. I used to bring Sweets with me on my shifts."

The overseer's eyes met mine. "That choice isn't up to you either," he said slowly, drawing out each syllable as though to make certain that he wasn't being misheard. "I have allowed this reunion to go on long enough."

"Don't make me go," Sweets whimpered as he clung to my neck and buried his face in my mane.

"Sir," Starry interjected. "From the look of things, we really do need all the help we can get if there's any hope of getting this reactor back online before the stable has to be evacuated. If Sweets can help us, then you should let him stay."

The overseer's eyes shifted over to Starry. "Do you presume to speak for the best interests of my stable, miss? Need I remind you that you are here only at my discretion and I can have you removed at any time?" He pointed his hoof at me. "And don't you think for one second that simply because I agreed to pardon you, Lucky, that I won't take it back if you start causing trouble."

"That's specious reasoning," Starry said as she stepped up toward the overseer, putting herself between him and me. "If Day really is the only one capable of fixing this thing—and from what I can see of the repairs so far, I think he is—then you may as well evacuate now if you think you can actually follow through on a threat like that."

The room was silent; everyone's attention was focused on Starry and the overseer. His eyes darted around the room before settling back on me. His pursed lips drew back into a crooked smile. "You are quite right, miss. It would be foolish of me to throw you both out before repairs are finished. But if Lucky Day wants to stay, and if he ever wants to see his little brother again, for whom he says he committed such a brutal murder, then you both will be on your best behavior while you are here."

Sweets squeezed tighter around my neck, nearly choking me. "Y—you promised he could stay!" he cried. "You promised!"

"That I did," said the overseer as he adjusted his glasses. "And I'm a fair stallion. So I'll let you stay here for now, Sweetie Pie. You help your brother: remind him why he's here and why he wants to get along so he can stay. I'll come back for you later."


***


At first we just hung back by the doorway, looking out over the scene in front of us. I wasn't even really sure where to begin; I hadn't known what to expect, but once I had realized that it was the reactor that needed repairs, I'd thought that it would only need an hour or two's work to fix. And perhaps it might have if it hadn't been completely disassembled. We wandered over to the collection of damaged parts that had been separated from the rest and began by examining those.

"Almost looks like a bomb went off in here," Starry whispered to me.

"Some parts of it operate under high pressure," I mumbled. "Maybe if a valve or a seal failed, a pipe might have burst explosively?"

I tried asking one of the engineers, "What happened here?"

She snorted. "It's broken. What's it look like?"

Starry leaned in next to me. "I'm starting to get the impression that nopony in here is very competent. They only took my harness at the entrance and didn't think to search us for other weapons—you've still got your pistol in your bags. And now it looks like they don't even know what they're doing here."

"Well, it's like I said the other night at the diner: this thing ran perfectly for as long as anyone can remember; nobody ever needed to know how it worked." I sighed. "We've got a lot of work to do. Let's worry about that right now." I took a quick look around the room. "Wait here a minute," I said. "I'll go get my toolkit."

I headed for the corridor at the back of the room—it lead directly to the maintenance offices and to the lockers and supply rooms.

One of the senior engineers moved to block the door from me, though. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked sternly, looking down his nose at me.

"To the lockers to get my toolbox," I answered.

"What makes you think you have a toolbox? You don't work here. You don't even live here. You'll have to fill out a requisition form and wait for somepony to approve it."

"I . . . but that's absurd! We need to repair this thing before the end of tomorrow! Just let me get to work!"

"Hey, I don't make the rules, kid. I just follow them. We all gotta get along down here," he sneered.

"I'll just ask somepony to share with me," I mumbled as I turned away from him. But all the engineers I approached would immediately scoop up their tools and hover over them like possessive vultures hoarding their carrion. "I'm using these," they'd all say.

With each failed attempt, I felt more and more self-conscious about how I must have looked to Starry and Sweets. This was supposed to be my domain—I knew more about the spark reactor than anypony in the stable. Sweets had made such a big deal about it; I couldn't let him down, and certainly not in front of Starry.

Starry had stood up for me enough already. It was my turn to stand up for myself. So I made a break for it. I got out into the maintenance corridor before the senior engineer could block me again. I heard him call after me, but he didn't follow.

The locker room was right around the corner. Inside, I found my locker almost exactly as I had left it; all they'd done was peel off the tape with my name written on it. I grabbed my tools and carried them back to the reactor room.

The senior engineer was standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

"I have work to do," I told him.

"Not with stolen tools, you don't," he said. "Go put those back where you got them, or—"

"Or what?" I snapped at him. "What can you do to me?" I almost instantly regretted saying that; my heart began to race, and I was about to start apologizing profusely, but then I saw the look on the senior engineer's face: he looked afraid.

He started backing up and stammering. "O—or . . . or . . ."

"Or nothing," I said, stepping past him.

After that, the other engineers would move out of the way whenever I went to work on something. The senior engineers even moved their card game so I could get at the schematics. Nopony would say anything to me, but I could hear them whispering and could see them staring at me whenever I glanced over my shoulder. I tried to simply ignore it, though. If I was going to go back to living in the stable, I'd have to expect that I'd be treated differently. So I focused on the task in front of me.

We started by reassembling some of the smaller components, but after I finished showing Starry and Sweets what to do with the first one, and moved on to a second, I saw one of the engineers pick up the part we'd just finished rebuilding and start taking it apart again.

"What are you doing? Stop! No, don't—" I cringed as I watched him simply drop the component; it landed on the table with a loud clang which immediately drew everypony's attention and turned the quiet murmur of activity in the room to complete silence.

"I just finished putting that back together. Why are you taking it apart?" I demanded.

"I . . . I was just looking to see if it needed fixing . . ."

I put a hoof to my forehead. "Nothing here needs fixing except the pile of scrap in the corner," I explained through gritted teeth. "You don't have any idea what you're doing, do you?" A blank, slack-jawed stare was his only answer. I couldn't believe it: the stable was going to fail by the end of the next day and nopony seemed to appreciate what that meant. I knew what it meant, though: it meant my little brother would be forced out into the wasteland.

I wouldn't let that happen.

"None of you know what's going on here at all! You're all fumbling around down here just trying to look busy, and somehow expecting everypony else to get this thing working before the emergency power runs out."

Nopony said anything as I looked around the room. They all had the same blank stare on their faces, as if to plead ignorance of their own ignorance, and as if that were any excuse.

"Get out!" I yelled. "All of you, just get out! You're all useless!"

At first nopony moved. They all exchanged glances with each other briefly, then collectively shrugged and started walking out—none of them even cared about what they were working on. Even the senior engineers didn't seem to mind being chased out by me. And somehow I wasn't even surprised that they listened to me—or maybe they were simply happy for an excuse to leave.

The engineer I'd accosted hesitated. "I . . . I want to help," he said.

I sighed and rubbed my temple. "Just go."

He nodded slowly and turned to leave with the others. And I went to stand on the side of the room with Starry and Sweets, keeping out of the way while everypony filed out.

One of the junior engineers, a zebra mare whose name I couldn't remember, stopped in front of us on her way. She glared at me briefly. "You don't belong here, little bird." Then a smug grin crept across her face as she glanced over at Starry. "Did he tell you how he butchered his own mother?"

Hearing her say that was like a kick in the chest. My heart skipped a beat and I felt Sweets cling tightly against my leg.

Slowly, Starry turned back to look at me, her eyes wide. "Day? Is . . . is that true?"

"Oh, it's quite true: stabbed her in the throat over a dozen times while she slept, I'm told," the mare said with a laugh.

"It's not his fault!" Sweets screamed.

"It's okay, Sweets. Don't argue." I took a deep breath and nodded slowly. My eyes stayed fixed on the floor under Starry's hooves. "It's true."

"Day . . . what happened?"

"She was killing him!" Sweets cried out. "It had to be done!"

"Sweets! Please, let me handle this." I felt him shaking against me. I was shaking too. "I had to protect my little brother. It was the only way." I looked up at Starry and saw that her face wasn't angry as I expected. If anything, she looked . . . sad. I couldn't hide my shame any longer. "She hit us. All the time. I tried to protect Sweets; I let her hit me instead. But it was getting worse. She . . . she was going to kill me if it didn't stop." I looked down at Sweets. "If it were just me, I'd have let her. But I had to keep my little brother safe." I closed my eyes and nuzzled into Sweets's mane. "She can't hurt you anymore."

The zebra gave an impassive snort, apparently content with forcing a confession out of me, and she turned and left. Then the three of us were all alone in the reactor room.

For a while, nopony said anything, and none of us moved. I hadn't wanted it to come out that way. I cursed myself for not having had the courage to tell Starry myself what had happened when I'd had the chance. But now she'd heard it. I couldn't change it. "You must think I'm a monster," I whispered with a cringe. "I mean . . . what kind of person murders his own mother?" I pulled Sweets into a tight embrace, wrapping him in my wings.

Starry didn't answer right away. She was silent for a minute, and then she sighed. "I don't know what to think. You said she beat you, and if you were afraid for your life, then . . ." She put her hoof on my shoulder. "I believe you. And I don't blame you. But wasn't there any other way?"

I squeezed Sweets and kissed his forehead. "Go see if you can put some of the smaller components back together. I need to talk to Starry for a bit."

My little brother looked up at me. "Not a monster . . ." he whimpered quietly.

I hugged him one last time before I let him go. He needed a little encouragement, but I got him to busy himself with cleaning up the mess of reactor parts that littered the room. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere," I told him.

"Day . . . couldn't you have told somepony?" Starry asked.

"Who would I tell? Security?" I shook my head. "They'd have told me to stop making trouble and get along like a good little pony, and then they'd probably throw me in a detention cell overnight for good measure to make sure I got the message. Meanwhile, Sweets would be left all alone with her. I couldn't just abandon him like that.

"If anypony noticed, nopony cared. And what would they have done anyway? Report it to Security?" I let out a short laugh, though it sounded more like a cry. "When I got hurt, I told everyone I fell. Nopony asked any questions."

I looked up at Starry, and I pleaded, "What should I have done?"

Again, she didn't answer right away. I felt the seconds drag on into minutes as we both stood there in silence. A few times, Starry opened her mouth as though to say something, but she closed it without a word almost immediately. I felt as if I were holding my breath the entire time, waiting to hear her speak, but I couldn't make up my mind about what I wanted to hear: Part of me wanted her to tell me that there wasn't anything I could have done differently—to absolve me of my guilt; if there had been no other way out of it, then that's all there was to it, and it had been just the bad result of a bad situation. But another part of me wanted her to come up with some solution, some magical thing that I could have said or done that would have spared us all such misery—something that would've been so obvious in hindsight that of course it had been all my fault for letting this happen, and I deserved exactly what I'd got for it.

"I don't know," she said at last. "I mean . . . was it really so bad that you were afraid she was going to kill you?"

"I . . . I don't know." I looked down at my hooves. "It was getting worse. A month ago, she . . . she beat me so bad that Sweets had to help me get to medical. By the time we got there, I couldn't breathe—the doctors told me that a broken rib had punctured my lung. I honestly felt like I was going to die, and all I could think about was how, if I did, I'd be leaving Sweets all alone with her."

I sighed. "She didn't used to be like that, you know. Before Sweets was born, she mostly just left me alone."

"You mean she neglected you?"

"No. Well . . . I mean . . . I never really thought of it like that, but to hear you say it that way . . ." I shrugged. "I was pretty much on my own before I even had my cutie mark. And even when I did get my cutie mark . . ." I put a hoof up to my left ear and felt along the torn edge there. I let out a mirthless laugh. "I remember when the air conditioner unit for our section had malfunctioned. They told us that somepony from maintenance was working on it, but the day went on and it only got hotter and stuffier. So I wandered off on my own to see what was taking so long. I found the air conditioner, but the engineer working on it was nowhere to be seen. Parts were scattered all over the floor, and he'd even left his tools sitting out."

I looked at the scene around me: reactor parts and tools littered the floor. I noticed Starry following my gaze. "They aren't just bits of metal to me: they're pieces to a puzzle—bigger and more complicated than any of those cardboard cutout childrens' toys that I loved to play with," I told her. A smile crept across my face. "I'd already played with every toy puzzle in the stable dozens of times, and they were all too easy—I even put them together face down so I couldn't see the pictures. But this was a real puzzle! One with moving parts that fit together in three dimensions!

"I found the piece that didn't fit right, and I found the matching replacement part from the spares that were mixed in with the tools, and I started putting it all back together myself. The engineer came back just as I was finishing up. I was still crawling around inside the access panel when he started yelling at me for messing around with his tools, but then he just stopped. It was right when I hooked the power back up that he told me I just got my cutie mark. I was so excited that I got careless and clipped my ear on the radiator fan as I was backing out from under it. It bled all over the place, but I didn't care: I had my cutie mark.

"Mom yelled at me for going off by myself. She didn't really care about what had happened. I don't even think she knew I had been gone. But that engineer got me apprenticed into maintenance after that, and that's where I started spending all my time."

Starry reached out to me and put her hoof on my shoulder. My smile faded as I looked over at Sweets. He was still busy reconstructing one of the compressors that had been needlessly taken apart by the other engineers.

"She started getting mean when she got pregnant with Sweets. At first it was only a lot more yelling, and I figured that it was just hormones or something or that she was mad at whoever his father was—I don't even know who my father is; could be the same guy for all I know. But I just assumed that it was something that would get better after she gave birth. I learned to be really quiet and careful around her—'yes, ma'am,' 'no, ma'am,' 'sorry, ma'am'—and I just waited for her to get better.

"But after Sweets was born . . . she came home with him, and he was crying. Mom put him in my room and told me to keep him quiet while she got some sleep. I tried giving him a bottle, but it didn't help. She kept yelling from her room—at him to be quiet, at me to do something . . .

"I didn't know what else to do, so I tried to entertain him: silly faces, stuffed toys, nothing seemed to work, and I could hear mom getting angrier every time she yelled. And then I tried walking on the ceiling."

"Walking on the ceiling?"

"Yeah—fly upside down and put your hooves on the ceiling. You should have seen the look on Sweets's face. It was . . ." I let out a small laugh and shook my head slowly. "I fell in love with him when I saw that happy little face looking up at me like I had just done the most amazing thing in the world." I looked down at my hooves. "That's when mom came in. She saw me up on the ceiling and she yelled at me to get down. And as soon as I landed, that's when she hit me for the first time. It wasn't really that hard, but I fell over and dislocated my wing. I started to cry, but she screamed at me to be quiet, so I held it in, and she went back to bed.

"I had to take Sweets with me to medical to get my wing treated; I was terrified to leave him alone with her—if he started crying again . . . what she might have done to him . . . and she never did get any better."

> Be Home in Time for Dinner
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After I told Starry about my mother, she and I didn't say very much to each other aside from what we needed to coordinate the repairs. Most of that work was relatively simple; the majority of the parts we had were intact, and we couldn't do anything with the damaged ones until the main body of the reactor was back in one piece, so we focused on that. Starry had a little trouble since she had never worked with anything like it before, but whenever she asked for my help reading the schematics, I had the feeling that she was asking me only so I could feel good about knowing the answer. Not that I minded—I did feel good about it, and she kept looking at me with this proud smile—the kind I often looked at Sweets with.

And I had plenty of opportunity to look at Sweets with that smile while we were making repairs; he had barely even needed to glance at the schematics once and he knew exactly where every part or tool he needed was and how to fit them together. Every time he finished rebuilding one of the smaller components, he'd rush over to show me, bounce up and down while I inspected it, and then rush off to start on another one. It filled me with joy to see him like that—I felt as though I had done right in taking care of him, raising him, and protecting him from our mother. I felt confident that as long as he could stay inside the stable, he'd be alright. 

With that one important goal in mind, I made sure that we made good progress on repairing the reactor. Among the three of us, we managed to reconstruct most of it by the time the overseer returned.

"Where is everypony?" he asked from the doorway.

"I told them to leave," I answered. "We made better progress without—"

"After insisting that I allow an outsider into the stable, and that I should allow Sweetie Pie to stay here, both under the pretense of assisting with repairs because 'we need all the help we can get,' you dismiss an entire crew of workers? And you dare call this"—he gestured toward the still-incomplete reactor—"'better progress'? Well, I'd hate to see what we'd have if you had let them help; we might have full power restored by now."

I balked and lowered my head, my ears folding back. "I—I'm sorry, sir."

"Don't apologize, Day," Starry said as she stepped forward to face the overseer. "He was right to dismiss them. They got in our way, wouldn't provide us with tools, and apparently the only thing they've done so far was to take the whole thing apart just to look busy. We've worked hard all day to put this back together. If it hadn't been stripped apart in the first place, we might actually have had power restored by now."

The overseer glared at Starry over the top of his glasses. "I remind you of your place, miss."

Starry snorted. "I remind you that without us, your whole stable will be out in the wasteland where you're not going to find enough food or water for your entire population. So you should be grateful for our help because it's the only way you're going to get this reactor back online before the emergency power runs out at the end of tomorrow."

I felt Sweets move up alongside me, and I hugged a wing around him gently.

The overseer cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. "Power will be restored by then, won't it?"

Starry glanced back at me.

I nodded. "We should be able to finish repairs by about noon tomorrow, sir."

"Good. Keep at it."

"Actually, sir, we can't really continue working tonight. The spark capacitor is completely burned out," I explained. "And it's the only part we don't have a spare for. Starry knows of an old factory nearby where we can get one, but it's too dark outside to go salvaging now; we'll have to wait until morning." We were also exhausted from working all day, but I didn't bother mentioning that part to the overseer.

"You're certain you'll be able to find and retrieve this replacement in time?"

"I've been there before. I know exactly what I'm looking for. And finding things is my special talent," Starry said with a smirk.

"Well then, if there's nothing else to be done tonight, Lucky Day, your old quarters are vacant; you may return to them. Miss Starry, you may share his quarters while you are here. Sweetie Pie, it's time to come home."

Sweets hugged my foreleg tightly. "I want to go home with Day," he said.

I pulled my wing tighter around him. "Where has my little brother been living?"

"With me and my family, of course," the overseer said with a small chuckle. "I'm like a father for the entire stable—it's my duty to make sure everypony is safe and cared for. Naturally, when I heard about the horrible murder that had left this poor young boy without a mother to raise him, I adopted him myself. Now, Sweetie Pie, come along. It's time for dinner."

"I want to go home with Day!" he cried again.

"Sweets, I . . . I think you should go with him," I said, though it broke my heart. I wanted to take care of Sweets as I always had, but I couldn't fight the overseer over it; he could make sure I'd never see my little brother at all. "We'll see each other tomorrow, okay? And then we'll celebrate your cutie mark after the repairs are finished. I promise." Sweets looked as though he were about to cry, and I hugged him tightly and nuzzled his mane.

"This hasn't been easy on either of them," Starry said. "Can't you work something out? If not for Day, then for Sweets—if you want to be his father, then don't make this harder for him; give him time to adjust."

"You certainly don't have any compunctions about telling me what I should or shouldn't do, do you?" the overseer said dryly. After a pause, he let out a sigh. "Very well. The two of you may join us for dinner." Sweets perked up almost immediately. "But after that, I don't want to hear any more arguments. Am I clear, Sweetie Pie? After dinner, you're going straight to bed."

"Yes, sir," Sweets said. He wasn't entirely enthusiastic about it, I could tell, but even if it was only for another hour or so, it would be good to spend time together again.

"Thank you, sir," I said, grateful for his hospitality.


***


Sweets rode on my back again as we walked to the overseer's quarters on the top floor of the stable where all the administrative offices were. He was quiet for most of the way; it had been a long day, and I could tell by the way he laid his head on the back of my neck with his forelegs limply clinging around my shoulders that he was tired. I would have put him to bed, but that wasn't my decision to make anymore.

The overseer's horn lit up to enter a password on the console by the door to his quarters. The door opened, and I was blinded momentarily: full lights were on inside, much brighter than the emergency lights that I had grown accustomed to. Starry and I both cringed, waiting for our eyes to adjust as we followed the overseer into his home.

"I'm home, darling," he announced as he continued up the entry hall into the living room.

"Dinner's almost ready," answered his wife, her head poking out from the kitchen's doorway. A half-emptied bottle of apple wine floated in her ruby aura next to her. "Oh, we have guests. Well, come in! Make yourselves at home. You know I just love it when we have company for dinner!" she said with a boisterous, though strained, laugh. "Boys," she called. "Set the table for two more."

"Yes, mother," came the simultaneous reply from two young, monotone voices. The sounds of movement and of dinnerware being rearranged in the dining room followed shortly after.

The overseer's wife trotted out to meet us, wine bottle in tow. "Are these friends of yours from work?" she asked after giving her husband a kiss on his cheek.

"In a manner of speaking," he answered. "This is Lucky Day; he's Sweetie Pie's brother."

"Oh, well it's so nice to finally meet you, Lucky," she said with a wide, cheery smile. "Sweetie has been such a joy to have with us this last week. My, how he does go on about you." She laughed. "Look at the poor thing, all tuckered out on you there. Looks like he's already asleep."

She turned to Starry. "And are you their mother?" she asked.

"No, dear," the overseer cut in. "Their mother is dead, remember?"

"Oh, yes, that's right. Terrible business, that. I'm so sorry about your loss. You know, if I had known you were coming, I would have baked you a pie to send you home with."

"I . . . um, thanks?" I said, unsure of how exactly to respond. "Why don't you let me go put Sweets to bed?"

"Go right ahead, dear. It's the last door on the right," said the overseer's wife, pointing me down the hallway. I thanked her and then excused myself, carrying Sweets down to his room while Starry introduced herself.

Inside the room was dark. I left the door open, using only the light from the hallway to find my way over to the bed and carefully slide Sweets off my shoulders. He opened his eyes and sat up almost immediately. "Sorry," I whispered. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

"I wasn't really sleeping," he said. "I just didn't want to have to talk to them."

I glanced over my shoulder at the hallway. I could hear the overseer's wife laughing again between mumbles of idle conversation—conversation I was certainly glad to have gotten away from, even if only for a few minutes; I don't think I had ever heard so many meaningless comforts—so many sweet nothings—all at once. I certainly didn't blame Sweets for wanting to get away from it.

"Have you been okay living here?" I asked Sweets. "Nopony's hurting you, right?"

"I'd rather live with you, Day." He pouted.

"I know, but we can't do anything about that. Not right now, at least. Are you going to be alright staying here?" I stroked a hoof through his mane gently. "I know this probably isn't anything like what you wanted—I know I never planned it this way—but as long as you stay safe, we can work things out."

He looked up at me and gave a small nod. I smiled and kissed his forehead, and then tucked him into bed. "Get some sleep. We'll see each other in the morning, okay? I love you, Sweets."

"I love you too, big brother."

I stood in the doorway, taking one last look at my little brother before I closed the door.

I returned to the living room to find everypony in the middle of laughing—presumably at some joke I'd been too late to hear—though nopony's laughter sounded quite right: the overseer had a dry, humoring chuckle; his wife's was as overblown and strained as ever; and Starry had a visibly forced grin that looked as uncomfortable as her laugh sounded. She glanced at me, and in her eyes I could see a desperate plea for escape.

"Sweets is asleep," I said, clearing my throat. "So I guess we don't need to stay for dinner after all."

"Oh, nonsense!" cried the overseer's wife. "You're already here. What kind of hostess would I be if I didn't let you stay?"

"It's alright," I said. "I'm more tired than hungry myself anyway." Starry nodded in agreement with me.

"Very well, then," said the overseer with a dismissive wave of his hoof. "You may return to your old quarters; they're still unoccupied. And don't worry, we cleaned up the mess you left behind. But, Miss Starry, certainly you'll stay for dinner, won't you? When you're minding your manners, you're actually surprisingly pleasant. And remarkably attractive as well."

His wife let out another of her laughs. "Oh, dear, you're such a kidder!" she said as she took a drink from the wine bottle she still carried—which I noticed had been reduced to only a quarter full while I had been putting Sweets to bed—and disappeared back into the kitchen.

"I think it's best if I call it a night as well," Starry said. Together, we turned and headed for the door.

I reached the door ahead of Starry and when I looked back, I saw her back at the other end of the hall. The overseer was talking to her; he had his foreleg stretched out in front of her, his hoof against the wall, blocking her path. "You know, I can see about making alternate sleeping arrangements for you," he said. "So you don't have to sleep with a murderer."

Starry narrowed her eyes at him and turned to walk around him. "I don't think so."

The overseer turned with her and grabbed her foreleg with his. His voice deepened. "I didn't ask you to think."

Before I even knew what happened, Starry had the overseer on the ground. She stood over him with a hoof on his chest. "Touch me again and I'll break your leg," she said calmly. The overseer was too busy gasping and wheezing, having had the wind knocked out of him, to say anything, but Starry didn't seem interested in hearing a response as she simply stepped over him on her way to the door.

We left together in silence. The whole time we walked, I kept staring at Starry. I had once thought that her confident stride was like that of somepony from Security, but as I watched her then, I saw that wasn't it. Hers wasn't the walk of somepony with power; it was that of somepony who wasn't afraid of those with power. And in that moment of realization, I admired her more than anything or anyone I had ever known. Remembering what Chrys had told me about her, if I could have chosen anypony to be my mother, I would have chosen Starry.

It wasn't until we reached my quarters that I asked, "What happened with the overseer . . ."

Starry smiled and shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I've seen his type plenty: he's just a bully who's used to getting what he wants. But he has no idea how to react when somepony actually stands up to him. He doesn't scare me, and you shouldn't let him scare you either."

I nodded slowly. "I'll try not to."

Starry and I both retired for the evening. She went to sleep in my mother's old room, while I returned to mine. Everything was perfectly sterile, as if nopony had ever lived there, with only the barest furniture that came installed in all the quarters: a bed, a nightstand, desk, and dresser.

The stable moved on, forgot. As though nothing ever happened. The stable would always be the same.


***


It's strange being in the stable again. It hasn't really been that long since I was exiled, but everything seems so different now. Everything, everypony here is exactly the same, though—nothing changes inside the stable.

And yet it feels different to me. Have I really changed that much?

But I got to see that Sweets was safe here without me. Everything that I've been through since that fateful morning has been worth it, if only for that. I had been so worried that I had done the wrong thing. Seeing that he's safe, and that he's being taken care of, though, I feel alright about what I did. I had to do it. I had to—

"Day?"

"Sweets? What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"

"I couldn't sleep. So I snuck out to see you."

"Oh. I don't think the overseer will like that."

"I don't care about him, Day! I just want to stay with you!"

"Sweets . . ."

"Don't you want to stay with me?"

"I . . . of course I do. Come on up, I guess. Just like old times, right?"

"Just like old times!"

. . .

"Day?"

"Yeah, Sweets?"

"I'm sorry you had to—"

"Shh. It's not your fault. I'm supposed to protect my little brother."

. . .

"Day?"

"Yeah, Sweets?"

"It's good, right? Good that she's . . ."

". . . Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"Thank you, Day. I love you."

"I love you too, little brother."

> Put Everything Back Where It Belongs
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't need to open my eyes to know I was awake; my dreams were never so happy. Sweets was there with me. I felt his breath against my neck as I held him tightly. The bed was warm and soft, and I just wanted to stay there, safe and secure. From how tightly my little brother was holding me, I knew he wanted to stay too—wanted me to stay.

He was a good pony. He didn't deserve . . . he didn't deserve our mother. He didn't deserve what I had to do. He didn't deserve any of it.

He deserved a better life than what the stable had to offer.

. . . But that was the best life there was. I had seen the world outside, seen what it would do to him, what it would turn him into. Rake had shown me exactly that on my very first day outside.

So I held him. I held my little brother close. I nuzzled the top of his head, smelled his mane, and just . . . lay there with him. I wanted him to stay like this forever—an innocent little child in a safe home.

But a part of me already knew that it couldn't last. All the more reason to keep holding on to him while I could. All I ever wanted was to keep my little brother safe. I already knew how far I'd go to protect him . . . knew I'd do it all over again if I had to.

Of course our peaceful morning together didn't last forever. A loud pounding against the door to our quarters broke us out of our embrace, and we both sat upright. There was muffled yelling, and then I heard the door opening.

I jumped out of bed and opened the door to my room to look out into the living room. The overseer was there, along with a mare from security.

"Where is Sweetie Pie?" the overseer demanded.

"Day? What's going on?" Sweets asked, coming up to my bedroom door.

I moved to keep him behind me. "Stay back, Sweets. What's this about?" I asked the overseer.

Ignoring me, the overseer made a move toward us. "There you are. Come—" He stopped abruptly when I flared out my wings and stamped my hoof. He leveled his gaze at me. "Sweetie Pie is my responsibility now," he said. "I told him to stay in his room, but he snuck out to come here. You have to get along with everypony, Sweetie Pie." His voice was at once stern and demanding and sickly-sweet. "Now come here."

"I don't want to stay with you!" Sweets yelled as he crawled under me and looked out from between my forelegs. "I want to stay with my big brother!"

"Sweets, let me handle this, please," I said quietly to him, trying to hold him back.

"I don't want to go!"

"It's okay. You don't have to go." I put my hoof on his shoulder and felt him calm down. I looked up at the overseer. "He doesn't have to go."

The overseer raised an eyebrow at me. "Come now, Lucky Day. We have to get alo—"

"No."

"Excuse me?" He blinked.

"I said no. I'm not going to let you take my little brother away from me." I took a step forward. "You've seen what I'm willing to do to protect my little brother. You already exiled me once. Do you think I'm afraid to do it again?"

Everypony was quiet. The overseer opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. He glanced at the security mare and jerked his head in my direction. She floated out her baton and started toward me. I took another step forward, and she stopped.

"You don't scare me," I said. "You've never used your little stick on someone who fought back, have you? You wanna try your luck on me?"

She didn't move. I took a step, and she backed up.

"Th—there's no need for this to get ugly, Lucky Day. We can all get along here." The overseer put his hoof on the mare's shoulder, and she put her baton away. "You've been away from your brother for a long time, Sweetie Pie," he said, clearing his throat. "We'll let you two catch up. I expect you home for dinner, though. Lucky Day, perhaps you should join us again. I'm sure your brother will like that."

The two of them slowly backed their way out into the corridor as I glared at them while advancing slowly.

"We'll think about it," I said as I pushed the button to close the door.

No sooner had the door closed than I felt the blood drain from my face and my legs go limp. I leaned into the door and slumped down against it. Sweets rushed up to me and threw his forelegs around my neck in a tight embrace.

"That was incredible, Day! Nopony will ever mess with us again!"

I clasped my hooves on Sweets's cheeks to hold him steady and to make sure he looked right at me. "Promise me, Sweets. Promise me you'll never do that. You should never talk to Security or the overseer like that."

"But you—"

"I shouldn't have done that, Sweets. Being outside changed me. I don't get along like I used to anymore—I don't fit in here. Please, Sweets, promise me you won't try to be like me."

"I . . . I promise . . ."

Hearing those words, I let go of his face and pulled my little brother into a tight embrace. The panic I had felt immediately following the overseer's departure melted away in Sweets's warmth.

"Day? Is everything alright?" came Starry's voice from the doorway to our mother's room.

Sweets shrieked and clung to me tighter.

"It's okay. It's only Starry," I reassured him. "She's my friend. She's here to help, remember?" I felt him shaking against me as he stared across the room at her. I stroked my hoof along his mane to try to calm him down. "We're alright, Starry. Just a little shaken up is all. The overseer was just here." I looked up at her. "Is it time to go get the new capacitor?"

Starry walked out toward us slowly, but stopped a few feet away. "You know, actually, I can probably handle it on my own. There's no need you should have to come with me, so you can stay here with Sweets." She knelt down and ducked her head to look at Sweets on his level, smiling at him. "That sound good to you?"

Sweets's trembling stopped, and he looked up at me, smiling. "It's all I ever wanted."


***


"Check," said Sweets as he put his pawn down where my knight had just been. We were playing chess while waiting for Starry to return with the replacement spark capacitor.

I looked over the board. "And mate next move; nothing I can do to stop it." I reached out and shook hooves with Sweets in resignation. It was the third game he'd won since we'd started. I smiled as I watched him reset all the pieces.

"Remember the first time you beat me?" I asked, laughing softly. "You were so upset about it. You even tried to invent an escape for me when I wouldn't let you take your move back."

Sweets's cheeks flushed. "I thought you'd be mad, and . . . you're my big brother; you're supposed to be so much smarter about everything. I thought if I won against you . . . if I was better than you, you wouldn't want to play anymore." He rolled his king back and forth between his hooves for a little bit before putting it on the board.

Reaching across the board, I tousled his mane. "And now I can't even remember the last time I won against you." I chuckled and made my opening move.

"Last month," Sweets said as he took his turn. "When you were in Medical, recovering from your collapsed lung. You did something I didn't expect you to do: you sacrificed your queen. It opened up a hole in the pawn defense, and then you pinned the king with your knight and finished him off with your rook." It never ceased to amaze me how he seemed to remember every move of every game we had ever played.

"Ah. I guess I just forgot because I had other things on my mind back then," I said. "All I remember from then was how worried I was about you being on your own while I was stuck in Medical."

Our conversation quieted as we focused more on the game. I could tell I was starting to lose already, though; my mind hadn't really been on the game—it hadn't been all morning, and finally I decided to say what I needed to say to Sweets, what had been running through my mind ever since I'd scared off the overseer that morning.

"I don't think I can stay in the stable after we finish the repairs," I told him.

He didn't say anything; only stared up at me, looking as though he weren't sure he'd heard me right.

I sighed. "I don't fit in here anymore, but I have a home with Starry I can go to outside."

Sweets's jaw trembled. "Y—you'll take me with you . . . right?"

I closed my eyes tightly and shook my head. "I can't. It's too dangerous outside."

"You'll protect me! You always protect me!"

"I can barely protect myself out there, Sweets. But with Mom gone—"

"D—did I do something wrong?" Tears welled up in his eyes.

"No! No, Sweets. Of course not. It's just that—"

"Then why are you leaving me, Day?" he cried. "I got the overseer to let you come back so we could be together again! I did it all for you!"

"Sweets, it's not about that. I'm just trying to think of what's best for you: you're safe in here, but nopony trusts me anymore. If I stay, it'll make things harder for you. You need to start taking care of yourself now. I don't want to leave you, but—"

"You're lying!" he screamed as he lifted the chessboard in his magic and flung it across the room where it crashed against the wall and sent pieces scattering everywhere. "You wouldn't leave if you didn't want to! Why, Day? Why don't you want to stay with me?"

I reached out to put a hoof on his shoulder, but he ducked away. "Don't touch me!" he yelled. "You can't leave! You can't!"

"Sweets, please, just . . ." I tried to reach for him again, but he ran off, crying. I wanted to go after him, but he was too upset to listen to me. I figured that he simply needed some time to calm down, and then I could try talking to him again later. So I stayed behind. I busied myself with picking up the chess pieces, arranging them in their starting positions on the board to keep track of them.

There was one piece missing at the end: one of the black pawns. I searched all over the room, but couldn't find it. It had simply vanished. And as I sat there, alone, looking over the incomplete chessboard, I thought back to the first time Sweets had been the one to teach me something about chess: I had advanced one of my pawns two squares from its starting position, thinking it was safe there, and then Sweets made it disappear, simply vanish—he captured it with one of his pawns in a move I'd never seen before. En passant, he'd called it. It was an obscure rule that I hadn't known about. He'd read about it in the stable library all on his own. I had been surprised, but proud of him; my little brother was getting smarter, growing older, becoming independent.

Sweets had needed to grow up so fast, faster than he should have. And I knew how much it must have hurt him to be faced with losing me a second time—I hurt just as much to think about losing him again. But I had seen the world outside, and now I had seen the stable through the eyes of an outsider too. I had never really belonged in either world, but I knew I had to spare Sweets from the horrors that lurked outside. And part of that meant I had to leave him. I was stained by the wasteland—the way I had threatened the overseer proved it. If I stayed, Sweets would be tainted by me.

I had protected my little brother his entire life. But now I would be his greatest danger.

> Don't Play with Fire
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Starry returned, she found me sitting under a tree in the orchard. It was dark; the emergency lights didn't reach that far into the void that was the atrium. "Day? Where's Sweets?" she asked.

"We got into an argument. He ran off," I told her.

She looked around, and twitched her ears back and forth. "Do you know where he went? Will he be alright?"

"He could be anywhere." I shrugged. "He knows the stable at least as well as I do. He'll be safe. He's just upset because . . ." I sighed. "I told him I wasn't going to stay in the stable."

Starry didn't say anything right away. Instead, she walked over and knelt down beside me. There was a slight breeze from the ventilation system that ran through the atrium, filling the silence with the calm rustling of leaves above us.

"Oh, wow," she said at last, and I turned my head to see that she was looking up. I followed her gaze up into the dark void above us. Through the rustling leaves, we could see the emergency lights as small points twinkling in the darkness. "I didn't think I'd see stars down here . . ."

"I've never seen the stable this way before," I said. "But it's always been like this, hasn't it? Those lights have always been there; I've simply never been able to see them. I've seen so much in the time since my exile." I lowered my gaze down to the shield on Starry's uniform; it glinted in the darkness. "What are you going to do after you leave here? Are you going to go back to Precinct?"

"I . . . don't really know," she said after a long pause. "I suppose I'll go back to the diner first and figure out the rest from there. But . . . well, I can understand why you don't want to stay here. And I think I'd feel the same if I went back to Precinct."

"The diner's not so bad. But I can't bring Sweets out there with me. Even if I can't stay here, the stable is still the safest place for him. Isn't it?"

Starry nodded. "Lots of foals grow up in the wasteland, but a lot more of them never get the chance to grow up. I can't blame you for wanting to keep your little brother here."

"You think I should let him come with me?"

"I think you know better than anypony what's best for him; you've been taking care of him for his whole life." Starry paused, and I let out a long sigh. "You wouldn't have to leave right away," she said, putting a hoof on my shoulder. "You could stay here for a few days at least, so you two would have time to say goodbye."

"I know. That was my plan. He didn't even let me try to explain it. But I don't think that will make it any easier for him anyway. I know he doesn't want me to leave at all. I just . . . I wish I knew what else I could do. I only ever wanted to keep my little brother safe."

"I know," Starry said as she stood up. "But let's take this one step at a time: I've got the capacitor, so let's go get the reactor back online first so there'll at least be a stable for Sweets to stay in. We can deal with everything else after that."

I looked up at her, her outline barely visible in the darkness; tiny points of light twinkled in the void above her, and glinted off her shield.

I nodded slowly. "You're right. Let's start there."


***


Starry had found a pristine spark capacitor. We had no trouble installing it, and when we closed everything up and got the reactor through its startup procedure, it hummed as good as new. We turned on the main breaker, and, like magic, the whole stable lit up.

We'd done it. We'd saved the stable.

We walked back to the atrium; I wanted Starry to see it with the lights on. She was congratulating me. I was smiling.

And then red lights began flashing along the walls, and a loud, wailing siren sounded over the P.A. system. It was a fire alarm. Screams and cries for help followed, and Starry and I flew up above the trees to get a better view: On the third level that ringed the atrium, smoke was billowing out of the corridor and rising up through the atrium in a thick, dark plume.

"Something's not right," I said. "With that much smoke, the fire suppression system should have kicked in already. I need to go back to maintenance; the control system there will let me activate it."

"Go," Starry told me. "I'll try to help evacuate everypony from that area."

I didn't stay to say goodbye to Starry. I knew that time was important: If the ventilation system didn't get clogged with smoke and spread it through the stable first, the metal corridors would turn the whole stable into an oven. Amid frantic yelling and alarms blaring, I raced back down into maintenance. The yelling faded, but the sound of half the stable stampeding around echoed through the walls, as if to impress upon me just how many lives were at risk. But I only had one life on my mind—the only life that I had ever cared about. And I wouldn't let him down.

When I reached the control panel, I stopped dead in my tracks. It had been ripped apart; torn wires and smashed circuit boards lay scattered on the floor. And in the middle of where the console should have been, there was a lone black chess pawn.

My legs started scrambling before I knew what I was doing. They carried me back out toward the atrium, and as soon as I was out of the corridor, my wings spread out and carried me straight up. I didn't spare a single glance toward the fire. I had only one goal that consumed all my focus: the overseer's office was the only other place in the stable that could control the fire suppression system.

Inside the office, I suddenly felt as though I'd never escaped the changelings in the forest. How else could I have been confronted with such a scene, ripped from my darkest nightmares, and yet so frighteningly real, as I was then: The overseer sat at the back of the room, his nose was bleeding, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. His hooves were bound in electrical cord. A large kitchen knife was against his neck, floating steadily in Sweets's magical aura. My little brother stood in the middle of the room, smiling at me.

"I did it for you, Day," he said. His voice was strained, and I saw his cheeks were wet with tears. "I did it all for you. So we could be together."

"Sweets . . . I . . ." I glanced over at the window that overlooked the entire stable; the smoke was growing thicker. "I need to turn on the—"

"Don't!" Sweets yelled as he twisted the tip of the knife against the overseer's throat. "You have to listen first."

"Sweets, I'll always listen to you. You don't have to—"

"Why did you have to leave me, Day?" he whimpered. "Why? I had it all planned out, but you had to go and do something unexpected!"

"Sweets, what are you talking about?"

"And you did it all over again! Day, I knew you were the only one who could fix the reactor—he'd have to let you back in after it broke. And it worked! Here you are! But you want to leave me behind again. You want to leave me here with this . . . this monster! He's the reason our mother hated us—why she was killing you: He's been raping her for years, and we're his bastards."

"I never raped anypony!" the overseer yelled.

"You're lying!" he screamed as he turned to face the overseer. "I saw you with her! I saw what you'd do to her! Tell Day what you'd say to her—what sweet nothings you'd whisper in her ear while you raped her."

"It wasn't—"

"Tell him!"

The overseer winced, and glanced from me to Sweets, then back again. He closed his good eye and swallowed hard. "I—I told her it was . . ."

"Say it!" Sweets reared up and slapped a hoof across the overseer's face.

"Sweets—" I started to protest.

"Her lucky day!" the overseer blurted out.

I blinked, incredulous; what I had heard hadn't made sense at first, and all of my thoughts came to a screeching halt as my mind scrambled to imagine how I might have misheard him. Then the overseer repeated himself, and I was certain I'd heard him correctly that time, which freed my thoughts from the trap of trying to think of what he might have said, and allowed me to focus on what it meant. Slowly, the realization sunk in: this was the story of my conception.

"What else? What did you call her?" Sweets demanded.

His jaw trembling, the overseer's eye focused on the knife Sweets was holding in his magic. "I called her . . . called her my sweetie pie."

"Her 'lucky day.' His 'sweetie pie.'" Sweets sneered while his magic tied a gag around the overseer's mouth. "That's all she ever was to him. All we ever were to her: Sweet—little—nothings!" He spat the words. "You know why it was getting worse, Day? She was pregnant again. You weren't going to survive. Neither of us would."

I felt my chest tighten. "Sweets, let's . . . let's talk about this. We can make it better. Just let me—"

"Don't lie to me!" His lip quivered. "You said you'd always be here to protect me. You said we'd be together. You said . . . you said you loved me."

"I do love you!"

"Then why did you leave me?" he sobbed.

"Sweets," I said softly, taking a cautious step toward him. He flinched, pointing the knife at me, and I stopped. "Sweets, they would have exiled you instead. I couldn't let that happen to you. At least with her gone, I knew you'd be safe here."

"I would rather have died!" he shouted, the knife faltering briefly in his magic. "You left me all alone, big brother. You didn't even say goodbye to me. I waited for you. I waited for you! I was alone for so long until somepony came to find me, and then nopony would tell me where you went."

"Sweets, I'm sor—"

"Don't tell me you're sorry!" he yelled through gritted teeth. I'd never heard him snarl like that before—as if the word "sorry" caused him physical pain. I suddenly remembered when I had snapped at Chrys in exactly the same way. "You left me here with this monster! He was even worse than Mom." Sweets sniffled, wiping his eyes with a fetlock. "At least with Mom, we knew she hated us. But this monster . . . he'll tell you he loves you, and—" he choked. "And he makes you want to believe it. He . . ."

I started to take another step, but Sweets re-strengthened his grip on the knife.

Sniffling again, Sweets wiped his nose on his sleeve. "He wanted me to forget you."

"Sweets, I—"

"It was all a lie, though!" His horn shone brightly, as he turned the knife point toward the overseer. "He never loved me. He just made me think he did. But . . . it felt the same as with you, Day." He looked at me, eyes wide, tears dripping from his cheeks. "How . . .? How can a lie feel so real, Day? Was it ever real? Did you ever really love me, big brother?"

"Of course I love you! You're my little brother. I'll always love you—I always have! Please, Sweets, just put the knife down. Let me activate the fire suppression system, and we can talk—"

"No!" he screamed. "Words don't mean anything! If you really love me, then kill him." He took a slow, shaky breath, and floated the knife toward me, offering the handle. "I killed Mommy. I did it for you. You took the blame for it, but that's okay: you kill Daddy and everything will be alright. We'll leave together. As brothers. Like we were supposed to. Do it for me."

I stared at the knife, then looked over at the overseer. His eyes pleaded with me. "Sweets, I . . . I can't."

"Why not? It's easy! Doesn't he deserve it? Don't you hate him? Don't you . . . love me?"

"Not like this, Sweets! This . . . this is just wrong."

His eyes going dark, Sweets levitated the knife back toward himself before I could snatch it away from him. "If you won't do it, I will. And I'll announce it to the whole stable, and they'll kick me out too, and then you'll have to take me with you!" Hesitating only long enough to look at me with tired eyes, he took a step toward the overseer.

"Sweets, stop!" I reached back into my bag, pulled out my pistol, and aimed it at him, blinking the tears out of my eyes to keep a clear sight. My jaw trembled as I struggled to hold my aim steady.

He stopped and simply stared at me at first, and then his eyes narrowed. "What? You're gonna shoot me? You won't kill this bastard, but you'll shoot me?" His lip quivered as he cried. "I killed for you, Day."

"I never asked you to! Please, Sweets! Stop this! More are going to die if we don't put out the fire!"

"I don't care! I'd burn the whole stable down for you, Day!" He sobbed and then sucked in a deep breath. His eyes locked with mine, and I could no longer see the happy, innocent smile that I had seen in them when he was newborn. I saw only a broken heart and the will to see the whole world burned to ashes around him. "I guess my big brother really did leave me forever," he said.

Sweets took another step, and I focused my aim on his foreleg—only a wound to make him stop; that's all I wanted to do. We could sort it all out if he'd just calm down and listen. I bit down, and the revolver fired. My ears rang from the noise, and the kick felt as though it had nearly broken my jaw as it twisted my neck. The gun fell out of my mouth, and I turned back to see my little brother.

And I just stood there, staring. Hind legs gave out, and I sat on my haunches. I wanted to throw up, but all I could do was look on blankly at what I'd done: Sweets lay there lifelessly, a gaping wound torn through his neck. His now vacant eyes simply stared out into space.

My eyes glanced over at the overseer. He was watching me with wide eyes, his pupils like pinpricks. Slowly, mechanically, I stood up. In the back of my mind there was a nagging thought that I had come here to do something. My legs were shaky, but did their job and carried me over to the terminal. My forehooves tapped a few keys and reinitialized the fire suppression system; the screen confirmed the system was active and responding to the emergency.

Less shaky now, my legs carried me over to the overseer, and slowly, mechanically, I untied his gag. He looked up at me and forced a smile. "Uh . . . heh . . . thanks, son. I'm sorry for what you had to do. That little maniac was going to—"

"That little maniac was my brother!" I screamed, and struck him in face. He toppled over and hit his head on the bare metal floor. I had barely felt anything up until that moment, but suddenly my chest was on fire. My heart pounded like an explosion inside my chest with every beat. The corners of my vision went dark, and all I could see was the monster on the floor in front of me.

I bit the collar of his barding and pulled him back up into a sitting position. "He was the 
only person who ever loved me!" I rounded on my hooves and kicked out with both hind legs, catching him under the chin and in the side of his neck. The blow knocked him back against the wall, his head streaking blood along it as he slumped down to the floor.

He groaned and tried to move, but his legs were still tied. Coughing and drooling blood from his mouth, he turned his eye to look up at me as I stood over him. He might have tried to say something, but I could only hear the blood pounding in my ears as I reared up and stomped down on his head with both forehooves.

> It's Okay to Cry
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything after the overseer's office was a blur. I barely remember leaving the stable, only limping through the corridors on cracked and bleeding hooves. Nopony stood in my way. They all knew I didn't belong. They simply let me leave.

I was flying. I didn't care where I was going—anywhere, nowhere, it didn't matter. I only had to keep moving.

I looked down and I saw the ground far below me. My whole life, I had been falling—every time I had a new bruise or broken bone, it was because "I fell." I kept on falling, and nopony ever reached out to save me. And the one person I had ever had to hold onto as I fell, my brother, had only been dragged down with me. And somehow, I was still falling. I looked down at the ground, and I decided it was time to stop falling.

It was time to hit bottom.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, tucked my wings against my sides, and pitched forward.

There was a brief moment where I felt my heart leap into my throat and my stomach twist into a knot, but all that passed as I breathed out.

It was quiet. Not silent—the sound of wind rushing past my ears was ever-present—but there was a strange, calm sense of stillness around me. I wasn't falling anymore; I was weightless. I finally felt as if I had managed to let go—to break free of everything that had been holding me back, dragging me down.

I smiled.

Opening my eyes, I looked up at the clouds. I let my whole body go limp. My legs stretched out above me, my wings alongside them. A few stray feathers, pulled out by the wind, floated lazily above me, and I watched them fly away on their own.

As I gazed up at my hooves above me and the clouds beyond them, I imagined myself walking along the clouds. I felt young again, and I thought back to that single happiest moment in my life when I looked down from the stable's ceiling to see my little brother smiling back up at me, so innocent and pure. That was how he deserved to be remembered, not for what the stable had turned him into . . . what it had turned me into.

A strong crosswind buffeted me from the side and sent me tumbling, eliciting a sharp cry from me; a desperate, primitive plea of instinct, swallowed up by the open sky. Unfortunately, my voice wasn't the only thing to react on instinct, and my wings fanned out reflexively to bring me back under control.

I was facing the ground.

It was racing toward me. Bleak, sickly gray-brown fields of dirt and decay as far as I could see. My hooves flailed wildly, scrambling for purchase they wouldn't find. I was falling, but my wings—which stubbornly refused to pull back in against my sides, no matter how much I strained—were slowing my descent and steering me off course.

A stray, low-altitude cloud came up in my path. It was far too thin to stop me; my impact scattered the puffy nimbus into a fine mist, but it robbed me of rapidly decaying downward momentum. I coughed and sputtered, gasping to draw in a breath after having the wind knocked out of me, but I found it hard to take in air as it whipped past me. Suddenly, I became deathly afraid that the landing wouldn't kill me.

My mouth opened wide in a futile attempt at a scream, but wind rushed up my nose and throat, inducing another coughing fit as I choked on my own breath. My eyes watered, stinging my cheeks with icy, wind-chilled tears. My wings burned from the strain of holding me aloft, and it was then that I saw they had steered me toward an old, abandoned barn; a putrid shade of dull red—where it still had paint—it looked as if a stiff breeze might knock the whole thing over. I hated to think what would happen when I hit it.

Fearing it might be the last thing I ever saw, I cried out once more with a redoubled effort, twisting my body and straining my wings against the wind. I flipped over onto my back, and gazed up one last time at the sky above. The clouds were far away now. I reached a forehoof out, dreaming one last time about walking on the ceiling. My thoughts drifted to Starry, and I breathed out a whisper, "Goodb—"

My back exploded in pain as I hit the roof of the barn. It cracked and splintered under me, and I continued falling, crashing through the rafters—thick, heavy beams that yielded to me due only to ages of decay weakening them. I came to rest on the floor of the barn with shards of rotten wood clattering around me. And, again, I couldn't breathe. I prayed silently that I should just pass out, but my lungs, burning in my chest, starved for air, pulled and sucked in a gasp.

And then I heard the floor creaking under me. I whimpered as I felt the support fall out from under me once more. It seemed that I would never stop falling.

I fell through into the barn's cellar, dirt and debris scattering everywhere as the floor fell in after me, half-burying me under a pile of rotten wood and other pieces of Old Equestria's decay.


***


"Day!"

"Day! Say something!"

No words came out, but I managed a whimpering gasp as I struggled under the crushing weight of debris on top of me. I blinked the dust from my eyes, and I saw Starry hovering over me. Her mane was matted with sweat, and she was covered in soot stains.

"Easy, Day. I found you. Just hold on while I get you out of there," she said.

After she dug me out from under the rubble, Starry reached out to me to help me up, but I kicked her hooves back. With a pained grunt, I rolled away from her and struggled to stand. Again she tried to help me, and again I pushed her away, this time with a snarled, "Don't touch me! Just leave me alone!"

"Day . . . what's wrong? What happened?"

After managing to stand up, I limped over to the wall and leaned against it for support while I clutched a hoof against my side; I could feel my broken ribs moving with each breath I took. I should have been in a lot more pain, but the numbness I'd been feeling since I left the stable had dulled more than just my emotions. "I fell. What's it look like?" I groaned.

"Day . . ." She looked at me with her eyes pleading, pleading for me to let her get close to me. But after everything I'd been through, I knew I couldn't do that. It would only end up hurting more, and I just wanted to stop hurting, stop feeling . . . anything.

"Just leave! I don't need you! I wish I'd never met you!" I yelled at Starry, my legs shaking. "I wish you'd left me to die!"

"You don't mean that," Starry said in a calm, soothing voice. A mother's voice. "Day, please, I want to help you, but you have to tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong! I'm fine!" I shouted, cowering back against the wall as she took a cautious step toward me. "I'm fine! I'm fine! I'm . . . fine," I choked back a sob.

"You're covered in blood, Day! You just took a dive through a barn!"

"So what if I did? It's not like I accomplished anything. Everything—" I choked again. "Everything I do turns out wrong. Why should this be any different?"

"Day . . . talk to me." Starry took another careful step in my direction, and I pressed myself harder against the wall, as if I could force myself through it to escape her. It only made the pain in my back flare up, though. But all that felt distant, as if it were only an imagined pain. It was completely eclipsed by the churning torment in my heart—an anxious, screaming fear that gripped my stomach and twisted it in knots and squeezed my chest from the inside, trying to suffocate me. It was as though some horrible monster were inside me, trying to claw its way out.

"Everything!" I trembled. "I should have—should have died when I first left the stable. Exile meant death." I looked up at Starry, my lips quivering. I could feel the monster clawing its way up the inside of my neck. "I went to Security and confessed, knowing that I'd die for it. But I was okay with it. B—because I knew the last thing I'd ever done had been to prote—" I winced, choking as I struggled to keep that monster inside. "Protect my little brother."

Starry stood there, just out of reach. She didn't say anything, only watching me with wide, sad eyes. Why should she be sad? I thought. What reason did she have to feel sad? What right did she have? She hadn't done the things I'd done.

"But then I kept living. And I had to live with what I'd done, what I'd lost . . ."

"Day, I don't blame you for killing your mother. From what you told me, it sounds like you were justified. I know that doesn't make it any easier, but—"

"I wasn't the one who killed her." I watched Starry's face as it went from a look of confusion to one of incredulity as she realized what I meant. The monster thrashing inside my chest quieted for a moment, and I sat down, lowering my head with a sigh. "Sweets killed her. I cleaned him up, got him back to sleep, and I took the blame for it. I had to. It was the only way to protect him. And the only reason I was able to face what I thought would be certain death was the knowledge that I would die protecting him."

"You're a good pony, Day." Starry reached toward me.

I clenched my jaw, feeling that monster tearing at my insides again. "And now I killed him!" I snarled through gritted teeth, as though that were all I could do to keep the monster from bursting free through my mouth. I felt tears rolling down my cheeks as I looked into Starry's wide-eyed stare. "I killed my little brother. I didn't mean to. I just wanted to stop him—stop him from killing the overseer." I winced. "That . . . that monster . . . he was our father. Our father! It was his fault! He raped our mother! He was the reason she hated us! We were nothing but constant reminders to her, reminders of him, of the sweet nothings"—I spat the words—"he'd whisper to her. She didn't want us. She never wanted us. Nobody did. All we ever had was each other. And I killed Sweets just to protect that monster."

I was shaking all over. The monster inside me was clawing its way out and I couldn't hold it back any longer. My chest heaved with deep, sobbing breaths and I cried out in the worst pain of my life. I hurt so much that I couldn't even feel it when Starry rushed up to me and threw her forelegs around me. I wrenched my eyes shut and buried my face in her neck, muffling my desperate, agonized wails into her. "I killed him! And for what? So I could just stomp our monster of a father to death anyway?"

Starry didn't say anything. She didn't say she was sorry, or tell me it was okay, that it wasn't my fault, or that I didn't do anything wrong. She just held me. And I held her. She was warm and soft and I just wanted to stay with her as she slowly rocked me in her embrace, quietly hushing me as I cried.

The monster that I'd been struggling to contain had burst free through my face in a torrent of tears and anguished sobs. And when it was finally gone, when I couldn't cry any more, I clung to Starry as tightly as I could manage, despite the pain in my ribs and along my back and across my shoulders.

"Please don't leave me," I whimpered.

Nothing Starry could have said would have meant anything to me. I knew from all the times I'd told Sweets that I'd always be there, that I'd always protect him—I knew that "always" isn't something you can promise. Doing so will only set an expectation that you'll never be able to live up to. To say that she'd never leave me would have only been empty words—sweet nothings whispered in my ear. But Starry didn't say anything. Instead, she just held me. And that was enough.


***


I was in no mood or shape to fly, so Starry and I walked back to Mum's Diner. It was a long walk, made longer by my injured pace, but that was okay. For once, Starry and I got to travel together without anything getting in the way; no dark forests, and no stables. It was only she and I.

I told her everything. I told her what really happened that morning when mom died, and how much I felt as though I had failed my little brother, that he felt there was no other choice . . .

And Starry just listened. She listened while I told her about waking up alone and looking for my brother, as in a dream. She listened while I talked about finding him on top of our mother in a bloody mess—the dream turned nightmare. She listened to me go over what happened in the overseer's office, and how I killed my brother and my father.

All the while, Starry never said anything. Maybe she understood that there was nothing to say that would have meant anything to me, or maybe she just didn't have anything to say. She walked at my side, put her wing around me, and nuzzled at the back of my head. And no longer did I recoil from her touch. She was warm, and I leaned against her side for support while we walked.

We had to stop a few times when I broke down crying. Starry was patient, and she held me, wrapped me tightly in her wings, and rocked me gently in her warm embrace while I cried and shivered. I begged her not to leave me, repeating my lonely plea several times, as if the words themselves were other limbs I had to cling to her with. Making those pleas was more important to me than hearing a reply. And though she never did say anything, the way she held me made me feel safe with her. Rather than tell me she wouldn't leave, she simply stayed with me and kept me close to her.

I wasn't okay, not by a long shot. And maybe I never will be after all I've been through, but Starry managed to give me something that I hadn't known I was missing. She made me feel as if I mattered to someone. And while that didn't make everything all better, it somehow made it bearable. No longer was I trying to deny my pain. I had finally hit rock bottom . . . somewhat literally. And though I still feel like it would be tempting fate to believe things couldn't get any worse, I don't have to suffer alone in silence anymore.


***


The sun had set by the time we reached the diner. But the moon was in full and even the cloudy skies couldn't hold back the brilliant glow. The bright night would watch over the end of the old day and the coming of the new.

Lights were on inside Mum's Diner, and as we approached, we could hear loud noise from within: singing, laughing, sounds of celebration. It hardly seemed like a place where I belonged. I felt absolutely wretched. I was sure my eyes were puffy and bloodshot, my face was wet, and I had streaks of snot along my blood-stained forelegs where I had wiped my nose. Not to mention my myriad aches and bruises, but those were hardly anything new.

Starry turned to me, put her hoof on my shoulder, and smiled gently. Her shield sparkled with reflected moonlight; a bright, shining star that had always been there, guiding me through the darkness. I didn't have it in me to smile back at her, but I knew I didn't have to wear a mask for her anymore. She stroked my mane a couple times then leaned in to kiss my forehead. "Let's go home," she said softly, nodding toward the diner.

The corners of my lips pulled back ever so slightly, and I nodded. "Home."