Fallout Equestria: Sisters

Fallout Equestria: Sisters

by Arowid

Chapter Nine:

Star-Crossed

“How could you ever know what it’s like to be totally obsessed with a pony, only to find out they’re obsessed with somepony else?”

“Isn’t it weird that nopony ever came along and grabbed all these water talismans?”

Lily had graciously offered me the first bath, and even though she took the opportunity to relentlessly tease me regarding whether or not she would be observing my struggles to shed my armor, she did turn around and cover her face with her stetson like I had asked. I wasn’t entirely satisfied that she wouldn’t peek anyway until she had recreated her odd little promise ritual—something about wishing to fly and having pastries stuffed into her eyes—but after that, I snuck behind the cauldron and wriggled free of the tight leather barding. It was an… arduous process.

Having finally freed myself of my constrictive trappings, I slinked around the side of the cauldron to find Lily in exactly the same position I had left her. My hoof roamed over the spiral rune on the side of the cauldron and tingled as the energy in the talisman was stirred to life by my touch. The bottom of the bowl lit up, glowing a dim orange while I turned back to Lily. “Honestly, I’d be more surprised if anypony were brave enough to come claim them in the first place. Between the ghouls, the raging battle outside, the manticores, and the insane pod-monsters, I’d think that this facility has more than enough to deter even the most determined of scavengers.”

Lily’s wings gave a single, weak flap as she shrugged. “Dungeon Diving 101, babe. The scarier the traps, the better the treasure. That’s what makes it worth it to scout out the really fucked up places.”

Water flowed over the cauldron’s brim and fell through the grate, splashing noisily in the darkness beneath our hooves. “I’ll have to take your word for that one,” I conceded. “Scavenging has returned to me a net loss, as far as I can tell.” I waved my PipBuck over the massive black cauldron and examined the statistical readout that popped up on my screen. “Potion contamination and radiation are both down to zero point zero zero zero… Ugh… I’m tired. It’s pure.”

“So we can drink it now?” Lily turned around, biting her lip with the same endearing anticipation I had seen on the faces of little ones eager to have their doctor tell them they were well enough to go play again.

A small smile formed over my face as I nodded. “Our cauldron doth runneth over.”

Lily eagerly flung her hat to the side and hobbled over to the caudron. She raised herself up on two shaky legs and braced her trembling hooves against the rim of the giant kettle as she exclaimed, “Thank the fucking spirits! I’m so thirsty I could drink piss out of a skinned snake!” Before I could stop her—or even react to her disgusting words—she plunged the entirety of her face underneath the water’s surface, noisily gulping as if she’d gone days without a drink.

At first I simply rolled my eyes at the uncouth behavior, but when it continued for longer than ten seconds I grew worried. I gripped the back of her mane in my magic and yanked her gasping and dripping face out of the water. Floating an empty bottle up to her eyes, I suggested, “Dear, we do have spare containers. At least try to act civilized, won’t you?”

“Pfft,” she grinned playfully. Struggling to catch her breath, she added “Where’s the… fun in… that?”

Water was still streaming over the cauldron’s brim to splash through the grate at our hooves. Underneath the metal I could see a large drainage trough traveling deeper underneath the facility, and realized how fortunate it was that the system was unblocked. If it had been clogged we might have been up to our fetlocks in water. Or, given our findings in the facility thus far, something far worse.

I stopped the miniature deluge with a couple hoof taps to the wave rune, grateful that it behaved as I expected. “Yes, well, some of us do… Do have...” I trailed off as I noticed the running black liquid dripping down Lily’s cheek and off her chin. “...standards… “

“What?” she asked. “You’re looking at me like I’m melting.” Lily’s face was the very image of perplexion. I simply pointed my hoof at her cheek, unsure of how to address the issue.

Setting her bottle down on the mossy floor, she dabbed at her face with a hoof, and wound up pulling away a good portion of jet-black goop. “Oh, shit. It is about that time, isn’t it?”

“Is your…” My words hung in the air just like my wavering hoof pointing at Lily’s face.

“Yeah. My face paint is running. I guess I am melting.” She rubbed her cheek vigorously, staining the entire side of her face in a deep black splotch. As I continued to stare incredulously, she offered up an explanation. “Thunderhooves pegasi paint our faces when we go to war. Something we picked up from the buffalo.” Her brow twisted and contorted as she grimaced bashfully at me. “I’m… not the best at remembering when I need to replace mine.”

“I… honestly thought that was a tattoo,” I said, trying to conceal my puzzlement as best I could.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to look like one.” Lily wiped her hoof off on her chest before asking, “If I gave you the recipe, could you brew some more for me? I’m awful at alchemy.”

“Alchemy?” I was, to put it mildly, skeptical. “You need magic for face paint?”

“Sort of. Zebra magic makes it last a little longer.” She shrugged. “I have been getting Half-Moon to do this for me since I can’t brew for shit, but the last time I saw him I was off my meds. I’m lucky enough that I remembered to ask him for Battle Brew.”

“So if I understand this correctly, you have an ancient tradition passed down from buffalo, which requires zebra alchemy for the main component, to be used on a pegasus pony?” I had to shake my head at that. “I must confess that when it comes to your tribe, my imagination is running wild.”

She chuckled, and nodded encouragingly, “We’re a crazy bunch. No argument there. Will you do it?”

I didn’t want to waste any time in reuniting with my sister, but one more little task to accomplish before we set out wouldn’t kill us. “Of course.” I glanced at the slowly heating cauldron. “But can it wait until after we’ve cleaned ourselves up?”

“Sure.” She nodded and sighed in relief. “Thanks. I owe you another one.”

“Hmm, so just that I’m certain,” I began, a sly grin spreading across my lips. I raised a hoof and cocked my head toward it, “In order to curry your favor I should either put myself in dangerous situations where I would inevitably be forced to save your life through either violence or medical knowhow.” I repeated the gesture, this time with the other hoof. “Or I could simply make a jar of paint?”

“You…” Lily’s eyes shifted from side to side as a blank look of surprise overtook her face. “You could also buy me a hat.” In a hopeful voice she added, “I like hats.”

I giggled and shook my head before taking another look at the indigo mare in front of me, pursing my lips in concentration. “You are… rather odd. You know that, right?”

She shrugged. “Eh, most of my friends usually have a hard time understanding me.” Raising her inky hoof and scratching at her chin, she continued with an altogether understandable admission, “Actually, sometimes I have a hard time understanding me.”

I inclined my head as I asked, “Perhaps it would help if I knew something more of The Thunderhooves as a whole?”

Her ears flopped to the sides of her head as she sighed. “Yeah, I kinda figured it was pointless to try and dodge that conversation for too long. What do you want to know?”

“Well, for starters, the slaver did use the word ‘raiders’ when he referred to your tribe,“ I stated matter-of-factly. Lily licked her lips and nodded thoughtfully, then took the opportunity to fish a box of cigarettes out of her mane. To this day, I’m still not sure how it managed to stay dry. I swallowed before asking, “What did he mean by that?”

“The short answer, the easy answer,” she paused to light her cigarette and inhale, “is that we’re raiders.” Just as I recoiled from her admission she blew a plume of smoke to the side, meeting my shocked gaze with one melancholy eye.

She must have seen the barrage of questions I was about to pelt her with, because she raised a hoof and preempted my verbal assault with her own. “Look, Candy, no one has a good definition for that word anymore. To some folks we’re savages that take everything we want before we burn villages to the ground. To other folks, we’re more like a small nation keeping our territory free and clear of all the real assholes out there.”

Her voice rose steadily as she continued. “We’re the sorry bitches that get to deal with folks like Red Eye and his huge fucking slaver-army grabbing up every town on our borders. We get to deal with the Steel Rangers whenever they think that maybe we shouldn’t get to keep our ancestral power armor. We have to fight off all the other tribes that have been edging in on us ever since…” She trailed off, hesitating as her jaw worked silently.

It wasn’t terribly difficult to deduce that there was something she didn’t wish to share just yet, and given the frankness of her admission, I could only assume the worst. Still, I have to admit that I was curious—and optimistic—enough to not pass too much judgement on her. Lily certainly hadn’t acted as foul as the fiends I had encountered when Nohta and I returned to our stable, and she did seem to genuinely adhere to her own peculiar sense of honor and proper conduct. I couldn’t possibly imagine her being devious enough to plot and scheme against anyone. Or smart enough to plot and scheme, for that matter...

After fear, rage, and frustration had played across her face, she grit her teeth, took a deep drag from her smoke, and sighed heavily to steady herself. She started again, a bit calmer than before. “Bottom line is: we do what needs to be done to protect ourselves and help as many as we can. If we have to crack a few skulls or ‘acquire’ some supplies from folks that don’t deserve what they’ve got in the process, then so be it.”

My brow furrowed as I shuffled my hooves. “Could you elaborate on that?”

“You ever hear of a town called Appleloosa?” I shook my head, prompting Lily to explain. “Before The War, it was one of the places where the buffalo first learned to compromise and make deals with ponies. The old apple orchard there used to be part of the original Thunderhooves tribe’s traditional stampeding-grounds; a holy place.” She swished her tail and ground her teeth together. “But now? Now it’s a fucking slaver-town, full of nothing but filth that treat ponies like property!”

Lily glared at me, her ruby eyes colder than ice. “Where buffalo used to run free, now ponies live in chains.” She spat on the ground and flared her wings, “Fuck that! If we want to send war bands up north to fuck up their shit and take whatever we can haul back, then it’s our right. And we’ll be doing the whole wasteland a fucking favor while we’re at it!”

“That… is something worth mulling over,” I conceded. A moment of silence passed between us, with me pondering what she had said as she flipped ashes off the end of her cigarette. My tail curled around my hooves as I asked, “Do you free the slaves?”

Lily calmed down after hearing the hope in my voice, and allowed her wings to fold at her sides. She grinned and nodded, “Freed slaves make up a good chunk of our earth ponies and unicorns. Not that there’s a whole lot of ‘em ever since Red Eye started sending the town protection, but we do what we can.” She let out a soft chuckle before adding, “And shit, we’re probably gearing up for a big raid on the town right now. I heard over the radio that somepony damn near wiped the slavers out and escaped with all the slaves by train.” Her grin grew a little wider as she added, “If that pony went in alone like I heard, then they probably needed the train just to haul around their massive testicles.”

“Lily…” I shook my head, but couldn’t hide how the corner of my mouth turned upward in my own grin. Even if it was just a glimpse of her cheerful side, it still felt good to see her smile again. “Well, I don’t suppose I can find any fault with harassing a group of miscreants such as slavers.”

Lily’s ears perked up as she smirked, and her voice took on all the annoying qualities of somepony trying desperately to convince you to buy whatever dreck they happen to be peddling. “Then congratulations! You have the qualifications of a raider, and you’re a decent person! At your soonest convenience, you can redeem twenty pony-scalps with Papa Thunderhooves to apply for citizenship at your local Thunderhooves camp, located in the the lovely Dumb Rock Canyon in The Badlands!”

I cocked my head to the side, feeling my grin spreading. “Twenty scalps? That seems a bit steep, don’t you think? Besides, I prefer to do my cutting with surgical equipment on ponies that need my help.”

“Twenty scalps is the discount rate, sugar, on account of me being your sponsor.” She shrugged, lifting her blackened hoof to her chest as she smiled innocently. “Sorry babe, kickin’ ass and takin’ manes is a requirement for being this awesome.”

Part of me really wanted to just let that be the end of it; to end the conversation on a good note while we were both cheerfully exchanging awful jokes and lame puns. I gave her a moment to smoke the last little bit of her cigarette and drop the remaining nub through the grate at our hooves. That was all the time I could spare before the desire for the whole truth won out.

My expression darkened as I asked the question that was gnawing at my insides. “Do you only raid slaver towns?”

“If we can help it, but sometimes we have to go after softer targets.” She scowled as she continued, “That entire desert has been carved up into teensy little pieces by all the rival tribes in the region. If the other tribes start to think that we’re weak, then they start thinking about war. We keep the peace by being in charge. Sometimes you have to burn down a village or two to make sure everyone knows you're still on top.”

My hoof found my lips as I stared at her in shock. “Entire villages? Isn’t that a little extreme?”

Her eyes conveyed a startling lack of emotion as she explained, “The Badlands is a war-zone, Candy. And it looks like the San Palomino is turning into one too. If you declare allegiance with the wrong group, you gotta face the consequences.” The nonchalant way in which she was speaking did little to ease my mind. It was almost as if she believed that razing homesteads was akin to pulling weeds in a garden, or that uprooting lives merited just as little concern.

“Look,” she sighed and rubbed her neck, “it’d be nice if we could all be best friends forever and dance and sing songs and hold hooves and talk about boys,” she paused to roll her eyes. “But the fact is sometimes you have to mare-the-fuck-up and kill somepony if they’re a threat.” Her wings flared at her back again, matching the way her ears stood at attention and how her voice rose. “And as much as I’d like for life to be simple, more often than not it’s a confusing, complicated, clusterfuck. But we keep doing this shit because it keeps us alive. So don’t expect me or any other Thunderhooves to apologize for any of the hard decisions we’ve had to make!” By the time she finished, her voice was bouncing off the darkened walls in the distance, allowing me to imagine many more members of her tribe echoing her exact sentiments.

I winced, holding up a hoof in a pleading gesture. “I… I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Lily sighed and drooped her wings before shaking her head. After a moment she slowly turned around to stare at the massive glass domes in the cavernous room. Her words were a soft whisper when she said, “Sometimes the way you act makes me think that you’re one of the few folks out here that actually gets it, y’know?” My ears perked at what I could only assume was a compliment, but that didn’t keep me from cocking my head and furrowing my brow with confusion.

Luckily she was quick to elucidate, lifting a hoof to her side as she continued. “Helping the wounded at Mareon for no charge? Wanting to avenge a family member? Saving that little filly from the ghoul a couple hours ago?” She turned around to let me see the melancholy grin on her face. “That’s the sort of stuff that Thunderhooves expect out of our members. That’s the kind of shit that this world needs right now.” She emphasized her explanation by lifting her hoof and stamping it on the grate, as if she were trying to physically drive her point home.

I couldn’t suppress my grin, knowing that in at least one pony’s eyes I wasn’t making a complete mess of things. Unfortunately a mess is still a mess and I had a rather large one on my hooves. My smile faded as I saw Lily’s expression turn sour, and I steeled myself for what was coming. She grunted and winced from the exertion, inching closer like an irate wrecking ball in slow-motion

“But when you start asking about things like this,” she started, “about how far you have to go in order to do the right thing…” She paused to shake her head and scowl, clearly frustrated, “I just don’t know where your head’s at, Candy. It’s like there’s a divide between what you know and what you’re willing to accept. Or that you’re not really sure if you’re committed to going down that path.”

“I guess,” I began, speaking slowly and cautiously in an attempt to keep her calm. “I guess I’m just trying to figure out where you draw the line between yourself and the ponies that you’re killing.”

Her pierced ear flicked as she pursed her lips and stared at me. “There is no line, Candy. Everyone we ever kill is just the same as us.” She shrugged and added, “At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to see tomorrow.”

“Then how do you make such a complicated decision look so easy?” I pleaded.

“Because it’s not complicated.” She stated bluntly. “It’s the easiest fucking thing in the world to understand.”

I recoiled from her harsh tone of voice. “But-”

She stared at me, and asked in a flat tone, “If you knew someone was going to hurt you, would you just let them?”

Puzzled, I shook my head. “Of course not.”

She scooted a little closer and winced as she asked. “What if they were trying to hurt someone you cared about?”

A memory flashed through my mind. I recalled the feeling of warm blood spurting across my face, and the heft of a knife in my magic. I remembered how my desperation had mingled with a sick satisfaction as I sank the blade into flesh over and over again. I could still hear the raider begging me to stop, his rapidly weakening voice bouncing off the walls of The Goddess’ temple as he foolishly prayed for my mercy.

He should have known better. He had just hurt my sister.

My lips quivered as I returned Lily’s stare. “Never,” I whispered.

“Then you’ve got this shit figured out already,“ she insisted. “Stop worrying about it and just do what you gotta do!”

I swallowed the lump that was forming in my throat before asking, “But, is that the only option? What if there is a better way?”

Tilting her head to the side and speaking softly, Lily asked, “Why’d you kill that slaver?”

Her response caught me completely off guard. I faltered, blurting out my answer as my eyes widened in shock. “I… I didn’t kill him! He chose his own fate!” Lily pursed her lips while staring directly at me, the exact expression Nohta wore when she was trying to ferret out whatever secret I was guarding.

Even without being such a sensitive subject, it was enough to place me firmly on the defensive. I recoiled at the indigo and black face before me, scoffing as I attempted to reason with her. “You really expect me to defend one of the ponies that forced me to place these collars around our necks?” Without thinking, I nudged the side of the uncomfortable device clasped over my throat, and was startled by the angry beeping that leapt into my ears.

Lily’s hoof shot out to grasp my own, pulling it away from the irritated bomb collar as she edged even closer. “Maybe,” she whispered as she sat on her haunches right in front of me. “I’m not as hard to figure out as you want me to be. Maybe that’s because you know that, deep down, you feel the same way I do.”

My lips parted and my jaw worked up and down, but no sound escaped my throat. Despite all the gears in my head turning at once, no rebuttal to her statement ever came to mind. I was left feeling small and impotent against her simple and damning insinuation.

“Candy,” her hoof released mine as she encouraged me onward. “Think about this before you give me an answer.” She paused, allowing her words to sink in before she repeated her question. “Why did you kill that guy?”

“I… I didn’t—”

“For the report,” she cut me off, gazing knowingly in my direction. “You’re terrible at lying. Your ears start twitching, you get tense and fidgety, you blink too much, and your eyes start looking around the room like you’re gonna find a convenient answer written on a sign just off to the side.” She straightened up and flexed her wings experimentally before staring at me like a hawk. “If you want to lie to me, then that’s fine. But don’t lie to yourself.

“Trust me,” she cautioned, “that’s a road you don’t want to walk.”

She was right. It was no use hiding it any longer. Still, I couldn’t meet her gaze. Instead I stared at the ruffled tuft of fur sticking out of her chest as I confessed, “He… He hurt us.” I had to swallow the lump forming in my throat as I whispered, “He hurt me.”

“And that made you feel…” she trailed off, fishing for the answer like a pony trying to land the big one.

I slumped my shoulders and groaned petulantly. “Since when did you become my therapist?”

The barest note of annoyance tainted the soothing tone of her voice. “Ever since I realized you’re going down the same fucking path that I already have.” A bit more confrontationally, she asked again, “That made you feel…”

“Angry,” I huffed, first at Lily and her goading query, and then at the memory of the slavers stripping my dignity away in such an appalling manner. “Outraged.” Once again, my anger lent me strength. Even if it was only enough for me to glare at the blood red eyes so close to my own. My face twisted into a scowl as I stamped a hoof on the grate. “Furious!”

Lily nodded her head up and down slowly. It wasn’t a contemplative nod, nor was it judgemental in the slightest. It was sympathetic. Her voice was even and gentle, but it still managed to tip me over the edge. “And so you killed him because…”

“I wanted to!” My shout echoed through the dark, reaffirming the truth in my own voice a second and third time like recorded evidence at a trial.

I blinked, stunned, as the full weight of my admission crashed against my heart. “I killed him because I wanted to…” My hooves found my lips, just in time to cover my dropping jaw. It was suddenly so very stuffy in the dark by the heating cauldron, and the bomb-collar was much too tight. My lungs fought for air just as my stomach churned and my gaze fell to the floor. “Oh, Goddess… What have I—”

Soft but firm hooves snaked around my shoulders, pulling my hyperventilating body against Lily’s. Her clean cheek brushed against my right ear, and her hoof pressed into my mane to cradle my head against her own. I could feel her breath, warm and steady against my mane, and I could feel her heart beating slowly against my heaving chest.

I was too shocked to react, but as the warmth of her body bled into my own it chased away my anxiety. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath to steady my nerves. Somehow, amidst all the foul odors of sweat, gore, tobacco, and whatever foul gunk had spread over us from the pod-zebra, I caught a whiff of flowers from her mane; the same scent that had been haunting my memory for days.

My mind wasn’t sure whether to speed up or stop completely, and quite frankly, I had endured more than enough of its indecision. So, bereft of any sensible ideas regarding how to proceed, I simply let go of my need to remain in control. When my mind was unfit to pilot my actions, I allowed my heart to take the helm.

The hoof that had previously found my lips cautiously—as if it was even more unsure of what it was doing than I was—maneuvered underneath Lily’s bomb-collar, and relocated itself in the crook between her shoulder and neck. The tip of my horn brushed against her mane as I pressed myself against her. My free hoof wrapped itself around Lily’s other shoulder, and I quickly realized I was pulling her into the embrace as well.

I felt the muscles in her back flex and shift, and a moment later hard steel and soft feathers had draped themselves across my back. I had found myself wrapped tightly in a comforting, protective cocoon of blades, feathers, and fur. Dear Goddess, I had needed that hug.

As my breathing calmed, Lily whispered into my ear. “Killing a slaver felt good, didn’t it?” Positive reinforcement for such an admission was not what I would have expected from anypony else, but it wasn’t terribly surprising coming from the pony I held in my hooves.

I nodded, feeling my mane brush against her cheek. She pulled away, and I felt the tip of her hoof turn my chin upward. I opened my eyes to see the concern, conviction, and compassion in hers. She nodded as she asked, “But saving the filly felt good too, right?” It was as rhetorical a question as ever there had been, but it certainly served its purpose.

I swallowed, and nodded in agreement once more. “Yes.”

“Then maybe,” she placed a heavy emphasis on that word, just like Father had when he was teaching me something important, “it’s time for you to stop worrying about whether what you’re doing is right or wrong, and just do what you want. I don’t think your good nature is gonna let you do anything you need to worry about.”

I realized, finally, that she wasn’t just trying to rationalize my actions. She really believed what she was saying. She really was trying to help me.

I studied Lily’s supportive expression as I allowed everything to sink in, and then nodded in silent contemplation. Despite the veritable maelstrom of emotions swirling through my mind, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I could weather the storm so long as she was with me. No matter how calming her presence might have been, however, I couldn’t escape the same peculiar thought that kept buffeting my mind: I was already lamenting the absence of her wings from my body.

A weak grin graced my lips as I whispered, “Thank you, Lily. I needed to hear that.”

She raised an eyebrow and nodded. Letting out a single snort of laughter, she lightly chastised me. “Heh, you need to hear a lot of things.” Tilting her head, she conceded, “It’s just hard for me to figure out what to tell you.”

“I can hardly argue with that,” I agreed. “But to be honest, I think the most important aspect is that I heard it from you.”

Still smiling, she playfully asked, “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

Goddess, I knew that I was playing with fire. I knew that what I was about to say would only fan the flames. I knew that at any moment, an inferno might flare up as Lily made some crass joke and I would have to endure the intense heat in my face. At the time though, I felt that letting her know exactly how much I appreciated her friendship was more than worth the risk.

I reached out and placed a hoof on her shoulder. “You’ve proven to be a very good friend to me, Lily. I don’t think I can adequately describe exactly how lucky I am to have found you.”

Her eyes widened slightly before her expression returned to her trademark smug grin. She remained silent, however, as if she were inviting me to continue. I retracted my hoof to brush my mane out of my eyes and glanced at the ground as I tried to think of how to explain myself. Seeing no other viable option, I decided to backtrack and give some context.

“Nohta and I didn’t have many friends before we left Stable 76. Excluding Mother, Father, and myself, I can count on four hooves the number of residents in The Stable that got along with my sister.” I closed my eyes and sighed, “I might be able to claim to have had more friends than my sister, but,” I shook my head, and opened my eyes to see Lily’s questioning gaze. “None of my friends has ever put their life on the line solely for my sake.”

I reached out with my hoof again, this time gently resting it on Lily’s chest as I looked her directly in the eye and whispered, “None of them, except for you.” Upon hearing those words, Lily perked up and grinned as if I had given her the best compliment in all the world.

I pulled my hoof back and stood up a little straighter. With a bit more resolve in my voice, I proclaimed, “I don’t believe that a tribe that produced somepony like you deserves to be likened to raiders.” I nodded and continued in a matter-of-fact tone, “I for one, am more than willing to give you and the rest of The Thunderhooves the benefit of the doubt in that regard. You are far too selfless for me to imagine that your tribe isn’t doing what they think is best for everyone.”

Lily tilted her head and fluffed her wings before challenging my claim, “I ain’t selfless, sugar. I only do something if I want to.”

Realizing that I had finally managed to back her into the proverbial corner, I tilted my head and smirked, “Well, I’ve mostly seen you do good things. So that must mean you’re a good pony.”

Rendered uncharacteristically speechless, Lily grinned and tried to reach up to scratch at her mane. She stiffened and grimaced as her pained body protested against the sudden movement, and she was forced to gently lower her hoof back down to the ground. Her voice was a little thicker and more husky than normal when she replied, “Thanks. I needed to hear that.”

Something clicked into place for me when she said that. I recalled how she had previously told me her intentions to be “one of the good guys,” but it was only when I saw her reaction to being labeled as such that it all came together for me. Her reckless behavior, the few snippets of information I had gleaned of her past, the fact that her tribe was considered to be a group of raiders… All the evidence pointed to her having been involved with something that she regretted dearly, and now she was trying to atone for whatever that might have been.

It was just a theory of course, but it gave me a whole new perspective on Lily. She was trying very, very hard to be a force for good in this world, even if that meant that she had to break a few rules to do what she felt was right. It was a desire that I could both intimately relate to and deeply admire.

It wasn’t long before I realized that we were both staring into each other’s eyes. I could feel something pass between us at that moment, and even if I didn’t fully understand what it was I knew that it heralded the deeper bond that had been cemented between the two of us. The slow realization of exactly what she meant to me followed soon after, accompanied by my own assumption of exactly what I meant to her.

I saw before me a wounded pegasus with a world-weary heart and a chip on her shoulder, and I was sure that she saw a naive unicorn full of unrealized dreams stumbling blindly through an alien world. I saw an opportunity to heal and comfort a lost soul, and knew that she saw an opportunity to protect and guide one. I think that both of us recognized a chance to make the world a better place through the other, and understood that both of us were willing to fight whatever odds we came across for the other’s sake.

It was quite a powerful realization that I had made a friend for whom I would gladly take a bullet. Even more so when I understood that elevated Lily to the same level previously inhabited only by my sister. My thoughts lingered on how I felt about Lily in the same way that my eyes lingered on hers.

For a moment, I was able to forget that I should have averted my gaze long ago. I didn’t feel a need to question why I was inexplicably capable of basking comfortably in her company, nor did I even desire to know why this short span of time felt so peaceful and warm. For that one little moment all else was swept to the wayside as I remembered just how nice it felt to have her wings wrap around my body...

That was when the exact nature of my predicament began to sink in. At the time it was just an oddly powerful feeling; a budding desire to simply be closer to my friend. Part of me, however, realized it was much more than that and I knew that if I didn’t quell these wayward thoughts quickly then I would soon be walking a path fraught with peril.

Looking back, perhaps that was what made the prospect so exciting!

I finally realized exactly what I was considering, and—after remembering that The Dark Mother had forbidden such things—covered my face with a hoof. It wasn’t nearly enough to conceal the blush on my face, but it did hide the dying grin on my lips. Even if the wisdom of Mother’s people proclaimed that I was to “walk both paths,” the doctrines of my faith were absolute.

On the other hoof, I had already committed heresy by praying to the sun. Would just a tiny bit more deviation away from Selenism really be all that bad? As far as I knew, there was no earthly reason whether or not Celestia would condemn two mares for being more than just friends…

Or, I wondered as I glanced back to Lily’s waiting face, perhaps I should simply take Lily’s advice and do what I wanted regardless of how much it would clash with my Selenist upbringing. My thoughts raced as I realized I was actually considering this insane third option. I certainly didn’t believe that Lily would mind. I just wasn’t sure if I could balance these new feelings with my old life.

“Candy?” Lily’s mane fell limply to the side as she tilted her head inquisitively, and I caught myself staring at the silver-white tresses that danced over her shoulder. I could no longer ignore the fact that I found her lithe figure more than pleasing to the eye.

I recognized that I was staring, and shook my head in a desperate attempt to clear it. I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t! I had absolutely no idea what to say! How was I supposed to explain this to her of all ponies!? She hadn’t gone a single day in my company without making a flirtatious comment, or at the very least hinting at some lewd activity! But just a moment ago she was… different. And I was…

Confused. Very, very confused. Not with Lily; I knew precisely what she wanted from me. But now I was wondering what in the world I wanted from her.

“Uh, Candy?” Her wings stretched behind her as she shakily rose to all four legs, and I realized that I was genuinely worrying her.

I had to pull my eyes away from her wings before I could speak. “I’m sorry, I…” Goddess, why did she look so different now? Why was I noticing, only now, how beautiful her coloration was? Or how her wings seemed both impossibly strong and uniquely delicate?

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath to regain my composure, and did my best to reassume some small semblance of poise. “Thank you, Lily.” I spoke as evenly as I could manage, wary of divulging any hint of my feelings, but couldn’t refrain from offering her a compliment. “You have all the patience of Moonglow.”

A small grin erased the worry from her features. “Eh, I don’t know about that. I never met the dude.” Folding her wings at her side, she added, “And I’m still gonna rip your ass about the alicorns.”

The stark reminder of my previous folly was like a kick in the ribs. Being reprimanded by Lily was bad enough before, but now it left a chill in my gut. My ears drooped as I rubbed my leg above my PipBuck and nodded.

“But, I guess I can hold off on that for a while,” Lily reasoned. “Besides, your sister probably wants to lay into you about that even more than I do.”

Nohta… Ugh! Here I was going on about… whatever this was, and meanwhile my sister was out there trudging through Goddess-knows-what horrors just so that the two of us could be reunited! Priorities, Candy! Get a grip on yourself!

I nodded again, both to reassure myself of my conviction, and to agree with Lily’s assertion. “Yes, I can already hear her. No doubt I’m going to receive several earfulls.”

Lily’s lips pursed as she gave a little shrug and a weak chuckle. “Yeah… You kinda have it coming though.”

I scowled, and stamped a hoof on the grate. “And I understand that! I just…” Oh, this was hopeless! How was I supposed to explain to her, or anyone who was not a Selenist, the cause for my actions? Nearly all would call me a fool for such reckless behavior. Still, I had to try. My shoulders slumped as I pleaded with Lily, “I just wanted so badly for what I had seen in the orb to be false. I think I was ready to believe anything which would have proved you wrong. Even if I had to delude myself in order to do so.”

I straightened up, brushed my mane out of my eyes with a hoof, and tried to explain a bit further. “I understand that many of my preconceptions of the world are erroneous, Lily. I just wonder why it took you to show me that.” A blush crept across my face as I realized how aptly my words could have been applied to my refusal to properly acknowledge Lily’s amorous advances.

Luckily, Lily didn’t seem to notice. She scratched her mane absentmindedly before offering, “Maybe it would help for you to learn about the real Luna? Instead of the messed up stories you got in your stable?”

Believing that I had just dodged a fairly large bullet, I sighed in relief and smiled. “Perhaps,” I agreed. Gesturing to her mane with a hoof, I asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have a biography of The Princess stashed away in that mane of yours, would you?” Raising an eyebrow, I teased, “Somewhere amidst all the chems and booze?”

“Heh, sorry. Fresh out.” As if to prove her point, Lily leaned sideways and tapped her head with a hoof, depositing a small pile of bottles, tins, inhalers, syringes, and cigarettes onto an outstretched wing. I had seen her pull a few items from underneath her hat before, true, but the sheer amount of drugs contained within her wild mane was still mind-boggling.

She gingerly slid her stash off her wing and into the bowl of her hat, then turned back to me and suggested, “I’ve got some more memory orbs in my bags. As soon as we hook up with Nohta you can watch ‘em if you want. Just as long as you don’t go crazy again.”

I huffed, “If they bring about any more world-shattering revelations, then perhaps I should hold off for a while. It would be a nice change of pace to go a day or two without my world being turned on its head.”

Wrinkling my brow, I pointed a hoof at Lily and asked, “Actually, I’ve never seen technology like that before. How did you come across it?”

A huge grin spread across her face. “I inherited my recollector from my dad! And uh… well…” Her expression went sheepish before slipping straight into the realm of conspiratorial paranoia. She beckoned me closer with a hoof, and when I was near enough she wrapped her good wing around my shoulders and dragged my surprised form right next to her, smushing her cheek up against mine. Surely she had to hear my startled yelp, but how she didn’t feel my blush I’ll never know.

Casting furtive glances about the room, as if we weren’t impossibly—and mercifully— alone at the moment, she raised a hoof in front of our mouths and whispered in a low hush. “Alright, look. I’m gonna tell you something, but if you tell anyone else I’m gonna deny it. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.” With every turn of her head to check for eavesdroppers in the darkness, my burning cheek rubbed against hers.

Evidently convinced that our only audience was the slowly warming cauldron, she released me from her grasp and giggled into my ear. “I’ve been collecting those orbs on my own for a while now as a hobby. I’m kind of a history nut.”

I turned my head to find her grinning nervously and wagging her tail like a puppy. It was the exact same expression I had seen years earlier when a silly little filly had expected me to praise her “pet” radroach. Dear Goddess the infestation that followed during the next few moons had been awful… Nohta may have had fun squishing as many of the pests as she could find, much to the poor filly’s dismay, but I still remember treating all the hundreds and hundreds of bug bites.

And the distinct lack of brownies! The little abominations had made it into the kitchens and ate all the sugar in The Stable! Truly, it was a hard time for all of us.

Regardless, Lily was eagerly awaiting my opinion of her pastime. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice. “You?” Assuming she was merely joking again, I lightly shoved her shoulder with a hoof as I playfully chided her. “Oh, please… You’re teasing me again!”

“No, seriously! At least The Wasteland makes sense most of the time! The old world was completely fucking crazy!” She sat on her haunches, spreading her wings and her forelegs wide with her exclamation.

I grinned skeptically, but that only spurred her on to regale me with proof. Pointing one of her hooves in my direction, she declared, “I could tell you stories about The Ministry Mares that would make your skin crawl, and they were supposed to be the good guys!” The Ministry Mares? I wiped the grin from my face and listened intently.

Lily must have decided that, since she now had my attention, she shouldn’t pull any of her kicks. She came out of her corner bucking like a bronco. Although given her wild, tribal upbringing, perhaps that was to be expected.

She nodded, and proceeded to explain herself with gusto. “Like Fluttershy, for example! The mare you see on all the Sparkle-Cola signs? All the first aid boxes have her colors: pink and yellow. She was super nice, extra sweet, kinda sexy for an older gal…” Lily trailed off just long enough to leave me wondering what the issue was. Then her voice dropped low in disgust as she condemned the pre-war mare. “And stupid as all fucking tartarus.”

I shook my head, utterly confused. “Why would you say that?”

With a completely deadpan stare, Lily stated. “She gave the zebras the technology that the ponies used to make megaspells.”

My jaw dropped. “You mean…”

“Yeah, The Ministry of Peace ended up destroying the world. Maybe a Ministry of War would have been a better idea, huh?” Lily spat to the side with disgust, bludgeoning a small leaf with her saliva. Turning back to me, she grimaced and explained. “That’s part of the reason this place creeps me out so bad. It’s Ministry of Arcane Sciences and Ministry of Peace. I don’t know which one of them made that pod monster, but at this point I’m just hoping we don’t find anything worse.”

I needed more time to mull that over, but at the moment Lily was busy casting anxious glances at the shadows. It wouldn’t do to have my sole protector frightened out of her wits. In as encouraging a voice as I could manage, I suggested, “Well, perhaps we’re already past the worst of it? And in that case the ‘treasure,’ as you put it, should be quite interesting. And close.”

Her grin returned as she latched onto my convenient distraction. “If we can haul a couple of these cauldrons out of here and dig the talismans out of ‘em, then yeah, the loot’s gonna be great.” Her ears perked upwards as she stared at the cauldron beside us and gave it a quick tap with her hoof. “Seriously, there’s a fucking fortune in water talismans here. We could probably space these things out in the desert, crank ‘em up to full power, and turn this whole region into an oasis.”

I shrugged noncommittally. “It would probably be more efficient to set up an irrigation and filtration system to make use of the river water.” Lily turned her gaze in my direction, allowing me to catch the puzzlement etched into her features. I cleared my throat and elucidated. “Water talismans work more efficiently if they’re only being used to clean water that already exists, rather than creating freshwater from scratch with magic.” For all my educational efforts, I received naught but a playful grin from Lily. Perplexed as to her reaction, I went a step further with my explanation. “What? My stable might have had failing mechanical and electrical systems every step of the way, but our arcane systems never failed a single time.”

She chuckled, and stated simply, “You are such a nerd.”

My jaw dropped. What!? Why would she say such a thing? I was merely… Oh! The shocked expression on my face gave way to a knowing smile as I prepared to parry her playfully pugnacious parlance. “Says the mare who studies history for fun!” I raised my eyebrows and gave a jaunty little head-bob. Such a well-executed riposte was most deserving of a victory dance, I say!

Despite being thoroughly trounced, Lily continued grinning like a cocky idiot as she chided me. “Ohhh, did I touch a nerve there, egghead?” Oh no she did not! I had years of experience in this area due to my dealings with my sister! If Lily thought she could out-antagonize me then she had another thing coming!

Summoning forth my most confident smirk, I flipped my mane to the side and stuck my nose in the air, “Hmph! If that’s the best you can do then feel free to touch my nerves however you like!”

Yes, yes, of course I realize now that I didn’t exactly communicate my thoughts precisely as I intended. The occasional error is bound to happen from time to time when my words outpace my train of thought in the heat of the moment. Personally, I like to think that a smart mare will take the extra time and care needed to not make the mistake in the first place. But it takes a spark of true genius, if I may be so bold, to make a mistake, adapt to it, and utilize it in a way that benefits…

You’re not buying it, are you? Okay, fine, it was a slip of the tongue! I swear, trying to sneak anything past you is harder than self-levitation after I’ve just risen from bed. It simply can’t be done.

I realized my mistake just as soon as I recognized the predatory grin spreading across Lily’s face. “That,” she purred in a sultry voice, inching closer with every word, “almost sounded like you were flirting with me, sugar.”

I froze. Every muscle tensed as my jaw opened, shut, opened again, and slammed shut a final time. I found myself rooted to the spot, almost as if I had become just another part of the pervasive vegetation all around us. Only my eyes moved, following the slinking gait of the advancing pegasus as she slowly encroached on my personal space.

Her eyes fixed mine as she edged ever closer. “You keep doing that, and I’ll have to break that promise I made to your sister.” She tilted her head to the side, undoubtedly catching how my eyes followed her mane as it flowed over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t want to make a liar out of me…” Her hoof reached up to cup my cheek, allowing me to feel just how cool her hooves were compared to my face. She turned my head gently, forcing me to gaze into her hungry eyes as she asked, “Or would you?”

“I…” It was like the pod-zebra all over again. I was paralyzed, horn to hooves. Even my mind had gone numb, only able to repeat that single word. “I…”

“It’s really hard to say this right now, sugar. But it’s the truth.” She leaned forward, lightly brushing her muzzle against my left ear. The touch sent an electric tingle down the back of my neck, forcing my lips open as I gasped for breath. Her whisper was as smooth as silk. “I keep my promises.”

She pulled back ever so slightly, still holding my burning cheek in her hoof. “My hooves are tied, babe. But you can do whatever you want.” She paused just long enough to run her eyes up and down my body, and then continued in that same sensual tone, “So if you want this…” Her eyes smoldered, inches from mine, and promised things I could scarcely imagine. “All you gotta do is say so.” And with that final, devastating whisper, she slowly winked one eye and sauntered back to her side of the cauldron.

My eyes followed her until she sat down, and I thanked The Goddess, Thunder, Celestia, the spirits, every other deity whom I hadn’t yet learned of, and my ancestors that she was facing the opposite direction. Then I remembered to breathe.

My hoof found my chest, and the thundering heart that lay within. I stood still as a statue, save for my flustered attempts to draw breath. My frantic eyes finally landed on the back of Lily’s mane, and I finally realized just how precarious my position was.

She knew… She had known longer than I had. I was convinced that she had patiently been waiting for an opportunity just like this one—convinced that in this matter I was completely outclassed. I was a mouse chained to a manticore, and the only reason she hadn’t yet pounced was because she was enjoying the chase…

…and so was I.

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

My bath passed in silence save for one or two warning beeps from my bomb collar. The ornery device didn’t seem to mind the water or shampoo, but the slightest nudge from my hoof would see it launch into a veritable conniption fit. I would have considered its tireless squawking nothing more than an annoyance were it not for the fact that every little beep and boop was a stark reminder of the explosives tightly cinched against my neck.

As I carefully labored to scrub myself clean, I had to wonder if my stablemates were also burdened with these appalling little leashes. I could only hope that somewhere, Caramel was just as annoyed with her chafing leather straps and scratching bits of metal as I was with mine. At the very least that would mean she was still alive…

Caramel: the bubbly, beige, and big-hearted baker of Stable 76. She was most certainly the best friend I ever had in The Stable, and according to Nohta’s ludicrous theory, she was also a mare that had wanted more than just my friendship…

Of course it’s easy to see now why Nohta may have had her suspicions, but during my time in The Stable I was as oblivious as a mare could be. To be completely honest, Nohta’s idea about Caramel wasn’t really that far-fetched. Not with the late-night reading sessions, the constant gifts of various confections, and all the in-jokes shared between the two of us. I had to step outside of my little subterranean bubble in order to understand Nohta’s idea without instantly dismissing it. Of course, it didn’t hurt that nearly everywhere I looked somepony on the surface was going against the word of Lady Luna. Father had warned me that there might be a bit of culture-shock, but honestly… I hadn’t expected anything quite like this.

Before Lily had shown me that orb in the barn, I had assumed that all the oddities of the surface-dwellers could be chalked up to simple ignorance. I truly believed that they must have acted in their perverse and frivolous ways—particularly in regards to their casual attitude toward, er… relations—because nopony had shown them the right and proper way to act: how Luna wanted us to act. It was easy to roll my eyes, shrug my shoulders, and shake my head, all the while secure in my belief that one night they would learn. That perhaps I would even be the one lucky enough to teach them. It was a grandiose dream for sure, to be the one mare that finally spread Selenism to The Wasteland, but what did Selenism encourage at all if not to dream?

I must seem silly for bringing up my religion and how strange it was for me to not see others following its teachings. No doubt you are wondering where this is going, or why I bother to stress the point at all. The problem, you see, wasn’t just that I had learned Selenism to be false. That revelation was certainly catastrophic, but it is by no means the worst thing to happen to me. No, the real dilemma was that I had been lied to. That I had been taught falsehoods. That I had been led astray by a lie, whilst all around me others were privy to the real truth of the world.

I couldn’t help it; I took it all as a personal affront. What must have been going through the minds of those that knew the truth as they watched me jump through their sacred hoops? As I danced to their pious tunes while they pulled my zealous strings?

Even now, merely acknowledging how easily I had been played is infuriating. But that anger has dulled over time, like a knife that has gone overly long since its last sharpening. It doesn’t bite into the flesh and cut deeply anymore. It just bruises and leaves a stubborn, angry welt in its wake. But you must be intimately aware of my state of mind if you are to understand why I performed the horrendous acts for which I am now known. You must understand how I felt: underappreciated, used, and betrayed.

I took my mane in my magic and hooves once more, and scrubbed furiously at the pink strands to rid them of the caked-on mess that had accumulated over the last several days. I wasn’t quite sure how, but the shampoo was able to rid my body of every single bit of congealed ghoul blood and pod-zebra goop. After a bit of soaking in the warm water even the bloodstains in my coat were coming out. I only wish that my thoughts had been as unblemished as I was.

The ponies of my stable had never truly recognized my prowess as a doctor. Instead they had turned a blind eye to a truth they were too prejudiced to see. As soon as Father was no longer capable of practicing medicine, I would have been the head of The Clinic. Pearl may have technically been next in line, but both he and I knew which of us was more invested, more capable, and more ambitious. I would have climbed the ranks in The Stable, one way or another, and everypony’s casual disregard of my dreams only served to strengthen my resolve on the matter.

The Overmare, on the other hoof, did have some appreciation for my healing spells and knowledge. But that appreciation was certainly overshadowed by my sway with Nohta. Wintergreen must have seen our family as a simple compromise: two crucial medical staff in exchange for one delinquent. I couldn’t fault her for the logic. After all, she was a pony in leadership and was bound to have to make tough decisions on a daily basis. But still… To come to the realization that my worth to her boiled down to being able to keep my sister in check… How could I not take offense with that? How could I not feel that my talents would forever be squandered by her? How could I not seek to right that wrong?

And finally, Mother and Father. Their lies hurt the most. Never before had there ever been a breach of trust between us. But now, with Selenism exposed for the lie that it was, and the parallel realization that I was still learning the true meaning of my glyph-mark, I could only wonder why they had lied to us. At best, I could imagine that it was for our protection from The Stable. At worst, I could only fathom that they were incapable of trusting their own flesh-and-blood.

Determination, self-righteousness, and resentment are a terrible combination of emotions to have mingle in your heart. I could feel my world shrinking as I withdrew into my own head and sunk a little deeper into the warm water, and it wasn’t long before I realized that Psyker’s advice meshed rather well with Lily’s: I needed to take care of myself first, because the world at large didn’t care about me one bit.

As I lay soaking in the sudsy water, that realization weighed heavily on my thoughts. Nopony was ever going to just give me something. They all wanted something in return. And the only way to ensure that such a deal was fair, was if I got exactly what I wanted from such a bargain. But of course, that begged a very simple question.

What did I want?

I rested the back of my head against the rim of the cauldron, and stared at the vine-covered wall in front of me. My eyes were drawn to a long, winding strip of honeysuckle that couldn’t quite figure out which direction it wanted to grow. The plant meandered up the side of the wall in a haphazard fashion, but in the end it finally found the window it sought. The beautiful clusters of yellow and white blooms at the zenith of the vine’s ascent brought a warm smile to my face.

For all its faults, The Wasteland is an excellent teacher. One of its many lessons is that you either die young or grow up very quickly. The young will ignore their problems, hoping that they go away on their own. But an adult will confront her issues head-on and find some way to either fix them outright, or at the very least ameliorate the situation to be more in her favor than before. There is simply no middle-ground to be had, especially when the decisions we make are oftentimes a choice between life and death.

However, amidst all of the bleak and dreary decisions we must make about who to kill and who to save, sometimes we find a more cheery obstacle in our path. With the warm water easing the muscles I had worn sore over the past day, I found my thoughts drawn unceasingly to Caramel. With my mind racing to piece back together the world that Lily had shattered with a memory orb, I had to wonder if Nohta had been right in assuming that Caramel wanted more than a simple friendship with me.

I absentmindedly raised my hooves, and gently nudged two soap bubbles together. To my amusement, they joined as one, and I was left staring at the colorful, swirling patterns on the bubble’s surface as my PipBuck’s faint light shone upward from under the water.

I could no longer refuse to acknowledge the possibility that my sister may have been right about Caramel. I had been witness to too many individuals with, ah… shall we say, deviant tendencies to simply dismiss Nohta’s insinuation without so much as a moment of consideration. Still, the notion of two mares doing anything like that together was as alien a concept to a Selenist as the idea of there being multiple alicorn goddesses. But regardless of whether I was ready to accept it or not, I had prayed to the sun herself for the truth. It would serve no one if I chose to ignore the light and crawl back into my world of shadow.

We had been taught within Stable 76 that such a thing was taboo; The Stable needed to reproduce in order for Selenism to spread its influence like the stars that had spread across the night sky. Like all the other teachings, I had never questioned this. The Lunar Mandate was law, plain and simple. And within The Stable, nopony ever doubted the word of Luna or her priestesses.

As one of my hooves gently scratched at the caked-on goop covering my PipBuck, I found myself contemplating a different life in The Stable. One that could have been. What if the mandate had been nothing more than a suggestion? What if the population of The Stable hadn’t frowned upon straying from Luna’s path? What if Caramel and I had…

Undoubtedly disturbed by my attempts to clean my PipBuck, the bubble popped. The little fantasy died as quickly as it formed. I sighed, and went back to cleaning myself in earnest.

Ugh! Nohta and her theories didn’t prove anything! I knew my friend better than my sister did! And that’s what Caramel was; a friend! Nothing more! And now that she was Goddess-knows-where, that’s all that she would ever be. If any opportunity had ever been there, it had been taken just as surely as the ponies of my stable.

Or killed, like Spicy Salsa and so many other members of my caravan. Just another opportunity that The Wasteland had destroyed right in front of my eyes.

Perhaps that’s what Lily was really offering me, then. Another chance at something I had never experienced, but always wanted. Even if it wasn’t precisely what I had imagined, would it really be so wrong to indulge my curiosity? Even if just a little?

I sighed again, my breath carving a valley through a hill of bubbles and disturbing the water underneath. I was about to dismiss my thoughts as errant and rambling when Lily’s words echoed in my memory. “Stop worrying… and do what you want.”

My hooves fell into the water, splashing my scowling face with fragrant froth. I let the water drip off my chin as I huffed, wondering what in The Goddess’ name I would do. It wasn’t as if The Dark Mother held any sway over my decisions anymore. I was my own soul; free to do as I pleased!

Right?

I glanced back at Lily to find her lying on her belly with her forelegs stretched out in front of her. Judging by the odd motions of her hooves, she appeared to be rolling an invisible ball back and forth in front of her face, completely oblivious to my curious stare. I shook my head, wondering how in Equestria my comrade could be so at ease at a time like this. Or so easily amused.

Why… her? Why now? I hadn’t ever felt anything like this for another mare in The Stable! Only after I had left my home and ventured into The Wasteland had I met with so many ponies treating… that as just another casual fact of life.

I knew love. Or at least I thought that I did. I had seen it in Mother and Father’s eyes every time they looked at each other. I had learned of love when I witnessed their undying devotion to one another, or how even after their very worst arguments they always managed to patch things together and simply forgive one another. I had witnessed it in their tender caresses, and heard it in their soft words.

This… infatuation, or whatever one might call it, wasn’t love. It couldn’t be! There hadn’t been any romance! There needed to be more long talks, and candlelit dinners, and, and… Dear Goddess, what did surface ponies even do in the name of courtship? Did somepony present a dowry of bottlecaps? Were wedding presents simply bundles of grenades and ammunition? Was the honeymoon spent hunting raiders and ghouls?

Ugh! And the timing! No matter what, I couldn’t escape the timing! What if my feelings were just born of some vindictive desire to spite The Goddess? Realistically, I shouldn’t have even felt that way toward Selenism or its deity. The Luna that I had grown up knowing wasn’t even the real princess! But still, I just felt so… angry.

Angry with my stable, my religion, my parents… Angry at myself and who I had become. Even angry at Lily for putting all of that into motion. It was enough to drive a mare mad! I was better than this idle daydreaming full of petty revenge! I was too smart to fall into such a silly pitfall!

My anger, I found, was just like the bath I was enjoying; inviting, warm, and deceptively easy to slip into. It felt good to let it wash over me, and the less I fought it, the more comfortable I became. Just like the water in the cauldron soothed my tired muscles and cleaned the piled-on gore and gunk from my body, so too was my ire warming my heart and scouring doubts from my mind.

It was a calm rage; a quiet resistance against all the iniquity I had thus far experienced. I was… justified. Yes. I was right to feel this way.

I sank a little deeper into the water, and a lone bubble sneaked its way up my nose. It burst with a soapy sting as I wiped at my muzzle and hurried to sit back up in the cauldron.

Hmph. It would take a lot more self-convincing than that for me to write a blank check for my emotions. I stole a quick glance back at Lily, who was still batting her hooves back and forth and giggling to herself. As strange as she was, I had to admit that she possessed a quality which I deeply admired: confidence. If she ever doubted herself it never showed. She knew who she was, and was comfortable with what she was doing.

I wanted that. I wanted to know what my life would be like if I didn’t feel an overwhelming desire to second-guess myself at every turn. To just let myself go, and actually live in that world of freedom and possibility that Nohta believed we inhabited. The world that seemed, at the moment, to only be populated by one carefree pegasus.

I wasn’t exactly sure if I would consider her “honorable,” but Lily certainly did adhere to some sort of code of ethics, odd as it may be. I hadn’t once seen her bat an eyelash when it came to taking a pony’s life if she deemed that pony a threat, or if she believed that pony guilty of something abhorrent. Her ability to render simplicity unto any given situation by way of a bullet or blade was a quality that I almost found refreshing.

In that sense, she was correct about her assumption; she and I were similar in that regard. Plagued as I so frequently was by indecision, I suppose it was only natural that I admired her confidence in dealing with such matters. Knowing that she and I shared that in common was enough to cement her as a friend, of course, but was it enough for something more?

My horn lit as I scooped up a wobbling orb of water, which I promptly splashed down my mane and face to rinse out the shampoo. More of the little hoof-sized spheres followed me as I clambered out of the cauldron, and I used them to rinse myself off while standing over the grated floor. After using my magic to wring the last of the soap and as much of the water as possible from my body, I walked over to let Lily know the bath was open.

“Thanks, babe,” she replied, still lazily swiping her hooves from side to side.

I chose the most comfortable-looking bed of moss I could find, and sat down before asking, “Er, what are you doing?”

“Just playing with Grumpy before I take him out of my ear.” She said this as if it were the absolute height of normalcy. As if she could somehow explain the nonsense that had just come out of her mouth, she continued, “Neither of us really likes being separated, but I don’t want to risk messing up the binding-runes on his bone. So I’m getting in some quality time with him before washing up.”

“Right…” I wasn’t particularly in the mood to engage in that argument again, and I sorely needed something to help take my mind off of things.

I floated my packs to my side and plucked my equipment from the bags. “I’ll um, I’ll just be brewing until you’re finished then.”

Alright then, I thought to myself, what potion would I be making? Sweet Water? Practical, but relatively boring. Mana? Useful, but not exactly challenging. Dragon’s Breath? Beyond the occasional glowing one, my encounters with radiation had thus far been rather limited. It could wait.

I flipped through the pages of Mother’s book one-by-one, looking for something a bit more intriguing than your typical potion-fare. Grammy’s Gummin’ Goop? An extra-strength adhesive seemed slightly impractical. Slickery Solution? Magical lubrication seemed equally impractical. Instant Electrical Insulation Elixir? When would I ever use that?

To my eternal chagrin, the very next page had a recipe that I had completely overlooked and previously written off as near-useless: Super Sudsy Shampoo. Lily and I had placed ourselves in mortal peril for something I could have brewed in minutes. I groaned into my hoof, and vowed then and there to take my unexpected and ill-timed lack of literary scrutiny to my grave.

It wasn’t until I flipped randomly to another page that I realized what I would be making. Already in my possession were all the ingredients required for something a bit more intriguing. Something I hadn’t ever made before. Something that would undoubtedly help all of us.

Well, why not, I reasoned. I was feeling refreshed and invigorated by the bath. I might as well do something a little more adventurous!

My magic tipped a bottle over, and a dozen lifeless eyes rolled into my mortar before staring back at me in dull bewilderment. I have to confess that popping them with my pestle was both unnerving and, well, oddly satisfying. The fetid aroma certainly left something to be desired, however.

I was in the middle of adding manticore venom to the ghoul-eye-slurry when I realized that Lily still hadn’t gotten up. A quick glance in her direction revealed that she was staring at me, her lips parted and a hint of blush in her cheeks. I raised an eyebrow and asked, “Is, is something wrong?”

She swallowed to clear her throat, but kept staring. “I’ve never seen you when your mane was still wet.”

“O-oh. I, um, I don’t really have a brush for it.” I admitted, plucking an errant strand out of my eyes with a hoof. “I’m usually too busy to be bothered with that sort of thing.” She was still staring, silent.

I focused on the elixir, though not without feeling a bit more self-conscious. Using a scalpel and my magic, I split the petals of the Killing Joke and set them in boiling water to steep. The water immediately turned a shocking shade of turquoise before flashing bright pink and fading to a golden-yellow. So far, so good.

“It’s really pretty like that.”

I looked up to find Lily sitting primly in her spot, head tilted and jaw slack as she continued to stare. A blush was creeping into my cheeks as I cleared my throat. “I, er…”

Nearly every ounce of my being screamed in unison; a howling chorus of discomfort that sang the tune of self-doubt as if conducted by fear itself. It was an opera I knew by heart, one that I had listened to on multiple occasions, but now something was different.

A lone voice, out of tune and out of line, dissented against the choir. It was weak, flustered, and tired, but no matter how the maestro blustered and signalled it would not be quieted. It had suffered in silence for far too long.

The more I listened to that voice, the stronger and clearer it became. Before long it had risen above the rest of its fellows, and planted itself firmly at the forefront of my mind. A nervous grin graced my lips as I asked Lily, “Do… Do you like it?”

Her blank stare was replaced by a wide grin. “Yeah.”

My smile broadened, and I held her gaze for as long as I could before the weight of her stare forced me to turn my head back to my bubbling pots. The liquids inside each were throwing off quite a lot of heat, possibly more heat than my burning cheeks.

My magic added Witchweed to the Killing Joke tea as I glanced back up at Lily past a puff of emerald steam. “Lily, you’re um… You’re starting to embarrass me.” I brushed my mane back behind my ear at the same time that I caught a delicious whiff of the stewing herbs. “And weren’t you going to make dinner?”

“Right,” she shook her head and blinked, as if she were coming out of a trance. “Sorry. I’ll try to be quick.”

She ambled past me on shaky legs as I returned my attention to my two pots. Was… Was I doing this correctly? I checked Mother’s journal again. Right, right… Simmer slowly. Don’t turn up the heat too quickly, but never let it run cold. Keep stirring and gently mix the two together…

I held a hoof to my face and massaged my temple in frustrated silence. How in Equestria the recipe for an elixir, of all things, was beginning to read like a steamy romance novel was completely beyond my comprehension! Err, not that I have any experience with… I mean, perhaps on the rarest of occasions…

Oh, hush. The important thing to note here is that I was rather… Let’s go with “flustered.” To be completely honest, the only thing I was absolutely sure of was this: it was going to be a very long night.

By the time I heard Lily splash her way out of the cauldron and shake herself off like a dog, the eye and venom mixture had cooked down to a thick, orange goo. More crushed herbs and diced roots were folded into the mixture, and soon after I was adding the Killing Joke and Witchweed tea. Only a few drops at a time though; any faster and the pink and yellow sparks shooting out of the pot would have lit my surroundings, or perhaps even me, on fire.

Lily plopped down on the other side of my alchemy set, scrunching up her nose and scowling at the bubbling pot. “That smells worse than the mess of rotting organs I just scrubbed out of my mane.”

I pursed my lips. “It does smell rather, err… abnormal doesn’t it?” As if the elixir had taken insult with my word choice, a large bubble on top of the mixture burst, flinging even more of the sickly-sweet odor of decay into the air. I wrinkled my nose and pressed on. “I’m certain that I’ve followed Mother’s recipe exactly. Perhaps it’s just the humidity?”

Lily covered her muzzle with a hoof before asking, “You ever made this one before?”

“Well, no,” I admitted, “but Mother’s instructions are very detailed.”

Shrugging her drenched—and oddly fluffy—wings, Lily stretched her legs out in front of my pots, and reached for the bone she normally kept in her ear. She winced slightly as she threaded the little animal bone through the holes in her ear, and offered up some encouragement. “Always a first time for everything.”

She was right, of course. There was a first time for everything. But was this that time?

Biting my lip, I tried to think of an appropriate way to broach the topic that was plaguing my mind. The silence stretched uncomfortably long while I searched the simmering surface of the elixir for ideas. In the end I had to acknowledge that whatever I was doing wasn’t working. With that in mind I had to wonder to myself: what would a brave pony like Lily Belle do?

Actually scratch that. I had a very good idea of what she would do, and it involved a lot of suggestive looks, sultry whispers, and…

“Geez, babe. I haven’t even said anything and you’re already blushing?” Lily’s impish giggle hoisted me out of my lurid daydream and sat me down squarely within her crosshairs. Smirking, she flipped her soaked mane over her shoulder with a hoof. “Is it the wet mane? That always gets me too.” Well now that she mentioned it, her mane did look much softer than norma-

UGH! I shook my head, and tried desperately to rub the heat out of my cheeks. Okay, Lily’s playbook was well out of my league. But what about my sister’s? That was doable. I just needed to borrow a dash of Nohta’s confidence…

Steeling my nerves, I cleared my throat and sat up straight. Staring Lily right in the eyes, I stated in a no-nonsense voice, “Lily, we need to talk.”

“Well I ain’t going anywhere.” She chuckled, and pointed a hoof at her bomb-collar. Her ear bobbed up and down before she added, “Lay it on me.”

“I-I’m serious Lily!” I stamped a hoof against my bed of moss as my ears stood straight up. “This conversation is long overdue!”

“Alright then! Go ahead and start it!” she exclaimed before grinning and stretching her neck so she could reach her right wing. With an amount of diligence and attention to detail that I had only seen her employ when cleaning her guns, she took the primary feather between her lips and methodically smoothed it out, from base to tip.

With Lily laying prone on the floor while I sat up straight, I towered over her. Despite the disparity in height, however, she still managed to hold all the power in the room. It was all I could do to keep my cool as I took in how relaxed she was.

“I would have thought that you would be more inclined to take this conversation a bit more seriously than you are.” I huffed, crossing my legs in front of my chest.

She looked up from her wing and gave me a patronizing smile. “Trust me, Candy, you have my attention. But if I don’t get the water out of my feathers then they’re gonna frizz up and make me look like I licked a stormcloud.” Going back for another feather, she added, “And believe me, cloud-licking isn’t half as fun as it sounds.”

I couldn’t take her flippant attitude any longer. I rose up to all fours and shouted, “Lily, I need to talk to you about us!” That last word hung in the humid air. I stood stock-still, my frustration slowly giving way to embarrassment as the realization of what I had just yelled sank in.

Lily let go of her wing as her ears perked up and gazed, slack jawed, in my direction. “Uh…”

I sank to my haunches and brought a hoof to my face. A hurried explanation came tumbling out of mouth before I could even hope to stop it. “Or, whatever it is that’s going on between us. I don’t really know what we are. Or might be.” Removing my hoof, I lifted my desperate eyes to the darkened ceiling and groaned. “Goddess, help me. I have no idea what I’m saying!”

As my gaze fell back to the ground, I caught Lily’s eyes. She wasn’t wearing her usual cocky grin anymore. Instead she lay completely still, staring at me with rapt attention.

“Aren’t you going to continue preening your wings?” I groused.

“They can wait,” she whispered, and gently shook her head. “You’re more important.”

I was more important… Those were her words. For a moment, I was left incapable of doing anything beyond wondering why my stomach was doing backflips.

I licked my lips, and brushed my mane out of my face. “I don’t really know what to think when you say things like that.”

“When it comes to this,” she stated, “what you think is a hell of a lot less important than what you feel.” My ears drooped when they heard how Lily’s tone had changed. It was harder than I had expected. Where before her words might have deftly slipped past my defenses like a knife, now her voice was as blunt and crushing as a hammer.

“And right now,” she continued, “I feel like I need to be honest with you, but I seriously doubt that you’re gonna like what I have to say.” Her brow furrowed above an intense stare, and she retracted her wings against her body. “You sure you wanna do this? The timing is pretty shitty. Last chance to back out.”

After a moment of mental preparation, I nodded. “We—”

“Again,” she stated coolly, and snapped her tail like a whip.

Ouch… I winced at the tone of her voice, and absentmindedly rubbed the scar on my shoulder. Her single-worded scolding hadn’t quite cut me to the bone, but that didn’t make it any more comfortable to hear.

My ears drooped to the sides of my shaking head as the damp strands of my mane fell in my face. “No, no I’ve made up my mind. This isn’t fair to either of us, and I don’t…” Just as I brushed my mane away with a hoof, I caught Lily’s eyes. They held the same look of hopeful and defiant desperation that you’d see upon the face of the only soldier holding her ground against impossible odds. Lily was the last mare standing. She was the captain going down with her ship.

I still hadn’t really come to a conclusion as to precisely what Lily was to me. Not yet. I knew that she was my teacher, in a manner of speaking, as well as my protector. And perhaps most importantly she was my friend. Given all that had taken place in my life recently, I wasn’t entirely sure which I needed more. But one thing was absolutely certain.

My lips trembled, and my throat ached, but I fought through it and held her gaze just long enough to choke out, “I can’t lose you, Lily.” Her expression softened at that, but I couldn’t bear to look her in the eye any longer. Staring at the moss at my hooves, I shook my head and spoke quickly before I could lose what little momentum I had. “Not to some silly miscommunication or foolish error in expectations. If you and I have a falling-out because of something important, then fine, but—”

“This is important!” she snapped. “And you know it is, too, or you wouldn’t have brought it up!”

“See!? This is precisely what I mean!” I pointed a hoof at Lily over the bubbling pots, and tried to reason with her. “You’re… Angry. And I’m scared out of my wits!” I took a very deep breath, steeled my nerves, and set out to do what needed to be done. “We can not keep going on like we have been! Dancing around the subject isn’t going to help either of us. So, for both our sakes,” my strong and clear voice had withered away, reduced to little more than a frightened whisper. “Something has to change.”

Lily mulled that over for a second, and then nodded. “Alright. Let’s talk.” She took a moment to collect herself, folding her legs underneath her body and assuming an almost business-like pose.

And then the yelling began.

“By Thunder, Candy!” she started, and held a hoof to her chest. “Do you have any idea how frustrating this is for me?”

My jaw dropped. “Frustrating? Frustrating!? Do you have any idea how confusing this is for me?”

Her eyes widened in bafflement before she shook her head. “What is there to be confused about? It’s either a yes or a no!”

“Oh please, this is hardly a simple matter!”

“It’s only complicated because you’re making it that way!” Looking to the side, she spoke in a normal tone to the empty air. “Hey Candy, I think you’re pretty great. Wanna go out for dinner? Maybe get some drinks and gut a rug?” Looking in the other direction she raised the pitch of her voice in an abysmal attempt to match my own, and complimented the sub-par act with a limp waggle of her hoof while fluttering her eyes. “Oh, what a marvelous idea, darling! How darling of you to suggest it!”

I stamped the ground, and pointed at her with my own—very much not limp—hoof. “I do not sound like that! And the correct phrase is ‘CUT a rug!’ ”

She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Meh. I think my version makes more sense.”

“And furthermore,” I continued, “don’t even pretend that such a night wouldn’t end up with both of us sharing the same bed!” My hooves flew to my face, too late to cut off the last word or the damage that would come with it.

She smirked, pouring fuel on the fire that had lit in my cheeks. “Well, not with that attitude, it won’t!” I was still fuming while she chuckled and shook her head. “Gotta be honest, babe. I don’t see the problem there.”

I needed to change tactics, so I decided to tackle the issue head on. I scowled as I yelled out, “Why are you so interested in… that anyway? Are you simply wanting to add another notch to your belt or hat or wherever you keep score?” I hadn’t meant to pour as much venom into that accusation as I did, but my flaring temper was getting the best of me. In the heat of the moment, some awful part of me was taking sadistic glee in the hurt that splashed across Lily’s face. It was that part of me that drove me to continue. “I heard all of the names that the waitress listed off in The Prickly Pair! If you’re hoping that I’ll be just another one of your lewd conquests then—”

Lily jumped to her hooves and flared her wings, shocking me into silence. There was a fury in her eyes, a malice that sent shivers down my spine. I had already taken a reflexive step backwards by the time she whispered in a low voice, “Is that really what you think?”

She took a step toward me, and I had to fight the urge to turn tail and flee. Lifting a hoof to her chest, she yelled over the bubbling elixir. “I’ve slept with hundreds of ponies, Candy. Hundreds!” I gulped and took another step backwards when she advanced over my alchemy set. She was close enough now that I was able to see something in her eyes that I had never witnessed before: tears. “And you know what? Only one of them ever meant a single fucking thing to me.”

Standing directly in front of me, she shook her head and admitted in a broken voice, “I would trade every drunken one-night stand and every night of empty pleasure I’ve ever had for just one moment with someone I care about.” Her pained expression crushed me under the weight of her sincerity, but not half as much as the forlorn tone of her voice as she whispered, “I guess I was deluding myself, but I honestly thought that someone might have been you.”

This wasn’t just about… She actually… Oh Goddess…

It was as if a veil had been lifted. I finally realized how poorly I had judged her. How quick I was to assume. All the times she had spoken earnestly with me made so much more sense. What was I doing?

“Why… Why me?” I asked in a voice thick with emotion.

She paused to stare at my pleading expression, and then offered up an explanation. “Because every time I look in your eyes, I see a mare that has the same problem I’ve been dealing with all my life.”

“And what is that?”

“You still care,” she took a step closer and tilted her head, almost as if she were examining me. “This world is shitting on you left and right, but you still fucking care. It’s taken nearly everything from you, but you still haven’t lost the will to be a decent person.” Reaching out she placed a hoof on my shoulder, just above my scar. “That alone means you’re more beautiful than this whole damn desert put together.”

My jaw worked in silence as I let her words sink in. I had no earthly idea how to respond to such a compliment. In the end, all I managed to do was get lost in her eyes. There wasn’t a single force in this world or the next that could have ripped my gaze from her. It was only when I felt something hot and wet run down my cheek that I realized I was in tears.

Lily’s hoof left my shoulder to gently brush the wetness away from my cheek. I closed my eyes and pinned her hoof in place with my own. It was such a simple touch, but at that moment it meant the world to me.

“I don’t like watching you cry,” she murmured.

I had to tell her. She deserved to hear it from my lips. “Lily, I…” I opened my eyes, and pulled her hoof from my cheek. I needed to look her in the eyes for this. “Some small part of me… No, no that’s not right,” I corrected myself, shaking my head. “I like the way that you look at me,” I finally admitted.

Judging by her expression, Lily was hardly surprised by this information. I pressed on, hoping that I might find a way to fix the tremendous mess I had created. “It makes me feel… wanted,” I explained. “I was never wanted in The Stable. Needed, yes, but never wanted. Not like this.”

“Is that really so bad?” she softly asked. “Why are you fighting me on this?”

“I… Lily, I’m having a very difficult time processing the fact that the first pony I’ve ever felt something like this for is…” Say it. Just say it for Luna’s sake! “…a mare.”

Her expression was one of utter bafflement. Shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head, she asked, “I don’t get it. What’s the problem?”

I swallowed back the lump in my throat, and cast a glance at the PipBuck on my leg. “Twenty two years.”

Lily’s brow furrowed. “What?”

I sat down, and my hoof absentmindedly poked at the various buttons on my PipBuck as I explained. “Twenty two years is how long I lived in The Stable. That’s how long I spent drinking in every little iota of Selenist dogma.” I felt like a filly confessing my sins as I peered up at her confused eyes. “According to my faith, what you’re asking of me is wrong. Unnatural. Selfish. Immoral. A sin against The Goddess’ divine will.”

I continued quickly, hoping to avoid the inevitable mention of how Selenism was based on lies. “Every day and every night those doctrines were reinforced by ponies I admired, friends that I trusted, and the family that I loved.” Brushing the wetness from my eyes, I shook my head. “I’ve built up this wall over the span of a lifetime, brick by zealous brick, and yet you’ve managed to topple it over the course of days.” I curled my tail around my legs and gazed up into her eyes once more. “I’m standing on the other side of that wall, completely bewildered as to how something that seemed so permanent could fall so quickly, and examining the wreckage of what I perceived to be simple fact.”

I took a deep breath and tried to explain. “I’m wondering if I should try to rebuild the shattered bulwark so that my life will retain some semblance of familiarity to what I grew up knowing, or…” I paused to gulp down my anxiety. “If I should venture beyond the ruins to examine what lies on the other side.”

After a moment of heavy silence Lily sat down in front of me. “You know, my parents came from a place like that. A place where they were always telling you who you can or can’t be with.”

My brow furrowed at the abrupt change of subject. “Your parents?”

Lily’s eyes were locked on the moss at our hooves. “They were Dashites,” she said in a voice as distant and low as the rumbling explosions in the city. “After The Enclave told them they couldn’t be together, they threw their comfy lives away and came down to live in this hellhole. After a while they wound up joining The Thunderhooves, and I came along a couple years later.” She shrugged her wings, shook her head, and replaced her melancholy expression with a small grin. “I guess I’m just the girl that shows up when folks decide to start living life for themselves instead of giving a shit about what everyone else wants them to do.”

I licked my lips, and returned her weak smile with my own. “Your parents sound very brave.”

Lily nodded, and sighed quietly. “Yeah. They were.”

“But it also sounds like they had each other before they threw their lives into disarray,” I pointed out. “What do we have?”

“You mean, besides all the sexual tension?” she asked with a smirk. For once, I was able to return her stare, if just barely.

“Look, Candy, I know that you aren’t super familiar with my history or anything, but all this craziness?” She waved her hooves in the air to indicate the predicament we had landed ourselves in. “Pretty fuckin’ standard for The Wasteland if you ask me. There’s always someone that wants you dead, and there’s always something you think is worth protecting. And more often than not, you have no clue what the hell is going on because you’re just trying to see tomorrow.” Lily smiled and shrugged, “That’s life, babe. Get used to it. It’s up to you to find something that makes your life worth it.”

Like a pick through several inches of ice, her words were finally starting to break through. “And you believe that something is… me?”

“Us,” she corrected me. Lifting a hoof to my chin she turned my face up to her own, and locked my eyes with hers. “And honestly? I don’t have a clue. But if anything’s worth taking a risk over,” she leaned closer, her voice as soft and dark as her gorgeous eyes, “it’s this.”

It all happened so quickly, but the memory of that moment has been etched into my mind forever. The world slipped away, becoming no more than a smoky, insignificant haze. There was only Lily, clear and immediate and intense. Her pale mane, usually as frenetic and carefree as her personality, now lay limp down her neck and shoulders like strands of silver moonlight. Her light-indigo face and its deep laugh-lines that ran down to the corners of her full lips took up more and more of my vision as she slowly edged closer. But more than anything else, it was her smoldering, blood-red eyes that drew me in. I was powerless to look away as she fixed me with a smoldering, half-lidded expression of ravenous allure.

I lost myself in those eyes, in that gaze. I was helpless against the current of my desire; guided by instinct like a moth to flame. I didn’t care if the smoke would stain my coat. I didn’t care if the rising ashes would blister and scar my skin. I didn’t care if the fire consumed me horn to hoof… Goddess, I wanted to burn. I needed to feel her heat wash over me, just like the sun on my face or the fire in my heart.

I wanted her the same way she wanted me. All I had to do was give in. All I had to do was commit one little sin. I had already prayed to the sun. I had already murdered in retribution. What possible harm could come from a kiss?

My heart raced as Lily’s hoof left my chin and glided across my cheek. With the gentlest pull she gingerly encouraged me closer to her waiting lips. I lifted my hoof to her chest, feeling her own thundering heart with flesh and bone, rather than magic.

That lone voice that had driven me thus far cried out in anticipation, filled with joyous ecstasy now that its amorous longing was so very close to being sated. With Lily close enough that I could feel her breath on my muzzle, I slowly shut my eyes and parted my lips, inviting her to close the distance. Nothing else mattered. Everything was as it should be.

Until the rest of the choir returned, and in an unforgivably sour note screeched one, awful word…

Luna.

My eyes shot open as I turned away, gasping and wincing as Lily’s lips met the side of my cheek. The last vestige of the fire withered and died, and even through the heat and humidity of the air all around us, I felt a chill creep in to replace it. I shivered as I realized the damage I had done.

With agony on my face and in my voice, I whispered, “I’m sorry… I can’t. I can’t do this.”

Lily’s warm hoof left my cheek, leaving only the icy sting of regret in its place. A lifetime of silence stretched out like the frigid waters of a vast, frozen sea. “Could you,” she asked in a voice as bitter as hoarfrost, “if I were a stallion?”

I rounded on her, “Lily, that’s not fair!”

“Just answer me,” she demanded.

My breath hitched in my throat, and my vision blurred from the tears pooling in my eyes. For just a moment, I could imagine that the pegasus in my sight was male. That image didn’t leave any doubt in my mind.

I allowed the tears to spill over my cheeks, revealing the mare I had almost kissed. “Yes,” I admitted.

The silence that stretched after that word told us both all that we needed to know. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I buried my face in my hooves and sobbed like the pathetic little filly I believed myself to be.

“You know what? Your sister was right,” Lily hissed. “You are running. From yourself.” I looked up to find Lily walking away from me.

“Lily! Lily wait!” My legs carried me to her side before I knew I was standing, and my hoof found her shoulder before I knew what I was going to say. “Don’t go!”

Lily shoved my hoof away, and pointed at her bomb-collar as she yelled. “It’s not like I can get very far anyway!” Digging roughly through her hat, she produced her cigarettes and lighter. “Look Candy, it’s not often that I’m wrong about this shit, but that doesn’t make it feel any better, so just leave me alone for a fucking second!” She ended her shouting by sitting roughly on her haunches and pulling a cigarette out of her box.

“You’re not wrong!” I pleaded. “I do feel…” What? What could I possibly say at a time like this? “...something,” I offered, and immediately regretted my word choice. I winced and rubbed my temple as I tried to explain. “I don’t know what it is. But it’s there!”

Lily only spared me an exasperated glance out of one eye before she shook her head and lit up. “You’re really not helping right now,” she grumbled through the cigarette hanging from her lips.

I didn’t know what else to say… “Lily, I’m sorry!”

“Yeah, you said that!” she roared before punching her lighter into her hat, where it smacked into a box of Mintals with a sharp metallic clang. “But what good does it do either of us?”

This was falling apart so quickly! I had to triage the situation immediately! In desperation, my panicked mind offered up the first option it found. “I-I can try to learn! I’ve always been good at learning new things!”

Lily’s every breath blew roiling billows through the thick smoky haze that had gathered around her. It was as if she were just beyond my reach; a grand prize locked behind an infuriatingly flimsy, yet impassable barricade. “This isn’t something you learn how to do, Candy. You have to feel it,” she admonished.

“And if you don’t feel it strongly enough to get past your hang-ups,” Lily paused to take a long pull from her cigarette, then sighed heavily and shook her head, “then there’s no point in trying anymore.”

I had seen so much in her eyes, but not once had I glimpsed despair. I was at my wit’s end. My hoof found my chest, trying in vain to soothe the wringing agony I felt there. I clenched my eyes and jaw shut, forcing hot tears down my cheeks before I screamed, “Well right now I feel like I just stabbed my best friend in the heart!”

She turned her head up from staring at the moss beneath us, and regarded me with weary, wounded eyes. But behind all the hurt, the exhaustion, and the anger I could see a faint glimmer of hope. A spark that no matter how miniscule might rekindle the flame I had callously snuffed out.

“Please,” I begged her, “let me fix this! I just need some time!”

Lily looked away, and shrugged her wings dismissively. “Time to do what?”

“Time to… To sort out this awful mess of a life I have! Lily, I only learned a few nights ago that Selenism was a lie! I only came to accept how I feel about you moments ago!” I wasn’t entirely sure if I was simply making excuses for my actions, or speaking words from the heart. I didn’t know if I was stalling for the time to come up with a better means of persuasion, or if my emotional rambling would suffice. I wasn’t really sure about anything other than the fact that I had her attention, and that meant that I needed to keep her listening.

I buried my face in my hooves, shouting through the tears soaking through my cheeks. “I’m so used to being able to piece things together, but this is different! I can’t figure this out!”

In a flurry of words, I admitted the greatest conundrum I had thus far faced. “This all started with the orb that you showed me, Lily! I can’t figure out who or what I am anymore!” After a sharp inhale for breath, I kept going. “And I’m not blaming you for that! But, Goddess… What in Tartarus is wrong with me? I can’t even understand myself…”

I continued to hold my head in my hooves, grimacing as I fought to make sense of it all. “I can’t make up my mind about anything right now, Lily! One minute I’m that mare you want me to be, compassionate and helpful, and the next I’m vengeful and cruel!”

She snorted, blowing smoke from her nostrils. “You really weren’t listening to me, then.” Before I could respond she spat the cigarette to the ground and spun around, glaring. “I like that about you, Candy!” she shouted. “I like that you killed that guy! No, it wasn’t smart; we would have had these fucking things off our necks by now if you'd kept his worthless ass alive!" She shook her bomb-collar hard, eliciting an angry staccato of beeps that accompanied her argument. "But killing him was the right fucking thing to do!”

Of course she would say that. But how was I to believe it? “Lily, I’m so confused! How am I supposed to make a decision about you when I can’t even sort myself out first?”

“You don’t need to sort yourself out, you just need to stop fighting yourself!” Her eyes locked with mine, and I could feel in my gut that she was trying to lend every bit of weight she could to the advice she had just provided me. Her voice quieted to a gentle whisper as she placed the capstone on our tumultuous conversation. “No matter how hard I want to try, I can’t fight this battle for you, Candy.”

My chest heaved as I wiped the tears from my eyes. “This isn’t fair. To you. To me… None of this is fair.”

“You’re telling me…” she sighed, lighting another cigarette without even bothering to snuff out the still-burning one that lay in the damp moss on the floor.

When it became evident that I had no further words to offer up, Lily turned and sullenly plodded past the all but forgotten elixir. Seeing her walk away was like watching a chapter close in my life before I even had the chance to skim the pages.

From my vantage I could only see two paths laid out before me. The path of Selenism would see me letting her go. I would of course try to maintain a friendship with her, but I couldn’t possibly imagine that we would ever be the same.

The path of the Sun was far more intriguing at the moment, as it would lead to me to running to her side, taking her face in my hooves, and kissing her for all I was worth. What would come next would be up to her, and I could only pray that she might forgive my indecision. The problem, as I’m sure you have surmised, is that in order to be with her I would have to sever the very last tie to my faith that I still had. As much as I wanted Lily, I also didn’t want to have to completely remake myself from scratch. She liked me for who I was. Changing too much of myself wouldn’t be fair to either of us.

So what was I to do? Following either route exclusively would only guide me toward a lackluster compromise at best, and an awful tragedy at worst. Even if I could possibly maneuver myself to some miracle of a conclusion, there simply wasn’t time for me to figure it out! Every step Lily took was like another nail in the coffin of our friendship. If only there was a way to… to…

To walk both paths…

I gasped as an electric tingle ran up my spine. It gained in power as it passed my heart, and again as it surged forward to arrive behind my eyes. I could feel it brimming in my horn, like a storm of focus. I knew exactly what I had to do.

My horn erupted in crimson light as I took a step forward. I wasn’t going to just let her walk away! I wanted this too badly! And I had promised myself to take what I wanted!

The teleportation spell placed me directly in front of Lily, forcing her to stop. Her eyes widened, first in shock, and then in confusion. But before she could open her mouth to ask what in Equestria I was doing, I laid out my demand.

“One week,” I insisted. I no longer needed to emulate my sister’s strength or Lily’s confidence. My own conviction was just fine. “Give me one week.”

To her credit, she took my magical light show in stride. She hardly batted an eyelash before she scoffed, “You want me to just wait while you make up your mind? How is that fair?”

I shook my head, watching the shadows cast by my scarlet aura dance across her face. “It’s not, Lily. At all. It’s cruel, and selfish, and it will hurt.” If anything was worth taking a chance over… “But that’s life in The Wasteland, isn’t it?”

Her lips parted as she stared at me, but she didn’t deign to respond. Her brow furrowed in confusion, but she asked no question. She was hanging on my every word, so I knew that I had better make what I was about to say worth her while.

“If you truly believe as I do,” I began, speaking slowly so that every syllable had ample time to sink in, “that you and I have even the faintest chance of scraping together some small measure of happiness within this bleak and rotten hell,” I lifted my hoof to her chest, placing it gently, but firmly, over her heart. “Then I will be damned”—my horn flared just a little brighter at that word—“before I let you give up this easily.” I let the magic in my horn fade away, but kept the determination in my voice as I repeated, “One week.” After a moment’s consideration, I softened my voice and added one little word. “Please.“

Lily was silent for quite a while after that. She removed the nub of her second cigarette from her mouth, and flicked it into another patch of damp foliage. It seemed that her eyes weren’t exactly sure what to focus on, my white hoof on her chest, or my blue eyes demanding an answer. Her own hoof lifted to gingerly embrace mine, and in trademark Lily-like fashion, she managed to find the one question I hadn’t anticipated.

“Am I really your best friend?” she asked in her usual, self-assured tone. It was only the tiny—almost imperceptible—wavering of her voice that gave away the vulnerable heart beneath the bravado.

I, for one, was happy to play along with however she wished to present herself to the world. I had an inkling of who she really was, and that was all I needed. Cautious optimism brightened my face and leaked into my voice as I asked, “Would I have made such an impassioned plea to somepony that wasn’t?” I turned my hoof into hers, holding it in place between us. “I owe multiple ponies my life, Lily, but you’re the only one that hasn’t asked for anything in return. Or held anything over my head to get what you want.”

“Sounds like you need better friends.” And at long last, she was smirking and making jokes again.

“As long as I have you and my sister,” I returned her smile, “I think I’ll be alright.”

Lily shut her eyes, dropped the smirk, and sighed. “You’re really hard to say no to, you know that?” Letting go of my hoof, she finally acquiesced. “One week.” Despite Lily’s stern tone, I couldn’t keep myself from grinning like a filly. “I won’t wait forever, Candy,” she warned. “Life’s too short for that shit.”

I nodded, and beamed at her. “Thank The Goddess! Thank you! That means the world to—” I was abruptly silenced by a curious stench that was permeating our surroundings. It almost smelled like my father had gotten into the kitchen again.

I covered my wrinkled nose with a hoof. “Do you smell that?” Lily and I turned our heads at the same time, and both of us saw the winding, orange and cerulean smoke emanating from my little pot. Of course, only I understood the dire consequences that would come with that smoke. “OH GODDESS!” I shouted, already galloping to my alchemy set. “The elixir is burning!”

It’s often easy to make a few mistakes when you try an unfamiliar recipe for the first time. Sometimes there’s too much heat, or not enough. Sometimes your seemingly tiny improvisations backfire spectacularly. Sometimes… you simply leave the cookpot unattended for too long. In all cases, you just have to hope that you learn from your mishaps, and vow to do better the next time.

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

Despite my best efforts, I was only able to salvage two doses of the elixir. The third portion was caked to the inside of my little cookpot, dried out, crusty, and utterly ruined. It took me nearly fifteen minutes just to scrape the gunk out, which left me with plenty of time to ponder who should get the remaining two servings.

Practicality and an acute desire to smooth things over with her as quickly as possible demanded that I give one dose of the elixir to Lily in order to help speed her recovery. That particular decision was easy. Much easier than it was to actually convince Lily to imbibe the reeking slurry. When she finally acquiesced to my begging the poor dear nearly gagged on the thickened goop, and with every swallow her face turned a paler shade. It took her three bottles of water just to get it all down.

Her mood lightened considerably when the elixir finally began to work its magic, however. In her words a “tingly-stretchy-warm” sensation had overtaken her entire body. Furthermore she remarked that she felt, and I quote, “Amazeballs.” I wasn’t particularly familiar with the term, but judging by the elated look on her face, it possessed approximately the same definition as “good.” She wasn’t fully recovered just yet, but it seemed that we had managed to counteract the worst of Stampede’s atrocious side-effects.

As grateful as I was for Lily to be on the path to recovery, I was still split on whether I should take the last dose myself or give it to my sister. It was an elixir to bolster one’s physical strength, after all. Nohta would undoubtedly find much more use for it overall, but I remembered all too well just how helpless I was after running my magic dry. If I should face burnout again, then I certainly didn’t want to be as useless as I was in the past. Quite the conundrum if you ask me.

Despite all of that, however, Lily and I had a much more immediate concern on our minds: food. Luckily we didn’t have to venture far for our supper. The first of the enormous glass biospheres we came across was marked “Dodge Junction,” and was a veritable cornucopia of foodstuffs. If I had been on my own, I would have heeded the plaque’s advice, and dipped past the moss-covered dome solely due to its name. Fortunately, Lily insisted that it would be worth our while to take a closer look.

After she reared up and slashed away a sizable chunk of the moss, I was able to see the treasure that lay within the dome. Dodge Junction, as Lily so smugly informed me, was where Pre-War Equestria produced most of its cherries. It didn’t take long for my mouth to start watering!

Whoever had designed the consoles for the biospheres must have done so with the express intent of making them easy to understand no matter the language a user might be capable of reading. Labels utilizing the scientific names, common Equestrian names, and even the Zebra runes of a multitude of flora corresponded to a series of buttons. Buttons that, I should add, were shaped and colored exactly like the ingredients they represented. It was simple enough for a child to comprehend, and yet detailed enough to satisfy even the most fastidious of scientific minds.

Lily kept herself occupied by tapping buttons for various desert edibles, but I was content to stand by her side and repeatedly poke the cherry-shaped button labeled “Prunus Avium.” The only thing that could distract me from popping the little morsels in my mouth was the magical regrowth of the fruits. Well, that and the annoying little pits. But those all went into another jar in case I could find a use for them later. Waste not, want not. You understand.

I was completely at a loss as to what magical process was taking place in the dome. Was it an age spell? Revitalization ritual? Time manipulation!? It didn’t matter how many times I watched the white burst of energy wash over the branch only for new fruit to develop in place of the old, I simply couldn’t glean any details at all. After all the absurdity and mystery of the past few days, I must admit that it almost felt good to be stumped by something so simple as a tree.

Er… please excuse the pun. That one was an accident, I swear.

It wasn’t long before Lily and I found ourselves seated at a table-sized toadstool near a wall, munching on our salads and quietly ruminating on the day’s events. With the exception of the occasional rumble of a distant explosion, the loudest noise to be heard was the crunching of leaves and the smacking of lips, though none of those noises bothered us. We were both far too hungry to care much about anything at that point.

My dinner companion finished her meal first, and let out a massive yawn as she reclined against the wall. Pulling out her box of cigarettes, she smiled sleepily. “That hit the spot.”

I dabbed at my lips with one of the ferns we were using in lieu of napkins, and nodded appreciatively. “Thank you. It seems like ages since I’ve had a decent meal that didn’t come from a can.”

With a sly smile, Lily whispered just loudly enough for me to hear, “Quickest way to a mare’s heart…”

“Well, I’m glad to see that you’re in good spirits after our…” My grateful grin turned sheepish as I gazed over the toadstool at her. “ …whatever that was.”

“It’s called a ‘fight,’ babe.” Lily smirked past her cigarette, and winked at my surprised expression. “Even best friends have ‘em from time to time.”

“I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me to see you bounce back this quickly.” I leaned over the table and asked, “How are you feeling? Physically?”

She lit her cigarette and shrugged. “Still pretty sore. I think that elixir is helping though.”

“You don’t know how glad I am to hear that,” I sighed. “What with that awful expression you had on your face while you were drinking it, I wasn’t sure if you were going to be able to keep it all down.”

“I’ve had my fair share of weird-ass cocktails.” She licked her lips and winced before adding, “Just never one that used ghoul eyes as a mixer.”

I smirked back at her. “Oh, well you see, I was hoping that the manticore venom—” I widened my eyes in my best attempt at mimicking a mad scientist’s bug-eyed stare “—would kill the rancid taste of the eyeballs.”

“Hmm, good instincts.” She chuckled and nodded before blowing a plume of smoke off to the side. “Manticore venom has a sharp, smoky flavor. And it’ll numb your mouth so fierce you’ll forget you ever had a tongue.” She emphasized that ridiculous statement by scrunching up her face and sticking her tongue out at me.

I rolled my eyes, but couldn’t keep the grin off my face. “I don’t know how or why, but I actually believe you when you say you’ve tried it before.”

She shook her head and insisted, “Manticore venom casserole is no joke, babe. Kinda hard to get the ingredients, but good eatin’ all the same.” After taking a drag off her smoke, she pointed the cigarette at me and suggested, “I’ll make some for you sometime. Then you’ll get a real taste of Wasteland cuisine.”

“I believe I’d rather stick to a vegetarian diet,” I snapped my tail behind me, but smiled all the same. “Thank you for the offer, however.”

With a wolfish grin, she asked, “Sure. You’ll stick to eating veggies unless it comes to magical potions with eyeballs in them, right?”

I wriggled my eyebrows, staring at her incredulously. “What? Food and potions are completely different!”

“You eat one. You drink the other.” She shrugged her wings, grinning smugly. “Other than that?”

Raising an eyebrow, I used a hoof to indicate the few leaves remaining on my side of the toadstool. “One is solely for nutrition.” I lit my horn and compressed the magic into a tiny sphere just above my other upturned hoof. “And the other is either for medicinal purposes or various magical effects.” Letting my magic die out, I pointed that same hoof across the mushroom toward Lily. “And not all potions are imbibed, mind you. Some of them are for other purposes.”

“Uh huh…” She took another long pull from her cigarette before conceding the point. “If you say so, sweetheart.” It was plain to see that she was just teasing me again. As much as I would have liked to continue our little game, there was one other thing that needed to be taken care of.

I cleared my throat, and folded my hooves under my chin. “We should probably take the opportunity to recuperate while things are relatively peaceful, don’t you think? Why don’t we stay here for an extra day?”

Lily arched an eyebrow. “You sure about that? We’re gonna lose The Bard if we have any more delays. I think we should head out just after we’re rested.” Waving a hoof to the smoky air behind her, she added, “Besides, Nohta’s out there somewhere. Don’t you want to get back to her?”

“Well obviously, but right now you’re… well…” I tilted my head and grimaced.

Lily lay her chin on the mushroom’s cap, looking up at me from just underneath the brim of her hat. “Fucked,” she stated plainly.

I nodded, and pushed myself back from the squishy toadstool to give Lily a sincere stare. “And since it seems that we are being completely honest, I’m rather dependent upon you for my protection.”

Lily pushed herself up with a hoof and blew of plume of smoke to the side. Pursing her lips, she glared at me across the mushroom. “One day,” she grumbled. “But only one day. You know I hate sitting around.”

“Good. It’s agreed then.” My tail swished happily behind me as I donned my packs. It seemed that I was getting the knack for convincing Lily I was right. Things always go so much smoother when everypony simply does as you say, don’t you think?

“Now,” I continued, with a confident smile on my face and a jaunty skip in my step, “we only have the one bedroll, so obviously you should be the one to sleep in it.”

Lily held her hooves in front of herself, shaking her head obstinately. “Whoa, whoa, hold up. No way am I stealing your sleeping bag. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

So much for everything going smoothly…

I paused, wrinkling my brow in confusion. “It’s not stealing, Lily. I’m giving it to you.”

She ground the little nub of her cigarette out on the mushroom, producing a tiny puff of smoke as a hole was burned into the fungi. “Nope, doesn’t matter. You take it. I’ll be fine.”

“You will not!” I stamped my hoof on the floor. “We need to ensure that you’re rested before we set out.”

Lily adjusted her hat as she stood up and looked me dead in the eye. “I’m not gonna force you to sleep on the floor.”

I was flabbergasted. Where was this coming from? Meeting her gaze head on, I declared, “Well, I’m going to have to insist.” Raising my nose primly in the air, I added, “Doctor’s orders.”

Lily rolled her eyes and grunted. “Fuck that.”

I shook my head incredulously, “Why is this, of all things, a problem?”

“It just is!” she shouted.

“Why?” I asked again.

Lily pursed her lips and folded her hooves across her chest. “It’s called chivalry. Bite me.”

“The irony of that statement notwithstanding,” I quibbled, “you know this is the practical way to handle the situation.”

“There’s practical, and then there’s right,” she insisted.

With a smug chuckle, I raised an eyebrow and purred, “I honestly never believed I’d see the night that you refused to sleep in my bed.”

She snorted, and jabbed a hoof in my direction. “That’s ‘cause you wouldn’t be in it.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” I replied matter of factly. “After the incident with those… pleasure pills of yours, I’ve already spent a good portion of the day sleeping!”

“I told you that was an accident!” Her protest was really more of an annoyed grumble than anything else.

“And due to your accident I am nowhere near tired enough to sleep, while you are liable to succumb to exhaustion at any minute. You need sleep, Lily. I do not.” Surely she couldn’t argue with that logic! Not with her eyes already beginning to droop. Honestly I was expecting her first yawn at any second.

Holding a hoof to my chest, I proclaimed my plans for the immediate future in the hopes of cementing the arrangement. “I’ll be staying up tonight, and I’ll be taking the opportunity to restock while I’m at it. When we do set out to leave this facility, we will do so with plenty of essential healing items.”

Lily rubbed her hoof across her face and sighed. “I’m not gonna be able to convince you to just take the damn bed, am I?” I shook my head, and put my hoof down for good measure. Lily allowed her hoof to fall back to the floor while she shrugged. “You’re gonna wind up tired tomorrow,” she warned in a taunting, singsong voice.

Without breaking eye contact I grinned smugly and lit my PipBuck lamp, shining its light through the smoky haze all around us. “Oh, don’t you worry. I’m no stranger to burning the midnight oil, as it were.” Dropping the smug grin, I adopted an earnest smile and implored her for aid. “I would however, be most appreciative if you were to help me gather a few ingredients. That is, of course, if you’re not too tired already.”

“Yeah, okay.” She waved a hoof in the air, as if she were shooing away an annoying gnat, and rubbed her eyes as she nodded. “Let’s get this over with before I pass the fuck out.”

Walking out onto the floor of the facility between the enormous glass domes, I was struck once again by how enormous the structure was. Even the smallest of the glass enclosures towered over us, and the biggest ones reached up toward the ceiling many stories above our heads. Sitting several hundred yards deeper into the facility, the very largest of the domes housed what appeared to be a single colossal flower with a tree-trunk sized stem and petals as large as bedsheets. Thanks to Mother’s botanical books I had an inkling as to what that flower must have been, but after our ordeal with the pod-zebra I was in no mood to disturb the flower and the enormous worm that possibly lay dormant underneath its roots.

In our haste, Lily and I managed to mistake several conveniently placed terminals for colonies of fungi. Though that probably had to do with the mushroom caps sprouting from the keyboards and obscuring the view of the monitors. Once we did slow down long enough for me to catch a glimpse of the black and green screens awaiting search requests, our navigation through the rows of bio-domes became much more efficient. In fact it was a little too efficient. Or at least it was according to Lily.

Despite sleep-deprivation being plainly visible upon her features, she insisted that we simply must, and these are her words mind you, “Stop and taste the roses.”

I chuckled at her sudden playfulness and waved her off with a hoof. “Lily, we just ate.”

“Oh, come on. There’s always room for petals!” She offered me her upside-down hat, in which she had gathered a colorful assortment of blooms from every far-flung corner of Equestria. “Try the tulips! Oh, and the dandelions! They’re a little bitter, but they’re good for making wine!” She was practically bouncing in place, with a wide grin plastered over her face.

The unbridled glee in her smile won me over. I used my magic to pluck a few petals from the bouquet and pressed them to my nose. They smelled remarkably like her mane.

Grinning, I nibbled on the petals, and smirked as I pointed out, “I’m rather surprised you didn’t offer me a bouquet of lilies, to be honest.”

“Figured I’d wait a week,” she implied, and then winked at me. “Hey, did you notice the Ice Irises over there? Or the Heart’s Desire?”

Shaking my head, I asked, “How exactly does a tribal raider turned mercenary know so much about flowers?”

She shrugged. “You don’t go through a life-altering event that gives you a girly-looking flower permanently stamped on your ass and not wind up curious about this sorta thing.”

I raised an eyebrow at the same time that a corner of my mouth turned upward.

Lily gave her wings a quick flap and adopted a defensive tone. “Just because I’ve killed more ponies than you’ve ever met doesn’t mean I can’t like this sorta stuff.” With a determined—if slightly miffed—head nod, she confirmed something of which I was already entirely sure. “I’m still a mare, you know.”

I kept smirking at her as I picked a single rose from the bouquet, using my magic to shear the nasty little thorns from the stem.

“What?” she asked, grinning quizzically.

I nibbled on my rose, and smiled coyly as I teased her. “And here I was just starting to think that there wasn’t anything more to you than wanton violence, lewd thoughts, and terribly silly jokes…”

Lily shook the flowers out of her hat before placing it back on her head, and then winked slyly. “You mean all the fun stuff that you like about me?” It was extraordinarily hard to maintain eye contact with her while she was giving me that predatory smirk, but not impossible.

While I was busy grinning like a school-filly talking to her crush, Lily grinned right back and stated simply, “Tick tock, babe.”

I wasn’t entirely sure if she was referring to the week I had bargained for, or just hinting at how tired she was. Either way, my time was running out. I cleared my throat, nodded, and tucked the rose stem behind my ear. “Right, let’s continue.”

After stopping at over a dozen of the glass domes and collecting samples of everything useful within them, we finally arrived at the dusky enclosure marked “Everfree Forest.” For whatever reason the moss had failed to overtake the glass, and gave a crystal-clear view of the shady copse that lay nestled inside. Lily rose up to place her front hooves on the dome, and peered inside with a wide-eyed grin.

“Hey, check it out. Poison—” Lily’s mouth opened wide in a massive yawn—“Joke.” Rubbing her eyes, she continued. “I only know of two other places in the whole Wasteland that you can find joke that isn’t trying to kill you. Err, well… Only one now, I guess.”

My ears perked up as my interest was piqued. “What do you mean?”

Her bloodshot eyes sank to the floor as she recoiled at the question. “I uh… I knew a girl. It was a long time ago. Let’s get the rest of your stuff.”

I wasn’t sure if it was my place to prod her for more information. The hurt in her voice and the expediency with which she dropped the subject told me not to inquire further. My hoof brushed her shoulder as I nodded, “Okay.”

It wasn’t long before my packs and satchel were bulging with a multitude of leaves, roots, seeds, bark, and all other manner of alchemical ingredients. Lily had even stuffed a few wax-paper packages of Poison Joke underneath her hat. It was a boon I hadn’t expected; I finally had everything I needed to make nearly every potion in Mother’s book!

We should have turned back toward the cauldrons at that point, but Lily’s ear chose that moment to begin twitching about uncontrollably. She was quick to inform me that “Grumpy” had spotted a trio of doors to our south that might be of interest. I rolled my eyes at that, wondering why she felt the need to hide the fact that she had discovered something behind some silly superstitious nonsense.

As we plodded up to a solid wall of green, I had to admit that her eyes must have been much more keen than mine. The outlines of the doors were just barely noticeable underneath the thick layer of foliage standing before us. Of course, they were much more visible once Lily had sliced three rectangles through the overgrowth with her blades.

Peeking through the first door, I spied a workbench and a menagerie of tools along with several heaps of scrap metal and loose wires. The scent of oil was almost as strong as the earthy smell of mushrooms coming from the metal lockers toward the back of the room. Two pairs of grease-stained overalls hung on the wall, next to a large dry-erase board filled with notes and reminders about various maintenance requests. Further back, another door led to a small storage room filled with glowing magical domes. I couldn’t help but think that magical stasis was a bit overkill for the purpose of keeping fertilizer fresh, but whoever had designed this facility obviously wasn’t in the habit of sparing expense.

The second room was much more interesting. For starters, it was clean of vegetation save for a pair of entwined vines hanging between the bright ceiling lights and brushing against the black lab-tables. Secondly, every cabinet was filled to the brim with pristine laboratory equipment. Flasks, beakers, scales, bunsen burners, centrifuges… Absolutely everything anypony would need for carrying out delicate chemistry experiments, or in my case brewing several batches of potions all at once. There was even a clean lab coat and spare set of safety goggles by the door! Lily may have snorted and giggled at my squee of delight, but I was too enchanted by a clean working space to care in the slightest.

After a few moments of gleeful equipment inspection, I reluctantly allowed Lily to coax me away from the lab and into the third room. My eyes were immediately drawn to the large writing desk, sofa, and tea table that dominated the space’s interior, but Lily seemed more interested in the pile of purple pillows in the corner. After removing her wing-blades and hurriedly whispering a few words over them, she dove into the cushions head first, landing spread-eagle on top of the pile.

A moment later, after her weight had split the thin fabric at the seams and jettisoned all of the stuffing in the pillows into the air like confetti, she lay face down on the hard floor and groaned. “That’s just not fair,” she lamented through a mouthful of empty pillowcase.

I used the auto-sorting spell in my PipBuck to find my sleeping bag amidst all the herbs in my packs, and unrolled it on the floor at her side. With a gentle smile and a gentler nudge of my hoof, I guided her toward the bedroll, “Here you are, dear. Sweet dreams.” She scarcely had time to thank me before she was unconscious. I grinned and shook my head as I marveled at how quickly she could fall asleep.

With Lily finally getting her well-deserved rest, I decided to take a closer look at our room. The desk was almost completely barren; its only decoration a faded picture of six colorful young mares in the middle of a group hug. My heart warmed at how happy they looked, but I quickly moved on in search of something more interesting.

The tea set, on the other hoof, was like a gift from The Goddess herself! The silver kettle was of little interest, but in one of its companion containers I found a little piece of heaven: tea leaves! And they were still fresh thanks to the magical packaging! Luna bless the miracles of science!

I hurried to stuff the tea into my packs, pausing only when something curious caught my eye. Hanging on the wall was the framed front page of a newspaper. The glass pane in the frame had cracked, allowing all the humidity of the facility to seep in. As such, the majority of the article was too blurred by mold to decipher, but I was easily able to read the headline.

“Newly Crowned Zebra Caesar Visits Ponyville, Thanks Discord For His Assistance With Tirek.”

Portions of the article were still somewhat legible. Squinting my eyes, I was just able to make out a few snippets of information.

“Princess Celestia welcomed the Zebra Caesar to Ponyville today, marking the anniversary of the death of Tirek by The Caesar’s hooves. The mood was cheerful as—”

“ —took tea in Fluttershy’s cottage near The Everfree Forest. The Royal Guards of both nations waited outside, bedecked in splendid golden armor.”

“—talks of possible trade agreements between Equestria and The Empire. The phrase ‘Mutually beneficial partnership’ was used by both The Princess and—”

“—concluded with a magic show put on by Twilight Sparkle and Discord. Fluttershy was unable to watch as her animal friends were—”

At the tail end of the article, one last line was still intact.

“When asked about her absence from the meeting, Princess Luna refused to comment.”

I knew better than to expect that the truth of the old world would play nicely with the history I had been taught in Stable 76. Still, I had to wonder if this was the same Discord that The Goddess was said to have defeated over a thousand years ago. Perhaps not all the information in the holy texts was pure fabrication? Whatever the case, I had never once heard or read anything at all about this “Tirek” fellow. And I could scarcely imagine the Discord that I knew of helping anyone other than himself. But all of that paled in comparison to the strange notion of both ponies and zebras celebrating something together in peace. Not to mention the oddity of establishing trade relations with each other. It was a pity that the article was so thoroughly consumed by mold, as I would have gladly pored over the entire thing.

I checked on Lily one last time, then left for the laboratory to get started. The first order of business was to don the proper attire for the evening. I placed my bulging packs on the closest tabletop before turning to the lab coat by the doorway. There was no name to denote the previous owner of the garment, but a vaguely familiar cutie-mark had been sewn onto the breast pocket. My eyes lingered on the starburst pattern as I wondered where I had seen it before, but no recollection of meeting the pony it belonged to ever crossed my mind. I shrugged my shoulders and donned the coat before tying my hair back into a ponytail with a spare bit of fabric from my packs. After fitting the goggles over my eyes, I was ready and eager to proceed with my brewing.

The second order of business was to make sure that all of the equipment in the room still worked. One by one, switches were flipped, dials were rotated, valves were opened, and talismans were activated; each producing the effect I was hoping for. By some miracle this laboratory had been spared the ravages of time. Everything was in working order, including a peculiar little device tucked away in the corner.

Unlike all the other contraptions in the room, I had never seen this particular piece of equipment before. Four glass panes rose from the edges of a square sterile-white base, creating an open-topped chamber as large as the terminal next to it. When I tapped the keyboard the machine stirred to life with a low, electric hum, and a tacky title flashed on the terminal’s screen.

>Divid-O-Tron 5000!

My eyes widened. “Oh, it’s a Divid-O-Tron.” Tilting my head, I asked the terminal, “What in Luna’s name is a Divid-O-Tron?” As if to answer my question, the screen flashed black and proceeded through several status reports.

>Prepping Partitioning Program…

>Toggling Talisman Tickler...

>Calculating Controlled Chaos Coefficient...

>Judging Jam Jars…

>Evaluating Elemental Essences…

>Error. Enclosure Empty.

>Insert Inanimate Item.

“What?” My brow furrowed as I looked over my shoulder to make sure I was alone. The last time I had witnessed anything as nonsensical as the screen before me, it had been a blue pegasus flying overhead and giving dance lessons while simultaneously picking off ghouls with her rifle. I turned back to the terminal, shook my head, and repeated myself. “I… What?” As I’m sure you can imagine, there were several questions running rampant through my mind. None of them held a candle to the one I asked aloud, however.

I rubbed my temple with a hoof and hissed, “What sort of inane fool would program this device to only communicate through the use of alliterative prompts!?”

If I hadn’t rolled my eyes so hard, I surely would have missed the corner of the piece of paper that was poking out of the drawer beneath the terminal. I lit my horn, and tugged open the drawer to find a short note skewered by a single nail. It wasn’t addressed to me, or signed by the pony that had sent it, but it wasn’t exactly hard to figure out who it was from.

I read the note aloud, “Use this nail in the machine. Then think about the fertilizer in the other room. You’re welcome.” Picking the nail up in my magic, I huffed. “This had better not be a waste of my time, Psyker.” Without further ado, I placed the nail in the device and turned to the terminal. It was already flashing wildly, alternating between black and green as it reacted to the metal. Then it repeated one of the prompts it had already given me.

>Evaluating Elemental Essences…

The monitor flashed several times as the program finished its calculations. After several clicks, whirs, and beeps, it finally showed a list of items followed by their percentages. I furrowed my eyebrows as I read down the list of iron, carbon, manganese, phosphorus, sulfur, plus a few other trace elements, and wondered what in the world I had come across or why Psyker would insist that I should spend my time discovering the exact composition of a steel nail.

It was only when I reached the bottom of the list, and saw the command prompt waiting for me, that I started to piece things together. Er, in a manner of speaking.

>Start Separation Sequence?

With curiosity driving me forward, I poked the Y button with a tendril of my magic. The device kicked on without a moment’s hesitation, and the hum of magical batteries discharging energy flooded my ears and made my fur stand on end. I took a reflexive step backward as the monitor flashed solid green, displaying a warning message in bold, black letters.

>Retreat! Respiring Remnants Remains Risky!

Before I could react a loud bang and bright flash of white light erupted from the divider, and I was left coughing and waving a puff of foul-smelling smoke away from my face. Covering my muzzle with the lapel of the lab coat, I took a step closer to the glass chamber and peered through the haze. Inside were several sealed glass jars with markings on their lids. The first was labeled “Fe.” The second, “Mn.” Another bore the letter “S.” I raised my eyebrows in appreciation, and turned to the monitor again.

>Collect Completed Components.

The history I had concocted in my mind was starting to make sense. The ponies must have used this room to study the potions that the zebras living here had brewed. Specifically, this device must have been used to discern the exact composition of those potions.

I returned my attention to Psyker’s note and re-read the message. Why would she remind me of the fertilizer in the storeroom? And why would she assume that I would thank her? Fertilizer was nothing more than…

My jaw dropped, and then I burst into a huge grin as Psyker’s intent was finally made clear. I made a mad dash for the maintenance room, flinging the door of the laboratory wide in my bid to scavenge everything within sight. Old nails, broken circuitry, bags of fertilizer, scraps of stained cloth… nothing was spared the enthusiastic grasp of my greedy magic as I scoured the room for materials.

The mere thought of the opportunity at my hooftips brought a manic grin to my face! The quiet titter that bubbled up through my throat grew in intensity, eventually breaking into a mad cackle before I calmed my racing heart. I once felt powerless against my many foes, but no longer! Now I had options!

The rest of my night was spent monitoring simmering potions in the lab and tinkering with the workbench in the maintenance room. After some initial trial and error I settled into a comfortable pace, and before long I had amassed quite the stockpile of little glass jars on the countertops of the laboratory. After the fifth batch of Dragon’s Breath sat snugly against its kin, I took a step back to admire the fruits of my labor. I have to admit; seeing a full rainbow’s worth of colored bottles sitting neatly in a row filled me with no small measure of pride.

Still, repeatedly brewing the same potions over and over again did get rather monotonous, especially without any music to alleviate the tedium. It was such a shame that the radio in my PipBuck still wasn’t picking up any useful signals. I would have gladly forked over a whole purse full of caps for just one of Octavia’s serenades.

Rather than start up another batch of Sweet Water or slink away to work on my little side project in the maintenance room, I tossed a sprig of Witchweed and two teabags into a beaker of steaming water and sat down for a well deserved break. My drink was ready by the time I had rubbed the indentations left by the goggles out of my cheeks. And even if it was a little bitter for my taste, it was quite refreshing nonetheless.

I poked at the knobs and buttons on my PipBuck, and opened the files I had downloaded earlier. Psyker had suggested that I read them while brewing, after all. If nothing else a small change of pace was in order. I just wasn’t expecting the information held within to be so relevant.

>Fluttershy was right! In just a few weeks, we’ve discovered more about Zebra magic than pony scholars have been able to document in centuries! I’ve already written to Princess Luna, informing her of our successes and requesting an expansion to the Canterlot Library. As practical and efficient as these terminals have proven, I’ll never prefer them over books. And we’re going to need a lot of room for all these advancements across so many various fields. Oh, this is so exciting!

I grinned and raised an eyebrow, feeling a level of kinship with a pony that died long before I had ever been born. Despite Lily’s accusations as to the diminishing level of sanity within Pre-War Equestria, Ms. Sparkle certainly had a good head on her shoulders. Anypony that would dare to take up Princess Luna’s immeasurably valuable time with a letter simply for the sake of requesting more library space was alright in my book. Especially if she possessed the necessary clout to accomplish such a worthy goal.

However as interesting as I found the casual mentioning of The Goddess’ name, the juicy tidbit regarding Zebra magic was what had really caught my attention. It was nice to finally know what this facility had been doing, and I was more than eager to learn what they had actually discovered with their research. Blowing the steam off the beaker floating next to my face, I sipped my tea and continued reading.

>Fool has already been able to tell us so much. Most of our research has been focused on potions, of course, but we’ve already begun converting several rooms for the other experiments. Zebra magic seems to be broken down into two main schools: Black Magic and White Magic. What I’ve heard of both has been fascinating, and the practical applications of each are too numerous to list in a simple journal entry. Perhaps even more intriguing is the cultural impact these branches of magic have had on the Zebra tribes. Who knows how this research might affect relations between Equestria and The Empire? With a little more understanding we may be able to resolve our differences through communication after all!

Now the notes had my undivided attention. Fool? Potions? Black and White magic? My curiosity ran wild as I imagined all the secrets of Mother’s people hidden within these halls and chambers. I licked my lips, staring intently at my PipBuck, and selected the next entry. If I hadn’t been so focused, I might have missed that it was dated several moons later.

>I have my doubts about bringing Discord in to assist with our research, but Princess Luna is insisting. I just can’t see him taking any of this seriously, but I can’t exactly refuse The Princess either. Fluttershy is assuring me every day that he will behave himself. Only time will tell.

I took another sip of my tea, enjoying the tingling sensation that the Witchweed left on my lips and tongue. That was the second time in the span of a few hours that I had seen Discord mentioned in Pre-War records. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Not with Psyker pulling the strings. Licking the tingle off of my lips, I scrolled further down the entry.

>As strange as it might sound, I think I might actually prefer Discord to the ponies that burst through our doors last week. Nothing disrupts delicate experiments quite like an angry mob of protesters. Especially when you can’t even make heads or tails of what they want to protest! I could understand if the herd had been angry about the zebras staying here, but all they did was chant “WE ARE THE SAME!” over and over again. I’m just lucky that I still have my friends. Pinkie Pie might have been acting a little strangely, but she still knows how to improve everypony’s mood!

>We haven’t seen the protesters since Pinkie’s party, and now that we’re back to work I’m hoping to make up for lost time. There is an elixir that I just can’t wait to make! Fool and Kipaji call it the F. A. E. R. I. E. and it’s supposed to give whoever drinks it Spike, please, that clacking noise is very distracting. Can’t you just go back to using quill and ink?

I raised an eyebrow. That last sentence didn’t make any sense at all.

>No! Don’t delete it! Yes, keep typing! It doesn’t matter if we’ve run out of parchment again, I still need you to record everything! My research notes are imperative!

>Yes, I’m glad that you finally learned how to spell that word. Why did you type that? Ugh! Just let me do it!

What followed was a wall of text that was so poorly written it appeared as if somepony had literally dragged their face across the keyboard. I had heard that terminals were a relatively new invention before The War, but it still came as a shock that some ponies were incapable of typing. Luckily, Ms. Sparkle still had her assistant to take over.

>I, Twilight Sparkle, am bad at typing. And Spike The Brave and Glorious is the best friend a pony could ask for. Dictated but not read, Twilight Sparkle, Ministry Mare, Bearer of the Element of Magic, personal student of Princess Celestia, and egghead supreme.

>There, I apologized! Can we please get back to this now? Wait, you’re already—

>Oh, forget it. Rarity and Applejack wanted to see us anyway. Let’s take the day off and go to Coltsville.

>Yes, we can stop at Cinna-Fillies for coffee and cinnamon rolls on the way back. If it helps keep you awake, then it’s alright in my book.

>Yes, I remember! And it’s not funny! You’re lucky that no one was hurt! Biting into a fire talisman because you were too sleepy to know it wasn’t a regular ruby is a great way to—

>It doesn’t matter how hilarious the zebras thought it was! And you can stop typing now!

I was so very confused. I had absolutely no idea what the title “Bearer of the Element of Magic” meant, but I could only surmise that it must have been a moniker of great significance. All the same, that little nugget of information was nothing compared to discovering that Princess Celestia was a teacher! That wasn’t at all what I expected!

Intrigued—and a little bewildered—I flicked a button with a tendril of my magic to read the next entry.

>Bringing Discord in to assist with our research went about as well as I expected. He did promise not to alter our carefully controlled experiments, but I know a scheming draconequus when I see one. He’s up to something. I’m just hoping that Fluttershy can keep him in check.

>At least our zebra guests were happy to see Discord. The whole Loa tribe burst into song the moment they saw him! And of course Discord joined in right away. As if making all the cauldrons spew their potions like fountains wasn’t bad enough, he turned all of our lab-coats and goggles into pink tutus and sombreros! And The Loa weren’t behaving any better! They showered him with bouquets as soon as he flashed onto the production floor. Then every flower turned into a pig! Pigs with wings! It took Fluttershy’s team a whole day to sort things out!

Okay that was definitely the same Discord that I remembered reading about in my stable’s temple. Goddess, I had always assumed those stories were nothing more than playful fables for the foals! Something to preach the virtue of order rather than chaos, and of how important it was to follow the rules set down by your superiors. It was an excellent lesson for several hundred ponies huddled together in a stable with limited resources, but I was still surprised to learn that they might have been based in truth!

Of course, hearing that Discord had survived his confrontation with The Dark Mother didn’t sit right with me. Nor was I comfortable learning that Princess Luna insisted that he be involved in the projects that took place in this facility. I shook my head and scrolled further down the entry, idly wondering if the real Princess Luna was more merciful and lenient than I had been lead to believe.

>Unfortunately one of the zebras wasn’t paying attention to which flowers she was throwing, and wound up with her stripes reversed after she came into contact with poison joke. She couldn’t stop blushing after that, so in order to save her from the teasing—and to get away from all the chaos—I let her stay in my office while I combined the ingredients for her bath. She was surprised at how well I made the remedy, so I told her the story of how I first met Zecora. That lead to us talking about some of her own experiences making potions with ponies in the facility. Oddly enough that lead us to another minor breakthrough!

>For many moons now, no one has been able to understand why pony scientists and mages have been incapable of recreating the same alchemical results as the zebra shamans and medicine mares. In nearly all cases magical potency of potions brewed by ponies was reduced by at least sixty-four percent when compared to potions made by members of The Loa. Only ponies that attempted alchemical tasks related to their special talents were capable of producing potions on par with those made by our zebra guests.

My eyes widened at that. So it was true, then. Zebras were better at alchemy than ponies. I took a fleeting moment to survey the colorful liquids I had bottled over the previous hours before I returned to my PipBuck. I smiled, feeling just a bit closer to Mother as I continued reading.

>Further testing revealed some interesting patterns: Unicorns and pegasi with medical cutie marks proved remarkably adept at healing potions, but failed miserably when attempting simple gardening brews. Earth ponies of all scientific fields were more than competent when tasked with making elixirs designed to accelerate plant growth. Zebras, of course, were capable of brewing just about anything they wanted, regardless of what their glyphs signified as their special talent. Even the zebra colts and fillies are able to make healing potions better than my science team.

>I would have assumed that zebras were simply better at alchemy because of their magical dependence on potions and trinkets. That would have easily explained this entire discovery as a disparity of skill due to necessity. But it turns out there is an exception. Just one. Me. I am the only pony here capable of utilizing alchemy on the same level as the zebras. I’m still not as good as Fool, but I’m already very close to his level, and the potency of my potions matches his almost perfectly.

>Long ago my dealings with Trixie taught me that it was okay to celebrate my accomplishments, but I still feel bad seeing some of the most brilliant minds in Equestria stumped by what I can manage with minimal effort. Lots of tea and even more discussion have gone into figuring this out, and I believe we have a good lead on an answer.

>It is my hypothesis that, just like unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi each have their own unique brand of magic, so too do zebras. Furthermore, I believe that this racial magic allows zebras to bypass what their glyph mark defines as their natural talent for the purpose of brewing potions. We have plenty of evidence to suggest that this is the case, at least when it comes to alchemy. Both pony and zebra magic are showcased in the alchemical tests we have run, and this facility is the best place in all of Equestria to get to the heart of the matter. We’re going to learn exactly what is going on here. We have to.

>Normally a find like this wouldn’t be so alarming. But based off of what Fool has told us, alchemy is typically governed by the White school of zebra magic. Big Macintosh and Rainbow’s stories of alchemically enhanced zebra soldiers are bad enough. We need to learn the nature of the zebras’ racial abilities before The Empire uses the Black school of magic against us. One Littlehorn was bad enough.

>There is still a chance at diplomacy. I just have to find it.

I was stunned. Finally! Some answers!

Goddess bless this mare and her note-taking! She had just given me a plethora of information to consider. To be completely honest, I could have spent the rest of the night pondering all of the little facets of what I had just read, but the siren call of the next journal entry demanded my attention.

>This will be my final entry from this location. Spike would probably make a snide comment about me bothering to make this entry, but I didn’t get to where I am by slacking off in my note-taking. At least I finally learned how to type after all this time.

>I’m able to brew the F. A. E. R. I. E. on my own now, so I’m leaving the original batch here in Spursburg for further research while I move our main operations to Maripony. After years of tinkering with the formula, we’re finally ready for pony testing.

>In hindsight, I’m surprised I didn’t think of the answer sooner. The essence of magic is so intrinsic to the nature of potions; of course a spell would alter a potion’s nature! Introducing alicorn magic directly to the liquid has altered the potion so severely that I feel it requires a new name. Spike would have been able to come up with that name if he wasn’t sleeping. Again. Midnight Oil is great, but nopony can replace my number one assistant.

I scratched my chin with a hoof. Alicorn magic? I had never known that there was an entire branch of magic named after ponies such as Princess Luna. With a name like that, it must have been incredible to behold.

>There are only four ponies alive that can use alicorn magic. Of those four, I’m the only one with a special talent for magic itself, and that means that only I can brew and alter the elixir to suit our needs. As wrong as it feels, I have to do this myself. Years of work, dozens of ponies, an entire tribe of zebras, and it all comes down to me. I’m consolidating the brightest minds and the most powerful unicorns from all of my ministry locations at Maripony in order to speed development. Gestalt and Mosaic are already there and overseeing operations. Soon, Midnight and many more of my top assistants will join them. Together we’re going to end this war. One way or another.

It was starting to make sense now. I remembered from that accursed memory orb that Princess Luna had mentioned a third princess by the name of Cadance. And Lily had insisted that three alicorns had lived before The War. So that made three alicorn princesses, and one incredibly powerful unicorn? No wonder Ms. Sparkle was the “Bearer of The Element of Magic!”

Impressed even further with this mare, I nodded my head appreciatively and continued reading her entry.

>I just need volunteers for testing, preferably unicorns that are capable of handling the magical strain. Midnight would jump at the opportunity just to please me, and he certainly has the potential, but there’s somepony else who is better suited. Somepony else who already has experience with powerful dark magic and should be able to recognize any possible corruption. I can’t stop thinking that she’d be the perfect candidate.

>I need to go to Manehattan. It’s time I checked up on a great and powerful friend.

There was only one entry left. Unfortunately, it wasn’t written by Ms. Sparkle. It had been written two years ago.

>Drink the F. A. E. R. I. E. now. You’re going to need the power it gives you.

There was nothing more to the entry. Just that simple command. Finishing the rest of my tea in one gulp, I set the beaker down and levitated my packs over. The elixir I had taken from the arcane safe in Ms. Sparkle’s office sloshed inside its bottle as I plucked it from my bags and floated it in front of my eyes.

I briefly questioned the wisdom of imbibing a centuries-old elixir. Especially one whose effects I wasn’t even slightly familiar with. Still, Ms. Sparkle had seemed quite enthusiastic about it. And Psyker had implied that it would give me a necessary boon of some sort.

In the end, I think it was knowing that the elixir had been brewed by Ms. Sparkle herself that drove me to yank the cork from the bottle. I didn’t know much about her, but I knew that she certainly had my respect. I think that some part of me wanted to form a lasting bond with this long-dead mare of science.

The pink liquid inside the bottle possessed a sweetly floral aroma, and tasted just as pleasant. It fizzed slightly as it rolled over my tongue, but it went down smoothly enough that I was able to drink it all at once. In hindsight, that might have been a mistake.

The elixir hit my stomach like a bucket of ice-water. I winced and held my chest as freezing tendrils of magic snaked through my body, twisting in my gut and coiling around my bones. Goddess, it felt like ice crystals were forming in my blood vessels! By the time the chill had worked its way behind my eyes I was panting for breath, blowing out little puffs of cooled water vapor. Luckily, the discomfort ceased as quickly as it began, and the soothing sensation of warmth came back to my veins one heartbeat at a time.

I examined myself, prodding my chest and limbs for any signs of change. Finding nothing, I swished my tail and ran my hooves through my mane. No changes there, either. Lighting my horn, I hefted the empty tea beaker. I didn’t feel any stronger with my magic either… What in Luna’s name had that elixir actually done!?

Holding the beaker closer to my face, I checked my reflection in the glass. Nothing was out of the ordinary. I pursed my lips and groaned. This wasn’t what I had expected at all! It was as if the elixir had been made just to give someone a quick chill!

“So much for that,” I groused.

“So much for what?”

“Gah!” I jumped to my hooves and found Lily standing in the doorway, grinning at my shocked expression.

“Sorry babe, didn’t mean to spook ya.” While I caught my breath, she trotted over to the collection of potions and let out a low whistle as she checked the labels on the bottles. “Damn… You weren’t lying about stocking up. How long you been at it?”

I checked my PipBuck. Stars above! Was it already that late in the morning? Clearing my throat, I replied, “I started almost as soon as you fell asleep.”

“Looks like it.” She nodded. “Did you make any healing potions? I don’t see any over here.”

I shook my head. “No, I made Sweet Water instead.” Seeing the confusion on Lily’s face, I explained further. “It’s a recipe of Mother’s; similar to a healing potion in that they both accelerate and boost the body’s natural healing process, but muchmore potent.” Grinning, I added. “It also tastes much better.”

Lily shrugged. “If you say so. I kinda like the taste of the regular stuff.” Moving further down the line of bottles, she finally came across my other little project. She paused, and turned back to me with an anxious stare. “Are those what I think they are?”

I finally let my mane down, and tossed my hair to the side as I giggled. “They most certainly are!”

“Holy shit, Candy…” Picking up one of the bottles, she turned it over to examine the powder inside the glass. “I know you like blowing shit up… but now you’re making grenades!?”

I winked at her, “I may need to borrow your lighter from time to time. I didn’t have enough electrical components to create reliable detonators, so I had to fashion makeshift fuses.” There was a jaunty skip in my step as I moved beside her to point out the more creative explosives I had thought up.

“See this one? I used one of Mother’s potions to glue screws and nails to the bottle! They’ll fly out just like bullets when it goes off!” Picking up another bottle, I showed it off to Lily. “Oh, and this one has vials of poison tucked inside the explosive powder! They should be reduced to an aerosol by the pressure and heat, and create a cloud of noxious fumes!” I set my little bomb down on the counter and clapped my hooves together, beaming at Lily the whole time.

“And this one!” I removed the cloth covering a jar of simple black powder, and held it so close to Lily’s face that it was a miracle I didn’t smash her nose. “This one is actually rather simple! I just cast a Want It—OH!” Lily’s eyes were halfway through the transformation when I realized what I was doing. Luckily I had the presence of mind to grab her eyelids with my magic and slam them shut before the magic could take hold of her.

Her response was not altogether unexpected. Cursing, she shook her head violently to free herself of my magical hold. “Ah, fuck, Candy! What are you doing!?”

By the time she had managed to open her eyes I had replaced the cloth over the simple explosive, blocking it from view. “Sorry, Lily! That was a mistake. You don’t want to see that one.” Without missing a beat, I proceeded to explain exactly why. “I cast a Want It, Need It spell on that one. Whoever sees it will go out of their way to keep it for their own, even after it’s been lit!”

Not waiting for her to congratulate me on how brilliant an idea that was, I placed the cloth-covered bomb on the counter and eagerly gushed about a few of my other wonderful ideas. “I also have ideas for combining Mother’s adhesive with a flammable solution to create a sticky fire bomb! And if I can collect a few vials of Pink Cloud then I can—”

“Candy!” Lily cut me off, shaking me with her hooves.

“Oh. Um. Yes?” I smiled innocently as I looked up at her.

Her bewildered expression turned to one of quiet resignation as she dragged a hoof across her face. Staring at me with one eye, she slowly shook her head and asked, “Have you tested any of these?”

“Of course not. You were sleeping.” I bit my lower lip and giggled again before I added, “But now that you’re awake the testing can begin!”

She winced, then scowled at me. “I don’t know if this is crazy-stupid or stupid-crazy.”

Sticking my nose in the air, I parried her absurd warning with sound wisdom. “Well at least we have more weapons at our disposal than just my pistol and shotgun now.”

She shook her head again, chuckling. “If they work,” she pointed out. “Have you ever made explosives before? What was the ratio of all the shit you put together? What about the humidity in here? Did it gum up the powder?”

“I…” I blinked, realizing that Lily might actually know what she was talking about. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” she grinned. “Gotta admit though, I like where your head’s at with this one. Just promise me that you won’t blow yourself up, okay?”

“Hah! As if I would ever do something so foolish!” Grabbing one of the plain bottles filled with nothing more than simple black powder, I trotted for the door picking up a pair of fuses on my way out. It was only as I turned to ask Lily for her lighter that I noticed something… odd. What appeared to be wispy little blue vapors were leaking from underneath Lily’s hat, rolling behind her left ear before they evaporated into nothing.

“Lily?” I asked, furrowing my brow. “What’s wrong with your hat?”

“My hat?” she asked, tilting her head back to look upward. When that failed to put her stetson in view, she remembered how hats work and removed it from her head.
My eyes went wide and my jaw dropped. Nestled in all the insanity of Lily’s silver-white mane was a tiny, partially transparent cerulean rodent with tendrils of blue vapor rolling off its body. “W-w-w-what is t-t-that!?” I shrieked.

“Huh?” Lily looked behind herself, flaring her wings and raising her eyebrows. After failing to notice the ethereal creature that had just crawled on top of her own ear she looked back to me, cocked her head, and shrugged. “What’s what?” Completely oblivious to the problem, she nonchalantly placed her hat back on her mane.

I rushed toward her and pointed a hoof at her head, screaming. “T-THAT! That thing! That glowing thing on your ear!”

The little blue squirrel stared me directly in the eye. After a moment, its short tail stood on end and it chattered furiously in Lily’s bone-pierced ear while bouncing up and down. Every hop, skip, and jump resulted in Lily’s ear bobbing—just like I had seen it twitch countless times before—as the appendage bowed underneath the apparition’s weight. The squirrel’s little paws clenched into tiny fists, shook with rage, and finally pointed in my direction before it leaned over and kicked Lily squarely in the head.

Her jaw dropped before a hopeful whisper escaped her lips. “You can see Grumpy?”

“G-G-Grumpy?” I repeated.

Grumpy crossed his arms and squinted his beady little eyes. A moment later, his slightly-see-through head gave a curt nod, and he walked straight through Lily’s hat.

Lightheaded and dizzy, I stumbled over my words. “You… I… It… He… You… What!?”

Lily’s face exploded into an ecstatic grin as she cheered, “You can see Grumpy!” Wasting no time, she dove in my direction, scooped me up in a bearhug, and jumped up and down excitedly. I was dragged along for the ride as she flapped her wings and hollered, “YES! You can see him! You can see ghosts!”

Finally, I realized exactly what the F. A. E. R. I. E. had done to me. It had obviously deposited me in the same realm of insanity that Lily inhabited, and we were now sharing some sort of group-hallucination. That was the only logical explanation. Ghosts do not exist.

Well, actually they do. I just didn’t want to believe it.

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