Stories from Twilight's accidental kingdom in the Undiscovered West.
A miscellany of stories from Twilight's accidental kingdom in the Undiscovered West, and possibly elsewhere if the fancy takes me. Not necessarily connected to each other or in chronological order. Marked as complete, but there's a slight chance I may add chapters.
"Brother of mine, I have a presentiment that this benighted burg will be a veritable goldmine!" Flim said as he surveyed the amazing variety of creatures crowding the main square of the town.
"Indeed, my favorite sibling!" replied Flam. "This nexus of ne'er-do-wells is ripe for the plucking, and not a law or regulation in sight to stop us! What a splendid venue! Shall we?"
"Indeed, we shall!" answered Flim, throwing a lever on the side of the boxy cart that the two of them had laboriously pulled through the winding and sometimes narrow streets, all the way from the airship docks.
The two gangly stallions stood back and let the clanking and wheezing mechanism do its work. Quite a crowd had gathered before the cleverly designed vehicle had completely finished unfolding into an outlandish market stall, complete with garishly painted banners.
Flam climbed up onto a small platform that had slid out of the side of the cart. It put him above head level for most of the audience. "Welcome, welcome, my dear ponies… and griffins, and zebras, and hippogriffs and… whatever it is that you are, good sir or madam! This is your lucky day!" He produced a collapsible pointer from the pocket of his striped vest, and tapped out the words on the banner as he spoke them.
"The Double F Miracle Elixir! Guaranteed to put the vim and vigor of an alicorn into even the most pathetic of creatures, and now available to the public at a ridiculously low, low price!"
Flam continued his spiel, ascending to ever new heights of hyperbole, despite the growing suspicion that something wasn't quite right. The crowd was paying eager attention to him, true, but it wasn't the sort of desperately hopeful anticipation that he was used to stirring up. It was almost as if they were enjoying his performance rather than his promises.
A quick, sidelong glance at his brother confirmed his fears. Flim was staring out at the assembled creatures with an expression of obvious puzzlement. Flam quashed a worried grimace and turned his full attention back to the crowd; there was nothing to do but carry on.
When he came to the end of his carefully prepared speech, Flam swept a grand gesture at the counter, now laden with patent medicine bottles, and announced, "Only one bit per bottle or the equivalent in local currency. Half off for the first ten customers!"
That discount offer hadn't been planned, but as the suckers weren't eagerly pressing up to the counter as expected, he thought that some extra encouragement was warranted. As the useless glop they were selling only cost them a bit for fifty bottles, the limited markdown would hardly scratch their profits.
There was applause. There wasn't supposed to be applause. There was supposed to be a rush to dump lots of lovely bits into the cart's built-in cash box. But the only coins that immediately presented themselves were several odd-looking foreign things of obviously base metal, carelessly tossed onto the platform at Flam's hooves as if he were some sort of lowly street performer. Of the large mass of creatures that had approached at the clarion call of Flam's ineluctable sales pitch, most turned away and went about their business.
"I can't believe it," Flim said to himself under his breath.
"What's that, mister?" asked a somewhat squeaky voice from the other side of the counter.
Flim leaned over the counter to find a young griffin peering up at him. He wasn't very good at judging the age of non-ponies, but it was clear she wasn't an adult. Well, no matter; a customer was a customer. "Nothing, nothing! So, you'd like some of the wondrous Double F elixir? I would advise you to stock up! Makes a great Hearthswarming gift! How many will you take?"
The young griffin reached up and took one of the bottles from the counter. She examined it closely, rotating it so that she could examine every part of the colorful label.
"There's no dosage information," she observed in a disquietingly un-childlike manner.
"Well, that's because the more you take, the better it works!" replied Flim with hearty good cheer, since there was nothing in the elixir that could be considered an "active" ingredient besides a little sugar. Putting anything into their potions that had any effect whatsoever was a mistake the brothers were eager not to repeat.
"This has been tested on griffins, right?" the fluffy little peeper persisted. "We can react differently to drugs than ponies, you know."
Flim had faced tougher customers than her and was fully prepared. "Why, my little chickadee! I have thousands of testimonials from satisfied customers as to the efficacy of our product! Many of whom are not only griffins, but celebrity griffins! Griswold, first griffin in the Royal Equestrian Guards, has personally—" But before Flim could locate the forged letter of recommendation in the cart's paperwork cubby, the cute little vulture interrupted him.
"Anecdotal evidence," she said with the gravity of a judge pronouncing a guilty verdict. "I mean a real, scientific study. A proper one! Not one of those propaganda jobs out of Quaggastan. You show me your sample size and methodology and I'll tell you whether or not I believe you."
Flim realized he was gaping, but he couldn't help himself.
"Where are you from, young lady?" asked Flam, who had walked around the cart to stand at his brother's side. "Some... local academy, perhaps?"
For the briefest moment, Flim and Flam nearly panicked as they heard an earthquake start up behind the young griffin. When they looked up, though, all they saw was a remarkably large specimen of the water buffalo tribe. He was chuckling. "Her Majesty's public schools are pretty good, see? Don't need no fancy academies," he said.
The griffin chick turned and chirped out a cheery, "Hi daddy!"
"Daddy?" Flim said quietly out of the corner of his mouth to his brother.
"I think I'd rather not know," Flam replied in the same fashion.
"Hey, Little Bit!" the buffalo replied, scooping up the young griffin with a hoof and placing her on his neck, just behind his head, where she could rest her beak between the bases of his horns. "You wanna go get ice cream?"
"Yeah!" She bounced happily on her perch. "I don't want any of this dumb stuff. I think these guys are crooks."
"Lotsa people are, Little Bit, see?" her father replied.
"Yeah, but they're not usually so obvious about it!"
Flim and Flam were left sputtering in indignation as the odd pair headed for an ice cream cart across the plaza.
Their next "customer" was a pegasus who demanded to know about possible side effects and drug interactions of their elixir. He left unsatisfied and empty-hoofed.
After that was a zebra mare who was very persistent in asking for a sample. When the brothers finally, grudgingly agreed, she scooped up two bottles and walked off, throwing a cheery "This will be ample. Thanks for the sample!" over her shoulder as she trotted away.
While they were staring glumly after her, a hippogriff asked, with all apparent sincerity, if the potion was gluten-free, but cracked up before he could get an answer.
The last creature to approach them was a nondescript earth pony mare.
Flam wearily shook his head. "Unless you're looking to buy—"
"Oh, I am!" she told him.
He brightened up at that. "Ah, well welcome then, madam! How many bottles would you like?"
She smiled at him. "Oh, you've got the wrong idea. I don't want any of your snake-oil. How much for the cart?"
Flam slowly turned to face his brother, whom he found was wearing the exact same expression of disgust.
"Brother of mine," he said wearily, "I hate this place."
"Some pony on the landing told me that 'Cress is the weirdest boat design he ever saw," said the little filly to her uncle as she flipped the stern dockline free and hauled it aboard. "But she's just an ordinary ol' hay scow, isn't she?"
"Well," her uncle said thoughtfully, as he tightened the main sheet enough to get a little air into Watercress's mainsail, "they must be new to the valley. The scows are common enough here, but they don't build 'em anywhere else I know of. An' they sorta grew into what they are now over the last decade or so. Nopony really designed them."
The two ponies were busy for a few minutes, easing their unwieldy boat out of the farm canal and into a side channel of the Hydra River.
"Why's that, Uncle?" Catspaw asked the skipper when they'd gotten out into deeper water. She knew he loved to tell stories, and they had a long, easy run down to the river proper.
"It wasn't until Twilight Town started really growing that they needed to import hay from the Hydra Valley. No way they was going to haul it bale by bale over the Black Ridge, so the logical way was by boat."
"So, they built the scows, Uncle?"
The old stallion cleared his throat. "Now that you're my official crew, you oughta call me Captain— leastwise, when you're aboard."
"Yes, Captain!" she said, brightly. "Uh, izzat Captain Kedge or Captain Uncle?"
The skipper chuckled fondly and then snapped, with mock gruffness, "None of your sass matey, or I'll stop your cider ration!"
"Mom don't let me drink cider," Catspaw said. "I like juice better, anyway." She thought for a minute and then asked, "If they didn't have scows back then, what sorta boats did they use?"
"Why, in the early days of the hay trade, you might see somecreature on the bay in little rowing skiff, with a half-dozen bales packed in around 'em, pullin' like mad for Twilight Port!"
"There's no way they could move all of that hay in skiffs!" she protested. "There's over a hundred farms all along the river!"
"Well, there are, now," her uncle said. "Before folk figured out how much money they could make growing grass, and Queen Twilight cleaned out all the hydras, there was only a few scattered farmsteads. Anyway, whatever they are, the Twilight Folk aren't dumb or lazy, so they started building boats that were better and better at hauling hay 'cause the more hay they hauled in one trip, the more money they made. The boats had to be small and shallow draft enough to get up the sloughs and canals where the loading landings are, but they had to hold as many bales as possible."
"So that's why they're built like boxes? 'Cause hay bales are rectang'lar shaped?"
"Yep! That makes loading a whole lot easier, and you can pack in more bales. Didn't happen all at once, cause there was a lotta folks who thought you'd have to have pointy bows and such for when they got down the river and onto Crescent Bay. Turned out they was wrong about that."
"They was wrong about another thing too—" He broke off and squinted at their course ahead. "Nip forward and ease that jib sheet a bit, Cat. There's a bend coming up."
Catspaw trotted over the top of their cargo to her station at the bow. She was fairly young, but forward crew had to be short to fit under the jibboom. Any pony taller than her risked getting their brains knocked out during a jibe, and so there were several capable fillies and colts, and chicks, and calves, and such among the crews of the fleet.
Catspaw was a natural sailor. She had her own little scow skiff and knew the tidal channels of the Hydra as well as anyone, and had explored the upper reaches of the river as far as her parents would allow her. Truth be told (only when she thought her parents weren’t listening), she'd gone even farther than that on a few outings with adventurous friends.
She adjusted the sail smoothly, matching the skipper's easing of the mainsail exactly, then scampered back aft to hear the rest of the story.
"Now, in those days ponies would make the run with only two layers of bales on deck."
"What? Izzat true, Unc… Um, Captain?" Catspaw knew her uncle loved storytelling, but she also knew that the strict truth held a very distant second place in his affections. She looked down at the towering load they were both standing on and counted the layers. "They'd have to make four runs to carry what we got here! You sure they weren't stupid back then?"
"Not a bit of it! First off, they couldn't stand at the wheel and see over more than two layers, not until they fixed up wheels like this one that they could unship and put up on top of the load. Soon as that happened, the race was on!"
The filly looked down thoughtfully at the hay. "Could we get another couple of layers on here, d'you think?"
"Not without risking sinking at the loading dock or capsizing in a stiff breeze. Believe me, some folks tried it. Besides, we look silly enough as it is. Big ol' cube of hay, sailn' down to the bay!" Captain Kedge caught sight of a big green marker set on a post on the shore. "We're comin' up on the confluence with the main channel. Get forward!"
Catspaw went to her station, and remained there. The scow schooner jibed twice while they ran down the last league of the Hydra, and Cat handled the big headsail perfectly each time. She hauled in the sheet as they came dead downwind with just enough oomph to swing the heavy boom across the centerline, and then eased it out, as smooth as silk, as the wind filled it again.
She'd been out on the bay with her griffin friend Gar to do some fishing quite a few times. She didn't care much for fish, but timing the ebb and flow of the tide and puzzling out the subtleties of the currents they caused was good experience. Navigating the sometimes tricky bar at the main channel mouth had been a bit scary the first couple of times, but soon she could judge just the right line to take in almost any conditions.
She called out to Captain Kedge as they reached the bar at the river's mouth, letting him know the position of the clearest channel. In her skiff, it was hard to tell where the standing wave might leave a hollow only inches above the sand of the bar, or where a cross-current might create a dangerous whirlpool. From on top of eight layers of hay bales, on the other hoof, she had a nearly birds-eye view. It was just as simple as looking down on a chart, and they scooted across with a minimum of wallow, even though the tide was nearly at full ebb.
The filly was ridiculously pleased at her uncle's quiet, "Nicely done, Cat."
And then they were out on the Crescent Bay and about to make history. It's not every day that ponies give a name to a geographic location.
The trade winds generally blew from east to west, across the mouth of the bay, so there were rarely any significant waves in the sheltered waters—just wind riffles and whatever cross chop was reflected by the big rocky headland at the western end of the bay. That didn't mean it was always a comfortable ride for a big flat-bottomed craft. With even moderate chop, it could feel like sitting on a piano that was being pushed off of a curb every few seconds. Not dangerous, unless the craft was old and decrepit, but far from pleasant.
Then there were the times that some distant storm in the South Lunar Sea kicked up waves that rolled directly into the mouth of the bay. This day was one of those times.
Catspaw was rarely seasick, but the rough pitching, yawing, and rolling of the schooner was too much for her, and her breakfast decided it was time to abandon ship. Like a seasoned sailor and thoughtful merchant, she went to the leeward side of the boat and leaned out as far as she dared before letting go.
"Good lass," her uncle called out to her from where he had a deathgrip on the wheel. "Nopony at the Grassmarket will want to buy a hay bale with some filly's chunder on it!"
She would have laughed if she didn't think it would make her barf again.
A few minutes later, the captain called out again, "Shoals ahead! Keep watch!" It was purely a formality. The underwater continuation of the jagged basalt ridge that separated the Hydra Valley from Twilight Valley[1] was something that the big, ocean going cargo ships had to avoid, and it was well marked by several large buoys. But even at low tide, a fully-laden scow schooner could cross the mid-bay shoals with a fathom or two to spare.
---------------- [1] Yes, nearly everything in the western Crescent Bay region was named for Twilight Sparkle. Her subjects were unreasonably enthusiastic about her at the best of times, and it caused no little despair among mapmakers.
Watercress and her crew had almost crossed the line of marker buoys to the west of the shoals when they were hit hard. It happened so fast that neither of them had any time to react. One moment they were juddering along and the next, several tons of water overtopped the cargo, and the scow smashed over on her beam.
Catspaw was thrown into the water, a heavy hay bale smacking down on top of her then bursting its bailing cords and practically exploding all around her. She spit out salt water and sodden hay as she surfaced, staring wildly around.
The deck of the schooner was canted above her, slewing around and making a horrible grinding noise as the choppy waves raked the submerged, starboard side of her hull against the jagged rocks of the shoal.
Catspaw realized that 'Cress was only kept from completely capsizing by her masts, which wouldn't last long under the punishment they were taking. She swam away from the hull as quickly as she could and shouted for her uncle. "Captain? Captain, where are you?"
She had a hard time seeing anything because of the mass of floating hay, and the noise the poor scow was making as she was ground into driftwood was so loud that she wasn't sure she would be able to hear her uncle even if he shouted back.
With a rending crackle, the masts gave way, and the scow schooner turned turtle with a hollow boom! At least she was floating again—and without the constant grinding noise, Catspaw heard a desperate cry from somewhere nearby. She splashed toward the sound and found her uncle trying to climb up onto one of the few intact hay bales. All he was managing to do was to roll it over and over in the water.
Catspaw grabbed a piece of broken plank in her teeth and dog-paddled over to her uncle. "Grab this," she said, pushing the floating piece of wood to him.
He hooked his forelegs over the plank and gasped in relief. Like a lot of sailors, he couldn't swim worth a clipped bit, and had nearly exhausted himself in panic.
"I'll tow us over to the hull," Catspaw offered. "It's still floating and we can get out of the water."
"Right," Kedge gasped. "Good lass."
When they had clambered up onto the slightly green and slippery bottom, Kedge peered across the water to the docks at Twilight Port in the distance. "Sails up. They've seen us!"
Catspaw found that once she was safe and eventual rescue was certain, she had started shivering. "What happened? Was it magic? A sea monster?"
Kedge shook his head. "Dunno, lass. I wouldn't think a monster nor a bad magician would dare set hoof in these parts. Not 'less they was tired of living, leastways. All I saw was a wave taller than the cargo suddenly jump up outta nowhere."
The sailing craft were having to beat against the wind, so the little crystal-powered pilot boat belonging to the harbormaster's office reached them first.
"Ahoy there!" the pony in the little skiff called out to them from the edge of the hay-spill. "Anypony hurt or still in the water?"
"No, just us two, and we're okay," Kedge called back to her.
"Alright then. I'll stand by here if you can hang on until that big ketch arrives. If I try to motor through all that grass, I'll foul my prop for sure."
"Thank you," Catspaw called out to her in a squeaky and somewhat shaky voice.
The pilot took a better look at her and asked, "You sure you're okay there, filly? I could work my way over—"
Kedge interrupted her by laughing. "This little filly is the one that pulled me outta the drink! She's not just okay, she's damned excellent!"
The pilot grinned and glanced over her shoulder. "You've drifted west of the buoy line, so the ketch should be able to put alongside, no problem."
Catspaw cleared her throat and said, "Ma'am, we didn't see what happened. We didn't hit bottom, just one minute we were cookin' along and the next it was like a whale slapped us with its tail. Did anyone at the port see anything?"
"Harbormaster's assistant did," the mare replied. "He had a spyglass on you wondering how you were dealing with this miserable chop, and he said a big wave just came up outta nowhere and buried you. A couple other folk said they saw the same."
"Some sort of magic?" Catspaw asked.
"No," the pilot shook her head. "Rogue waves, they call them. Queen Twilight once explained it all with graphs and such at a meeting of the Merchant Sailors Benevolent Society. Only happens under rare conditions over shallow water. Most sailors never see one. You ponies just got lucky!"
Somehow, the pilot joking about the disaster made Catspaw feel better.
"Ahoy!" came a cry from one of the crew of the big ketch as it neared the wreckage. "Everypony alright?"
"We're fine!" Cat called back.
"We'll come alongside to leeward, so make ready to swing across sharply. Can you manage?"
"No worries!"
The ketch's crew put her alongside the ruined hull no more than a hoof's width away, and once Kedge and Catspaw were aboard, let her sails fill to get her quickly out of the debris field. It was a neat bit of sailing, and Cat wondered how different a ketch was from a schooner to maneuver. Probably easier, she decided.
Then she looked back at the scene of the wreck and gasped. The scow's floating cargo completely covered the water for acres. "That's no shoal!" she yelled, "It's a whole darned hay field!"
Cat’s indignant exclamation tidily skewered the lingering tension, and the crew of the ketch fairly fell about laughing. As such things go, the story got around, and the shoals appeared on all future charts of the bay as The Hay Field.
"Whoa, woah!" the terrified stallion yelled as the gigantic armored insect appeared from behind the largest of the stone warehouses, shouldered its way onto the quay, and turned to head for the pier he was standing on. "What in Tartarus is that thing?!"
The longshorepony standing next to him looked him up and down with an expression of bored contempt. "Are you new, here?"
"What in the name of the Dark Goddess are you doing, youngster?"
The young earth pony colt jumped guiltily and then tried to place himself between the disapproving glare of his grandmare and the case of empty bottles he had been filling with paint thinner.
"Nothing," he said.
The old mare swept her gaze over the bottles, cans of thinner, funnel, and box of shop rags that rested on the workbench in the old toolshed. "Firebombs? Really, Cobbler?"
She walked past her grandcolt, picked up one of the bottles, and examined it closely. "I thought you were taught better than this," she said sadly.
"We weren't going to hurt anycreature, Ma Mo!" the colt protested. "These are for the yateveos. There's supposed to be a treasure in the old mine that's overgrown with them. Zen and Gar and I were going to go and—"
"And burn yourselves to a crisp so those carnivorous trees would have a nice fried snack to eat!" the old mare snapped.
"Uh… what?" That wasn't the sort of reply that Cobbler had braced himself for.
His grandmare shook the bottle in his face. "That's exactly what would happen if you tried to use this thing! You've stuck the rag in this bottle like it was a wick!"
"Uh… yes?" The colt said, still confused. "That's how you make a—"
"Who says?" the old pony snapped at him again.
"Uh… well, everypony knows—"
"And everypony's an idiot!" She shook her head again and sighed. "Mostly. Bring a couple of those rags and empty bottles and follow me. You got some corks for them?"
The colt nodded and pointed to a discarded pile under the workbench.
"Bring some of them, too."
Cobbler did as he was told and followed his grandmare out to the pump by the garden gate of their farmhouse. They had once lived outside the town, but the village had eventually grown large enough to encompass the little steading. The family had sold off their fields but kept two acres for a large vegetable garden and chicken yard.
Selling eggs and specialty produce, along with their matriarch's famous toffee, provided the family with a comfortable living. It also provided the children enough leisure time to get in trouble, it seemed.
"Now fill up one of your bottles with water."
"Water, Ma Mo?" The colt just stood and looked at her. "But that's—"
Mother Molly gave him a look. This particular look included a cock of her head and a squint of her eye that gave him the choice of listening to her lecture and following her directions exactly and immediately, or regretting his choice for the rest of his very short life.
Cobbler gave the handle of the pump two vigorous pulls and got enough water to fill the bottle.
"Now put a rag in the neck like you did with the others. Good. Now pretend you've just lit it up and chuck it at that sack of chicken feed over there."
The colt obeyed her instantly, the look still fresh in his mind. A moment later he was wet all over and an empty bottle thumped into the bag of feed.
"Congratulations, boy!" the old mare cackled with glee. "You're on fire!"
"But… I…"
"Don't tell me; it works perfectly well in all those adventure books you're always reading?"
The chastened colt flicked his wet forelock out of his face and nodded.
"That's because those writers never threw a proper firebomb in their lives. All horn and no sparkle! Now pay attention."
Mother Molly filled a second bottle and stomped a cork into the mouth. She lectured as she worked. "Centrifugal force wants to push out the liquid as you throw the bottle, and a nice, oily rag doesn't hardly do anything to stop it."
She tied a rag firmly around the neck of the sealed bottle and wet it a bit from the pump. "Now I've just lit this, and I can wave it around a bit without too much risk." She demonstrated. "It still isn't safe, but safe enough. I aim for something hard enough to break the bottle, and…" Ma Mo proved that she still had a pretty good throwing leg on her, and the bottle arced across the yard to smash on a wheelbarrow that was propped up against the side of the barn. The water from the broken bottle splashed against the wall, making an impressively large wet patch.
"Right about now, that barn is sorely regretting making an enemy of your old grandmare," Ma Mo said, beginning to laugh. "Too bad it can't stop, drop, and roll!"
Cobbler echoed her nodding, wide-eyed. Mother Molly's gleeful laughter sent chills up his spine.
"Now, if you're a good boy and clean up that broken glass for me before you go back to your project, I'll give you a nice big piece of toffee."
"Ma Mo?" he asked, hesitantly.
"Yes, Cobbler?"
"Where did you… I mean… Did you ever…"
She looked at him sidelong for a moment and considered. Yes, he was old enough. "Giant warthogs mutated by dark magic," she said, flatly. "Mean customers, and a spear couldn't hardly puncture their thick hides. Pretty flammable, though. The Town was an exciting place in those days. You know, I met your grandfather when we were fighting off those monsters. Did I ever tell you…"
Cobbler usually found any convenient excuse to escape when his grandmare began reminiscing, but that time, he stayed and paid close attention.
= = =
That evening, Molly made her way up to Vagabond House, the Queen's official residence. There was a very old donkey asleep in the little guard hut beside the gateway to the grounds. Molly didn't bother to wake him, but she paused and looked down at him fondly for a moment, and left a small cloth-wrapped package of toffee next to him before she went on.
Molly walked slowly through the front garden, enjoying the sight and scents of the unusual plants. She climbed the broad steps to the big veranda that surrounded most of the main building and peered through the open double doors at the deserted room beyond.
Molly clopped a hoof against the floor and called out, "Anypony home?"
A part of the long shadow of the wall beside her flowed outward and solidified into the form of Princess Luna.
"Molly, 'tis good to see you again," Luna said to the completely unsurprised earth pony mare. "I fear Twilight is away and will not return until the week is ended."
"Well, it was you, Highness, that I was wanting to talk to at any rate." Molly replied, giving her a nod by way of a bow.
"Indeed?"
"Yep. Y'see, I've got a bit of trouble brewin' with my grandcolt, and I figure a bit of magic in the dreamlands would set him to rights. I hate to ask—"
"Nonsense!" Luna interrupted her. "You are a friend and a hero of the nation! Ask freely and without concern. In any case, 'tis my duty to keep the horrors of the Night Realm from the young."
"But that's exactly why I'm a bit hesitant to ask," Molly told her. "See, I don't want you to stop him from havin' nightmares; I want you to give him one!"
Luna cocked her head and raised an eyebrow at the old mare. "I'sooth? 'Tis most curious. Perhaps you will explain the matter to me?"
"Well, he's in need of a bit of discouragement, and if I or his ma outright forbid him, he'll only be that much more set on doing it. Y'see..." And the old mare told her the story.
= = =
Before sunrise the next day, Cobbler jerked awake, screaming, "It's on fire! The whole forest is on fire!"
His mother calmed him down and told him it was just a dream. But he knew it wasn't. It was something more real and true than that.
He spent the rest of the morning pouring the paint thinner back into the big can and washing out the bottles.
"I must protest in the strongest possible manner!" the Klugetown ambassador exclaimed. He was a large rubbery amphibian of indeterminate genus, but the richly brocaded vest proclaimed him as a creature of some wealth and importance.
"Very well," Queen Twilight said, in a deceptively soft voice. "Go ahead, Ambassador Ghlurgh. I'm listening." She settled onto the cushion that the mayor had placed down for her.
"You have denied the pony due process! He is our citizen, and he must be extradited to face our justice from the Council of Kluge! As is his right!"
"There is no due process here," Twilight replied, her voice still soft. "We are a nation without laws."
This was perfectly true—the town was lawless in the literal sense of the word. It didn't have a set body of legislation that became increasingly more complex as clever creatures found loopholes and work-arounds that needed to be addressed and amended. It didn't have a set of rules that, through mechanistic application, dispensed punishment tenuously correlated with justice.
But if peace and stability were the desired outcome, a lack of laws seemed to be working remarkably well. Technically, Twilight Town was the most crime-free city in the world, which annoyed statisticians to no end.
What it had instead of a dense body of legal code, was a single, simple to understand guideline: Work out your problems in a peaceful and reasonable way, or the Dark Goddess will settle things for you. That was all the explanation any sensible creature needed as to why lawlessness worked so well for the Twilight Folk.
The final clause of the guideline was being enacted in the Town Hall that day.
"And that is why you must let me take the stallion back to be tried under a system he is accustomed to!" Ambassador Ghlurgh continued.
"This one wonders if you would argue so passionately for a Kludgetowner who was not so very wealthy." The white eastern kirin who floated just above and behind Twilight's left shoulder fixed the ambassador with a focused stare that the Ambassador was unwilling to match.
A slight smile tugged at Twilight's lips as she replied. "That's of no real concern, Ao. I will make the decision, and I am notorious for fairness—no matter a creature's status or condition."
The small group of witnesses quietly shuffled, and one suppressed a cough. While they would all have hurried to agree that their Queen's statement was demonstrably true, "fair" was not the first word that would have occurred to any of them to describe her judgements.
"Then, how is it fair to expect a foreigner to abide by your system of non-laws, as if he were well-versed in the local cultural norms?" It sounded very much like a reasonable question, but it was not, and every creature present knew it.
Someone tossed a folded bit of paper at the ambassador's feet. It was a colorful pamphlet with the title How to Not Commit Suicide in Twilight Town written on the top in a cheerful, friendly font. Everyone in the room recognised it.
Some years before, a mischievous pony had printed up a stack of the pamphlets as a prank, and passed them out to the disembarking passengers of the first scheduled passenger airship flight from Equestria. Most of the newcomers had been puzzled, and some offended, but a few were delighted. The pamphlet contained a very good (if slightly exaggerated) summary of the customs, culture, and dangers of the kingdom, as well as a fairly accurate guide to the town, and the first print run of the pamphlets soon became a collector's item.
By royal command, the pamphlet had been slightly redesigned, reprinted in bulk, and made aggressively available at all points of entry into the kingdom.
Even with such a helpful guide, foreigners sometimes misunderstood how things worked in the city-state, but the Twilight Folk were understanding, and could be counted on to explain the situation with whatever degree of emphasis was required. In the current case, a rare consensus had been reached that being beaten to death would be sufficient explanation for the Klugetowner.
It was at that point that Mayor Buzzy had called for Twilight to intervene.
"You have no proof that he read that—that joke!" the ambassador sputtered, kicking at the paper on the floor. "To punish him for this so-called crime, that is not even specifically prohibited by—"
Twilight held up a wing to silence him. "Some nations allow this evil by ignoring it or pretending it does not occur, but none openly condone it. Not even your own, ambassador Ghlurgh." She glanced aside for a moment, taking a deep breath to calm herself, and then continued. "You must forgive me for bringing up an irrelevancy, because the laws and customs of other nations do not apply here."
"So you will decide his fate by simple decree? That is the action of a tyrant! Most civilized—"
There was a blur of motion and the kirin was at his shoulder, a long curved blade held just under where his chin would have been if he'd had one. "You have been here nearly a year, and yet you are so foolish?"[1] Ao hissed into where his ear should have been.
--------------------- [1] Rule #1 in How to Not Commit Suicide in Twilight Town was, "Never speak ill of Her Majesty if you’ve seen a white kirin any time in the last quarter hour."
After a brief pause that felt like an eternity to the terrified amphibian, Twilight said quietly, "Don't kill him, Ao."
The kirin immediately returned her sword to its sheath with a smooth motion and resumed her position behind the queen's shoulder.
"If I am wasting my time advocating for my citizen, why am I here?" He flicked a glance at the glowering kirin and added, "Your Majesty."
"You are here as a witness," the dark alicorn said. Pre-empting any reply, she turned to the waiting guard and ordered, "Bring in the prisoner."
A sleek, well-fed stallion was led into the room. He was fairly disheveled, thanks to his earlier encounter with the mob of outraged subjects, but still gave the appearance of a prosperous individual. He immediately knelt before Twilight and said in a rush, "I am so sorry, Your Majesty! I know I shouldn't have… I know I should be punished, but I couldn't help myself, and I—"
"I have no interest in punishing you," Twilight said in a level voice.
The stallion looked up from his bow, half puzzled, half relieved.
"I have one question for you."
"Anything, Majesty!"
"Will you give me your permission to alter your mind so that you will never do this again?"
"M-mind magic? But I swear I will never, ever—"
"You are lying," Twilight said, in a tone that caused the Twilight Folk to edge slightly away from her. "Possibly to yourself, but certainly to me. I ask you again, will you submit to having your personality altered?"
"I… I won't be me anymore!"
"That is quite correct." The alicorn stood up.
"I… Please think of another way of punishing me! Please, Your Majesty, I beg you!"
"This is not about punishment. To imagine that punishment would correct the compulsion that you harbor is foolishness, and punishment is worthless and hypocritical when it is merely state-sanctioned revenge. This is about prevention. One way or another, you will never abuse a foal again."
The ambassador realized what was about to happen, and despite his earlier protests to the contrary, he also knew the character of the stallion he was trying to defend. "Your Majesty! Please hear me out! If you transform this stallion to stone, will that satisfy—" The look that Twilight gave him killed the words in his throat and he found himself pressed against the far wall without consciously deciding to back away from her gaze.
"And kick this problem a thousand years down the road? No. That’s not how I operate." She turned back to the shivering stallion. "For the third and last time, I ask you. Will you submit to being cleansed of this foul appetite?"
"But it will change who I am! No, I might as well be dead! I—"
Twilight's horn flickered and the stallion instantly collapsed into a heap of gray ash. "Mayor Buzzy, please record his choice in the town ledger. Good day, Ambassador," she said, before abruptly teleporting away.
Ambassador Ghlurgh swallowed heavily and decided to retire.
Mayor Buzzy sighed and said, "We will gather up his ashes to return to his family. All expenses will be paid by the Crown, but can you arrange for the shipping, Mr. Ambassador?"
"I will accompany them personally," he replied, trying not to let his voice shake. He hoped to be able to work up a plausible excuse to mollify the stallion's powerful family during the journey home. Blaming it all on the dangerous and possibly insane monarch seemed like a good plan.
After the ambassador and most of the others had left, Ao opened the window shutters and leaned out. Below, in the town's central square, a large crowd waited expectantly. Ao pitched her voice to carry and added a tiny boost of the Royal Voice spell. Normally she would have never presumed to do so, but she was making a semi-official announcement. "Her Most Perfect Majesty has resolved the issue," she intoned.
There was a murmur from the crowd. They had expected no less, but they wanted details.
Ao knew this, but she preferred to emphasize her point with a touch of drama. She paused just long enough for the murmur to grow louder and take on an edge of disappointment, then she extended her right foreleg out of the window and spread her toes. A fine gray ash swirled out of her grasp and blew away on the wind.
Inside her office, Mayor Buzzy heard the cheering and leaned back for a short moment to enjoy it before going back to her work. She was filling out a generous bank transfer for Zashira's forgetfulness potion. The mganga had refused payment for her services, but the filly's family had threatened to throw a gold bar through the zebra's front window if that was the only way to get her to accept something for her help, and Buzzy didn't need any more headaches that week.
There are uncounted stories about how the Town got started, most involving a mythical goddess of the evening. She is usually depicted as a blend of Celestia and Stellamara because... storytellers are lazy, I suppose.
None of the Folk use the word "Twilight" much. With nearly everything West of the Black Ridge having some variation of that word attached to it, everybody just says "the Docks", "the Valley", "the Mountain", or what have you, for simplicity's sake. Some new residents will even go as far as to only say "dusk" or "sunset" in normal conversation, even when it sounds awkward. That's purely an affectation, and it has the opposite of the intended effect, marking them out as pretenders.
That's not to say that nobody believes in the Alicorn of the Evening. Quite the opposite. There must be a half dozen major sects in town plus more little near-cults than it is reasonable to keep track of, all certain that they know the exact particulars of how Twilight the Terrible wanted everybody to conduct themselves. There's one group that goes as far as to stipulate which hooves must touch the floor in which order when arising in the morning, and they're not the weirdest bunch.
Fortunately for the rest of us, every archdiocese, oddfellowship, and llamanate agrees on one unalterable divine precept: "Get along, or else." The exact consequences are not stipulated. As devout followers of the Scholar Queen, the congregants are given free rein to imagine the appropriate horrors. The rest of us Townies pretty much agree with that particular rule and go about our business, neither knowing nor caring about any other holy truths.
On the rare occasion that I gave the matter of our founding any thought at all, I assumed that, because our national symbol is a bull's head, the Town had most likely been started at some time in the far-distant past by minotaur traders. Our half-day, half-night creation myth must be the product of pony chauvinism, or an attempt to one-up the foreign alicorns in Canterlot who moved the sun and moon. It's very easy for a goddess to be superior to both Celestia and Stellamara combined when she didn't need to actually exist.
But I have come to—doubt my casual disbelief.
I had lived in Town for several years and settled in quite nicely, forming a small and select circle of friends and lovers. But things change.
I moved out to this little bungalow when I became too restless to be good company. The joy I used to take at dining out and lingering over coffee or drinks in the Old Town had disappeared. Sitting at a café and attempting to exchange pleasantries and gossip with friends who happened to pass by had become tedious.
The bungalow had come cheap. It was isolated and exposed to storms sweeping in off the sea. Unpleasant for the outgoing and friendly Folk, but ideal for my mood. There were only two rooms, but the tiny one at the rear of the house was ideal for the foal, and the larger one that opened onto the broad veranda on three sides suited me well enough.
I spent most of my time outdoors, reading or merely staring at the crash of waves on the black basalt far below. I thought I would drink more, but the bottles on the low shelf beside the door gathered dust, only occasionally smeared by a hoofprint.
Meadowsweet had arranged for a pegasus filly to come out and clean for me once a week. I hardly needed it; I am a stallion of neat habits and the foal wasn't old enough yet to produce significant dirt or disarray. Well—I'm sure Sweet had given the cleaning girl private instructions to evaluate my "situation" and report back. At least the filly did her work quickly and efficiently without attempting to converse with me.
The foal was at the crawling stage, so I carefully attached fine netting all along the veranda railing. I tried to keep its explorations confined to the large room where a decent enough carpet covered the floor, but the open air, the clouds, and the birds seemed to fascinate it, and there was no sense in taking chances.
Occasionally, someone would come up from the town with my mail or some business papers to sign. I am not one to neglect my duties, and so I carefully stomped the forms and replied to the enquiries and put the unopened envelopes of personal correspondence in the drawer of my nightstand.
Sometimes there were storms and I would fasten the big shutters across the front of the house to block out the rain. Sometimes the sea breeze died entirely, and I fastened the big shutters across the side of the house to block out the noise from the town below.
I had dreams, of course, but I hardly ever remembered their content. When I did, I drank.
That particular night was fine. The breeze was gentle and balmy and the sky was bright with stars—unclouded. I opened all three sides of the bungalow. I read for a while before bed, using some of my limited supply of lamp oil in order to finish a particularly interesting chapter, and then lay down on top of the covers and drifted off.
The nightmare came suddenly. I dreamed an explosion of lightning, and rolled over to see a huge, dark shape ripping at the railing of the veranda, shattering the wood and tearing away the netting as easily as if it were paper. I started up in terror and backed away toward the stairs that led to the narrow, cliffside path to town.
But the dark mare wasn't interested in me. She turned to the back of the house, her rapier horn scoring the roof beams and her flared wings casually tumbling the furniture as she strode to the doorway of the back room.
I screamed out something, a wordless protest barely audible over the thunderous hoof falls of the thing that scooped the foal out of its crib with a black wing. She turned and gave me one merciless sneer before growling, "Mine, now."
The alicorn leaped into the roiling storm and vanished as I awoke, gasping.
The night was quiet. The gentle breeze had cooled. I stumbled to the back room to find the foal was gone.
I wasted several frantic seconds searching the confines of the small space and then I knew. I knew with that awful certainty one sometimes has in dreams, and I ran to the veranda to find a little tear in the netting. It was so very, very small, yet large enough.
But there, nearly below the level of the floor, dim in the moonless night, was a little spot of color, the pale green that I knew so well. And there was a soft, desperate cry that could have been a sea bird disturbed in its sleep.
I lifted her up and untangled her tiny hoof from the frayed bit of netting, then hugged her to my chest and wept as silently as I could until she quieted and fell asleep.
I looked out into the night and whispered to a creature that may have been a demon or may have been a goddess, "No!” I paused for a moment, looking for some sign I had been understood before continuing, "Mine. She's my daughter."
