The Waning Dusk

Enjoy.

Harold J. Piggs was an accountant. He was 43 years old, with a daughter named Margret and a home several miles out from Toronto. It was a Tuesday.

Harold awoke to the sound of a seabird, floating through the air. It wibbled and wobbled and cried and cawed. It seemed to him the sound of a very strange flute, or perhaps a whale call. He tensed at the sound. It disturbed his peace. As it drifted away, he relaxed into the covers of his bed. Content.

A chill wind drifted across his face and he opened his eyes. There he saw, just across from his bed, just across from his window, perched upon a frond of an old oak, a seagull.

He stared at it, but it didn't stare back.

He rose from his bed to the sound of snapping joints and cried in pain. He reached quickly for the painkillers on his bedstand. His cat yowled loudly as the seagull flew off, and he jolted, knocking the bottle to the floor. The top snapped off, and the last few pills rolled off under the bed. He gritted his teeth and attempted to bend down to pick them up. A hot pain bolted up his spine, and he brought his back up rigid. He dropped to his knees, leaning forward to reach his hand under the bed. He grasped at the pills, but they were just out of reach. He leaned further. His arms trembled from the pain it caused him, and as he touched the pills, they were knocked further back from his shaking. He smashed a fist onto the ground in frustration and rose upwards, his head slamming against the bed frame.

“Fuck!” he swore, tears forming in his eyes as he clutched at the back of his head.

“Dad, where did you put my iPhone?” his daughter yelled from downstairs.

“Check under the computer desk, you often forget it there!” he shouted back.

“I can't hear you!”

Harold drew back from under the bed and stood up, breathing heavily. He dressed himself tenderly and left his room to help his daughter.

He found her texting her friends in front of a bowl of soggy cereal.

“That's going to go bad if you don't eat it,” he said. She didn't respond.

Glancing over to the kitchen counter, he saw the stove clock reading 7:44.

“Damnit,” he said, rushing to grab his coat and shoes. He found his suitcase by the couch and scraped his papers and work from the table into it.

“Oh, I took your iPhone last night since mine was missing,” his daughter said from the table.

Harold barely registered it, rushing out the door and into his car. He drove off towards Toronto.

Several minutes later he reached the local traffic, backed down the road towards the city.

Stopping, he gave himself a moment to calm down and think.

“iPhone, my iPhone... my alarm!” he cried. He slammed his hands against the steering wheel, and a loud 'Honk' screamed out, to the sound of several more honks and some people shouting about the backup. He felt a sharp pain up his spine, reminding him he hadn't taken his painkillers before leaving. He looked towards the clock, which read 8:00.

“Shit, shit, shit...”

⁂

One hundred and thirty kilometres out from Timbucktu, deep in the mesas of the Maroon Desert, two equines shared a drink of Terskish coffee in a tent.

“Mm... for crooks and thieves, you people sure know your beverages,” the earth pony said, sipping on his cup.

“Hah!” the hefty zebra across from him shouted. He grinned wide, showing two gold teeth to match his earrings and necklaces. “You make me laugh, little yak; we've followed the track, and now here the kettle is hearing the pot, who ought not have the mettle to call the pot black.”

The pony scowled. “Don't start with that. I spent years tracking this down, it's my right and my due. You got a problem with that, you can give me my bits back and shove off, you striped cow.”

The zebra set down his cup. He leaned his considerable bulk back slowly and stared down at the pony with a stern expression. “There was a time long ago when you called me a friend, and I called you brother, and each to our end would be there for eachother. But that night we met blind in the house of Emirs, that memory has since become faded from years; not a story we've told, our memories cold, our bodies grown old and all that I've heard was the word that this friend of mine split from the herd. While you used to have fire that churned in your soul, your greed ached and yearned till it burned through a hole, and all that was left of that proud little prat was a lonely old rat who would sell out his friends, to meet any ends, just to save his own hat. So excuse my surprise at a break from your lies, but ignoring this question is very unwise.” He leaned in close.

“When did this swine grow a spine?”

The pony stared back bitterly. “I don't need to listen to this, Jambazi. I came for the coffee, not some tirade about when we were young and naive. It's time to move on, old man. Grow out of the nursery rhymes.”

The ground shook, and a booming rumble was heard outside the tent.

A mare shouted, “Dr. Caballeron! You'll want to see this!”

The pony Caballeron stepped outside, followed by Jambazi. About fifty metres away was a massive, deep red cliffside, a hundred metres tall, stretching far out into the distance. A large cloud of red dust was rolling out from the cliff, where a huge chunk had slipped from the side to the ground, crushing several minotaurs beneath it. The remaining slaves had scrambled away from the cliff, where, as the dust settled, an enormous skeleton was revealed, embedded in the cliffside.

“Beautiful,” said Caballeron. Jambazi stared at it in horror, hoping dearly it wasn't what he knew it was. After a long moment he said softly to Caballeron, “You'll find what you spent on the desk in your tent.”

“Hm?”

Jambazi whistled loudly, and from around the camp, several zebras began rounding up the surviving minotaurs and shackling them in lines.

Caballeron stared around in shock. “Wha... Jambazi, what are you doing?”

The zebra stared at the skeleton in the cliffside with resolute dread. “You didn't tell me what we'd find in this rock. You'll be paid back in full, but I'll have back each bull. And never, ever again will we talk.”

Caballeron watched in horror as his slaves were herded back into lines, and Jambazi's gang prepared to leave. He could scarcely believe his eyes.

“Overgrown skunk!” he shouted. “Striped greasebag! Those are my labourers! You... you treasonous hippo!”

“Excuse me sir, but what do we do now?”

Caballeron looked back at the mare he had forgotten about. He noticed he was shaking and breathed deeply.

“Sir?”

He stared at the skeleton in anger.

“We dig it out ourselves.”

“...Sir?”

“We only need the eye.”

The mare shuffled her hooves nervously. “Um... sir, as a paleontologist I'm sure you already know this, but squid eyes generally don't fossilize. In fact, being made of cartilage, even the skeletal structure of squid shouldn't fossilize well.”

Dr. Caballeron rose a hoof to point at the massive head of the skeletal squid. There, like an enormous ball of glass, was a pitch black eye.

“I'm an archaeologist, not a paleontologist. I don't know any of that shit. Now help get the scaffolding up, we've only got a week at best to get that thing down.”

⁂

Rushing through the doors of McAndrews Financial, Harold made his way up three flights of stairs and found his cubicle. He sat down at his desk and opened his suitcase. He pulled out several drawings his daughter had made of characters from shows she loved. Mostly cartoons.

“Goddamnit!” he shouted.

Holding his head in his hands, he gripped at his hair. He heard then, sharp on his ears, the clicking of the director's shoes coming near.

“Good morning, Mr. Piggs,” he heard from behind him.

Harold tried to turn around, and his back froze. He tried to open his mouth, and he found his teeth grinding eachother unpleasantly.

“Have you finished the ledgers for the end of the month?”

Harold's eyes glanced towards the drawings on his desk.

“I would hope, Mr. Piggs, that if you wanted to pursue a career in cartoons you'd have done it outside of this office. Or at least have been in the office at all.”

A thin hand tapped on the small, plastic clock on his desk that read 8:24.

“This office opens at 8:00. You've already missed that deadline twice before. We have very strict policies on this, and it makes a poor show if we don't keep our word on them. Three strikes, Piggs. I'm sorry, but I have to ask you to leave the building.”

Harold heard every word exact. He picked up his briefcase, stood and left quietly.

The next nine hours were very strange, and very indistinct to him.

⁂

The streets hung arid in the autumn air, strung from the courts of Canterlot in a dusty yellow like the strands of wheat growing dry and thin outside. The sun beat slow across the brows of the ponies in the streets. A fearful quiet crept across the cobble, and save for the court of Open Debate, a hush had made its way into the capital of Equestria.

“The Saddle Arabians, who sell us grains, cut ties with us, and a drought appears out of nowhere? That's not coincidence, that's bucking sabotage!” yelled Lady Hackles.

Save for the court of Open Debate.

“It's absurd to think that our farms can't produce at that kind of level!” said Lady Highmane.

“What are the bloody Earth Ponies for? We are easily self-reliant! This is a cheap ploy by the farmers to bleed the hard work of the rest of us out by our bits!”

“Are you insane? The Earth Ponies have busted their backs to get every ounce of grain they can from this kind of weather!” screamed Lady Viridian, “And speaking of weather, have you maybe considered the lack of rain might have anything to do with the pegasi who runthe weather?”

“For the last time,” shouted lord Vane through gritted teeth, “You can't make rain when there isn't any moisture! This isn't a matter of condensing the evaporated water, the water is gone! Vanished! Skadoosh!”

Princess Celestia slowly rose from her seated position at the head of the table, and a lull fell over the nobleponies. She looked around the room with displeasure. “Can you hear that?” she asked.

With the ponies silent, the voices of the market outside crept through the open windows. The voices were hushed, and low.

“I'm sure you can. The ponies of Equestria,” she said. “They are relying on you to walk out of this room, fully able to make the right decision when you vote on these issues this evening. They are scared, and unsure of what will happen to them. As I am sure is true for many of you. I made the decision to leave the Open Debates non-procedural trusting that you would be willing to yield to one another in your turns, and that trust has largely not been misplaced. I understand you are all afraid, but now is not the time for panic. This is the Equestrian Parliament, and I have complete faith that each and every one of you will do what you think is best for Equestria. I suspect that you may need reminding of that from time to time, but your hearts are in the right place.”

She looked across the ponies sternly. “Now settle down, and speak like civilized ponies.”

She laid down, and silence filled the room again.

Lord Calamus Silver cleared his throat and spoke nervously. “Perhaps, and let it not be said that this is representative of my own view on the subject by any stretch of the imagination, but it has been suggested to me by members of my constituency, who look upon the subject with a different perspective...”

“We get the idea, you're a blithering turd. Get on with it,” snarled Lady Hackles.

Calamus cleared his throat a second time. “Well then. Princess Celestia, given the absence of rain, the drying of the fields and the lack of moisture to create rain, it has been suggested that perhaps we could make use of the sun to evaporate the ice caps of the Macintosh Hills and create rain over...”

“Absolutely not,” said Celestia firmly. “Under no circumstances will those mountains be unfrozen. This decision is final, and all further discussion on that train of action shall be suspended.”

The room went deathly quiet, and the harsh tone of the Princess's words rung through the ears of the parliament.

A sharp tang floated into the room, and many of the ponies began turning their noses up in disgust. The dryness of the air soon became forgotten in the wake of a sudden chill and the smell of deep rot.

A voice rose, slow, drawling and hoarse.

“It is, too late now for that,” the voice intoned, “Princess.”

The ponies turned to look at the figure that had appeared suddenly at the foot of the table. He wore a dusty grey cloak that covered most of his thin body and face, leaving only a scraggly haired, grey mouth and chin. He swayed as he stood, as if unable to stand straight.

“Who the buck are you, then?” asked Hackles.

The pony seemed to ignore the question and continued, his voice cracked and wheezing. “A new river in Saddle Arabia flows. The ice is melting, Princess.” The pony stooped over into a coughing fit, and when he rose, his jaw was shaking. “'Ock thast...” He paused, raising a hoof to his chin. He pushed upwards, to a resounding 'thck'. His jaw stopped shaking. “Apologies,” he said, before continuing.

“Not fast, but steady. I have,” he paused, sounding bewildered, “No post to station.”

Lady Viridian spoke up, “You seem ill. All you alright?”

“Who cares if the pony's alright, he certainly isn't alright in the head,” interrupted Hackles, “Who is this geriatric fruitcake?”

“He is Captain Zarath,” said Princess Celestia. “Head of the Dusk Watch.”

She looked at him tensely.

“How do you mean, 'No post left to station?'”

⁂

The door closed quietly behind Harold. He left his coat and shoes at the closet by the door and dropped his suitcase by the kitchen counter. He made himself a light sandwich of cucumber and tomato and sat down at the table to eat it.

It was cool, and crisp.

He saw his daughter sit down in the living room, on the couch. She turned on the television.

“Hey Dad.”

She changed the channel, and music started playing. It was some of that electronic stuff she had gotten into lately. He noticed himself staring at her. It hurt too much to see his wife in her, but he couldn't bring himself to stop. His mind wouldn't let him turn away. It ached with loss, and he could feel his grief building deep in his throat, choking him.

“Peggie,” he started.

“Don't call me that,” she said, angry. “It's a stupid name.”

“Margret,” he called. She humphed in annoyance. “Why don't you take your friends out to the movies?”

She got up and walked towards the kitchen. “We just went to see something last weekend, why...” she scrunched up her nose, “Oh god, are you drunk?”

“No.” Harold's back throbbed with a dull pain.

“Yes you are, you're fucking drunk! What, did Melissa turn you down again or something?”

“No, she didn't.”

“Yes she did. Don't lie to me like that.”

“I just told you she didn't, go watch your fucking cartoons already.”

“Yeah, you tell 'em, big, tough man. At least I can get a date and don't whine all day about my horrible fucking back.”

“I have a slipped disc.”

“You have a slipped life, fucktard. You're a shiny turd of mediocrity with delusions of adequacy. Fifteen years at the same damn company without a raise and you come home drunk out of your fucking mind and tell me to fuck off with my fucking friends. Well fuck you too, Mr. Big and tall, fuck you and your half-assed excuse of a life. At least your drunk-ass wife didn't lie to my face.”

Harold hit her.

She stood there a moment, tears welling up in her eyes, and rushed to her room.

Harold collapsed backwards, missing his seat and dropping to the floor. A well of pain shot across his back, and he shook with tears. His sandwich fell apart across the floor. He closed his eyes and tried to will his daughter's face to leave his mind. It stung him. His mouth trembled at the thought, and most of all, he hurt at the expression she held.

No anger. No fear.

Confusion.

His mind was dull, and his thoughts were incoherent. He just wanted to leave the house and run.

His vision blurred, and his tears drifted him off to sleep.

When he woke, he felt himself on a cushioned bed, with the most incredible sensation of floating. The bed fell fast and numb into the emptiness. At once comforted with the closeness of the cushions and terrified of the empty void he flew into.

He was jolted awake when the car scraped over a large rock. The screech of metal on stone was heard, and Harold panicked. He didn't see the horse, but he felt the thud. His head flew forward, snapping back on the expanding airbag as something white cracked on the window. The glass broke from the seal. He had barely the time to realize the strange red pulp was his legs being crushed before passing out.