> The Fall
>  by waste
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> It's an angel isn't it?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunlight leaks sharp light and weak shadows on his mane. The stallion reaches forward and digs out packed clumps of dirt. The dirt flakes off, and he examines the potato with content painted on his face. He packs it with the rest and sets about reaping the rest of his crop, the stench of earth stealing the stallion’s senses. He glides between fields, vineyards and orchards a soft curved smile on his face, happy weightless thoughts in his mind. As a unicorn it was always unusual for him to toil the lands; it was also unusual to stand around gormlessly staring into space. Most called him slow, but his parents knew that sharp exotic thoughts danced in his brain when his eyes would fall into that blue sky. Halfway through the pear orchard, empty thoughts transformed into heavy ideas. The stallion’s gaze lost itself in the heavens, while he thought of the inefficiency of common farm implements, and wonders if their ergonomics resulted from the ruins of a precursor species. Needless to say, the thought made him look a little dense. 

A Green and black blur punches the sky. Violent screams and curses throw themselves at the world. The unholy thing arcs across his land and lands in the strawberry fields, its curses forming the colour of fury and regret. With effort he abandons his thoughts and gallops a good half mile to the crater, an ugly scar in his well-tended field. It would take at least a month to get that field looking right again. Small angry blotches of green fluid are splashed on to the red flesh of strawberries. The green fluid has the sharp metallic smell of copper mixed with blood. With the crater in his sight, small careful steps follow small careful steps as he nears its edge.

Bristles of green blue hair or fur cover the strange object in the crater. When he comes closer he can see the gleam of light on a hard black surface. Stepping over the edge of the crater, he sees the remains of a lifeless creature rather than some strange meteoroid. A shock of green blood covers the creature, and the gleam of light reveals a hard exoskeleton. Appallingly skinny with insect like wings, the creature looks more feminine then masculine. He recoils as savage pointed teeth jut from the creature’s dead mouth. Then he looks over its face and is stunned. He decides it’s a she. Despite her stick like limbs, and hideous veined wings, her face is smooth and well-formed all curves and delicate arcs that made a beautiful thin face. All of it covered by that hard black shell and peppered with a pair of closed eyes. And of course her green blood that manages to be everywhere.

After much internal conflict he decides to bury her here right in the strawberry field. Obviously she was some sort of warrior angel that fell from heaven, only right to bury her someplace important. She’s not the only body buried on this land. He gallops back and finds a shovel. The yield of earth and a heavy handle scatters earth across that lovely alien face. He tried to listen for breathing, but he read somewhere that insects respire without constant muscle movement. He tried to feel her pulse but it’s hard to feel something underneath her hardened skin. He tried to open her eyes but with no success. He heard her very much alive screaming and cursing, and then heard her brief probably fatal collision with the ground. All signs point to dead.

A small twitch and a grunt escape from her. The Stallion drops his shovel and shouts in surprise and worry, because now another small trickle of green is flowing from her mouth. She shudders again and it clear pain has dug its hands deep into her body, deep into the large cracks in her shell, deep into her exotic face, suddenly shaking it into an ugly picture of hurt. Against the common laws of nature she struggles hard to stay alive, much to the stallion’s confusion. Fear also claws at his mind because he’s afraid of the choice he’ll have to make. Either he’ll have to hope he can nurse her back to full health, or he’ll have to end her pain right here with the blunt shovel. Both are hard decisions and both are entirely right. Which is worse, to linger on the threshold of death and life being driven insane with desperation, or ending her fear and pain with a murderous strike to the face?

It’s obvious which choice he’ll make though isn’t it? Because even for all his random and deviant thoughts he’s a stallion with a large soft mind, finds it easy to love and hard to hate. Also, for a unicorn that has spent a small lifetime caring and tending for plants murder is a probably a foreign idea to him. But his own dark thoughts call him an uncaring coward if he can’t simply pick up the shovel and end her life, do the most loving and humane action. He clears his head then proceeds to get as close as possible to the stranger.

“Please calm down, I don’t know who you are but I mean no harm. You fell from a fatal height. I think you’re lucky you’re alive right now.”

Delicate words laced with worry and hope gains no response, and yet her body curls up slightly and her head learns into his words.

“My name is Wandering Thought, I’m going to get you some water, clean you up, patch you up and then set up a tent around you. I think it’s wise you don’t move too much because you have some serious injuries on you. I’ll be back soon.” 

His words are thrown down with dread rather than comfort. He stumbles and trips to the river, uses two buckets and blind panic to get a good amount of water. Finally he rushes to his drying line next to the river and struggles with a handful of old clothes, and dusty fabrics. He snarls because the damn things won’t stop being a problem, the blankets and rags more content with jamming his legs then helping him run back and bandage the stranger. 

Then suddenly the stranger is screaming again. She cries out in hoarse painful wails, tearing and clawing at the peaceful countryside. Broken and dying she lets a trail of tears carve though the dust and blood on her face, while Wandering Thought drops everything but the water and rushes to her side. Small hisses and groans escape her tortured fading body. Her own regret and failure do nothing to stop deaths slow march to her. She fights furiously to stay awake, and all she receives in return is the feeling of warm blood leaking from her body. With eyes closed shut she lets herself collapse and corrode further into death’s arms, the sound of her own heart releasing shards of hurt with every beat. She finally lets out a rattling sigh, because now she knows that despite everything she did in this life she’s going to die alone in pit of her own blood and regret, abandoned and soulless. 

But she’d like to see a little sunlight before she dies. Her eyes fold open and Chrysalis stares into two pools of worried blue eyes.

********************************************

Moonlight glows on a heavy canvas tent. The stench of her blood blends with the smell of strawberries and the scent of his sweat. She waits for the pain to stop, and he waits for her to sleep.

By Celestia she could scream, after she broke their gaze it was mostly all she would do for the rest of the day. If she wasn’t quietly cursing and hissing, she was shouting and tearing at his ear drums. Misery turns into rage, and on more than one occasion she’d bite and cut him, a little bit of his blood stolen from him to soak with hers on the discarded bandages on the floor. Hate, hate, hate her large body cracks and explodes with it even while dying. Patiently he’d wait with a hoof on her shoulder and another to try and fend off her weak legs, as they tried to claw and beat him. He can only feel pity and fear for this angry spiteful mess in front of him.

Then she would stop and stare at the ceiling of the tent. As if in a trance, her fury and rage would leave her body, leave behind an empty creature drained and exhausted. In this window of opportunity he’d rub ointment into those horrifying gashes on her side, and then cover them in bandages. Unable to stich the hard outer bone together he instead decided to pack the plates of exoskeleton as closely together as he can by wrapping them tightly, try and close some of the gaps. She’d gasp and sob a little while he gritted his teeth and apologised over and over again, then promises her that the pain will end soon. When the ordeal ended she’d search for his hooves with her disfigured pock-marked hooves full of holes. She’d find his hooves and then he’d hold hers, and he’d feed her a little vegetable soup or herbal tea while she’d often cry or moan. Quiet and well fed they would then worry together over her fragile damaged body. Her hooves would desperately grasp his while they both waited for crippling pain, silent death or peaceful sleep to take her. 

More often than not the pain takes her. Wandering Thoughts would then bite his lip as her anger and madness returns, the stranger being driven to insanity by her pain. She’d release his hooves and start shouting and thrashing. Then He’d have to put his hoof on her shoulder and it'd start all over again. However over the two past hours she started behaving differently. She started talking. 

In between her screams she’d say that Alicorns are a collection of weak selfish cowards, which would use lesser species to unfairly shield themselves from danger. Scream that she was Chrysalis! Queen of the Changeling union, all its nations, and all of its dominions and colonies! She’d shout it as if her words could split reality down the middle. Then she’d scream at how much of a failure she herself was, how she couldn’t even feed her people, that she should die cold and alone. With that over, she would lapse into another one of her cationic states and let the unicorn wash the blood off her shell while she’d calmly watch his shadows lengthen on the wall. It was during these times that he would listen closely, because rather than be angry with death’s closeness she would embrace death’s presence with despair and serenity. 

You see Wandering Thoughts isn’t like other ponies. To be honest he’s rather simple and a little boring. So when Chrysalis bragged of mighty nations and Alicorn weakness he paid little heed for he is, to be honest, a simple unicorn. But when Chrysalis finally calmed herself in the shadow of death he’d listen, since she’d release her most treasured memories like the rolling of great weights from her shoulders. Wandering Thoughts would always value the lovingly preserved secrets of a dying mare, rather than the boastful rambling of a remorseful tyrant.

She told him of things so precious and intimate that he’d lean in and drink in the memories of the places she’s been and the things she had done. She told him of the great hive capital of Effervo, of a citadel that stretched to the pits of hell to the heads of mountains, told him how proud she was of her first child when she held it to her chest, told him with a smile, how much she adored the smell of cave mushrooms in spring and the delicate taste of iced pollen in summer. Lastly she asked him to come a little closer and listen to her last words.

“I don’t know who you are, or where I am, but I thank you for holding Virgil and listening to these words. In life I thought I knew everything, but in death I realise I know so very little. I fought so hard for the love of my children, and sacrificed so much to bring them the love they deserve. But now I know you can’t fight and take love like a war trophy. You can’t take something that must be given. Tell my children I’m sorry I couldn’t feed them with the love from equestria. Tell them I’m sorry my love wasn’t enough. Tell them I’ll try harder next time.”

She said this moments ago, then held his hooves tightly and softly closed her eyes. He holds her hooves and stares out of the tent. Of all her speeches and rants this last one was both the worst and the best. He was blessed to hear such honest, desperate tenderness and love, yet cursed to hold her broken dreams and broken spirit in his heart, until he tells her children how she died in her ruined body. Darkness is cut by piercing beams of moonlight underneath a blanket of stars, and he cries for that lonely dying monster, for that beautiful terrible dictator, for that fierce angry mother, because she’ll die alone and so far away from the family she loved and sacrificed for. He cries because even the stars have their sisters, brothers, mother and father when they die, but she’ll fade away lonely and forgotten with neither her children’s voice in her ear, nor at home where she tasted iced pollen in summer. He cries because she’s suffering, and no matter what he does he can’t stop Chrysalis from withering away.

His crying suddenly turns into a silent terrible sobbing. He tries to breathe but can only steal ragged, frayed breaths of air. The night is still dark, the moon is still bright and Chrysalis is still dying.

He tidied her hair and washed the blood stains on her exoskeleton, but this can’t hide how she lies so limp and vulnerable, with only her two hooves grasping at Wandering Thought’s own. Her body is now frail and corpse like, her strong stubborn attitude and his unbreakable stare the only thing preventing her from leaving her wasted flesh and broken bones. He slowly looks down at the ground and breaks the silence.

“I’m sorry.” 

She doesn’t respond.

“I know it’s not your fault and it isn’t mine, but I’m sorry.”

The morning sun slowly chases the night away, while birds welcome the small fringes of sunlight with their song.

“I don’t know why we live in such a strange world, but I know that there is nothing but peace in the next. I don’t even know why your here, but from all the things you’ve told me, I think I know what you are. You don’t deserve this pain, this heart break.”

He leans in close and strokes a tangle of hair out of her ear. Despair and destructive hope bleeds from his words, like the blood from her scars. This is his last dumb idea, to save her life.

“Remember when you told me you needed love? How it sustained and nourished you and your family? Well I have a source of love that is never ending. You just need to listen to me so you can find it.”

Her grip tightens but he ignores it.

“At one point in my life I became a destructive hateful pony. I did many things I regret. I became something nobody could ever imagine. Even if my body was healthy I could feel the weight of all my guilt crushing my soul. In the end I just became tired, tired of hating, tired of how cold and hard my heart was, tired of living.”

She tilts her head a little closer and squeezes his hoof, urges him to hurry.

“Long story short I found myself in the strangest of places, a farm owned by an old mare in the middle of nowhere. She took me in and gave me reason. She’d never know it, but she gave me a home, a purpose and a friend. She saved me. Before she passed away I asked her “How should I bury you? Where should I put the pears? What will I do without you?” She told me to simply never stop loving then proceeded to abandon me and this world. Just like that I was hateful and destructive again. I buried her under an apple tree and then howled at her for leaving a giant hole in my heart. I hated her, I hated myself and I hated this world. How could I ever love anything again? And then after a month I found that a discarded pear had slowly grown into a small green shoot. I realised then that even if she’s gone, she was alive in that little green shoot. She was alive in every plant that she had touched, alive in the wind that spread pollen, alive in the sunlight that fed her farm, alive in me. All because she never stopped pouring her heart, soul and life into this land, never gave up on me. Even if you can’t feel her love in this land, know that you can feel mine and you can take all the love I have, because my love for her and her farm will never dry up, never compromise, never falter. It’ll be here after Celestia leaves and discord plunges this world into chaos, it’ll be here until time runs off the horizon. It'll be right here in the wind, in the water. ” 

Chrysalis is still silent, but already he thinks she looks a little better. He sends a small prayer into the pink dawn and closes his exhausted eyes, then falls asleep right next to the queen of changelings. 

The night is gone, the moon is hidden and Chrysalis is still alive.

> One dumb raven
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The soft cracking of broken bones and a rattling breath fill the tent. She turns her head to the tent opening; half open eyes stare at a mess of colour and light. A tiny sigh escapes her and she returns to stare at the canvas tent. She’d rather shut the world outside and ignore how far she fell. Rather stare at the knots and tangles of canvas then question why it’s here. Her eyes widen as a brutal grinding of broken bones and a monstrous fatigue both fight for her mind. She scolds herself to be more careful. She uses her horn to summon a change to her form, remove the weakness and pain from her body. But all she receives is a terrifying dark emptiness, not a trace of magic.

She drowns in terror, fears how disgusting and sickening she must be, her shell covered in deep scars of blood and darkness. She’s Afraid of life without magic, afraid of a life without her shape changing and blending. Then she promptly tosses the traitorous thoughts out of her mind and scowls at herself for being so selfish. How could she worry about herself when the hive is left leaderless and alone? In her eyes she was less than worthless if she can’t find her family. She deserves everything that happened, for failing the hive again, for failing herself. She deserves to be this miserable angry sack of broken bones and failure. She doesn’t deserve to see her children.  

As you can see, being raised in the hive somewhat lowers any ideas of individualism or self-worth.

A rather spiteful person would think that’s what she is though, a horrifically insecure sack of anger with an unbearable personality, a product of being raised in a society where the idea of an individual is not only detrimental but out-right hated and hunted down. She likes to throw it on others you see, throw all her petty insecurities and weakness on them, try and gain a little control from the community that told her she was worthless and weak without the hive. And because that society treats everyone the same, she never had any one to make her feel different, no one to set a particularly dejected sad little child on the right path, no one to make her feel safe. She had to convince herself that this lack of life and love made her independent and strong, that the hurt and loneliness didn’t make her an unhealthy boiling bag of rage. 

She’ll hurt murder and destroy not for some moral point, but because it’s easier, because no one told her it’s wrong, no one told her that the world doesn’t have to be sick or abusive, that she shouldn’t treat others like shit. She’ll gloat and boast, and string out that repulsive little laugh of hers not because she’s really that happy, but because if she’s been treated like crap all her life, then everyone needs to do some catching up. Even sitting there in that tent she wasn’t surprised by her agony because, well, that’s what life’s given her and that’s all she knows. It’s all she’ll ever deserve.

Instead of fidgeting any more she decides to stay stock still, no need to provoke the torment that lives in her body. Her closed eyes and tired mind beg for sleep to take her. Her armoured form can’t feel the bandages that hold her together and her tortured mind can barely remember her saviour. She barely remembers where she is or what she said. All she can think about is falling, crashing and someone’s blue eyes.

Too short-sighted and self-absorbed, she doesn’t quite notice the comatose unicorn sleeping next to her. 

*****************************	

She opens her eyes, and her body is still a damaged wreck. The only thing that’s changed is a tray of bread and water, and a curious visitor standing in front of a shard of midday light. Wreathed in black with two cold eyes, the visitor is severe and intense. With a dark unyielding frame it awkwardly steps into the tent.

Rather brave for a raven.

More curious then his brothers and sisters, the raven remains confused at the strange structure in the field and the strange smelling creature. But the raven knows its time is short, for the farm is haunted by a horrifying four-legged unicorn that stalks the fields. It steps through the tent and carefully pecks at a discarded bandage, tries to find some treasure in this forsaken land. Surprisingly enough Chrysalis remains subdued; two green eyes track the pest. The raven’s search finally brings it to the creature and his greedy eyes spark with the promise of blood, since the creature next to him looks further from life and closer to death. He steps a little closer, the smell of earth and dead flesh falls from a sharp cruel beak. Chrysalis uses the only part of her body that works, and her tongue whips out.   

Rather tasty for a raven.

With the taste of the bird’s feathers and the dusty air, she snaps the raven into a tomb of teeth and fangs. She chews slowly, because even if her tongue is undamaged her head feels like hell’s trying to claw its way out. Tiny trails of crimson fall and stick to her body while her tongue laps the bitter red nectar, she doesn’t want to waste a drop from the monumentally idiotic bird. 

Light spills into the tent’s only occupant, the canvas glows orange and gold. She bows her head as the warmth strokes her face, each bite of the raven bringing another tangle of her hair down. Brilliant blue green strands cover her face, her hair both unnatural and beautiful. Specks of red fall from brutal teeth covered in blood, two stunning green eyes watch them hit the ground. She lies there spread out in the sun’s gold, a broken triumphant queen in the farmer’s tent. But it’s not the bright strands of hair or the intense angelic eyes that make her beautiful. It’s that tiny unseen smile that does it. It’s surprising isn’t it? How a small open smile turns that changeling’s face into something honest and pure. How a little joy can burn away her discomfort and shame. 

It’s quite tragic, but she hardly ever uses that private smile of hers. She uses the other one though, her big arrogant grin that makes you want to punch her till she bleeds, uses it to remind you that you’re going to suffer for being weak and not strong like her, uses it to remind herself that she’s above all these inferior animals. But not that tiny hidden smile, it only appears when no one is looking. It grew on her face when her first child hatched, a goofy tired smile with uncontained love and pride spilling out of it. When she stood outside with her child, the bright sun soothing their skin, she’d hold it tight and pretends that nothing could stop the love of a mother and child. She knows that she’ll protect that small defenceless bundle, and that small bundle will protect her from her harsh desolate life. But she’s only pretending. For the good of the hive, she’ll let them take the child while they tell her that she is a strong queen for giving them such a soldier, she’ll nod her head and they’ll leave thanking her contribution to the union. Then she’ll break her hooves stomping the wall. 

And even if her eyes are small lakes of tears and anger, she’ll still have that little smile on her face because for the briefest of moments she was a winner. For the briefest of moments everything was perfect. For the briefest of moments she was lucky. So whenever the world looks at her kindly, she’ll tuck away that memory in the back of her mind, turn it into an anchor to stop life overwhelming her. For a crippled mess, having breakfast hop into your mouth is pretty lucky. A smile is still painted on her face.  

Then the tent flap opens, and he steps inside. He places a basket of fruit next to the opening. Hard cold air steals the warmth she took from the sun.

“Hello”

His words drop with unpleasant weight. She stays silent, her large eyes widen.

“Do you remember me? I helped fix you up”

His gaze drops to his side because her eyes are maddening. Her eyes will reach in and take his heart.

“I gave you some bread and water. Got some fruits as well”

She doesn’t know how to respond to generosity. Meaningless words of gratitude want to push out of her mouth. The changeling is helpless and mute.

“You’re going to be okay. It’s just going to take some time”

He reaches out, but she shrinks back.

“My name’s Wandering Thoughts. I’m going to make sure your better and I’m not going to hurt you. And no I don’t want it. I don’t want to be asked why I’m doing this or what I want out of this situation. I don’t deserve to watch someone die again. You don’t deserve to die.”

Now she’s worried, as his hooves reach out and squeezes her shoulders. She’s trembling because no one told her what to do when a stranger cares for you. And he’s wrong. She deserves nothing.

“Don’t touch me” She spits the words out.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”  

“Don’t touch me.” She throws the words at him.

“I’m no-“

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” She howls at him. And her voice shatters the small peace he worked so hard to make for her. She catches him in the face with a hoof. He stumbles around, a small dent of flesh on his temple. And she breathes heavily, miserable and guilty, while old wounds reopen. She bites back a sob as she tries to hold her body together. He recovers and stares at the demon in the tent.

The strangers look at each other and Chrysalis knows what will happen. She knows that he will bring a hoof down on her face, use magic to beat her, repay his bruise by breaking her. She’s seen it before, done it before and it’s been done to her. He’s going to beat her and then he will regain his dignity, make himself feel a little better and everything will make sense. She wants the beating because being hurt makes sense, being hurt is normal. She wants the beating because she doesn’t want to comprehend this dumb act of kindness that doesn’t fit in her world. She wants the beating because he’s maddening. His gentle voice, his calm, and his compassion; it’s maddening and disgusting. She wants to understand why this idiot gave so much of himself to her, saved her life when all she wanted was to die. She wants something to make sense.

“I’m sorry I touched you.”

“I want to go home.”

“Look at you. You can’t go anywhere.”

She takes a few seconds to stare at the ground. Bows her head and waits for punishment.

“I’m sorry I hit you.”

“It’s okay. I forgive you.”

Anger bubbles in her chest again because he doesn’t make sense.

“I don’t understand.”

“I forgive you. Don’t feel too bad about it”

“You shouldn’t forgive me.”

“Tough.”

He gets a little closer, decides to sit next to her frail form. She looks a little empty from learning that he will never make sense, that he will just accept her abuse. He gets an apple and slips it into her hooves, and she quietly stares downwards at that mundane fruit. Without her anger she looks lost.

“Can I feel your bandages?”

She peeks up underneath her shock of hair, and nods her head. For a small moment she’s only a hurt victim that wants to hide behind her hair. He helps her sit up then gently unfolds her legs. He put his arms underneath hers, feels the gnarled edge of vicious wounds. Methodically and coldly he checks the plates of bone that ruptured and broke from her collision.  Much to his satisfaction their healing up well but the bandages are too loose. He reaches under and sniffs the bandages, wonders if the sour smell of infection has set in. Either way he’s going to need to redress and clean them. 

She mutters close-mouthed words, his embrace both comforting and hellish. As quickly as it came, her anger is swallowed by his coarse touch. She keeps her head bowed down, the queen of changelings submissive and weak. All that intimacy and closeness is now brought back, back from the time she knew she was going to die in that crater and she had to hold his hooves because cruel abhorrent torture was dancing in her flesh. Her windows of green eyes stare at the apple in her hand, while his touch traces lines over unnatural canyons of bone. She closes her eyes because his touch is both too short and too long.  

He finishes and stands up; his hooves no longer feel the ruin left on her body. Suddenly she is shy and subdued because when he stood up he took something with him that she wanted. Words want to free themselves from a foolish mind, want to take what he stole from her. No matter how confused and hateful she is, she wants those few seconds of kindness and care.  His presence leaves and her muscles relax and tighten at the same time.     

With a small awkward grin, he laughs nervously. She’s still holding that apple in both her hooves like it’s going to bite her. He takes an apple from the basket and slowly bites down. She follows his lead, the smell and sound of the apple sweet and crisp.

“Better then you expected right?”

He steps out in to sunlight. 

She has a small smile painted on her face. 

> Chunks of water
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Come on its just a little further. Don’t worry I’ll catch you. Come on, I made you a bed, not some pile of old rugs and blankets, an actual bed. You can’t stop, if you stop then your broken bones is going to act up. I know it hurts but we’re nearly there.”

Her response is small pitiful groans. They fly from the bottom of her lungs, ragged torn up sounds. The clouds sink into the horizon. They fight the sunlight and form patches of grey. Unsubstantial drizzles of water struggle to the ground because the wind’s breath pulls them into leaves. And like the sun the pair’s progress is stunted and diminished, their bodies cling to each other like the rain on their bodies. 

“Please, a little further. Just lean on me.”

The changeling queen holds the short unicorn, her hair tangles in his pale white coat. Closeness is necessary and wanted. Heavy steps tumble into each other, each metre, each inch a monument to the stallion’s will. This grey little world only has her and him. 

“You said it. You said you wouldn’t hurt me. You lied” Words shaped like blades, words meant to wound. Spiteful isn’t she?

Her body needs to stop. Her body needs to steal more air. In a heartbeat her words plummet on to a strained conscience. Rips up the stallion’s burnt out heart, because he’s so spent trying to ease her pain. It hurts more then she knows.

“It’s going to be bad but it will be better. You’ll sleep on a comfy bed if we get home. Okay?”
“Okay. Promise to do my bandages again.”
“Yes. I promise”

The cold and dark track their prey stumbling across the fields. Tall stacks of shadow and wood make a cabin. It stands at about one and a half miles from the crater. Solid and real it holds out in the divide between sky and ground, a mountain in the tamed land that hugs the ground. As they near it the rain pounds out the smell from the cabin, the smell of stale wood in your hands. Rough, ragged squares give the cabin a window and a door. A mess of changeling and unicorn clump and hit the walls.

It’s those gaping holes in her hooves, holes that twist and bend air around itself in flight, holes that let changelings feel the pulse and pound of the tearing wind. They bog her down; suck her legs in a marriage of dirt and water. Each step rips out watery isolated earth and leaves them panting, exhausted. The sound of hinges groaning, the sound of a door complaining, and colour and light is lost on his mellow maze of hair and sweat. The blackness of a changeling’s shell eats the light, a black hole in the shape of a queen. Strength is spent and the quiet colour of a warm home fills their eyes.

“Over here. There you go, just make yourself comfortable. I’m going to make something to eat.”
“I’d like an apple” 
The Hushed voice barely reaches his ear, a feeble string of words shackled to a shallow breath. Joints pop and melt into the mattress he gave her.

A fire grows, decomposes wood into ash and collapses into scathing red. There was something in her heart that burned and stirred, like those sparks amongst that unruly fire. Warmth shrouds everything, hides her despair, and hides his desperation; two souls listening to the squeal of boiling water. A stale loaf soaks the fire, specks of burnt brown and black slowly growing on its skin. He’s leaning on a small stove now, his horn radiates because a tray hangs in the air, dragged down by a meal.  A crusty roll leaking crumbs, an apple stained with the splash of red a flash of green, a tenderly made cup of tea. She blows a whisper of steam across the feast, a small ghost of the food, a small ghost of her thanks. 

“Enjoy. I even got you an apple”
She grunts in acknowledgement. Kindness is short- lived and precious. Vicious and unfettered her pain tries to cut into her grunt.

Five days since the angel fell. Her bone is scarred and cracked; her wings are small torn dirty coughs of air. They’ve been healing though, the shattered plates of bone no longer move on her body like broken ice on water. She’s able to stand now, able to push her legs against the earth. For a few days she couldn’t use magic, but now her horn twitches and hums, a hungry dog waiting for food. Pain leaves her body more and more frequently. As surely as day turns to night, her injuries heal. 

“Wandering Thoughts?”
His name isn’t said often, he pays close attention.
“Yes”
A deafening pause, all her fondness for him turning into jittery nerves.
“Why are you looking after me?”
“Because she did. Because she took me in when I was in a dark place”
“The mare you told me about?” 
He didn’t realise she remembered, nor how blunt she could be.
“Yes. She helped me like I’m helping you”
He reaches for his own dinner while she suddenly becomes mute. She looks downwards, staggers on her words. Her wings flutter and twitch. 

I don’t deserve help. I’m not as good as you; don’t think I’ll ever be. I’m going to leave because no one has ever made me feel so worthless and so valuable. Your kindness is brutal. Say it chrysalis. Say it.

“I’m not as good as you. I’m not right in the head.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I don’t look after strangers, I don’t nurse a dying changeling back to health.”
A peal of silver laughter, he finds something funny while she’s bleaker then the gates of Tartarus. He digs into his meal; the words that leave him are light hearted, float into her mind and arrest her dark mood. 

“I don’t worship Celestia, I don’t forgive easily, and I don’t even wash my hooves sometimes. Does that make me bad? Do you think anyone gives a damn about the things I haven’t even done? You shouldn’t feel bad about what hasn’t happened. You shouldn’t regret.”
“I never used to. I never even thought twice. Then you did something to me.”
“I bandaged you up”
“You ruined me, I never had to look at myself until I met you. Never had to care.”
“So I should have killed you” 
Half question half statement, it sticks like an unpleasant stain.  
“I don’t know. It’s just that looking at you is like a mirror. Whenever I try to think about you, I think about myself, I wonder what I should have done”
“You shouldn’t”
“It’s hard when death was so close to me.”

Seconds slip out in between the words, a lull in conversation. She’s bold now. The unicorn moves to her side and sits down. Her sight is lost in the aged gnarled wall. The great body of the changeling queen a giant to the unicorn.

“I’ve done bad things”
“Have you?”
“Yes. I hit you”
“That’s fine”
“I invaded equestria”
“That’s pretty major”
“I defeated a god”
“That’s also pretty major”
She bites her lip. She knows which of her sins will draw a reaction from him. It’s not the big details, it’s the small ones.
“I lied and deceived. I disguised myself as a bride and stole her groom. I taunted, shouted and hounded. The hive paid the price for my mistake.”

Her stare is cold and hard, tries to penetrate the walls and run away from the conflict in her head. It’s not her conscience she wrestles with; she made her peace with her actions a long time ago. She wrestles with the disappointment that will flow from his mouth. It will hurt more than her scars.

“You did the wrong things for the right reason. You did it for your family”
“It’s not enough of a reason for you, is it?”

He reaches out for her, wants to fight away the anxiety that feeds on her. He touches her and she shrugs him off, a cold angry action that stops him from comforting the changeling. She’s tired of his loaded words and opinions, tired of him invading her mind. How dare he take away her thoughts. How dare he make insignificant moments last a lifetime. How dare he replace everything with his smile. Dense and suffocating, her feelings strangle the world and her mind walls it off. You can see the rage which wakes on the surface of her. She’s still staring at the wall.

A sudden flash of aggression. He breaks her gaze. Firmly her head is pulled to his face, a stubborn stare collapsing into surprise, her wide eyes staring at two hardened ones. His gaze is metal, unyielding, and brilliant. He’s holding her face in his hooves, an assault of bravery and good intentions, his grip as solid and serious as his gaze. She releases her animosity, it’s nothingness floating on the sound of soft and heavy breaths. A stab of shock on her face, next to the hooves that hold her head.  

“Look at me Chrysalis. You love your family. You’d defeat a god and invade a nation for them. I wouldn’t act like an ass, but I’d do it as well. You’d do anything for them. You’re alright.”
“Alright?”
“Yeah alright. You know that old mare? She was alright. She always told me to be kind to everyone I met, because everyone is fighting a hard battle. Life is a struggle that the selfish can’t understand, they don’t want to. We look out for everyone that’s fighting or struggling.”
The sound of a whisper. Their voices are coarse barely heard noises.
“I’m not fighting as hard as you”
“No. You just had a harder fight. You didn’t have anyone to help you.”

There was a small patch of flesh where his hooves touched her face. It was cold and hot, a paradox between the two, something massive that wanted to break out. It held itself in their thoughts while it grew and grew in their minds and hearts. A silly thing, a feverish waking dream, disappeared when they tried to take make of sense of what they felt.  She’s closing her eyes now, leans in to a pair of shaking hooves that still hold her, screws up her face and listens. Listens closely and fiercely to affection and tenderness, wants to force it from his hooves into her skin. 

The silence speaks of things better un-said, it wraps itself in what they remember, and they can’t forget this brittle delicate memory. His hooves drop to his sides. A useless pair of limbs. Something has gone, something has disappeared, something has been changed and can’t be taken back. They’re both blushing, a fierce rush of colour fires underneath her cheeks, hard to see under the exoskeleton. His back is now turned and he’s made a gulf between them.

She moves across the gulf. Massive legs cross each other and she holds him. Now he drowns in her embrace and they lean in to each other on a creaky broken mattress. Holds him in her large gangly limbs, lifts her legs over him and envelopes him in her worry and admiration. Alive in that instance, she kills the fear and stress that lives in his joints and muscles. It’s a hell of cold wind and grey light outside; it tells us that we need to shelter ourselves in the company of others when the weather breaks down into fragments of piercing wind. It speaks of a lost evening of warmness and a breakable strength that lives in all moments shared.

“Thank you.”

She frees him with a small squeeze. He was a tiny mess of nerves and concern in her hug. His meal is half finished, lost and forgotten. The fading fire gives a layer of auburn, wind peeling through cracks, wailing disappearing heat.  

“Serious today aren’t you Chrysalis?”
He tries to bring confidence and humour back into the cabin. He’s turned to face her. 

“Yes, I am” 
She’s a sharp mouth of jagged points and fangs, a grinning cheeky face. There are excited eyes, feels like she climbed a mountain.

There is a place that she dreams of, more of a time actually. She loves someone and they love her, there is safety and happiness. She reads maps, schematics, blue prints, but have never read the romance novels full of crap. She doesn’t know what romance or affairs of the heart are, so she settles for this.  Settles for the promise that they would make for each other in her dream, semi whispered ideas that would make her smile.

Then he trips over his meal, and her laughter rings out, bounces against the walls of the cabin.

********************************

The sleep is urgent really. There is no hushed small talk at midnight, they both fell into sleep let wakefulness pour out of their heads. They slept on separate beds and slept comfortably but they both wanted something. They don’t know what it is yet, so they talk and fight in their dreams. It’s a fire that wants to step into the past and it fends of the cold outside. Small shadows shudder and dance around the cabin that sleeps.

The night is cold iron, it can’t reach them. Dark is weighty and formless, stretches out from unseen corners. Wind would whip and chase the reduced clouds of dust across the domesticated land, but there is no movement because nothing is awake, no one cares because the night is abandoned. A god cries for her followers that shun the night, a parody of religion. Luna can ask questions at this night and receive no answers. This is how night lives here, and how it should be, unbodied and without end far away from the borders of equestria. It’s all around, the love and hate we feel for the darkness. 

There is a patch of darkness that moves. A small bump of life that’s now gone. The hidden moon builds a kingdom of moonlight on top of thick boiling clouds, while something glides. How long did it travel, how long did day and night blur around it. Where are its eyes underneath that hood of darkness? Does it land with soft hooves? It’s in the crater now; its heart is the murderous one we hide in ours. The royal guard unfurls its wings. 

> Two days
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first night was a remedy to his fears of discovery, windy dark and cold. They wouldn’t stare out at his shadow that crept slowly, relived the pair’s steps. The shadow crawled from the cut-out injury of earth to the hollow tent, finally reached the cabin. Trails blackness like ink, Silence like unwanted secrets. The guard bowed his head and stared at the abomination, an unnatural concept of hate and promised violence. Her hair is limp strands that fade into black, colours suffocate on the dying fires soul. There’s a plain unicorn sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

She is too beautiful. It’s a sin not a compliment. There will be soft winds and soft whispers in his mind telling him not to kill her. Can you see how pony-like she is? Does she speak with a pony’s voice think with a pony’s mind? There is an answer in the small frown and sigh that comes from the sleeping changeling, tells the guard of innocence, how all things have goodness that can’t die and be replaced. But he refuses to understand.

There used to be hope and foolish dreams. There used to be a comfortable ignorance, love can grow strong. Love would grow and hate diminished every day, you could see it in the proud citizens. Then it happened. Chrysalis. The cancer. The parasite queen which annihilated the hope for safety, ripped up the illusion of security, twisted love into something else. Did you see her? She was the eye in a tempest of green fire, hellish and made of cold heat, she cast down our god. She cast down Celestia. There are Changelings in our nightmares now, they would gorge on fear and walk into the waking world. Everyone’s a changeling and everywhere that fear grows in equestria. It’s a fear with no flesh, a fear based on a threat that doesn’t exist. A fear of the death of god. Trust is shaken up and replaced. Where did Equestria’s love go?

This was ironic. This was delicious. There was a kind of love, a fiery misguided spectre that leads the lynch mobs and vigilantes. They thought that they could protect their family by rounding up the enemy; their love urged them to destroy the changelings, to make their children safe. It was there when the guard saw the scared changeling turned into a bloodied wreck. A circle of hooves snatching life and blood, a dull stamping and thudding while the changeling’s gaze followed the sky. There is a god of the sun and a changeling queen, but they both forgot about that pathetic creature having the shit kicked out of it. The colour of green blood, the brutality of bent flesh. It was an hour after the failed invasion, a handful of changelings were left behind. The guards were told to stop the ponies from killing the changeling. They all watched the changeling limp away into the wilderness. Some cried, some didn’t watch, most were silent. Most wanted to finish the beating they started. Kill the changeling. 

Shining Armour tried to talk to the crowds but they didn’t trust his soft well-meaning nature. Shining armour was noble and honourable but didn’t have murder stamped in his soul, couldn’t reach out and stab a changeling, watch the life fade from its disgusting body. Do what was needed to save family from the changeling threat as substantial as wind in your hand. The guard knew there was no changeling threat, but he knew that most thought there was. That equestria will start committing atrocities in the name of love, that soon ponies’ will hold a little bit of hell in their hearts. Unless he brought back the corpse of the queen. One monstrous act to give security back to them.

So they sent the guard out to track her and kill her. The guard had murder stamped on it’s soul. 

A detached mind wondered why justice and harmony has to strike down on evil when its weakest. Will it hurt, will I care? Follow orders soldier. Cut off your mind and let morality be a higher-up’s problem. You will give the queen blinding light and darkness. Kill her, let Tartarus sort out her shrivelled up soul. I am the evil that good people want to punish evil with.

The guard vanishes from the cabin to a congregation of trees. The guard perches there amongst the unlit dimness. The enemy has a strong exoskeleton, has witchcraft that would tear holes out of the guard, has a potentially dangerous unicorn under her thrall. The guard will wait and watch. There is a desire for peace and life in that guard’s identity, but it’s lost in an eternity of wants, lost in the moral annoyance of taking a life.

**********************

There was a rhythm that evolved from them. For the next two weeks there is the long stretches of the day and the intimate, intricate hours after waking, the hours after sleep. Short time well spent, a time thought of endlessly. In the long day he would reap his crop and she would follow. Her injuries have sapped most of her strength, but her will is iron. The giant changeling queen is a colossal, unfit, unmade shadow for the unicorn. Large beams of hard harsh white light flow from his horn, give life and movement to the vegetables and fruits that tumble and scramble out of earth, out of trees. 

“Why do you farm? How can you harvest every day?”
“Because of goodness. Because of magic. Now hold this.”

She knows that he would steal glances at her. His entire body would twist, shy eyes would meet her curious glints of green light. But he would quickly shudder, a tremble of nerves, a useless excuse to look away from her eyes. He never saw that delirious spilling smile on her. It was almost unhealthy the joy seeping from her, the joy he gives her. She’s flying everyday even if her wings are crippled and torn. Just turn around and see her smiling. Turn around and place a kiss, kiss her right here in the strawberry field. Put a hoof through her hair and taste her tongue. Instead he’d only harvest, his face a scarlet fire she can’t see.

Two weeks is such a short time for her to recover. But she’s getting there. She can make firm stubborn steps that defy her wounds. She can use some of her changeling magic to change her voice, he’d laugh at the heavy polished voices, laugh at the artificial bird song rising from her lungs. She can bandage and dress herself, but the pair prefers it when he’d touch her. They know what they want. They just refuse to say it.

“Where are you going? Help me farm you lazy changeling!” His voice is said from a smile, words struggle hard not to turn themselves into laughter. He chuckles afterwards, throws a well-aimed carrot at her. 
“I’ve made a decision” She half scowls, it’s a playful look, blends exasperation and mirth. He locks her face in his mind.
“You’re going to laze around?”
“I’m going to make dinner from now on. If you’re lucky I might decide to poison you.” Another well-aimed carrot.
“Carrot soup it is!”
There. It’s decided. She’d make dinner every day for two weeks. A brush with death can’t rid a lifetime of being a bossy misanthropist.

Boiling, frying and baking. The snapping of oil. The dry crack of a warming oven. She’d clean her hooves and water would churn and mutter through those abnormal holes in her hooves. Swathes of sunlight and fire crash together on beads of sweat, on the landscape of black chitin, she’s there every day in that cabin. Every day she’d focus hard to make something perfect, something real. Then he’d barrel in with an apple and a small plain smile, a curve of the mouth lost in daydreams. She’d let him wrap his legs around her, a tight hug that pulls them together. Then she’d bat him away with her scrawny legs, a grin and a shout as he gets a couple of trays.

Where did it go? The anger and the rage. The sleepless nights and the broken hooves. The sorrow and the cold. The weakness and the spite. It’s a distant shade of memories. Maybe we can find the grave where she dumped all that hate and abuse, find out where she buried those corrosive memories. Those corrosive memories always seem to come back though. About two weeks has passed. It was then that the she decided she’d try and fly. For a few glorious seconds she could feel the cold and wind that tried to pull birds back to the ground. Then she fell ten feet. Did the sky abandon her? Did the sky reject her? Let it be. Let hopelessness crawl back in through the scars. Let her stare at the clouds. 

There is a quiet gasp. A private sound only she can hear. Suddenly her left side is occupied by something warm and worried. It’s him isn’t it? It was always him.

“Hi.”
She doesn’t know why but she wants to bash in his face.
“What are we doing here?”
Chrysalis doesn’t feel like answering. She feels like letting frustration control her body again. That’s the sad truth I’m afraid. You can’t bury hate and anger like this. It’ll haunt her. Its sewn into her soul. She’s become the unwanted sorrow and fury. It’s why she’ll scream and cry for no real reason. It’s why the simple act of falling ten feet can make her unstable. It’s why she hit him when they lay together where she fell, overpowered him and drew her hooves back; hit him in jittery clawing actions. She thought that together, they could fix her burnt out heart. Why does she love him so much? 

She leant down and bites him. Right there outside the cabin. Right there on the shoulder. Right there a tight ring of teeth marks. The taste of blood. He lets out a hurt sigh, gasps because her teeth are meant to cut through flesh. She stops above him, an insignificant strand of his skin and hair stuck in her teeth. You’re delicious and I don’t really want to bite you. I don’t want to hurt you. But it’s funny the things I do because I’ve been abused, because my wings can’t work.

As sure as rain, her anger passes. There is a serenity that wants to swallow them. He knows she wants to apologise.

“I’m bleeding”
She leans down again and rubs her broad head against his neck. Wants to drown in him. She licks the blood from the bite. She didn’t really hit him hard; it was only the bite that hurt.
“What’s wrong with you Chrysalis?”
He’s a freak isn’t he? He probably dreams of the hurt, wants perverse pain that she inflicts. 
No. 
He lets her hurt him because she is terrifying and real. It’s a familiar landscape that only he’s seen. No matter how much she hurts him, this is a world only she can share with him. Even if it’s unhealthy they have something no one else has. It’s ferocious and never ending, unstoppable. A waterless flood and an endless fire. Why does he love her so much?

“Nothing’s wrong with you is there?”
Her hushed scared words slip out. He’s watched her fall apart again. He stares upwards. The clouds would chase each other forever in that endless sky. He kisses her. He’s never felt so brave and afraid in his life. He trails through her hair and she shakes so slightly.

Let it last a little longer.

They pull away. He has half closed eyes and a blush. It was always him wasn’t it? He’d like to bask but she pulls them together. He kisses her eyes, the corner of her mouth, kisses her neck. Hold and tear at one another. Their heads collide and crash with each kiss, shaky laughter from both of them. There is a world out there that made them. There are families and nations and a royal guard that wants to kill them. It doesn’t matter. Right now it doesn’t matter at all.

“Stay with me. Just a while.”
“Okay”

They held each other in their hooves.  A Normal smooth hoof and a hoof full of holes. A crash of darkness and light. The sky and the clouds would fall into blue, then dark blue, then darker blue. The pair only held each other as the sun ran across the horizon, left behind small specks of gold that could be seen in that sunset. There is an inky moonlight now. It’s the dusty light which makes things darker. Now he steps up and she follows. It’s like their silhouette is one. 

The tangle of a changeling and a unicorn. Their hair a shambles of green and dense knots. Hide in an embrace. The bed could have them both if they squeezed, they stayed pressed against each other all night. Few words are said. Silence is golden, is wanted. Needed. Come in and smell the smoke, smell their scent. If you close your eyes and listen closely they breathe at the same time, a crescendo of sighs. The light is another dying fire; the colour of candlelight on your skin. 

The whole world is breathing and sleeping.

Their whole world is breathing and sleeping.

**************************

This is the dawn. It is the miasma of pollen and stacks of pink light. It’s the sky and the horizon exploding into pink, blood red, arms of yellow.  The fragrance of it wants to break into the cabin. The cabin glows in dawn light. It’s a haze, dust in sunlight fidgets with the sound of his snoring. He lies amongst his dreams, a wakeful day is far away. She lies awake; we won’t know what ideas or wants go through her. The guard didn’t sleep, eyes are restless orbs of darkness, can see light swallowed in them. 

Their love doesn’t matter. It’s unnatural and a waste of time. It won’t work, can’t work. But this guard’s plan can work. It will be two days of this desperate pseudo love clinging to them. Then the guard will come down and kill her. Two days. 

> exposed
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The scent of the morning bursts into the cabin; it’s pushed by the dawn. A spike of cold from the wind and abrasive bird song want to wake the lovers. This morning shakes off flakes of blue iron light. Shadows are paralysed underneath that overcast sky. They lie there in the damp light, the changeling already awake. Her eyes are open and she would stare down to the rise of his chest. She wonders how much a picture of sunlight and his scent would cost. She wonders if it would tremble, if the very idea of him would move and change in her mind or if he’s the exception to the rule, if he will last forever in her head. Nothing lasts forever. Stop starring Chrysalis. 

She stops starring and kisses his forehead.  Light trapped between her lips and his skin; she puts something intangible and immaterial into this simple act. His eyes fade from the darkness of sleep to the washed out colour of the waking world. His breath shimmers in the blue dawn, then breaks apart, moves into the damned world outside. He’s a perplexed crumple of boyish looks, a statuesque male that doesn’t know where he is. Then he breathes out and kisses her neck, adds teeth to this kiss, an attenuated bite. He’s hungry for the taste of her, hungry for that diminutive gasp when his teeth brush past her. His hoof parts through hair like smoke from the cabin wrestling with that mangled blue-black dawn.

A great barrier has fractured, something has opened. Something has grown. It’s so alive and forceful that their past lives are fleeting thoughts made of cobwebs. They share this tiny bed while the inconsistent tug of war between day and night continues. The morning would fade and they’d press into each other. The smell of his pale coat, cradled by the strangle-hold of her legs. The dull thud of her heart, scrutinised by his ears buried in her chest. The couple would rest there in the gruff fortress of soft edges and blankets, astonished as to how life can twist so strangely.   

He’d kiss her, and then kiss one of her scars. Then they’d both leave the bed, her following, and work the farm for a few hours. The shadow of two bodies pressed into one another. 
“What are we?”
Her husky mature voice is stilted with worry. He appreciates her voice. 
“A unicorn and a changeling. We’re the good guys.”
“No. What are we?”
A pause that floats in a sea of pointless bird song and wind.
“We’re in love”
“We are?”
“Yes”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Definitely”
“I wonder if you love me like you love this land.”
“No. It’s different. I’ve fallen for you really bad. I can’t stop it. It scares me.”
“I’m scared too.” 

They huddle and shuffle together. She still limps slightly. The sound of their movement swallowed by that uncaring dirty blue daylight. They tread on leaves maimed by the immoderate wind, a blanket of forgotten violence stamped into the ground.

“I’ll have to rethink everything. I can’t just force you to farm with me.”
“What.”
“I’m going to marry you. Under a house of Luna”
“Luna?”
“Yes. Luna, true god of the night”
A small roguish smile stretched on his face. It manages to look tired and tender at the same time.
“Who do you think I prayed to?”
“I thought you just prayed to anyone that would hear.”
“No, I prayed to Luna. I prayed for you.”

A question – no, more of a statement hangs there in the air.

“You’re going to marry me.”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Is it like sex?”
She’s old and wise yet certain knowledge eludes her, as well as social etiquette. In the decoloured light her curiosity and ignorance resembles youth.  He’s blushing now, bless him. 
“No - I mean yes.”
He’s an exasperated foal again, a crimson face because he imagines making love to her.
“So yes. It is like sex.”
“They can be considered the same. It means I love you.”
“I already know that.”
She reaches down, cool lips touch his cheeks. His is love is a feast, it keeps her alive in more ways than one. 
“No. it’s not just that. It means I’m showing you how much I love you. It means I’m committing to you. To us. It also means…”
There the taboo in his head. 
“We have sex.”
He feels the need to clarify.
“We make love.”
Light ringing laughter spills out, it makes her strong and beautiful. A sheepish helpless flicker in his eyes.	
“The Hive wouldn’t like you. You’re weird”
“You like me though, right?”
A crooked teasing smile on her face.
“Hmm. Sometimes”
“Damn” 

He will always remember this sharp cold air, and her teasing smile. He could only remember being touched by the sarcasm and black humour she put in her jokes. He’ll remember how large blue worlds smother the black edges of a withering day. How everything shifts and frays around her. How everything is a false cavernous hole compared to her, because she fills reality with something else. Something pure. Something that’s more of a force then something you can hold. He tries to contain it in his heart, but it melts and spills to his stomach, he feels a winded ravaging in his gut when he looks at her. Fucking hell, it’s good. Fucking hell, it’s terrifying.

“We’ll adopt a foal. We’ll make a family. We’ll make a bigger home on my farm.”
Those words create something inside both of them, as if the home is made already.
“We can have offspring you know.” 
A curious set of words that she tosses out without thought, they land next to his daydreams. They are incendiary thoughts.
“What did you say?”
“We can have offspring. They will be changelings, but they will take on the form of their father.”
“How?”
“A changeling changes more then light and darkness. We shape our flesh and mind. Only our souls cling to us. Everything else is borrowed. Everything else is” 
A pause and a small scowl. A difficult idea to make in words. 
“Ambiguous.”

“Only offspring aren’t ambiguous. They share blood and memories. They are ourselves, but in another time. An extension of us.  I can change the blood and memories of my body to nourish any seed.”

She continues to limp on that hard bruised earth. Dew would form pools of dark water that deteriorates the dim blue light. She slowly moves her wings through that dense moist air. For a few seconds everything is a purgatory of overcast blue light and her inescapable words.

“The changeling union monitors all reproduction of its members for the good of the hive.”

There is cavernous shadow in her words. It weighs down on her voice and chokes off inflection. Her voice transforms from uncomfortable, to distant and neutral. Her past slithered and died in that frozen voice of hers. He’s more scared by this then her injuries.

“Females are categorised. There are five castes. I was part of the queen caste. We learn how to have sex with a drone. Then it happens. We are left with a child. Once a changeling is birthed we can become queen of either a splinter hive or nest. I cared for a nest. I report to the union.”   

Solid lament that hides in the dull shadows of day. Why Chrysalis? Why these words now? Iron blue light settles in the tired creases on her face. She looks half made.

“We are fed, given shelter and given orders. We become strong without family”

There. A broken lie that’s wrapped in empty words. 

“Who do we belong to? How are we made, how do we live? I don’t know if I can make a family, I don’t know who they will belong to. Will they lament me; will they cry out with no identity, with nothing to belong to? It'll go to shit like everything else I tried to do.”

Pain drips from those stale faded words. It drops from unanswerable questions into the dirt and grass underneath her. 

“I can only belong to the swarm.”

Less of a sentence. More a stillborn collection of abuse.  She’s still walking, but her voice is dead. Left behind in the cold moisture that drips off the vines and leaves. Away from the hive and swarm she can breathe, she can look at a life. She looks hard enough and sees that he lives in her dreams now. He stands next to her in a future. There is his smile and the smell of cave mushrooms. In this delirium she can hold their children, she would teach them changeling and he would teach them equestrian. They would kiss their children goodnight and fend off the darkness together. There is a house made of stone and wood, a small wind chime perches next to the front door. A basket of apples he picks for her, left in the kitchen. A night hides her family in a pattern of stars and inky blackness.
It might never happen.
It might happen.

Her head hangs low. There are no steps left in her hooves. Trembling coughs and stutters follow out of her mouth. She tries to wipe her tears but she’s choking on grief and remorse, her tears ignite into afterthoughts of dusty light. These are not the hot tears of anger and hurt, they don’t trail and pool in a face of rage, don’t slide through an apathetic visage. Its tears that respond to what she wants to forget. It’s a sadness and joy that compacts her face into tired lines of mortality. It’s the birth of a freedom in her mind. The death of those demons stitched to her anger.

Her past is now her past. In an overwhelming rush of clarity, she can see dark memories and un-reconciled conflict where they should be. Far away from the present, far away from the choices she needs to make. For now the oppressive darkness of the past can’t touch her, can’t guide her to a violent conqueror’s end. A watery wail from her chest rides the stammering of her breath, the beating of a heart. It’s the exhausting desperate crying that burns us down and builds us up. If you listen to the sounds of it, you can hear the promise of healing. Broken things remade. Now he’s all around her, an embrace of protection and life. The world turns hushed.

“It’s okay”

He cradles these words like he cradles her. Another sob leaves her and the emotion is a melancholy that was denied from her a long time ago. It’s the consuming weeping that she could never find, but always wanted. She’s remade in a torrent of unsuppressed mourning. She can hear the voice of a future in between frenzied gulps of air. You can live Chrysalis. You can be free.

Puffy green eyes open. There is salvation and redemption in the caged space between his hooves and her body. Memories destroyed, memories saved, memories made. 

“We belong together here. You belong to yourself and your dreams. I belong to you”
His savage feeble tumble of words. The exposed honesty is touching. A weakness which is strength. Their foreheads touch and the pale heat of their breath collides and crashes in that moment. He kisses her and those words escape again.
I belong to you. 
A collision of lips. 
I belong to you. 
His mouth on her neck. 
I belong to you.

Then she holds him so tight a small breath leaves them both. She feels that tight coil of ribs underneath his skin; it’s frightening how much affection she can feel. With this moment an intense empathy, it agglomerates among the blood and muscle in his heart. A reckless smile eclipses on his shattered face. He is just as ragged and depleted as the queen that’s shackled to him.
I belong to you.
Less of a mantra more a gladness to be alive. Now they share that fragmented genuine smile, and a laugh of heart-breaking victory, of realisation. The laugh sways and buckles in that sky, weighed down by all their hope and dreams and promises. Those words that can only spill and dance in their joy. They say it together, laughing at how strange it is to be alive at all. They stand together just washing their souls. For a stolen moment heaven isn’t far away.

And that hushed sacred sentence he gives her is the same one that is etched in her mind.

Our children will belong to us. 

*************************

The guard is unhinged and distant. 
Carved out memories and promises from a vanished life. Dark water slipping off dark fragments of armour. He dwells in the hollowed out part of his mind, away from the cold and hunger that consumes his body. The guard releases a pinched dirty cough, a symptom to his dishevelled living. His hooves ache from the traps he’s made and the conscious he wrestles with. He wrestles because they said they belong to each other, because those words are more truthful then this thin empty world and his strained spirit. 

Injustice heaped on injustice. The guard resents her. She fucked up equestria then fell in love. The unicorn loved her back. He would care and comfort a tyrant and conqueror. If only their love could be torn up, if only indestructible things can be destroyed. A lack of real sleep and shelter has released something demented and abhorrent in the guard. It uncoils in the guard’s mind, stokes the unspoken ideas of hatred and justice. The guard nods off then wakes alone in a pool of feverish memories. Its all memories.

Lessened the guard stands amongst the dark drops of dew. Fearless hopeless thoughts crawl through his brain and sleep in his flesh. They jitter and cry things he doesn’t want to understand. It’s all gone. I don’t know why but it’s all gone. I can’t go home. When I kill her I will then be so far from home that I can only watch it from a distance. I can’t sleep in my bed because I murdered and promised to murder. I can’t eat those ostentatious cakes on the corner of Sugar Street and Victory Street. I can’t hold him. Oh Celestia my heart. My heart.

Sharpened plates of armour. A shard of metal. Matches. 

The guard lights a match. The fire is rabid and hungry, it consumes the tree and the kindling the guard set around it. A tense determined hour is all it takes to see large gashes of smoke rise from the tree’s charred flesh. There is a finality in the crackling and snapping that dominates the vacant landscape. Soon she will die along with something in the guard’s essence. The guard moves a hundred paces in front of the fire. The apple orchid hides him in a blur of red, green and darkness. A feather from the guard breaks free, drifts amongst the embers. It lies there amongst the green and specks of dirty ash like a guilty conscience. 

Its all memories.







This line starts the comment

Sorry for the wait. I went camping for a week and fell down a cliff. Surprisingly it only hurt my foot. Thanks for the comments and favs. If anyone could tell me how to get this to Equestria daily I'd be glad. You should follow me because I have another idea lined up after this one, an idea involving our favorite deities. There will be a chapter sometime next week. There will be tragedy.

This line ends the comment

> shudder of light
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The smoke pushes itself among the blue of it all, a smouldering hellish entity; overshadows sunlight. The horizon is decapitated. A scarce blade of embers and ash cleaves it in half. Happiness then confusion, confusion then worry. The pair knows that someone is in this farm with them. 

They cross the fields and reach a tiny crest of land. From here they can see the tree on fire and it’s surroundings, they don’t bother to look upwards. Flames still coil and twist small heaves of wheezing smoke. The tree struggles in itself, licking lapsing tongues of red, tips of yellow. Other trees remain untouched around the burning stack of carbon. A ring of witnesses to a murder. The whining popping is the burning tree’s audacious last words. 

“It isn’t natural is it.”
Stiff taut words. No question mark, just a stark full stop. It’s a contrast to the unrestrained joy that vibrated through the air just a few minutes ago. 

“Don’t worry.”
Those words aren’t only there for her.
“Follow me. We’re going to put out this fire.”
He leans over and into her. Another snug entwining in a countless number of them. Their eyes are open as they try to hold something vast and invisible in each other’s arms. How many times? How many is needed?

A clutch of each other, a union of changeling and unicorn. A humming breathing thing lives between them. An affection, a closeness that never left from their first encounter. Not even a semblance of desperation or despair.

“We’re going to the river. Can you hold buckets?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Three. No, maybe four”
“Good”

Blue light summons lakes of umbra in their hoof steps. They step in time with each other, still close and touching. As the overcast sky mumbles in its movement they walk a little faster. They reach the river, spectres born of worry in their heads and the spectres burst out.
He worries she’ll be in danger. 
She worries he’ll be in danger. 
In a way they worry about the same thing. 

They step to the edge of emanating water. The water reaches forward and snares earth and rock to it’s trails and eddies. The hands of the river pushes out the smell of fresh water, green and glittering the surface of it the river you see in spring. The cold is immersed in the water and the water is immersed in itself. It gurgles and babbles in a bewildered loneliness, speaks to anything that would listen. But the pair are urgent, and they pay no heed to the river and her solitude.

The tools piled on the river’s side. Three buckets, wash basin, bath tub, two pitchers, washed out cauldron. They pick what they can. He reaches down into the river, and like a shock of fire the water’s skin breaks and engulfs the rim of that bucket. Cool transparent liquid inside the empty space.

When he bends back up she’s bent over the side of the river with a stern grim frown on her face. She’s tall, a clash of green and black on the crown of her, the slender body folded against her, long legs. She’s wanted. There again a rush of thought and dreams to his head. It’s absurd how she can always look so beautiful. It’s absurd how much he needs her.    

“You’re never going to starve.”
“What.”
“I’m going feed you and protect you and make you happy.”
“Who cooks dinner?”
“I’m going to marry you I swear it”

A laugh that’s short. With joy.

“This again?”
“I mean it. I’m going to make you safe. We’re going to be happy.”
“I’m double your size and a changeling queen. I’m going to make you safe.”

They grunt as they heave the water out of the river.

“We’re going to be happy”
“Yes I know.”
“I love you.”
“You’re so weird.”
“I love you.”

Exasperated and beaming. She takes the time to grin at him.

“Yes. You already know it.”
“Yeah”
“Okay”
“I love you, you know.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I’m annoying. I just. I’m just excited.”
It’s the first time he heard that sound. A giggle that lilts from the tip of her tongue, the stretch of her lips. For a scarce second she’s someone else.  
“I like you when you’re annoying.” 

“Oh crap.”

His two words, it drags it all down to a screeching halt. The words hit the bottom of her stomach; threat and fear bud and germinate in the river, in the grass.

“What?”
“My hoof just went straight through the ground.”
“Are you okay? Are you?”
“Shh. I’m fine. Don’t worry. I’m not hurt.”
“I’m not worrying.”
“You are.”
“Can’t help it.”
“Yeah, I know. I know.”
“What do you see?”
“It was like a blanket was covered over a hole. The blanket, I think, was covered in a layer of earth so I couldn’t see it. I’m about half a metre in the ground.  On my back left hoof. I’m pretty stuck right now.
“Someone trapped you.”
“Yeah”
“You scared?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
They were both lying so obviously it wasn’t a lie at all.

Lightning from a flurry of it. Lands a feet away from her, beats and pummels her retinas with whiteness. The guard missed, lightening is hard to aim anyway. A shadow in the shape of wings, it flies from a cloud. A clumsily made net is thrown. A wide arc and then it tangles in her. She stumbles in her blindness and in a net. 
The shadow lands. 
A glint of metal. 
There is a struggle, two fighters and the brief shout of harsh words, surprised words put up their hooves and ask for peace. Flesh is pushed aside the tip of the shard, slides into a warm body. I can’t think of the sound of it. Oh fuck the sight of it.

The blade bathed in blood isn’t as vicious as the Guard’s face, a frown dangerous and edged, a smile grim and unhappy. Sullen brooding visage, two sunken pits filled with eyes and shadow. Don’t stare at them; you’ll see an ugly hell. The commitment, loyalty and love on top of all of it, sustains him like the blood in his veins. The violence of it extends out and crushes peace in such a clichéd way. 

The guard steps away from the bleeding unicorn, the unicorn crumples on himself. The wound weeps crimson. No time for regret.

The guard’s sight finds the fallen changeling, and in a brash furious gait he follows his sight’s steps. She’s struggling with the net, struggles with ancient wounds that have reopened, struggles with the worry. The thought of him stabbed and alone, it holds her hooves down. The guard leaps. Then a frenzied detachment of her emerges through the netting. Her limbs into the guard’s face. She discards the broken netting. The guard swivels around spitting teeth and blood. They embrace in that desperate savage clinging that kings and animals fight in. 

Changeling curses and equestrian profanity exploding from dirty mouths: two languages that try to explain the language of fighting. 

The blade held between them, an object kept still by their effort to kill the other. The guard focuses on moving the jagged edge of metal into the changelings old wound below her neck, a passage through the exoskeleton and into a green bloom of flesh. The dark smouldering of needless combat in a vast forest of it.

The guard tries to marshal his thoughts but now there are two conflicts. The first is the changeling queen’s strength, no matter how much the Pegasus tries to flap it’s wings he can’t overcome her. The second is the visions of that night in Canterlot, the night when murder was stamped into him, an unforgotten sin. He tries to see Chrysalis underneath the grey navy light, but he can only see an orange tinged night with fireworks drowning in the sky. It seems as though the spark of Canterlot fireworks pours down all around him, haunts him. 

In a paroxysm of guilt his eyes unveil into a rush of wilderness, about five miles from the outskirts of canterlot a perfect snapshot from his memories. In his hooves chrysalis has transformed into the wounded changeling he chased when everyone was told to leave it alone. Her hissing spitting face transforms into the face he silenced and extinguished. The face he has to fend off every night from his dreams. He tries to resist but the memories rise up.

It’s all memories. 

He followed the changeling to the edges of Canterlot, carried the intention to kill the changeling. The wounded changeling exclaims in its language then falls under the weight of the guard. The guard beats the changeling again for good measure. It was a good idea at the time, the right idea. It was an idea that will eat you up and spit out your bones. He smothers the changeling’s face in his hooves, partly so he can’t see the life fade from it’s eyes. It buzzes and twists.

It isn’t fast enough.

He reaches out and finds a rock in his hoof. He smashes the face once with the rock, a cascade of green blood mixed with pain. With one hoof off he can see his victim’s eyelids. They fold open to reveal eyes. Black pupil-less eyes, ripe bruises hanging underneath them. 

There is no malice, anger, fear. Instead an acceptance and pity has descended on it’s eyes like the ashy colours that fall from the fireworks. Who do you pity? You pity me don’t you? Their eyes balanced precariously in each other’s stare.  A still silence on the outskirts of canterlot, the guard uncoils slightly and in this small stretch of time recognised they are more then strangers now.

In broken chunks of Equestrian the changeling tries to save the guard’s life.
“You don’t need to do this. It’s over. You don’t need to do this to yourself. Please. Please.”
All the pretty blasts of light recoiling off this one sided conversation. 

Somewhere in canterlot there was a wedding celebration. It was probably covered in modern tasteful music and confetti, bright lights and vibrant colours. Somewhere in the crowd a photographer would smile and take a still of everything a wedding is. The bride and groom would dance in fireworks that would illuminate a long hopeful future. Luna and Celestia would be singing and dancing with the dignitaries, nobles and the lucky handful. They wouldn’t be here administrating the justice of equestria, the small justice that gods overlook. They wouldn’t know how haunting the fireworks can be. 
If you let one changeling live, then you let an invasion live.
Is this justice?

An entity sharpens in the guard. It coils tighter and tighter.
The rock is slippery so he grips it tighter. 
He brings the rock down.
A chance to grab his breath then he brings it down again.
Again.

This is all that’s left. 
A dead changeling that accepted fate. 
A royal guard that can’t.

In a trembling shivering tempest he drops the instrument of murder. He slides down next to the corpse exhausted, holds himself in the suddenly freezing boiling night. There is nothing that can make him warm. Something detached and died in the guard, it cannot be replaced, it cannot come back, its absence is something that howls and wails. Never has he felt so powerful and helpless holding that changelings life in his hooves. Then taking it.

Oh Celestia what have I done?
The tears drift off him like his question, lost and alone in the milky twilight filled with fireworks. The guard’s thoughts unravel. If you didn’t kill this changeling then what? Someone else would have, a weaker person would have. Soon they wouldn’t be able to contain the corrupting power of justice and blood. Soon they will take up action against the changelings, soon a hot blooded pony will incite the masses. And for what? A riot, then a war, then a genocide. If Celestia does nothing now then she never will. If you don’t kill changelings then someone else will have to. 
If you love equestria, then save it from itself.
And you did. Only you stopped the invasion. 
Only you made the choice no one else would. 
Only it never occurred to him that he wasn’t strong enough. 

The thought doesn’t stop the shivering, the thought doesn’t keep him warm. Red blues and greens sigh in the sky, reflect and die in the hard pinched trail of sadness that flows down his face. The guard can’t comprehend how blind he is. The corpse is peaceful in its pose and in its place in the world, another cooling pile of meat. The desolate shaking of his hooves; the intricate whorled skin patched with hair. He stares at the balefulness of it; it tells him that it’s all wrong.
Wrong? 
What’s wrong?

He doesn’t know why he’s sobbing and he can’t stop it. When they found him alone wandering out of the wilderness he knew his mind was ready to kill Chrysalis. Only his heart wasn’t. 

In a faraway land and time chrysalis pushes the guard off herself. He knew this was going to happen but he can’t help but be astonished at it all, how the air tucks his hair behind his ears and sings to him. The guard watches in a trance as he leaves his memories and the present meets him. Sleep deprived and demented his tongue has the taste of the river on it, but also the taste of gunpowder and smoke. His eyes still see the fireworks, and the fireworks turn into multi-coloured hands, and the hands hold on to him like lost children. 

Chrysalis left her past and the guard couldn’t.

Blinded by the clash of the past and present, he can’t see the blade. Their shadows blend and flutter in the lingering smell of lightening. Then chrysalis has the blade draped in scarlet. She holds it amazed by the mundane vulgar design, the droplets of red beading then falling off the tip; it would be the thin top of a spear with rags wrapped around its bottom, it would be thrown down and forgotten and no one would care. 
Then she lifts the blade. 
It buries itself in his gut and then flies into his lung. The grip is tightened and twisted; she leaves it there satisfied by a gasp of pain. His organs slide and slip in a pain we can’t understand. Chrysalis releases the guard in a monstrous triumph. When the guard lands he doesn’t know if he’s on a riverbank, or in canterlot watching the fireworks set the sky on fire. Lying on his back his hooves would trace itself around the blade stuck inside of him, the bodiless boom of fireworks that are funeral drums.

Celestia, I’m going to die like this? 
He tries to laugh but lungs have filled with blood, the messy sticky thud of it. The remnants of the waking nightmare refuse to leave. All he can feel is blackness and hideous explosions of light. 

The fireworks above him. 
Shudder of light.

I redid the long description, gave it a bit of flair like the writing style I use. I'm sorry about the cliff hanger and how the story has turned so sadly. But we were all expecting this weren't we? The next chapter might take two weeks, but you need to read it to gain some closure. If you think its painful reading, imagine writing it. Thank you for the views and favs, but really you should follow me, I'd be grateful if you would. 

And the comments. You don't know how much a comment helps. Thank you. 

> the end of it
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rather warily chrysalis sits down, rests on her haunches. In a bitter resentful smile she looks at the dying guard. The guard is confused; at least that’s what he looks like, lying in blood mouthing nonsensical things. Confounded the guard stares at far off things, the fight, the struggle seemingly forgotten. His limbs rest on the chest where his wound is, drunk with the pain of it. Chrysalis notices that from where she is, it looks like he’s praying. She doesn’t notice the fireworks he sees.

She moves toward the unicorn, discards the fallen guard out of her mind. Yet she takes the time to stop. She takes the time to say something solemn and sober. The guard opens his ears.
“Screw you” she said.
She loses conviction into that heavy sentence. Like a dog off the leash her feelings chase those two words that fall out. The feelings dig their teeth into the guard, but the guard doesn’t care.
“Screw you” he said.
He repeats the words but not the meaning. He says it gently and apathetically, in the livid smell of blood the simple purpose of talking changes into something lost and alone.
It’s a shame because this will be the only conversation they would have. They would never know how similar they both were once upon a time. The fact that they are fiercely loyal, somehow broken, and tenacious. It’s both a hilarious and horrific parallel between the two.

She thinks of talking the blade out of the guard. But a sound comes from the crumpled pile of unicorn. She bolts toward the unicorn and leaves the royal guard to wallow with the blade poking out of him. With the footsteps leaving, life in its entity seems amiss, an unrelenting joke with no punch line. Two lives that tried to engulf and kill the other without even truly knowing what life reverberated in themselves and in their nemesis.
Two lives so similar.
They’d never know it.

Chrysalis has forgotten about the fight and she hovers next to the unicorn, the unicorn that gave her the strength to hold dreams and with that strength make a dream with her. Dreams of free children and freedom, of family and all its marvels and routines, of the ritual of making and protecting a mystery that can’t be measured. Weaved through it all the smell of cave mushrooms and the carved texture of his love. She stands there so still, he slumps there so hushed that it’s almost peaceful. Underneath all things their thoughts disperse and separate, then joins and osmoses into the ominous thoughts that lives in all lovers.

The wound on the unicorn so massive, so real. It gapes and swallows. Breathes out streams of life so balanced and pale. Except the streams are red.

“Are you okay?”
Tempted he wants to say yes. The lie wants to fly from him. For a second the dare of it thrills him. To pretend that everything would be fine. That he would lie so savagely to her. Never realize and never have an idea, until in a few minutes his eyes would close. All other things would close with it.
The voice of him.
The smell of him.

But the love that holds them together is so honest and sincere. It wouldn’t let him lie. The love tidied these lies and these thoughts away. The love leans in and holds them together and they are untouchable to the world outside, and the bleeding inside of him.

She stands, he slumps. Sadness and truth crawl from the horizon, far away but coming soon. Maybe death follows behind it all, checking its watch waiting for the right time for all things to pass.

“Are you okay?”
The sound of it and the frailty of it. A useless pattern of sound that can't stop anything. Wrapped in herself because he can't reach out, can't feel his embrace snap shut behind her. Holding herself, anguish and helplessness has endless depth and endurance.
“No. I’m not okay. I'm going to live for a long while though.”
Honesty is needed.

She reaches down and lifts him from the hole. He wants to cry out but he doesn't. Finally the hoof is free and he can slowly lie down on the grass.

“Get me some bandages, some blankets as well please.”
“Yes”.
“Chrysalis.”
“What.”
“Of all things. I'd love to do you right here.”
She laughs out at his attempt to bring control and life. He smiles and blushes despite it. But it’s only an attempt and the laugh chokes off suddenly. She can’t tell the difference of this choking laugh against the beginning of weeping. In the cauterized start of his death there is none.

They thought that they could live forever at one point. How wrong they were. How to live the dreams that vanish like dew in distant unknown sunsets. To make and to treasure the warm moments that remain outside the blood that carries the seed of all our ideas.

He counts her hoof steps and they are the same tempo as the drops of his blood hitting grass. Rumours of grass whisper, swaying naked, as the pain pass through him. Two different darkness’s descend with the pain. Undeterred waiting. The pain so unmoving and inexperienced that his mind travels far.

Now she’s an afterthought in the distance. So alive.
“I'll be back soon with what you need!” she shouts out. The noise stretches out, echoes against distant non-existent walls.
Now she’s gone.

As soon as she’s gone the guard stirs in the blood and tiredness of it. Just like the manner of his birth he lies there all buried in his blood and exhaustion.
“Am I going to die?”
“Yes. Why are you talking? Why are you here?”
The unicorn asks those questions. The guard ignores them.

“Are you sure, that I’m going to die?”
“Yeah you're worse than me. She really did a number on you.”
“What number?”
“It’s a phrase. Never mind.”
“You’re right I don’t mind.”

“Will you die?”
The guard’s question, so soon and so blunt.
“Yes but not now. I think you'll die first.”
In death it seems as though nothing is strange. That the pegasus that just stabbed the unicorn can talk so honestly, and die so curiously. All events are permitted it seems.

“Will I be buried or burned.”
“What. What?
“Will I?”
“You’ll just die remember.”
“Oh. Then you will as well. Die that is.”
“Yes, you stabbed me badly.”
“But I missed your heart. You’ll live longer.”
“I guess.”
The guard’s voice is bubbly like the river they both lie against. Bubbles of blood, he thinks.

“I’m not sorry for stabbing you. Because it wasn’t personal, it was a means to an end.”
“Then I guess you’re going to hell.”
“I guess I am.”
The world the Pegasus lives in must be ugly, to make him so apathetic and so cold. In a way the unicorn is apathetic as well for he doesn’t have the strength to hate. The pegasus turns on to his side and drags himself closer to the unicorn. The guard does something unexpected.

“How are you crawling over here? Why are giving me this piece of paper?”
“It’s where my sister lives. She’s older than me.”
“What do you think I’m going to do with it?”
“You’ll do the right thing.”
“How do you know, pegasus?”
“Because you’re able to love Chrysalis."
“Maybe I don’t love her.”
“Don’t lie to me. I’m dying.”
“Fine.”
The piece of paper is so light. The piece of paper could’ve come out of the ether, and it seems this way. But in a way it is expected because everyone has someone or something they need to care for. A burden.

The guard can’t talk anymore. The silence is peaceful. Peaceful and beckoning. He tries to make a sound but strangely nothing comes out. Rather than pain he feels numbness. Then he feels nothing. Luckily he can’t hear the fireworks, the sound of his guilt.
Eyes close.

Death claims the sliver of a soul that leaves the guard, and because the guard won’t be missed, it’s as if nothing was taken and nothing was given.

************************

Chrysalis trudges back. She holds all the things he needs.

She doesn’t mean to but she imagines him trotting next to him. And if she can’t stop imagining him next to her it’s because of a feeling with depth and weight. Deeper and heavier then fear or longing. Because in the grand subtlety of things out of our control, she and him occupy the same space. Share the same soul. They think and worry of the same things in the same pattern. That they would know in the back of their minds how the other would finish a sentence.
Two halves of the same thing.

“Here”
Rather than kneeling down, she dismantles herself next to him. Slowly she’d bandage him, and he’d want no one else to do it. Blooms of blood on the bandages, slowly seeping. Her hooves that shake have a chance to take that pain and throw it into the river, to float and tumble away. But it’s only a chance. 
They both know what will happen.
They refuse to say it.

He reaches out with a hoof to hold hers. A cool, warm thing colliding.
“Are you holding my hoof because it hurts?”
“No. Because it’s a miracle.”
She looks down to see his hoof holding hers tighter and the grip of it is love.

With another hoof he brings her closer. A hoof on the back of her head. Kissing each other tenderly and the taste of it is blood. The taste is so appalling, gruesome, that her hoof flies up and covers her lips. He kisses that hoof covering her then his hoof glides into the curve of her face. Her face screws up in something approaching sorrow, but he coaxes away all the lines of stress on her face with the peak of his hoof. In that touch she can remember when he did the same in the cabin. His touch lands somewhere outside her lips.

“Take this.”
“A piece of paper.”
“It has an address on it. To the guard's sister. Don’t give me that face. Just tell her he’s dead. He wanted it before he died.”
“What about you, what do you want?”
“You. I want you. Don’t cry. Please”
He said that while stroking the bones in her face. 
“Their good tears. Trust me it’s okay.”
“Okay.”

My heart is so loud. Too loud. Can you hear it? Place a hoof on the centre of me and breathe in, hold your breath and feel it. If you let me I would give each of those heartbeats to you. Unfold yourself against me and save yourself. You’re the best part of me. Please don’t do the unthinkable. Because if you leave I would leave as well.
I’d die for you.
Don’t you know I love you?

With eyes closed shut, it couldn’t of been anything more then something that wanted to be said. She opens her eyes and sees that it wasn’t so. He must of heard it because he has tears, a tremble in him and a mouth closed so tight. Stuttering.
“I Know”, he said.
He touches the centre of her, touches what ticks in her chest. Then he brings his touch back to her face.
“I feel it”
His voice is so hoarse she would weep.
“Shh. Don’t.”
In a small space of time they drink in the silence.

“You’re going to be strong.”
“How. How do you know?”
“Because I need you to be. Please. Please.”
“I will. I will be strong.”

He slips down again. His head in her lap. His hooves have fallen down limp, no color. She absently strokes his mane, and her eyes are static pillars trained on him. The world could end right there and she wouldn’t see it. She counts each of his breathes polluted by pain.

“Tell me Chrysalis. What do you dream of?”
His tired feathery smile, so weightless and frail. 
“I keep dreaming of us. Not just in my sleep but while I’m awake. We have children. And it feels so strange because I thought I was pregnant. We have a house and it has a wind chime out front. You confuse me so much, you know that? You know how complicated it all is? ”

But he died halfway through what she was saying.

“Will I see you again?”






There will be a prologue. It won't be as sad. I will also give a little snippet of information on what is happening in Equestria. Also the excerpt to my next story will be there. Lastly please "watch" me. Especially the guys I've been talking to in the comments. I'm looking at you gypsy. ciao.   




> an epilogue 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The day has cleared. A sea of sunlight and clouds trawl in the sky. The shovel bit into the hard earth, spat out piles of soil and grass. Chrysalis takes the time to wipe some sweat from her brow. Two bodies wrapped in canvas. One grave. She drops the shovel. A handle of pale wood, shadowed with dirt and use, shadowed with age. Wasn’t he convinced that crater would be her grave, in that long ago of pain and green blood? 
Well he was wrong. 
He can’t extinguish the pain obscured in her scars, gnarled lines of flesh and ordeals. 
He won’t toil those orchards that blaze lurid with red, apples permeated in the branches of brown. 
He can’t use his hideous sense of humor. 
He thought he was funny.
Even when dying.
She weeps. 

To stop the weeping is to choke and clench your eyes. So she covers her eyes and coughs out a surrender to her devastation. Her tears are status quo now; they run down the trails left by precursors. Remnants of lament sliding on paths of lament. 
A Half hour of this.

Weariness from the sadness and brokenness that settled in the niche of his absence. Take another breath chrysalis, still the blood inside your veins. She holds her breath. The world proceeds to stay silent for her. Then she releases her breath and nothing is released. 
First things first, she kicks the guard’s body into the river. The body, surprisingly light, flies on a surface of liquid blue and ascends into the river’s current departing with its own black red blood. Blood diluted in the water and then that was that.
Second she cradles his body. Wrapped in canvas and her love. As if he’s sleeping she lays the body down reverently. Her face is an open picture of dulled agony, no crying because she’s fatigued by the effort. There is no fear or pain she can’t face now because this is the worst of it. If his presence made her weak his absence makes her dementedly strong. 
Rather than missing, she treasures.

The grave is the crater, dug into a little further. There are more blankets at the bottom, and its heartbreaking that she still wants to make him comfortable. I wish I could step through this haze of words and artificial light, I wish I could comfort her misery, that empathy could transcend this abrupt sharpness of words on a screen. 
Don’t hurt chrysalis, don’t ache.
But I can’t. This story was already made before I wrote it. She can’t hear the author’ voice. Her life is hers and not mine to write. It could never be changed. I’m sorry. 

She unfolds the canvas and kisses the crown of his head, then the eyes, then the lips. The shovel shaking soft cascades of soil on to him. She covers him in a blanket of earth and lets him sleep. She sobs for an hour saying his name. Then she looks at the farm. Then she looks at the note. Erratic curves that forms an address. Etched into wakeless paper.

Her wings quiver. Her eyes in far off places. The sky, an abyss. Her wings carry her.
She rises.

*************************

Equestria has changed so much. 
Canterlot has retained its beauty but has become baleful. Posters line all of the quaint old-town buildings, latch themselves to the nervous looking apartments and the brash looking clubs. Ugly hateful posters using words like ‘Destroy!’, ‘Hunt the enemy!’, ‘Our right, our way!’ all of the posters made of red paint and exclamation marks. The stain of nationalism and extremism.

The earth pony rolls a pinch of griffon fire-weed into a scrawl of rice paper. He lights it watching the ash echo off the side of the table he sits in. Then he takes a drag, more a habit then a pleasure. The waitress drifts by, willowy and young with green eyes.

Another earth pony Joins him at the café, sits at his isolated table. She’s young, probably indoctrinated and sculpted from propaganda. He thinks. She holds him in fierce eyes that are blind in its righteousness. Would she be a baker, or a hair stylist in the old equestria? 

“I’m here to join the NESA”
“Tell me what it means girl”
“National Equestrian Security Administration”
Another drag, another fervid breath of smoke or ash.
“What’s your name?”
“Perteks”
“What?”
“Perteks”
“Weird name kid”
“I’m here to join the NESA”
“Alright, calm down”

Military rally in the distance. It troupes past them the stomp and pompous of military regalia. She sits there entrapped by the sight of it. She pulls a salute, a giant grin on her face. Celestia, what did they do to your brain kid? Another drag.

“Tell me what the changelings mean”
“They mean the infiltration of systems of government. They mean the infiltration of royalty itself. They mean the overwhelming of Celestia herself. So for two years since the wedding has taken place the NESA was. made. The equestria expeditionary army hunts down the changelings outside of equestria. NESA hounds down the changeling enemy hidden inside of society.”

Class A brain washed. He shakes his head, a bitter smile assembled. She stares there leaning forward, enthusiastic. This kid is a story in itself at how much equestria has changed, that total victory is a defeat. He shakes off papery cinders from his rolled cigarette. Stares at its brevity. Kills it on the table. The orange hiss of a dying smolder.

“Kid. Changelings mean a threat that is invisible and could be anywhere and anyone. This means that certain ponies can detain others for acting strange, for acting like a changeling. Then ponies are detained for not thinking right, because they would hamper the efforts to destroy the changelings. Then ponies are detained for no reason.”

A smoker’s cough.

“The common ponies call the government weak and unwilling to protect them. The elites of society call the government ineffective, a new order should take it’s place. Everyone says that Luna and Celestia should take it easy, let the ponies sort out pony issues. So they both look on as fear and autocracy slowly take place. I think their ashamed of us”

Her stare turns harder, colder.

“Then armies are sent out to secure land and resources, for the ‘glorious war effort’. Wars are waged and we win them, we take from our neighbors and get closer to the changelings. Changelings that are found are taken to god knows where, a camp in the north some say. Then traitors and ‘harmony traitors’ are sent there as well.”

He returns the stare. Just as cold if not colder.

“Changelings means that ponies in higher places can do whatever they want to defeat them. Whatever they want. Anything. It’s why the NESA exists. Here’s your badge, go to the administration building. Go slay some changelings. Make me proud.”

Perteks turns around all excited, having forgotten the other’s tirade. On purpose? Idiot he thinks. A well-meaning lovable idiot. They existed in the old equestria as well. He watches two foals run by too fast, and laughing too loud. Maybe the old equestria still lives. Maybe it can come back. He finishes his coffee. He puts two hundred bits on the table, two crisp rolls of green.
“Sir. Sir?”
The waitress looks worried. Fidgets with the hemline in her short dress.
“May I ask you a question, young lady?”
“Sir?”
“Are you heterozygous?”
“Pardon?”
“Are you?”
She hesitates. 
“No. I guess.”
“Then you’re a changeling. Isn’t normal to have a green eye darker than the other. No don’t move. Don’t run. If you run I shout and get every NESA officer down here. Just smile. Lean in a little close. ”
He smudges a little ash on the table. 
What was the phrase? 
As cool as a cucumber.
“Firstly fix those eyes, you asking to get killed? Good. Now you tell me why you’re here and how long it took to dodge Equestrian security to get here.”
“I’m here to tell a sister that her brother is dead. Took two years to get here and dodge security.”
“Curious. Where are you heading?”
She gives him a small piece of paper.
“hmmm. Alright. Wait a second.”
He pulls out a roll of paper. A pen in his hoof. A ballpoint, none of that quill bullshit.
“You follow these streets then, head out of the city underneath the aqueducts. Salute every rally, with a smile. Walk on the left side not the right side of a road.”
He gives her the two hundred bits, as well as another from his wallet.
“You use this for food and shelter. Keep to the poorer areas and don’t spend too little or too much.”
“Why?”
“Hmmm.”
“Why help me?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes”
“Because me and my collogues broke the legs and wings of twenty five changelings, filled a pit with them, killed them with fire, then buried them in that forest over there. Do you want my other reasons?”
“No.”
“Good. You can’t imagine my other reasons. What’s yours?”
“Excuse me?”
“What’s your reason?”
“For goodness. To do something right I guess.”
“Good guess. Good guess. Get out of here. Good luck.”

She vanishes into the blur of canterlot, a pinprick of changeling in a sea of ponies.

******************

She walks up an old country path. Wild grass poking through the edges. The cries of unknown creatures. The ever-free forest looms nearby, haunts of animals without names. She takes a breath, it’s a lot easier after two years. She passes a well kept mail box. Painted shell yellow. Faded. 

She knocks on the door. 

Fluttershy opens it.


Thats it. The story has no more words. This is the end. I want to say thank you to all the people that commented, faved and watched me. I also hope its okay I used your name Perteks. If not message me. Or comment.
This is the individual thanks. This will be long so skip it if you like.

Shadowabsol for funny and honest comments. As well as answers to my questions.
Gypsy simply for chatting to me.
PonyKnight for the criticism. Heaven knows I need to deflate my ego.
Inkbolt for the heartfelt NOOOOOOOO.
Spikeandluna for telling me the woes of the sad tag. I know that feeling bro. 
Perteks for the follow and the name. 
Thefluffyone for the truly encouraging comments. Thanks dude.
Miseryborn I'm sorry for killing the farmer. Please. Forgive me.
ilikepie dealwifit sorry for slapping you in the face.
Thomas R where did you get that gif?
Comrac mcarthy for sentence fragmentation. 
Markus Zusak to give life to words.
Bret Elison for a metafiction style.
You.

Watch me If you want to find out what my next story is about. The bonus excerpt for the next story is below this line.




The shotgun is disassembled and she blows through the barrel, a sliver of her breath comes out of the loader. She pumps the shotgun to check the loading mechanism. Still working. Damn reliable. She takes the saw and cuts off the barrel to the tube magazine. Next she files off the edge with a rough iron file, then sand paper. She blows off a cloud of disintegrated metal and wooded dust. It launches from the top of the freshly cut barrel, wheels to the forest floor. Unnatural compared to the green leaves and hard earth. 

“Mama. Mama.”
“Hmmm. Yes? Yes Hayden?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Okay. Mamas busy right now. In a sec. Okay?”
“Okay mama.”
She reaches over and kisses his hair then ruffles it. He giggles. Sweet smile stretched on his face. He becomes silent his eyes follow his mother’s work. The stern look of focus all six year olds use. Her hands resume movement. Her hands that tapper to sturdy fingers and smooth worked skin. Moves with confidence. 

Next she saws the stock off the shotgun. She files then sands the cut. Like a sculptor it seems as if the cut is made perfectly. Rounded and torsional, a durable pistol grip. Stockless and with a sawn off barrel the shotgun is leaner. Predatory.

Lighter, able to fit firmly in her hands. She shakes it. No clicking. No looseness. The want of killing poured into all the cracks and small slips in the shotgun.

She takes an extent of hand loaded shells. Enough shells to possess her hand. The unruly clunking of shells in to the loader. The shotgun smugly swallows five shells into its magazine. Her hands remember her husband’s hands that must have touched this gun and these shells. A remembered world shoe-boxed behind a vast and anonymous distance. How far away was earth? How much did she want to leave it?

Quite a lot apparently.