Tempest seeks atonement at any cost for her victims in the griffon highlands.
What everygriff said about ponies was true, Gelfand mused—they were some terribly confused creatures! If it wasn't friendship this, it was forgiveness that. Gelfand didn't presume to understand any of it; but what he did understand, was to never look a gift horse with a guilty conscience in the mouth!
Though he had to admit, the more time he spent with this selfless enigma, the harder it was to watch as she wasted away in her bizarre pursuit of penance...
It was an unremarkably bleak midwinter morning, when fate brought the Storm King's commander to my home.
“Former commander, to be clear,” she clarified, standing at the threshold and shivering slightly from the frigid breeze. Hooded in a thin overcoat, she looked dressed for a temperate pony winter, but not a griffon one. “The Storm King has been defeated, as you may have heard, and his army disbanded.”
“Storm King, riiight.” This old griffon wasn’t fooled so easily. “Now what really brings a crazy pony like you to a remote village like ours, in the griffon highlands no less?”
“As I already told you,” she spoke patiently, without a hint of scorn, “I am Tempest Shadow, former second-in-command to the Storm King’s army, and I've come to atone for my misdeeds.” Still sensing my visceral distrust (and perhaps the imminent threat of a door to the face), she continued: “But you don’t have to believe me at the moment. Or ever, in fact. My proposition for you will remain the same.”
She’d piqued my interest, albeit only adversarially. “Which is…?”
“Please, noble griffon, let me offer to do what I can—anything I can, everything I can, whenever I can—to make up for—” she caught herself, and chose her next words carefully. “... what I’ve done.”
I only vaguely understood what this unicorn with the broken horn was getting at. “So, what? You’ll be some sort of help for us? And for free?”
“Yes. A servant for you, I’m prepared to become, or even a slave.”
“So you would, what, cook my meals, clean my house, massage my claws? For free?”
“If those are the duties you wish for me to perform.”
For another moment we just stood there, eyes locked on one another. Then—as I put two and two together—I cracked a victorious grin at the shivering purple unicorn. “I think I’m wising up to your act, pony. You go to these foreign lands and towns, introduce yourself as some character with a moral debt to repay, and throw yourself into griffs’ homes with some no-strings-attached charity ploy. Then when our backs are turned, you make off with all our valuables, and skip town to find your next gullible mark. Well let me tell you, the first thing a cub learns when he’s still wet behind the ears is that every good and service comes with a price. Ain’t no free lunch in Griffonstone!”
The unicorn panicked. “You have frostcarrots!” she blurted, preempting a timely door to the muzzle. “Um, I noticed you had a large plot of them just out back. You wouldn’t need to trust me to come into your home, if that's what gives you pause; I could tend to them, and that way be out of your feathers and away from your valuables. They’re not ripe yet, so you could trust that I wouldn’t bother to steal even them.”
This pony vexed me, but I had to admit her argument was sound. Was her angle, then, to gradually earn my trust before making her move? She must be very dedicated to her con, I surmised.
“Fine. You’re letting the cold in, and I’ve no more patience for you. You know how to weed frostcarrots? Clean out the plot of slush and snowmelt?” She nodded meekly. “Then get to it! And don’t go cleaning out too much snow, either, and leaving them to dry up and die!” With that, I finally gave the door a satisfying slam.
I peeked through some curtains in the breakfast nook just adjacent to the front door, and to my mild surprise she actually trudged all the way out to the frostcarrot plot, deposited her belongings in the shed, and kneeled down at the corner of the plot. So be it, I thought. I had no qualms milking a con artist for some free labor, because she would never win over my trust. And on the impossibly off chance that she was who she claimed to be, well… I guess she'd best be ready to turn into an ice sculpture to atone for all her sins, huh?
At that moment I felt a tender tug on my tail. I turned around to greet my young daughter Gamila, who I must have woken with my racket. “Daddy, who was at the door?”
After a pause, I answered, “Just some crazy pony. Would you believe it?”
“A pony?” she said, eyes filled with confused curiosity. “Can I meet him?”
“Eh, she doesn’t really want to talk. But guess what: We’re off the hook for frostcarrot duty this morning!”
And so I slept in with my family that morning, as the chill frost howled outside and that Equestrian stranger dutifully persisted in her pointless self-imposed labor. It was my wife Gwendolyn—habitually a night-owl who operated on a different schedule than the rest of us—who eventually roused me from my hours of extra slumber.
“Who is that mare out there in our frostcarrot patch?” she asked, with a haunted expression.
“Oh, don’t worry, dear,” I reassured her groggily. “It’s actually a funny story.”
But even as I got out of bed, went downstairs, and prepared us both a warm glass of goat’s milk, all the while explaining the crazy con pony’s tale and how I planned to manipulate her for the manual labor she was worth, my wife’s expression remained deadly serious.
“So,” she said, after my account had concluded, “you really don’t recognize the face of the despicable creature who put our town in this miserable state?”
“...should I?”
“The purple coat! The pink mane! The broken horn and the scar over her eye! That’s Tempest Shadow, the Storm King’s highest-ranking commander!”
Former, her voice echoed in my head. “Ahh all those pony folk look the same to me. Are you sure?”
“I never forget a face,” she said with an insulted spit. She wasn’t wrong, I had to admit. “And when those airships clouded out the sky four years ago, I saw that face with my very own eyes.”
“Oh,” I said dumbly. “Well, what do you want me to do with her?”
“I want her away from our home, away from our cub! I want her out of our frostcarrot patch, and out of our town!”
Aw, geez. And I thought I’d found a means of escaping at least a day or two of midwinter chores.
~~
As I trudged out to the frostcarrot plot—my beak buried in a thick winter coat and scarf as I mulled over my choice of words for the mare—I began to reprocess the situation as I knew it. All right, I thought, there was a possibility that this pony was telling the truth. About who she was, anyway. But I still didn’t even really believe that much. Provided that was the case, however, what was she doing here? A lowlife con job didn’t really make sense for somepony like her, but even less did her story of repentance; no creature ever changes, not so drastically as that.
The pony was nowhere to be seen. A faint glow of a lantern, however, emanated from the confines of the shed—lazybones must’ve taken a break. So much for that atonement, eh? Yet when I crossed the plot and surveyed the frostcarrots, I couldn’t help but be impressed by her work. Ordinarily, me and Gamila would still be an hour’s time from finishing up with the frostcarrots, yet this pony had already tended to the entire patch by herself. And, after I gave the plants themselves a once-over and found nary a weed in sight, I had to admit she did quite a thorough job.
Heavens, this situation was bizarre.
I stepped into the shed and found her huddled over the mild warmth of the lantern, sipping cold coffee from a thermos. She promptly stood up and addressed me: “Sir, I just finished up with the frostcarrots. I presume, to your satisfaction? If so, I’m ready for whatever else you would like me to do, sir.”
I huffed slightly at her use of ‘sir.’ “Please, pony, just call me Gelfand.” My own remark threw off my train of thought, but once recovered, I continued: “And all right, you did a pretty good job with them. But I didn’t come out here to pat you on the back: Simply put, my wife wants you out.”
Tempest gave what I suspect was a forced grin. “Does that mean you yourself are not entirely opposed to my staying here?”
“Hmph. If it were up to me, I would have no qualms accepting free labor from anyone, anypony, even a villain like yourself.”
“Villain?” Tempest’s grin widened. “So, you’ve finally accepted that I am who I say I am?”
“Whoever you are,” I growled. “But that’s the problem. My wife, she doesn’t want some war criminal within spitting distance of our home or our daughter.”
“I see.” At last that seemed to give her some pause. “Gelfand, might I ask you, if you would for a moment pretend to trust fully my identity and my intentions: What would you do in my place?”
Hm, if I had her claws? Er, were in her horseshoes, would the expression be? “Hard to say; I’ve not much experience apologizing, or needing to apologize, for that matter. But if I did, I suppose I would have to… have to find some way to... ” I realized too late the obvious answer of “make reparations” accurately described Tempest’s current behavior, and to say it would only prove her point. Tempest surely knew this, yet she spared me the embarrassment of saying it herself. “Look, maybe the hardest part I have trouble believing is, why us? Why some old birdbrains, in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of winter? You and the Storm King managed to conquer at one point a good chunk of Griffonstone, Yakyakistan, Equestria, who knows where else—even if reformed, surely you have greater ambitions than our old homestead.”
“You’re entirely right, Gelfand. But, I'm afraid that it was my ambitions, my unfettered emotions that enabled me to become a villain in the first place. After a, shall we say, traumatic foalhood experience…" Her gaze drifted upward and inward onto her jagged horn stump. "… I felt so justified in everything I did, right up until I joined the Storm King’s army. And then I became utterly infatuated with the authority I was given, the incredible influence I had over so many creatures’ lives. I guess to put it simply, I just… don’t trust myself with any sort of power anymore. At least, I need a good long break from it.”
“Well, when you put it that way, maybe you make a lick of sense. Maybe.” I looked at the ground, and noticed the onset of frostbite on Tempest’s hooves. “Bah, I hate this winter cold. And I hate doing chores in the cold most of all. If you’re really willing to do them for me, and you ain’t tricking me, well, I guess I can stand between you and my wife. For now.”
Never had I seen one so delighted to be accepted for slave labor. “You don’t know how grateful I am that you accept my amends. I promise I will make her warm up to me.”
“Yeah… Speaking of, I don’t want the cold claiming your thin little hide. Take my coat. And this ain’t a gift, this is strictly a loan, you hear!?”
A griffon’s life is one of constant negotiation and exploitation. I like to think I’m pretty darn good at it, too. Case in point: I managed to avoid the full brunt of my wife’s ire by interposing our sparkly-eyed little Gamila between us.
“Did you hear that, Gam?” I called, after my re-entry. “That kind pony out there says she’ll gladly do our winter chores for the rest of the week! Sleep-ins all around!”
My daughter beamed and screeched with joy in the foyer, as my wife glared at me from the kitchen. I could tell, our child’s squeals of delight were not winning me father-of-the-year, in Gwendolyn’s eyes.
“But… why?” Gamila inquired after her show of excitement. “Are ponies always this nice?”
Oh, my precious child. She was growing into the age of reason and skepticism, but not yet out of the age of naivety. “Well, not all the time. But, it turns out she owes our family a little bit of a debt, actually. And what have I and your mother taught you about outstanding debts?”
“We pay them off! With interest!” she answered. No doubt we had read her enough Griffonstone fairytales with that particular moral, by now.
My wife stood silently with crossed claws in the kitchen doorway, staring venomously at her traitor of a husband. Against my better judgment, I walked up to her and attempted to make a case for myself:
“I promise, she won’t even learn the names of you or the little one.”
Body language and common sense informed me that I couldn’t expect to sleep anywhere but the couch for the near-future. But hey, it was still a winning trade, in my eyes!
~~
And so the week went by, and we made good use of our little workhorse. In any given season, we could never quite sell all the bottom-of-the-barrel frostcarrots at the local market, so I had no issue with allowing Tempest to subsist on some in exchange for her work.
Nevertheless—bleeding heart was I—one day I decided to bring her a portion of my own home-cooked meal, and dined with her in the shed.
“So just how long are you planning on staying with us, anyway?” I pried, before digging into my soup.
Tempest certainly looked worse for wear than she had one week ago, although no less determined. “It’s not up to me. However long you think is right. Be that one more day, or one more lifetime.”
I knew by now to expect ridiculous answers from this very ridiculous pony, but it still caught me off-guard. “You can’t be serious! Ah, if you think somewhere in this selfish heart of mine there’s a well of pity deep enough to turn down a personal servant for life, I would advise you to reconsider your offer. I call your bluff.” I looked for a reaction on Tempest’s part, but found none in that ever-serious countenance of hers. “Nah, my pity runs only as deep as this bowl of soup. Now eat up, you look like you’ve been gnawing on frostcarrots for a week.”
Truth be told, I was concerned she might work herself into the ground with no advance notice, and then where would that leave us? Nonetheless, her complexion glowed upon finally being given permission to partake in the steamy, savory meal.
“Thank you, Gelfand. This is more than enough.”
“Yep. I fancy myself a pretty good cook, you know. That’s one chore I don’t think I’ll ever let you take from me, even if my wife did let you inside the house one day. I guess you haven’t quite kept to your word of winning her over, now have you?”
“Maybe not.” Despite several spoonfuls of my home cooking, Tempest’s grateful expression suddenly sagged anxiously. “W-what happens to be in it, the soup?”
“Good ol’ family recipe, can’t take credit for that. But I did go through the trouble of throwing in some fresh parsley with an extra helping of garlic, and of course I caught, gutted, and cooked the field mice myself, aaand you’re a strictly vegetarian species. Right. I, uh, forgot.”
The purple pony didn’t wait for me to excuse her as she got up, stumbled outside and loudly purged herself of her forbidden delicacy. I looked down into my soup in shame, my appetite obviously departed.
I waited inside patiently for her retching to cease, before finally easing my guilty conscience and checking up on her. She stood, eyes closed, with one hoof against the shed, seemingly uncertain whether she was finished.
“Uh, real sorry about that. My fault… of course.” I really was unsure what to say in this situation, but for better or for worse, Tempest didn’t seem to be taking in my words anyway. “I think I at least owe you another meal, huh? Vegetarian, naturally. Does that, uh, sound good?”
Tempest still didn’t seem to be listening. Her eyes remained pressed shut, betraying some great pain. She swayed slightly from side to side, and I worried she might lose her balance. It was at this point that I realized the quivering lip and the moist eyes: What she was struggling against at this point was not her stomach, but her own emotions.
“I’m… struggling. After just one week, I’m struggling already. I told myself I…”
She was muttering under her breath, and I had a hard time hearing her. “I’m sorry? You’ll have to speak up for me.”
“N-no thank you, the soup was enough… One bowl, you said, you said that was as deep as… as it ran… didn’t y-…?”
I was straining so hard to hear her disjointed whispering, I didn’t realize it until it had happened, when she collapsed sidelong into a pile of snowmelt.
“Tempest…? Tempest!”
Without a concern in my mind for the consequences, I rushed to bring her inside our home for the very first time.
I nursed my soup silently in the corner of the bedroom. It had long grown unappetizingly cold, of course, waiting in the shed while I’d played peacekeeper with my wife before setting out in search for George, the town physician. But I sipped it regardless, less for taste and more just as an excuse for something to do while I and my wife Gwendolyn surveilled George’s work from a respectful distance. He murmured to himself as he examined the still-unconscious unicorn’s vitals.
“Well I don’t exactly work with equines enough to tell ya how hot they run, but I don’t think she’s running a fever, no, so that’s good, that’s good… Her breathing is shallow, but it’s steady, and that’s the more important thing, yes… I would tell you that her horn doesn’t look quite right, but I s’pose you told me that’s this one’s pre-existing condition, haha… Nah, wouldn’t know how to fix that even if I wanted to, no siree…”
I ventured a glance up from my soup to read Gwendolyn’s expression. Thankfully, it wasn’t one full of the same indignance that had been present when I first brought Tempest inside, before my frantic search for the doc. No, at this moment it also contained a healthy amount of contented schadenfreude for the creature she despised so much.
No matter, I thought. Happiness is happiness, and it would benefit me to encourage it as much I could. “You know, Gwen, if you’d just wanted to see her suffer, all you had to do was ask: I had her cutting deadwood in that subzero frost a few days ago! Have you ever seen a pony try to handle an axe? To cut through frozen solid bark? It sure is a helpless sight.”
“I’m not only basking in this creature’s misfortune, you should know,” she toyed. “I can’t imagine George’s services come very cheap on such short notice, do they Gel?”
Happiness is happiness… “You’re quite right, dear. No griffon black ale for me this month, from what remains of my allowance.” Nothing, in fact, remained of my allowance this month. And George—ice-cold opportunist he was—had coerced me out of half of next month’s allowance, too.
What had gotten into me? Was I letting this Equestrian clean me out after all?
“Oh, looks like our little patient is gonna pull through!”
I looked over at Tempest to notice her lifting her head and opening her bleary eyes. For reasons of diplomacy I intended to stay in my wife’s corner of the room, but Tempest’s awakening was Gwendolyn’s cue to leave. So, I gently set my soup down and slotted in next to George as he delivered his very expensive bedside manner:
“I’m just joking, of course. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with ya. Based on the history, the incident, and the symptoms, my guess is you simply collapsed from exhaustion and malnutrition is all. But just to be safe, I want to ask you some questions to make sure you’re feeling all right. All right?”
Tempest reached for a cup of water and crackers that George had thoughtfully brought up for her. “All right.”
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Tempest Shadow.”
“And what is your occupation?”
“I suppose you could say I’m currently a servant, of Gelfand’s household.”
“And before that?”
“… Unemployed.”
“And before that?”
Tempest sighed as George made a show of shining a pocket light across her eyes. “I was the highest-ranking commander of the dreaded Storm King.”
“I see I see. That’s a symptom of confusion worth investigating. Now Gelfand explained a little bit on the way here, but not quite to my satisfaction: Can you tell me what brings you here?”
“Reformation.”
“That much I understood… even if I can’t say I believe it for a second, ahah. You know I treated some of the griffs your soldiers fought with. Some of them, quite extensively, you might say. But neither here nor there: What I really meant with my question, is not what brings you here, but what brings you here? Why bother us again, huh?”
Sensing some tension, I decided to chime in: “She wanted some time away, from anywhere big and important. She didn’t want her ambitions getting the better of her again… or, y’know, so she’s told me.”
“So, then, you mean to say you just took a map of the general carnage you left behind, blindly threw a dart at it, and set out on your penitent adventure?”
Tempest offered an uneasy grin in response. “That’s a fairly accurate description of what my process was, yes.”
George matched her smile with an even larger one of his own. “Well, I’m more a doctor of the physical kind rather than the psychological, but if I might offer my two cents anyway: She’s either a liar, or a loon!”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking the same thing,” I said, “but after all this time I figure it has to be more of the latter. What all could she possibly be scheming that’s worth this much effort?”
“Nah, I said a liar, not necessarily a schemer. There is a difference. In fact, she might even be lying to herself.”
Tempest looked at least as confused as I must have. “Oh?”
“Ah, forget I said anything. I’ve been paid to act as your doctor, not your therapist, ahaha. Yep. Just eat right and get some bedrest, maybe wrestle with your inner demons a little, and I promise you’ll be right as rain in no time!”
After George’s fortunate (if underwhelming) diagnosis, I was at odds with myself what to do with Tempest, in the short term. George had prescribed bed rest—24 hours at a minimum—and a recuperative, high-protein diet.
“Tell me, Tempest, as you’ve already fallen victim to my ignorance once regarding the pony diet: Where does your kind get its protein from, if not field mice and wild shrews and the ilk?”
“You’re not to blame, Gelfand; I should have realized sooner that my nutritional needs were not being met. At any rate, ponies get most of their protein through grain crops. So, think hay, nuts, seeds, legumes, and the like.”
She explained to me that these carb-and-protein rich food sources grew plentifully and cheaply in Equestria, and were a staple of practically every meal for a pony. As far as I was aware, however, such plants generally did not thrive in Griffonstone, but were highly sought after as winter storage crops owing to their long shelf life. Our family only tended to indulge in them as a garnish for holiday meals.
For some reason, I withheld this explanation of scarcity to Tempest. Every way I could think to word it gave me pause, as though it would misrepresent what I really meant. Instead, I simply told her that it was all right, and I would bring her some helpings of oats and walnuts up from the storeroom throughout the day. She thanked me, and promised to be back on her hooves by tomorrow morning.
Although her strength gradually returned to her throughout the afternoon, I was still concerned for her well-being. Seemingly every time I came in with her meals, she was lying tense and breathing heavy, slick with sweat. When I would wake her, she would come to with a startle, and take a moment to come back to reality. After the third such incident, I prodded:
“Another nightmare?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“You sure seem to be a fitful sleeper. I never remember my dreams.”
“I never did either, until more recently.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but didn’t feel comfortable inquiring further.
Tempest’s presence in the house was a rare novelty in our lives. In fact the very first place I spotted little Gamila after Tempest’s medical emergency was in Tempest’s bedroom, curious to listen to whatever this non-griffon had to say about her homeland. She must have deliberately snuck behind my back to do so, fearing that I would’ve forbidden her had I noticed. Indeed I intended to keep the promise I made to Gwendolyn, but strangely enough, she seemed now to accept (on sufferance) the unicorn’s presence in exchange for what obvious joy it brought our daughter.
“How do ponies hold on to things without claws?” I’d overhead Gamila asking. “Don’t you spill your food and stuff?”
“Funny you should ask that. Unicorns—those with working horns, at least—have magic to help them get along. But for the rest who have to depend on only their hooves to, say, play a banjo or roast marshmallows, well, the answer might surprise you...”
And surprising it was, I did have to say. All the more fascinating was it to Gamila, who quickly and eagerly explored the limits of the deep knowledge Tempest had on all the biological and cultural diversity of the world civilizations. Prior to that day, I had scarcely considered all the worldliness that must have gone claw-in-claw with her imperialistic former profession.
Despite these short-term difficulties, I was finally starting to consider what the long-term situation with Tempest might've looked like, beyond merely that of master-servant. And for the first time, I found myself instinctually balking at the possibility that this was all just a big scheme of hers.
But, what ever did George mean, when he said there was a difference between a liar and a schemer?
~~
I was a light sleeper, and always had been. It was a rare occasion that I ever got more than an hour’s chunk of sleep in before some bump in the night or creak of the house woke me, as if on schedule. Thinking on it, it was probably why I never remembered my dreams.
That night, I was on the couch again, and my first such awakening was to a familiar sound of claws on wood in the hallway upstairs. Made sense, as this was about Gwendolyn’s usual bedtime. However, the clawsteps did not continue down the length of the hallway to our bedroom, as I’d expected, but instead stopped short. Stopped short, just outside of the guestroom where Tempest rested.
Apprehension grew in me, waking me fully. This could be a conflict, I thought; I'd best prepare for damage control. I lifted my head and strained to hear what choice words my wife might've been hurling at our guest. Murmurs only, nothing I could distinguish. Two voices, in stable tones. As the seconds passed and I could still not make out their dialogue, I realized this was actually a good sign: Were they having a calm, mature conversation?
Minutes passed, the adrenaline wore off, and slumber was about to reclaim me. My mind was blissfully crossing the threshold back into unconsciousness…
Then I heard it: A muted but guttural screech, followed by a Skrrt! characteristic of a claw swiping through flesh.
Wide awake again. Seconds passed in silence, maybe half a minute. Long enough for me to consider whether I’d hallucinated the exchange or mistaken it for the house’s creaking. Finally, I heard the clawsteps down the hallway again, this time proceeding directly to Gwendolyn’s room. Moments later, I heard hoofsteps—strangely graceful and tender—descending stairs.
I alighted from the couch, and rushed to meet Tempest at the landing. I did so, catching her in the process of opening the front door. She cast an acknowledging glance back at me before retreating outside without a word. The foyer’s candlelight was dim, but the expression on Tempest’s face was unmistakable and unforgettable: A portrait of abject resignation, framed by the glint of fresh blood.
“I wasn’t sure if I would still find you here,” I remarked, in as neutral a tone as I could muster. Tempest currently—that is, the morning after last night’s incident—lay in the shed she was so accustomed to, staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t think she had been sleeping when I had intruded, but she didn’t seem fully awake, either.
“I promised I would stay until I am properly dismissed.”
“I guess my wife doesn’t have the authority to dismiss you, eh? Only me?”
“Your wife never told me to leave your household. Nor even your guestroom.”
“Oh?” That genuinely shocked me. I gestured to the puffy, ruddy claw mark on her face. “What was this love tap about, then?”
“Before I go into that, I feel I should explain something else,” she said, setting herself upright. “You don’t need to worry about how you’ll go about feeding me.”
“Hm?”
“The oats and nuts. I noticed you were always careful in how you delivered it to and from my room, as if you didn’t want your wife or your child to see you. I asked Gamila how often your family eats those kinds of foods, and her reaction told me that it can’t be a cheap or sustainable option around here. Is that correct?”
“Awfully perceptive of you… But well, maybe I didn’t want to tell you so soon, afraid you’d go all ‘self-sacrificial’ on us again.”
“I suppose that’s a reasonable fear, given my antics.” She offered a quick, fleeting grin. “But for the record, I didn’t come here empty-hooved. I brought along a small bag of gems which I can use to repay you for any costs incurred on my behalf. And if that runs out, I’ll find some means of becoming self-sustaining.
“Though back to your question: No, this was no mere love tap. But I assure you that your wife came into my room with peaceful intentions. Made it clear that although she could scarcely forget who I once was, she was willing to look past it, she would let me stay a while. Let water under the bridge wash away. Because maybe I could be a good help to the household, because Gamila had taken a liking to me. But most of all, because she could tell some part of me deep inside had changed.
“You’ve grown soft on me over time, Gelfand; that much I’ve noticed. And the trust of a child like Gamila was never in question. But that sudden compassion from an unexpected place… I don’t know, it triggered something within me. I felt a compulsion to tell her all about the nightmares I’ve been having.
“In one of these nightmares, I’m back under the charge of the Storm King, leading a zeppelin fleet through the Griffonstone wetlands. Not exactly these parts, but close enough. We’re raiding local villages, carting off valuables, food, and other supplies, as well as select prisoners. We don’t have a set course or timeline; we’re powerful enough that our plan is simply to maraud about until our coffers and holding cells are full, and then return to HQ.
“But one tiny village—I know not its name—puts up a far more spirited fight than all the rest. After the skirmish there is little left but ruins. So we round up all the survivors, adult and child alike, and take them captive. There is one cub—I know not his name—among this lot who is without parents; whether they were lost in the battle, or he was already an orphan, I do not know. He is scarcely older than your dear Gamila.
“Might I make it clear by now, if it is not already: This nightmare is no fiction, but an old memory of mine. There is no short supply of them that start and end similarly.
“So this orphaned cub, I pay him no mind, as I am busy captaining my ship. But my crew, the bored brutes that they are, bully and harass him to no end. He’s made an example to every other griff on board that the limits of their cruelty are not to be tested. It’s pointless, since no other griff wants to make a target of themselves, anyway.
“Several days later, it’s as simple as this: We discover we’re missing a prisoner. Sixty-seven griffs instead of sixty-eight. Who could it be? A deckhand growls and asks if the young pathetic one has been seen; he hasn’t. We search the zeppelin top to bottom to no avail. Such as it is, the ship never touched ground since we picked him up, and all the griffons had their wings clipped before being taken aboard, so the only conclusion is that at some indeterminate point in the last twenty-four hours, he jumped overboard. Our cruising altitude is eight hundred feet at a minimum.
“That’s it. That’s the end of his story. I did not know his name, I did not know his age, I did not know what he called his home or his family, or whether he had either of those things. I did not know if he jumped in the hope of escape, or merely to cut his suffering short. I did not know if he fell by accident, or if one of my crew went too far with him. Yet I made no changes in how I captained my ship, for his story had little impact on my and the Storm King’s plans.”
I shifted where I stood, more than a little uncomfortable. During the reign of the Storm King, stories like this were always circulating, and after a certain amount of time I had learned to drown them out. But it was something else to hear them right from the source.
Tempest looked at me expectantly, as if awaiting my response to an implied question. In that moment, she felt as much like a stranger to me as the day she had first arrived on my doorstep.
“Gelfand,” she spoke up again, “how many of my victims do you think are looking down on me, eager to see me experience one one-hundredth of the suffering I’ve caused?”
What was I supposed to say?
“Do you not think they are owed even that much?”
Why was she asking me these questions?
“Would you feel so forgiving if it had been your little Gamila inst—”
“Shut up!” Something inside me finally boiled over. “I can’t answer these questions for you! Why in all the lands would I be in any position to? Don't you know they never have satisfying answers anyway? All I know is the past is the past, and… I still don’t know what you’re even doing here!”
My words took Tempest by surprise almost as much as they did myself. I don’t remember what else was said, after that point; just a meek exchange of apologies from the both of us, before I let her be once more.
Tempest returned to her usual chores that day. Granted, even after her day spent laid up in the family’s guestroom, there wasn’t much left to do; the frostcarrots were adequately tended to, the family had enough firewood for the next two weeks, and there were no more outdoor odd jobs that she hadn’t done in her first week. Still, she found an hour or two’s work clearing snow from their garden walkways, just to keep her mind from wandering.
Yet wander her mind did, confronting questions both new and familiar.
What will I do, where will I go, if Gelfand’s family releases me?
Am I any closer to my goal?
What is my goal?
Is this where I’m supposed to be?
What else could I deserve but this?
Tempest noticed she was losing herself in her thoughts again. She looked up from her shoveling to come to her senses… only to see white in all directions. A chill wind blew wickedly against her face. A freak snowsquall? Adrenaline pumped. She dropped the shovel at her hooves.
“Hello Tempest,” spoke a royal voice from behind.
Tempest spun around, and quickly put a name to the voice: “Princess Luna?”
“That is correct. You are in a dream now.” An alicorn’s silhouette in the distance drew closer, until finally the princess of the night’s face was recognizable through the blizzard.
Tempest quickly thought back—yes, she had gone to lie down after she’d finished shoveling. She felt her body relax: The wind no longer whipped and whistled in her ears, and the air now exuded a soothing warmth over her whole body.
“Is this how dreams always feel?” The words rolled off Tempest’s lips as quickly as they came to mind. Sedated. Hypnotic. Uninhibited.
Luna smiled. “I have added a little something to this one. Is it agreeable?”
“Yes… very much so...”
As if caught in a compassionate embrace, she felt the warmth overtake her. It intensified many times over, without becoming hot. The blizzard’s snow was replaced by little white lights all around, blinding her in both eyes, yet it was not painful. Every sense of hers, even her mind itself, seemed to slip away, to be replaced only by things bright and blissful. It felt as though, she were falling asleep, dreaming within a dream…
An indeterminate amount of time passed for her in this state. A minute? An hour? After however long it was, Tempest experienced a gentle reawakening of her faculties. Awakened from the dream within a dream, but not from the dream itself, clearly, as the lights died back down, and Tempest could see and hear Princess Luna once more: “I felt you were only deserving of a good reverie, after what’s been the content of your dreams lately.”
As Tempest’s senses returned to her, so too did she feel her usual anxieties rise to the surface. “Yes, I was meaning to ask about those,” she said. “By presenting me with such nightmares, or at least in continuing to allow them to occur… I only imagined you had a very specific message in mind.”
Luna shook her head morosely. “Perish the thought. Those ‘nightmares’ are dreams in name only, and I have scant authority or control over them; in fact, I can only even observe such dreams through a foggy lens of sorts. Tonight, however, I made it a point to preempt them within your psyche, so that we might have a discussion.”
“I see,” Tempest ceded. “What are they, then, if not dreams like any other that you can control?”
“I can only influence the content of the idling subconscious; in your case, every detail of your nightmare was borne directly of your memories, immune to any amount of suggestion.” Luna peered across the barren blizzard landscape, before returning to Tempest’s gaze. “And though I could not easily witness them, it was clear enough that they were not happy memories, were they?”
“Somehow I wonder if you haven’t actually seen them, and are just trying to spare my dignity,” Tempest mused darkly. “Regardless, you can take a guess; you’re well aware of my past.”
“I should imagine you’re aware of mine in turn. The path of a reformed villain is a long and trying one, is it not?”
“Yes. As it should be, in my opinion.”
The response appeared to give the princess some pause. “Please don’t tell me you’re making the transition harder for yourself than it needs to be...”
Slightly indignant: “And how hard does it need to be? Or maybe, how hard should it be?”
She shook her head. “You are right to take offense; I should not comment on your situation as though it were my own.”
More than a brief moment passed in silence between the two. Tempest couldn’t tell whether Luna was trying and failing to find the right words, or whether the uncomfortable stillness was exactly what she was going for. “Well, I can’t pretend that our situations aren’t analogous,” she finally responded, “but I do think they are… incomparable, in an important sense.”
“Oh?”
“You tried to kill your sister, yes? And you were planning on conquering all Equestria out of sheer jealousy?” After awaiting an approving nod from the princess, she continued: “But none of that actually came to pass. You were stopped, purified, and thereafter revoked your evil ways. Your sins were purely potential—my own, actual. And the damages probably exceed my ability to fully undo even over the course of several lifetimes.”
Again, Luna remained quiet when Tempest desired some sort of response. So, she continued:
“It’s just, for a little while after I reformed, it felt amazing. To be able to listen to my conscience for once, instead of repressing it with lies and excuses. But then I realized there were negative things I had been repressing, too: The tortured voices of innumerable victims calling out from beyond the grave, who seek nothing more than some sort of justice. Voices that don’t want me to have a warm place to sleep, that don’t want me to have good dreams at night, that don’t even want me to still be—”
“These voices are in your head,” Luna interrupted brusquely.
“What?” Tempest retorted. In this moment of tension, she felt a fading of sorts, a slipping away… was she waking up? “They’re only in my head because I buried most of their owners.”
“And there is nothing in all Equestria—or Griffonstone—that will bring them back.”
“That’s right! There’s precious little I can do that’s a drop in the bucket compared… You know I’m in Griffonstone?”
The princess’s lips moved as if uttering a response, but Tempest heard nothing. On instinct, Tempest attempted to ask that she repeat herself, only to be met with the same silence. She felt her head begin to spin, as the silhouette of the princess against the falling snow faded and blurred into itself. Like sugar in water, the dreamscape all around her did rapidly dissolve, until it was replaced with the lonely, drafty interior of Gelfand’s shed.
Until Luna’s sympathies were nothing more than just a distant dream.
After I’d had my spat with Tempest in the shed, I felt I needed a distraction. In situations like this, I always found myself returning to that one chore I genuinely enjoyed: Cooking.
I enjoyed spoiling Gamila in this way. Most parents would expect their kid to eat whatever it was they fancied cooking that day, and if they didn’t like it, well tough luck! But tonight, I was not one of those parents—my and Gwendolyn’s favorite dish involved roast goose loaded with one of my family-secret stuffings (in the end, I owe most of my cooking ability to my ancestors), but for whatever reason, I could never put a smile on Gamila’s face with this dish. No matter; while the bird roasted, I could quickly whip her up one of her favorites—macaroni and diced shrew. It would have the knock-on effect of letting me and Gwen have a more intimate dinner together, like we always used to.
Or maybe I was lying to myself. Maybe I just wanted to set the playing field, before I broached a delicate subj—
“So, would I be wrong in assuming this is your way of currying my favor regarding the workhorse?” she asked with a keen smirk.
She had preempted me, bringing it up after her very first bite of the goose. “I suppose I wasn’t very subtle about it, now was I?”
“Don’t fret, honey, subtlety is overrated.” Blissfully, she dined on another hunk of the bird.
“You’re right. As long as I can put you in a good mood, what do I need to be subtle for?”
I expected her to offer some playful comment in response, something I could segue smoothly onto the question of the “workhorse.” Instead, she simply continued to feast angelically on the meal in front of her. I guess the hint was, I would have to abandon any hopes I had of subtlety and just be upfront about it: “About Tempest, yeah, I’ve been thinking: After all this time, I still don’t understand her. I apologize on her behalf for whatever nonsense she got herself into last night with you. I figure it’s about time I ask you for your opinion on her, and, well, what we should do with her.”
“I appreciate the candidness,” she said, candidly herself. “I’ll admit that I didn’t quite have her figured out before last night’s incident. But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I would say her purpose here is actually rather simple.”
“Oh?” Her tone on the subject confused me, for as far as I could tell it carried neither scorn nor compassion. “Frankly, she’s the most unpredictable creature I think I’ll ever know.”
As if on cue, the pony in question made herself visible through the dining room window, off in the distance. Gwen and I spent an amusing moment together as we watched her labor over not more than half an inch of snow caking some forgotten garden path of ours.
“Her reason for coming here,” Gwen elaborated, once she’d tired of the pony in favor of the goose, “isn’t to scam us. But it isn’t to help us, either. It’s not to atone for her past sins, and it’s not to temper her ambitions. It’s not to spend some time away and come away from it the better pony. Be a dear and pass the steak knife, Gel?” She sawed into the juicy, savory ribs of the goose, soaking her plate in a puddle of blood and melted fat. “Her purpose here is self-limiting, whether she ultimately achieves it, or simply gives it up; that’s why I don’t particularly care if you’d like to continue housing her, as she won’t be here long. After all, she’s no danger to us.”
I felt as uneasy as I did confused. I looked down at my plate: I still hadn’t taken a single bite. “I’m afraid you’ll have to spell it out for me, Gwen—subtlety, as we’ve learned, isn’t my strong suit.”
“Why, her reason for coming here, dear,” she sang sanguinely, “is to die. Nothing more, and nothing less.”
~~
Tempest stood in the center of the town marketplace, feeling conspicuous and more than a little self-conscious. Despite the midday timing, the market could hardly be called bustling—at any given moment, only a griff or two could be spotted amidst the jagged crags. Some carrying produce or meats to or from a dingy vendor’s stall; others empty-clawed, merely passing by; but all of them casting a sidelong glance at this suspicious unicorn who they may or may not have recognized as the former head lieutenant of the dreaded Storm King.
Anxious of confrontation, she drew her hood further over her face. Clutched protectively at the saddlebag of gems under her cloak. She was just here to pick up some groceries for the family (chief among them, the oats and the walnuts she had gorged on during her recovery). Quite a simple chore, compared to all the others she had put herself through over the past couple weeks. Yet she felt an uneasy anticipation in the pit of her stomach… perhaps in waiting for a certain special visit she hoped to make after her grocery stop.
Just before she started to get desperate, she finally spotted a griff matching the description Gelfand had given her: A sharp-eyed fellow with the head of an osprey and a maroon coat. As hoped, he was manning a stall lined with bags overflowing with golden sheaves of wheat. He had to be the grain vendor Gelfand had in mind.
Based on his eye contact, he had located Tempest long before she had him. An eye contact, which he maintained unto and beyond the point of impoliteness, all the way until she found herself laying a friendly hoof on his stall. Careful to keep as much of her face enshrouded as she could without looking suspicious, she began:
“Good afternoon, griffon sir. I’ve heard you’re the only grain and legume farmer around these parts. And quite a good one, at that.”
“Skilled enough to be the only one this town has needed for two generations and counting, yes,” he spoke in a satisfied, croaking tone. “But your reputation precedes you as well, now doesn’t it, commander?”
The off-hand comment struck Tempest at her core as she felt her limbs lock in place. She took a breath, and as diplomatically as she could, pulled down the hood of her cloak.
“Yes, thank you, I do like to see eye-to-eye with new customers of mine. The name’s Gaul.” Finally retiring his penetrating glare, he closed his eyes and ran his claw through a graying mohawk. “Now what’ll you be buying?”
Sheepishly, Tempest browsed through Gaul’s wares. Recounted her mental shopping list. Inquired about the relevant prices. Settled on a gem-to-bit exchange rate. The pricing was incredibly unfavorable at each step, but that much was to be expected in the present season, in this country, in this remote locale... and who she was.
She had just finished the exchange and was retiring what remained of her gem purse when Gaul spoke up: “No bartering with me at all, eh? Don’t you feel me wringing you dry?”
“I’m aware it’s the griffon custom. But given my circumstances, it just doesn’t suit me.”
“Somehow I figured as much,” he said, pulling a loupe from his pocket and admiring the chatoyant band of a cat’s-eye. “Don’t tell anygriff I did this, but I offered you my post-barter prices. Others won’t be so kind with pony folk, y’know.”
“I understand these goods don’t come cheaply around here; thank you.”
Tempest turned to leave, took a few steps, and then changed her mind. Trotting back, she continued:
“I wasn’t upfront with you about my identity earlier. I apologize.”
“‘Tis no trouble.”
“...but I also would like to know, how is it that you knew who I was?”
“Ha, word’s been out for a while now that the Gelfand family has had some help the past couple of weeks. That the former commander of the Storm King has finally gone soft… ‘as much in the heart as in the head,’ Doc told me. But now having met you, I’d say you’re borderline crazy at worst, huh?”
“Doctor George? I see. About him, actually, I wanted to ask—”
Gaul had already lifted a wing and claw to point out a direction. He shook his head in amusement. “Oh Georgie, you have such an uncanny mind for these things, now don’t you… He told me you might come asking for him. Look for his cottage in the west part of town, a one-storey place next to a big bristlecone tree.”
“Thank you. You’ve been a indispensable help for me today.”
A massive, dormant bristlecone tree acted as a lighthouse of sorts for the dwarfed cottage at its feet. Thanks to Gaul’s directions and description, Tempest had no doubt that she had found her destination: the home of the eccentric doctor George.
Although the house looked young situated next to the ancient tree, it nonetheless embodied an older style of architecture than any of the other homes Tempest had seen thus far, Gelfand’s included. It bore the weight of countless seasons’ worth of accumulated wear to its stone foundations; however, these were merely cosmetic blemishes, and in every other aspect of its upkeep—the tiled roof, the paneled siding, the wrap-around porch—it was clear the home had a caring owner.
As she approached, she spotted what appeared to be a sentient pile of coats in the front yard. On closer inspection: A griffon tending to a bed of chill-lilies, his back facing toward her.
“Hello. Is this the doctor’s house?” she called out politely, from a distance.
Tempest’s hail was either not heard, or ignored; the griffon continued tending to the flowerbed.
Approaching further, to almost within hoof’s reach, she tried again: “Hello, is that you, George?”
This time the figure took notice, turned around, and indeed Tempest recognized the face of the doctor. “Ah, if it isn’t our resident veteran! Good afternoon, commander,” he hailed, with a salute of the wing. “What brings you here?”
“I’m out doing groceries for Gelfand.” Tempest nodded to the bags of produce slung over her shoulder. “But don’t play coy: Gaul told me you were expecting this much. That I would come to town and ask around for you.”
“Ah yes, I can say I had a hunch...”
Tempest smirked. “You knew it was only a matter of time before a pony like me would wind up talking to the only grain farmer in town. And I bet you knew I would have a question or two for you.”
“Sharp as a tack, commander.” George ambled up to cottage’s front door and produced a key ring from within one of his several overcoats. He fumbled in search of the right key. “Now what’s on your mind, huh?”
“Well, it’s just something you said when you were checking up on me. I can’t quite figure out what you meant by it… and I can’t get it out of my head, either.”
“The simplest of meanings can escape the greatest of minds, I always say. Yeah?” Finally, he found the means to open the front door, and stepped inside. “Come on in, but don’t let the draft in.”
Tempest followed George’s lead, and upon crossing the threshold into George’s home, turned around to shut the door behind her. “I’m sure you didn’t mean it so harshly as it came across, but, well, you accused me of ‘lying to myself,’ and frankly I just don’t—”
Tempest dropped her groceries onto the floor with a startle: Returning to face the doctor, she now found a scalpel pressed against her throat, and a claw clenching her shoulder painfully. “Easy, commander, easy. Now no shouting, no sudden movements. You understand?”
The very first instincts of hers to process the situation were those instilled in her by a lifetime of combat training. The sequence assembled at lightning speed in her mind: Drop her head back from the blade’s reach, wrap around and trap the claw that held her, swivel in place and deliver a back kick to the abdomen, tackle to the ground, pin the weapon—but then she came to wits with the situation: “This is revenge. Isn’t it?”
The doctor’s solemn expression spoke for itself.
“For all the lives I’ve ruined? Those of the soldiers you treated, back when I—”
“It ain’t revenge for distracting me from my lilies!” he spat. “Now tell me, how does it feel? After years of enabling atrocities and war crimes across the kingdoms, to have it all end in some grizzled, vindictive old bird’s cottage?”
“I would say...” Tempest swallowed uncomfortably against the pressure of the blade. “...that it feels only fair. I’m in no position to beg for my life.”
“Ah, ‘reap what you sow’ type? ‘Eye for an eye’? You sure you won’t struggle or plead just a little bit?”
“I will not.”
A crooked smile from the doctor. “Say, you almost look like you’re enjoying this, commander.”
Tempest blinked; a moistness on her eyelashes. Relaxed her shoulders; an inexplicable tranquility within her. “I suppose I am… Do what you have to do.”
The doctor chuckled. Whistling comically, he pressed the scalpel deep, and dragged it across her throat, the full length of her jaw. Dropped the blade at her hooves. Walked away and settled down in a nearby armchair, shedding his winter clothing. As if in a dream, Tempest raised her hooves to feel her neck… nothing. There was nothing there but a shallow indent in her fur where the blade had passed. She bent down and inspected the scalpel as it lay on the floor; a piece of masking tape had been applied along the length of its cutting edge, defusing it entirely as a weapon.
“Does that answer your questions?” George called out, tugging with his beak at a stuck zipper.
Tempest was dizzy with adrenaline. “I-I’m afraid it’s only given me more of them, George. What was that?”
“I’ll get around to answering that, but first, some questions of my own: You said you came here on a quest of reformation. How does trekking all the way out to our insignificant, inhospitable little town help you with that?”
She shied away from the doctor. “Because I felt I needed some time away from warm and familiar things, maybe. My self-interest, my ambitions in life, all they’ve ever done is corrupt me.”
“Okay. So how does that bring us to your toil and servitude at Gelfand’s household?”
“I suppose I just wanted to be responsible for some amount of pure good in the world, however small, to the benefit of one among thousands I have wronged.”
“You sure it wasn’t for the pure pain and penance of it? This country, this season, this harsh occupation?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “No matter the cost to myself.”
“Hm. So about that ‘pure good,’ how does that new scar you gave yourself play into it?”
Reactively, Tempest brought her hoof up to the claw mark on her cheek, which by now had scabbed over. “I didn’t give this to myself, I got it when—”
“When you blurted out something frighteningly upsetting to Gwendolyn, I imagine.” Finally free from his outdoor wardrobe, George stood up and positioned himself closer to the increasingly anxious unicorn, and began to pace. “What’s the matter, was Gelfand not as harsh a master as you were hoping?”
“I was only telling Gwendolyn about my past, George. The facts of my life. At that moment, my only intention was to inform.”
“I’ll just have to take your word for it, seeing how I wasn’t there.” He held a claw to his chin in feigned contemplation. “But where does that leave us regarding not-so-slowly starving yourself to death? Y’know, the thing that originally got us acquainted on a doctor-patient relationship?”
“T-thinking ahead might not be my strong suit,” she said, stumbling over her words as something vague, something unsettling inside her threatened to boil over, “but I can tell you that the specifics of my dietary needs weren’t at the top of my priorities when I—”
“Oh but they must have been at some point, weren’t they? Like before you made the perilous hike all the way from, shoot, Canterlot at the closest? For a pony to prepare their rations well enough to survive such a treacherous journey and then plain ol’ forget a basic staple of their diet is, well, very confusing to me!”
Tempest opened her lips, poised to reply, before realizing she hadn’t yet thought of anything to say.
“But that’s not so important, not compared to the main question: How would it help you to reform, how would it do any good in the world, how would there be any sense at all in dropping yourself on the knife of some grizzled, vindictive old bird, when I know perfectly well you had—and still have—the means of fighting for a better ending?”
He had made his point by now; Tempest could recognize his point of view, and all the evidence in favor of it. So desperately, all she wanted to do right now was to tell him that he was right, and that he had given her a lot to think about, and then to graciously pick her groceries back up and bid farewell. To learn from the experience what she needed to, and then to rationally move on.
Instead, all she could muster in response, was to sob. To sob for however long she did. To somehow go limp in George’s open arms. To somehow be laid down with a blanket and pillow on his living room couch. To ultimately cry herself to sleep, beseeching dreams and nightmares—come what may—simply to appear and spirit her away.
I’m sorry if you wind up reading this note over and over again—if you wind up thinking back to these weeks I spent with you, time and time again—and still don’t fully understand why I came here, and why I now must leave. That’d be a reasonable reaction to have. Or maybe, you comprehend the situation much better than me, and you’ve been expecting this conclusion for a long time coming. That, too, would not be surprising to me.
I know I promised that I would stay with your family until you unequivocally dismissed me, which you did not. I realize now that such an arrangement wasn’t very fair to impose on you—to put it bluntly, I was only using you and your loved ones as a means to my own bizarre ends. But I also realize, that suddenly rupturing our agreement without advance notice is not very fair, either. So, I only hope that, if you cannot accept my words of apology, then you’ll accept these leftover gems (what would I have packed them for in the first place, if I didn’t foresee how unsustainable my plan was from the very beginning?) as payment for inconveniences incurred.
This isn’t to say I’ve found any closure, for my part. At least, not yet. But that’s all right, because I’ve learned that absolute resolutions to these things can’t be rushed. Or maybe, they can be, but they won’t be the resolutions you should really seek to bring about—after all, we always have a choice in the matter, and we have to trust that we are capable of making good choices. Even when we’ve made atrocious choices in the past.
I hope that whatever impressions I left on little Gamila will be remembered fondly. And that whatever impressions I left on your wife Gwendolyn, will be forgotten quickly. I know I will remember your family for the kindness and patience they showed to somepony who has wronged them not once, but twice now.
And whether you, Gelfand, choose to forget me or to remember me, to write back to me or even to invite me to visit sometime after I’ve attained a healthier state of mind... those choices, of course, I leave to you.
