It hadn't taken long for Neighbourhood to collect up her possessions, secure them to a light harness, and throw on her cloak: she was traveling pretty light to start with and had only taken Selene's pistol and compass. Selene took the time to kick snow over where the fire had been. It would be almost impossible to cover all signs of their passage, but with just a little effort he could make it significantly less obvious this is where they had spent the night.

After just a short conversation they decided to head down the deer trail to the main road, to collect what they could from Selene's other gear and the raiders corpses. Selene spent most of the short walk down trying to find out more about Neighbourhood, but she refused to answer even basic questions. Eventually she outright told him, "look, darling, I know you're very curious by nature, and I promise I will never lie to you, but there are some things I simply can not tell you, or at least not so soon."

"Where you're from is too important?" Selene asked, jabbing her in the side of the head with his muzzle. They were walking very close to each other, with her again cuddled up under his right wing.

"At the moment, yes," she returned with a sideways glare.

"Fine," Selene mumbled after a moment. I'll dig it out of you later.

They continued in silence.

As they neared the end of the trail, and the main road it connected to, Neighbourhood suddenly stopped moving. Selene stopped too as she dragged him to a stop via his wing, still tightly wrapped around her. Her horn began to faintly glow, and the glow spread across to envelope her ears as they flopped around, searching for any faint sound.

Selene closed his eyes and listened too: he might not have any magic to boost them, but his hearing was sharp enough, and backed by a hunters instinct. Now that he was listening he could clearly hear the sounds of ponies trudging around in the snow that had fallen last night. He glanced at Neighbourhood, who was still focused on listening.

Eventually she opened her eyes and looked at him, and gently shook her head.

Selene pulled his wing free from her back and stepped away. "I'll be fine," he mumbled into her ear with a wink, then turned and hopped into the tree line. He moved quickly but quietly. With no gear at all, literally naked in his fur, he could press through the twisted underbrush without fear of anything snagging. His years spent charging through the evergreen forests on the East Coast as a young colt came rushing back to him as he weaved his way through the tangled mess of the dense sequoia forest.

He pressed down parallel to the main road until he was about even with the large group of ponies, then crouched down and moved closer to the road, slowly, and quietly. As he neared the edge of the forest he pressed his belly to the ground, and moved only slightly as he inched up to the edge. He pressed against the base of a giant tree, and checked the color of it's bark against his coat: it was more brown to his dark cyan-grey, but in the low light he blended enough they would be immensely lucky to spot him, even if they were looking for him.

He was finally close enough to easily see them, but still not close enough to make out what they were saying. They had stopped their early-morning march when they had come to the bodies, laying half buried in the snow and were just now digging them out. Selene laid there a few minutes, watching as they brought the four corpses together in the center of the road. The way they were handling them, with gentle respect, suggested they had known them at least in passing.

As Selene watched they moved in and out of his field of view. He counted about ten. He couldn't be sure, but they all looked like Earth Ponies too: he could miss a horn but there was no way he wouldn't be able to see their wings from this distance if they had any. He waited a bit longer; they were milling around, checking the area, and hadn't decided what they were going to do next, but they would likely start moving out soon.

He slowly inched backward, keeping his tail pressed close to his side to prevent it catching anything and making noise. Once he was back far enough to be out of view, he turned around and made his way back, following a similar weaving pattern between the thick underbrush. He poked his head out into the deer trail, where Neighbourhood was still standing.

"Hey," he whispered, waving a hoof. "There are about ten, but I think they're going to move away soon, and it didn't look like they found my stuff."

"We need to leave," she hissed at him as she moved closer. "Now."

"Why? They can't find us if we move deeper into the forest and don't leave a trail. I want my armor back at least and we hardly have any food!" He fought to keep voice down to a harsh whisper, but it was difficult.

"Were there any pegasi with them?" She asked, moving closer still, their noses nearly touching.

Selene drew back into the forest a bit. "I don't think so." Why would she care about Pegasi? Another Unicorn would be the only real threat to her.

"Then we need to leave... which way?"

"How the hell would I know?" he asked. "This is your side of the continent."

"I've never been this far south," she admitted.

"Well, if we want to get away I think we should go deeper into the forest, then up the mountain." He considered their options for a moment, then came to a firm decision. "Go back up the trail a bit, and try to walk in your earlier prints, then try to get off the trail without leaving any marks. Actually, I'll come too."

Selene moved out of the forest, not caring particularly about leaving tracks: he had already made a decent sized indent lower on the trail, and if they noticed it they could easily follow his trail back to this point anyway.

"Common," he whispered, moving up the trail. As he moved back up the trail he made a new set of tracks, but after getting away from where they came out, he moved over back into his original set of tracks coming down the hill, making it look as if his set coming back up had vanished. He checked behind to make sure Neighbourhood was doing the same: she was.

About halfway back to their small camp, he leapt from the trail and glided into the forest, high enough he wouldn't leave any marks until he was out of sight of the trail. As he landed he glanced over his shoulder, suddenly not sure how Neighbourhood would be able to follow without leaving a trail. The idea was that the raiders would find their trail easy enough, see that they had come back and looked around, then went back to their camp. Then the raiders would have to make a call; search around where their camp was thinking they had gone all the way back, or search around where their tracks ended on their way back, both of which would be well away from where they actually left the trail, but all of that would fall through if Neighbourhood couldn't get into the forest without leaving a trail here too.

Even after all he had seen of her power, Selene was still mildly surprised by what he saw. Neighbourhood levitated herself slowly over the bushes, and through the forest, to gently set down by his side. Selene only knew one Unicorn in his life that was able to self-levitate, and it was her special talent, leaving her without any other notable abilities. Selene still hadn't gotten a good look at Neighbourhood's cutie mark, and didn't have a clue what her talent was, but it was something he'd have to dig into later.

"Ok, stay close behind me." He moved forward, quickly darting between the brush and trees doing everything he could to avoid leaving an obvious trail. He tried to find a way through that was even larger than he was: while Neighbourhood was slightly shorter, she was still about his overall size and her gear would bulge her profile out further.

As he glanced back he was happy to see her easily keeping up: with her cloak wrapped tightly around her to prevent her harness from catching on anything she wasn't leaving much of a trail either. This should work fine.

They continued mostly blindly, Selene intentionally weaving them back and forth to confuse their pursuers if they even managed to pick up the trail in the first place. He eventually stopped, and retrieved his compass from Neighbourhood, who relinquished it without any fuss. Now, with an accurate heading, he was able to keep them moving in almost a perfectly straight line.

They continued almost straight north for nearly six hours, stopping only once to rest in the trees. It was a bit passed midday when they finally made it to the end of the trees, into a shallow gorge heading deeper and higher into the mountains.

"So now where to?" Selene asked Neighbourhood as they climbed out of the trees, into the open. The snow was still deep enough to be annoying, but it would only slow them slightly and they had made it so far from the group of ponies it would be almost impossible for them to find this point to regain their trail. They were in the clear, as far as he was concerned.

"I don't know. There is supposedly a free-trade-town hidden in these mountains somewhere, but as I've said, I've never been this far south. All I know is the ponies I was traveling with specifically didn't want to get into the mountains, so we were traveling the long way around them." She brushed some twigs that had hitched a ride on her cloak away, then looked at Selene expectantly.

"Ok, well I'm not even from this side of the continent," he said with a shrug. He also had some twigs on him too, but he honestly didn't care, and left them. "And why should we be heading towards a group of ponies who put your body guards on edge?"

"Body guards?" she asked, tilting her head.

Selene moved forward, and pulled her cloak around the side of her body, revealing the harness she was wearing as well as it's contents. At her side was his pistol and two of his knives, but across her back was her own weapon, a small two barrel shotgun. He hadn't noticed it until she had gone to put her harness on earlier today.

"Slaves don't carry weapons, and raiders don't do escort services. You were with them."

"And as a result I know exactly why we need to stay away from them, and yes, the kind of pony who deeply troubles them is exactly the type of ponies we need to find."

"Ok, well I'm not moving from this spot until you tell me—" he wasn't even close to finishing the thought when Neighbourhood's horn flared and he was gently lifted off the ground.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Please continue," she said, as she moved to walk up the gorge, carrying Selene with her, hovering just off the ground.

He didn't think he needed to continue, since his point was a bit moot. Neighbourhood was making it look easy, but as he watched her face more closely he could clearly see the strain that carrying him was causing her. "You can put me down now," he said quietly.

"Good," she said with a warm smile, setting him down beside her and pulling his wing across her back, "because I don't have a clue where I'm going."

"Yea, I don't either, but I guess if we keep heading up the mountain we'll eventually find this mystery town you know nothing about, other than the fact they scare away raiders... that you are one of." He gave her torso a quick squeeze with his wing, just hard enough to force her breath out in a forced sigh.

"Oh... Darling, you should be more gentle with me." She rolled her shoulders, rubbing her back across the underside of his wing. "I might not mind it now," she began, grabbing his chin in a hoof and pulling his head down to stare into her eyes, "but if you keep at it and I start to get board, I will retaliate."

Selene missed the threat at first, but the hard, serious look in her eyes drove the point home. He felt a bit skeptical at first, but then he started to think it through more clearly and completely: she was only slightly shorter than he was, but otherwise about the same size, and with his hollow bones she very well may weigh as much as he did. More importantly, she was a powerful Unicorn.

Still, he felt he should probably test her conviction a bit. He locked eyes with her, and began to squeeze around her torso and belly again. She quietly squeaked as the air was forced from her lungs. She tried to hold his stare, but as the panic at being unable to breath began to set in she blinked, then looked down. The moment she looked away Selene released the pressure, and allowed her to breath again.

"Ok, darling," she panted, still looking down. "I gave you fair warning." She looked back up, her mouth twisting into a crocked grin, and her horn flaring in a bright purple glow.

Selene didn't have any idea what she might be casting, only that he needed to stop her. He squeezed his wing around her belly with as much force as he could bring, but her cloaks soft fabric had turned hard as stone. He strained his tendons to their limit, but the cloak was being held in place with an immovable magic force. He tried to pull his wing away from her, but a faint purple glow suddenly surrounded it, and held it firm around Neighbourhood's side, trapping him beside her.

Neighbourhood's grin had widened, and her lips pulled back slightly to show her teeth. The fact that they were the flat teeth of a herbivore did nothing to soften the predators grin. Oh... I've made a mistake.

Her horn, still glowing to maintain the spell on her cloak and his wing, flared slightly brighter as she added a new spell to the mix. Selene was just starting to wonder what it was, when the metal band around his neck began to retract, squeezing. It didn't close his windpipe, instead it squeezed in from the sides, closing his carotid artery's on each side on his neck. She partially released the pressure almost immediately, to the point it impeded rather than stopped the blood flow to his head.

Still, he went lightheaded almost instantly, and he could feel the pressure rapidly building in his head and neck. He could still breath, and even speak, but the blood flow to his brain had been heavily restricted and the effects were immediate. He tried to claw at the metal band with his hooves, but he knew it was wasted effort, even though the rising panic forced him to do it. It didn't matter if he even could get leverage on the metal; it was too strong for him to bend alone, and he would need to overcome Neighbourhood's telekinesis first anyway.

"Now look," Neighbourhood began, ignoring Selene's plight, even as she was causing it, "I know what it's like have your freedoms restricted, and I will do everything I can to avoid limiting you in any unnecessary ways, but we need to come to an understanding. I own you now. I will try not to force you to do anything you don't want to, and I will reward you greatly for the services you do do, but at the end of the day, you are mine.

"I know, not all groups in the wastelands practice slavery, and many don't tolerate it at all, but I am from a group that does. As we travel we are going to come across groups that would free you if they knew, but they won't, because this is not the overt chains, shackles and 'yes master' type of slavery. No, I am much more kind and subtle master.

"I will be kind, even loving," she added, gently stroking the fur on Selene's chest. His vision had begun to blur, and he was starting to go numb, to the extent he could hardly feel the touch. "But you need to respect me. I won't restrict you more than I need to, but I can't have you running off, and I won't have you hurting me more than I allow."

She continued talking, but at this point Selene's hearing faded to the point he could no longer tell what she was saying. He considered asking her to stop—if he could still speak—but he decided against it. Instead, he watched her lips move as she continued talking until his vision faded away too.

It felt like just an instant later he was laying on the ground, staring up at Neighbourhood standing over him, with a worried expression on her face. He didn't remember falling.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she mumbled, lowering her head, sheepishly. "I may have overdone it slightly..."

He looked around for a moment, then checked the metal band around his neck; it had returned to it's snug, but comfortable, fit.

Neighbourhood moved up beside him, as he was laying on his back, and gently rubbed his chest. "I really am sorry—I keep forgetting you're not a Earth Pony."

That doesn't make any sense."...What?"

"Oh, don't worry about it, but I think you understand my point?" she asked, offering him a hoof.

"Yea," Selene said, grabbing her hoof and using it to lever himself back to a standing position at her side, "be respectful or I'll choke you."

"Well, not exactly," Neighbourhood whispered, nuzzling the side of his head with her muzzle, "but that's the gist."

"...Why would you be used to dealing with Earth Ponies?" he asked suddenly, tiered of knowing almost nothing about her.

"We've been over this..." she mumbled, lowering her head but still glaring back at him, suddenly aggressive.

"Fine, but you need to do something to help me trust you if you want me to stay."

"No, you didn't get it," she sighed. "You don't get to leave, no matter what you think, you're staying with me."

"Well if you want this magic, 'slave but not slave' thing to work, I need to trust you, and right now I don't, so answer some questions or get this thing off my neck!"

An instant after he had finished speaking Neighbourhood's horn flared in a quick bright flash, and the metal band around his neck exploded out away from him in tiny fragments. The few fragments that flew straight at Neighbourhood bounced away just before striking her by a second purple flash, this one not originating from her horn. Selene took a moment to check his throat, finding it completely fine, although he did have a bit of a headache.

"I'm perfectly willing to compromise, but you need to work with me," she punctuated with a stomp in the snow. "...I can't do this alone."

"I don't know what this is, but lets just focus on finding this town before we starve, ok?" Removing the metal band had made Selene feel more brave, but he reigned himself back in, thinking of the raiders she had killed, that she was apparently friends with not long ago.

"Ok," she said quietly, and passed him his compass back. "Which way?"

"I don't know, and this isn't going to help here," he flipped her cloak up and clipped the compass back at her side. "I think we should just head higher up the mountain. Near the top we should be able to see a settlement somewhere, if we don't run into it ourselves sooner."

"Up the mountain? Deeper into the cold?" She asked, starting to shiver already.

"Yea, but don't worry. We'll be fine," he added, raising his wing.

She quickly pressed herself into his side, and he gently brought his wing around her. What have I gotten myself into? Selene considered giving her a quick, only somewhat violent squeeze. That is what had set this all in motion, but she hadn't actually asked him to stop. For better or worse, Selene was a pony who took risks for stupid reasons, and this seemed like the perfect time to be himself.

He gave her a quick, tight, squeeze, forcing the air out of her lungs yet again, then released her immediately.

"Hhnnnggghhhhh, oh..." She stumbled slightly, but Selene easily held her up. "Oh, darling, you need to learn to be more creative."

Author's Note

For those who missed it, the title is a Star Wars reference...