No. Not there. She's not on the moon.

Chapters

the mother and the son
sawed off
Luna
Celestia
timber men
a cave
inside
plains
Elle
leaving the forest

the mother and the son

The truck drove on to the road, skids of black on asphalt. The stale sound of Adele and Cantonese pop formed into clipped sounds. The CD player is used, no radio stations. The mother is safe in this humming vault of metal. She flicks dust from her eyes. Asian, oriental eyes curved and elfish. The eyelids shuttered on to sleep or the edge of it. About a full day since she slept. She makes an effort to stay awake.

Raised in Hong Kong by her mother, in America she married her husband. Two different kinds of love, with her preferring the husband’s shy awkward kind. Like how all things end and begin she made a family with him.

Chinese. Fair complexion and worn skin. She’s tall and skinny, a rakish figure and impossibly tall for someone of her race. All Long legs, long arms and strangely short fingers. Features she felt made her imposing but her husband thought beautiful. What did he say? Your legs run for miles. Then he’d give her thigh a kiss and make her blush.

They met when she was in America. She was stranded with a broken engine halfway through the country to meet a client, him fixing her engines in between humming tunes of soul music or hushing himself when she entered the room. Smaller and gentler then her, she was humbled and moved by him. His softly spoken voice, foreign sounding and seemingly without accent. After an hour of her in the room he was brave enough to sing. Fond of tinkering with the mysterious innards of cars he would sing and she would listen.Finally in a quiet voice he said he finished and if she needed anything. She laughed and handed the small shy man a smile, money and her number. She closed the distance and couldn’t help but kiss him, him trembling in her arms.

All she has of him now is:
His truck.
His shotgun.
A landscape of good memories.
Their son.

Her son tethered with her black hair and the father’s eyes. Six years old and constantly astounded at the world, yet in caught-out moments capable of silent far-off stares filled with feelings desolate and edged. He holds in him a brittle innocence that could shatter in the harshness outside. So its hard. Hard to make their fate in her decisions; unmade points of time not yet come. Yet this decision already made. Without regret.
To drive to the end of the world and a little further.

A flash of light in to the left of her. A presence in the passenger seat. She swerves and swears.

“Keep your hands on the wheel. No don’t turn your head. Don’t do that. Don’t look at me or you will spin out of control. Don’t worry you and your son are safe.”
A rummaging of panicked Cantonese. Her widened eyes wants to tear into the thing sitting in the passenger seat.
“Honey. I don’t speak Chinese, or whatever gook language you’re talking. So take it easy. Tell me in English if you still want go to the end of the world.”
“Get out of my car.”
“If I can appear out of nothing into your passenger seat do you think I’ll leave? Nice truck. Or car. Whatever it is.”
“It’s a truck”

“Mama what is it? Why is the light talking? What’s a gook?”
“Quiet Hayden. Sweetie please let me talk.”
“Okay ma.”
“Don’t ever say gook again.”
“Okay.”

She tenses out her shoulders, the stress and lack of sleep dangerous companions. Her stare on the road and the road into the horizon, into slabs of blinding American sunshine. Into unbalanced whiteness.

“You an angel or a demon?”
“What does that mean?”
“You good or you bad?”
“I’m whatever I’m needed to be.”
“You’re a smart ass then. You have a name?”
“Yes. But don’t laugh at it. I’m usually called the elements of harmony or an emissary of it. An avatar if you like. My true body is as set of glorified jewellery. And no don’t. Don’t even try to look at me yet. Wait why are you slowing down?”
“So I can look at you. Then get my husband’s gun and shoot you.”
“Tell me first. Do you really want to go to the ends of the world and further?”

Brakes shunting. The truck reaching slowness. Stopping. All of it floated into the ridges of dirty brown and the cationic sun. Silent scorched colour.

“Yes. There’s nothing for us here. Me and my son. I’m guessing you know why?”
“Yeah. I know. Alright. You can look at me.”
“Christ. What the hell. You’re not human. You’re not real”
“Define real.”
“Why are you glowing.”
“Why are you covered in flesh.”
“God. Oh my god.”
“Why are you kissing that cross necklace?”
“Why are you in the goddamn car?”
“I thought it was a truck”
“Shut up. Just. No. Let me think.”

A white grasping of light. It floats there on top of the passenger seat. The elements of harmony incarnate. She slips the crucifix back inside the light green top she wears. She sighs and rests her forehead against the wheel.
“Mama?”
“Yeah?”
“You good mama?”
“Yes Hayden. Shh remember”

“Why won’t Hayden talk to me?”
“Does he look like an idiot?”
“Fine. Business then. Start the truck and carry on this road. Make no turns. Do it if you want to go to the ends of the world. If you find yourself somewhere unknown carry on in a straight line.”
“Do I look like an idiot?”
“Fine stay here and let the men that killed him kill you next, then kill your son.”

Fear finally cracking through her face.

“You don’t need to say that.”
“You don’t need to be a hard ass”
“So what? You save our lives and what for?”
“Well there’s a reason and a price.”
“What’s the price?”
“Take Luna back to her sister. Then you load this shell into your shotgun. Shoot the draconequus”
“Draconequus?”
“You’ll know when you see it. Like a dragon.”
“The reason.”
“Hmm?”
“What’s the reason?”
“You’re desperate. You’re an outcast that’s managed to find happiness. You seem nice”
“I had something better then happiness.”
“Okay. So help Luna get something like that. Fix my failures.”
“How will I find her?”
“You truck will break down in the first two days in equestria. Two hours after that she will appear.”
“Equestria?”
“Yes. You’re going to drive down this road and then find yourself in a different world altogether.”
“No coming back right?”
“Right.”
“What’s stopping me from not doing any of that?”
“Your conscience.”
“We can’t go home.”
“No.”

It can see all things that are and what it should be. Some things aren’t fair but they were never meant to be. A wife lost a husband. Two sisters now enemies. How is that harmony? Killing and changing the bright fires that carry dreams and good intentions. Sacrificing a sister’s vision of a world for another. Snuffing out the dwindled lights dying with hope. Hope for what?
For something else.
The want of change and the need of nothing to change.

The elements’ voice. Softer.
“Remember he loved you.”
“Pardon?”
“He loved you.”
“Yes. Why are you really here? Why me?”

Even Hayden stays silent in this moment. Who knows what the elements of harmony think.

“I' m meant to be honesty, kindness, laughter, generosity, Loyalty, magic. Yet all I've done is hurt. I've only ever been a weapon. A tool. You loved and lived more then any of my convoluted plans could achieve. Absolve my sins and my failures.”

So the element’s decided to make things right. To leave the ones it hurt in the care of someone unbroken that in all rights shouldn’t; a family that lost a husband and father. An event monstrously wrong that could still give the world a loving mother. A tender son.

The elements of harmony drifted out to the shaken heat of America. One last glare of sun.
The last sight.
A mother and son.
Entering a place two thousand miles from equestria.

sawed off

The road trails out into small sparks of growth. Fewer road and more greenery. The white and yellow paint on the road faded out, then soon the rough dark of the road fading.
No more road.
There is no gate, no portal, no blackout, no stretching of matter, no piping sounds of reality breaking. No indication of travel from one world to another. As if a universe could drift away and be left behind, then thin into another. That the earth could blur away and onto something else, not a journey but a change. An omen of how things are.

The pair no longer on earth but engulfed in a forested day languishing into night.

The truck controlled in the whorled grassiness, the suspension swimming in bumps of land. She’d pull the clutch then change the gearing. She keeps an eye on fuel and on him.
She doesn't look back at vanished roads.
“Hayden. Its time to stop okay?”
“Yes ma.”

She would stop the truck then pull the hand brake. Hands on her face. Wipe off the sweat and stress. Exhausted she would check the back, a miscellaneous pile of tools and all the food she could pack. On the passenger seat a single shell. The elements last gift, a shotgun shell multicolored and unfunny. She places it in her palm, then slips it into her left pocket. She unbuckles the seat belt.

She opens her door. Steps out, pulls the handle of the rear left door. He steps out saying mama. She holds his hand. Hugs him. From the truck she takes a small knife, then takes a tacky compass and a zippo lighter. Finally a worn spade in her hand.
“Follow me okay?”
"Okay ma"

They step into untracked forest. She takes a handful of subpar kindling. From dry plants and fluffy growths. The duo find a dead log. She hacks off a third from the top. Carries it five feet in front of the truck. They dig a pit, earth clawed by the spade. She lights the kindling with the zippo. The log hacked into four with the spade. A squat pyramid of wood on top of the lit kindling. They would silently watch the fire spill on to bark, the consuming heat.

She goes to the truck and finds her husbands gun. She lifts the shotgun. Chrome wrapped in wood. Too heavy. She takes a viscous looking saw and then the shotgun. Both of them in her hands. She walks towards a fallen tree. Sets it all down. Hayden follows her at her urging. “Cmon Hayden. Good boy.”

The shotgun is half disassembled and she blows through the barrel, a shake of her breath comes out of the loader. She would pump the shotgun to check the loading mechanism. Still working. Damn reliable. She took the saw and cuts off the barrel to the tube magazine. Next she goes back to the truck to fetch a well used file. The sawed edge filed off and raw. She blows off a cloud of disintegrated metal and wooded dust. It launches from the top of the freshly cut barrel, wheels to the forest floor. Unnatural compared to the dissipated green darkness of the forest.

“Mama. Mama.”
“Hmmm. Yes? Yes Hayden?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Okay. Mamas busy right now. In a sec. Okay?”
“Okay ma.”
She reaches over and kisses his hair then ruffles it. He giggles. Sweet smile stretched on his face. He becomes silent. His eyes follow his mother’s work. The stern look of focus all six year olds use. Her hands resume movement. Her hands that tapper to sturdy fingers and smooth worked skin. Moves with confidence.

Next she saws the stock off the shotgun. She files the cut. Like a sculptor it seems as if the cut is made perfectly. Rounded and torsional, a durable pistol grip. Stockless and with a sawn off barrel the shotgun is leaner. Predatory, Lighter, able to fit firmly in her hands. She shakes it. No clicking. No looseness. The want of killing poured into all the cracks and small slips in the shotgun.

She takes an extent of hand loaded shells. Enough shells to possess her hand. The unruly clunking of shells in to the loader. The shotgun smugly swallows five shells into its stomach. Her hands remember her husband’s hands that must have touched this gun and these shells. A remembered world shoe-boxed behind a vast and anonymous distance. How far away was earth? How much did she want to leave it?

Quite a lot apparently.

She leaves the saw where it is and holds the shotgun in one hand.
“Mama?”
“Okay. Alright. It’s time to eat. Up you get”
She hauls him into her embrace. He’s held in her arms his head popped over her shoulder. She’s going to have to stop doing this soon. He’s going to get embarrassed. Yet Hayden clings tightly to her, one hand a fist of her clothes, another hand entangled in her hair. Hayden might never meet another to be embarrassed around.

The pair gravitate towards the truck. She reaches into the back and pulls out a tin of powdered milk. Clumped, flavoured she drops a handful of the powdered milk into a battered looking camping pan. She puts in a good amount of water. Milk forming in a paste or mess. Leaves the rest of the water on the side. Milk would be warmed with a handful of oatmeal from the truck, a strongly flavored porridge. The rest of the milk warmed and placed into two flasks. Finally she takes four strips of dried beef jerky she found in a packet in the glove-box. Hayden sits cross- legged next to the fire fidgeting. She gives him a flask then places the porridge in between them. She hands him two strips of jerky but stops him before he can eat it.

She says grace, and thanks the lord.

They eat the food.
After a half hour she falls asleep next to the fire, only the milk left un-drunk. Her Limp hand with a flask. Hayden picks up the flask. Wakes her.
“Mama you need to drink this. To grow strong.”
“Huh. Okay Hayden.”
The meal is finished and he tucks himself into her arm.
“We can sleep by the fire mama?”
“Yeah. No sleeping bag needed.”

her son is close and so is the shotgun.

Luna

The mother wakes next to the dead fire. Her son still asleep, tiny hands holding her arm in place. She checks the safety of the shotgun with her other hand. Birdsong from the top of trees, and unknown beasts moving behind the treeline a place untouched by a chainsaw's agenda. She stays there silent and surprised at the peace. Her son stirs waking in her arm. “Hayden” she whispers but he buries his face into her clothes. She waits until his face unfurls into open sleepy eyes.
“Oh sweetie, you still tired?”
He nods his head then hugs her arm a little tighter. His wide eyes stare out at the canopy of tumbled green and brown. They both want to stay a little longer but she grows restless.
“No sleeping. Come on now.”
They both rise at the same time, a clumsy pair tangled in each other. They both shamble to the truck.

“Mama”
“Yes Hayden”
“If we slept yesterday this means this is the second day.”
“Yes, this is the second day.”
“The thing in the car said we’d meet someone today.”
“Someone called Luna, Hayden”
“Will that someone look like the thing in the car?”
“It could Sweetie”
“It could be anything”
“Yeah, it could be anything. You’re to seat upfront with mama today okay?”
“Okay ma.”

She reaches into the back and fits his booster seat to the passenger seat. She lifts him up and his small fingers brush her face slightly. The seatbelt is strapped across the shy boy. She left the key in the ignition so she simply turns it. The engine coughs and stutters into life, gasoline flowing underneath in veins of metal. She retrieves the compass from her pocket and checks her position. The red arrow flickers inside scratched dented glass. It points to the north behind her. She releases the handbrake and heads south a straight line from where she left. The ground breaks underneath the tires like a stubborn surrender.

The mother is silent for the next hour, her hands fused into the steering wheel. Something approaching determination and worry heaved in her face. Her son would be trailing his fingers on the window, steam and fog colliding into obscured circles born from his breath. His fingers would touch the glass to make images and faces contorted and conjured from the world left behind. Intricate patterns painted by the tip of a finger and the never known thoughts of youth. She wants to see what he makes but the fogged images fade apart too soon.
“What did you draw on the window sweetie?”
“Nothing ma. Just a horse”
“Why a horse Hayden?”
“I dreamt of one last night. It looked lonely so I’m going to give it some friends”
“That’s nice sweetie.”

They stop in the late afternoon beside a struggle of hedges. The tangle of hedge chokes a small dent in the land, climbing from the bottom of a small pit. Berries and thorns poked out and wreathed in sunlight sieved through branches. The forest’s voice as wind would whisper through the hedge and shake ripe berries.

Hayden had drifted back to sleep and his left hand lies limp in her lap. A hand half clenched holding something that is dreamt. She’d stroke his hair in fingers that feather into a soft caress. My son she’d mutter behind her breath. My son.
She leaves him there then locks the truck.

The black berries flesh scented and sweet. The fruit’s blood rich and red clinging to finger, lip and tongue. She licks the juices off and fills two flasks with the berries. She hesitates then fills another flask with berries. The battered shiny flasks would be carried in an armful to the truck. When she opens the doors Hayden is already awake.

“Mama what are you doing?”
“I’m getting some berries for us.”
“Is the third flask for Luna?”
“Yes sweetie.”

Then she’d open a flask and Hayden would eat the berries. She would laugh when Hayden poked her nose with berry juice. She’d bite his fingers with her lips and he’d laugh. The truck would spill out with their laughter and it’s as if the trees lean in to listen. It’s the first time she saw him smile here. When Hayden stops laughing she kisses his fingers then starts the engine. It would stutter once to silence in a painful groaning. A ragged choking from gaps of the engine then that was that.

“Trucks broken isn’t it? Just like that thing in the truck said.”
“Yeah. Let’s make a fire.”
“Does this mean Luna’s coming soon mama?”
“Yeah.”

They dig a pit and take a scattering of dead plants. A single log and gasoline is poured onto the pit. The fire separates the family from the blackness outside. The shotgun is held in a white-knuckled grip. Two hours of this, the family silent.

The pony would slither out from the darkness, exhaustion deeper then bones settled inside of her. When it raises its head its stare is vacant and full of nameless apathy. With hooves slippery and steps shattered it draws itself closer to the pair.

The mother clicks the safety of the shotgun. The barrel is pointed the pony’s way. As the pony draws near its flesh and hair is a blackish blue without depth and two wings are dragged on either side of its body, feathers slicked and left in cascades of dust. With eyes unreadable she'd stare at the truck. Stare at the duo.

“Are you Luna? Tell me are you Luna? You tell me or I shoot. Christ I can kill you right here.”

But she would answer with silence. Her heart strikes out at the ribcage, afraid of this baleful creature. The pony’s eyes are too human and sullen. The pony moves closer. In the feeble fire made the light casts its red on her and she'd still shed her forlorn gaze. The light digs further into her and the pair can see scars and bruises revealed from darkness.

“Oh mama look its hurt. It’s hurt so bad ma. It looks really bad.”
“Hayden hush I know. I know.”
“It looks sad ma.”
“Hayden fetch me my jacket and get the box with the red cross on it.”
“Are we going to help the horse?”
“Yes sweetie. Go on. Be careful.”

She keeps the gun trained on the pony. The pony shows no inclination to move or acknowledge her. Hayden scampers around somewhere in the blackness of the truck far away. When he returns he’s bought all the things asked for as well as the third flask of berries. She takes the jacket and drapes it over the pony. She undoes the clasps on the first aid box and takes out bandages and alcohol.
“C’mon come here closer to the fire. Oh look at you. Look at you. Sit down you need to sit down.”
“I had a fight.”
“You can talk. My god you can talk. Who did you fight?”
“My sister”
“Alright. Okay. Do you want anything?”

The pony shakes her head. Everything that is wanted to be said is told and is enough. Even if the pony is closer she retreats into herself. The ponies voice feminine distinguished and empty. The pony drops her head and seems either tired or dead underneath a mane of shimmered black and starlight. The mother warns her that the alcohol will burn then cleans the long cuts and scars, all the while whispering.The pony neither flinches nor thanks her.

“You’re Luna aren't you?”

Luna nods her head as if in defeat. Hayden reaches over to her and strokes her hung down mane. Rather than sadness he’s in awe of her, wide eyes flowing into surprise. Luna peered out with her eyes soulless and weary. The mother frightened by Luna’s desolate mournfulness. But Hayden stays close to Luna trying to convince her to eat berries from a flask.

Celestia

A large chamber. Sixty meters high, thirty meters wide, stretches out somewhere to the entrance. They stand about fifteen feet from each other. Both mares. Staggered stripes of moonlight through the windows. The room is lit in cold light, the mares transformed unto death in four legs. Death in the fractures in the wall, death bleeding from the pile of guards, death in their stares.
Blooms of blood amongst the rubble.
God blood sweating from scars.

“Luna you’re bleeding”

Nightmare moon takes three steps left. Dull sounds of glass stepped on.

“I’m nightmare moon.”
“Really? Luna how old are you? Make the decision to grow up.”
“You’ve made your decision. To ignore those ponies I hear at night.”
“You think I don’t know? I suffered as well Luna. You think I haven’t?”
“You can’t hear the night-time prayers of the starved or hollowed deathbeds surrounded by the fevered prayers. You can’t hear a mother beg you to kill another in place of her sick daughter. All night I hear ugly prayers and desires while you have your false sermons. Do you understand this? There’s not a light in our hearts but a hole. A pit”

Celestia stares at a stranger not a sister.

“Luna. Just end this. Please.”
“When this night stays for years then a realisation will come. That in the dark we are all alone inside of it, that all things said and thought in the dark are real. That fear of dark is a fear of what’s real, a fear of what we truly want.”

The frayed shadows of rubble, formed into dark teeth. It grows around the nightmare, jaws of darkness and unmade despair. The dark we hate and love.

“You spend another eternity in there. You realise that darkness can’t be dissolved by the light, only fended away until light dies. That starlight is the last swan song of a forgotten corpse of hot gas. My night isn’t beautiful but a gallery of the dead. We all stare at dead things, things that never wanted the names we gave them, which could never be what we want it to be. To fall further is to realise a final thing. That to make an endless night is the only choice I can make. It’s the only choice any of us can make. Everything falls closer and closer to the dark. The sick, the old, the young, the evil, the good, mountains, seas, suns. That if your sun collapsed it will only be another swan song swallowed. What else can I do? What else does anyone do?”

How many nights did it take her? Alone letting the abyss devour chunks of her. How many nights in the company of yawning blackness. Blackness that takes more than light.

“We’re sisters. We’re blood. Luna we’re the same blood. For the love of all things Luna we’re the same blood. I’m your family. We need to stop this.”
“Convenient. You need me after leaving me alone in the dark.”
“What do I need to do? Luna what needs to be done? I’m begging tell me. Tell me.”
“You have two choices. You kill me because you love me, send me to the darkness I want, lay to rest the little sister you loved but can’t get back. Or you kill nightmare moon. The villain that has taken the sunlight, bring justice.”
“They’re the same thing.”
“Good. Now you’re beginning to understand.”

Crippled thoughts unsaid. Anger rises faster than want needs to be heard. Celestia takes a step forward. Ethereal light touching the edge of curves. Elements of harmony arrayed like a crown of weapons.

“Do you want me to use them Luna?”
“I don’t want anything. This fight, this conversation, this endless night. It’s a result. The elements of harmony will make no difference.”
“Don’t you remember what it did to discord?”
“Don’t you remember discord?”
“No Luna. No. Not again. It’s just us here.”
Nightmare moon reaches out. She cleaves her own throne in two, the gravelled stench of night magic.
“It’s just you now. Is this what you wanted?”

Scars and bruises traded between the two. The floors and walls bitten and worn. Chunks of marble and stone.

“If you don’t stop this night, ponies will starve.”
“If you don’t stop me ponies will starve.”
“Luna just stop this.”
“You do it now. Or I take you. Then I start what must happen.”
“I’m going to send you to the moon okay? Just a small while. You need to think.”
“You need to stop trying to please everyone.”
“Luna this night hasn’t ended. I’m going to send you there. I’m telling you.”
“I’m telling you, you’re a coward.”
“Just for a month.”
“Coward”

The elements gather. A colour faded then intense. A flash of fire.

Half dead sunlight painfully rising behind the decayed horizon.

timber men

Luna wakes in the night. She’s draped in a jacket and the fire is raised on a broken log. She would touch her face and feel a layer of sweat. She had dreamt of her and Celestia. It wasn’t a dream but a memory of how they parted. Her mouth is sticky and her head is feverish. Sore.

Her eyes are gritty. She’d reach out with a hoof to rub her eyes. Her vision is repaired and in it she can see one of the things. This larger thing was poking the fire. The smaller thing lay down curled inside the larger thing’s limb. She’d watch as the large thing dropped the stick and lifted two eyes fitted on a smooth face. Luna felt like talking so she talked.

“Why are you awake?”
“Why are you?”

The thing would say no more after that then throw the stick into the fire. The thing’s sight is sorrowful when it strays on Luna. They’d meet eyes and it isn’t confrontational but understanding. Then the thing would curl up with the smaller thing, both turned away from Luna. Luna abstains from sleep. The other two motionless in the depths of fatigue, asleep and safe with each other. From where she is the two animals are so still she could imagine them dead.

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

Morning came again and Luna remained there solid and brooding. The pair would sleep there in a deep peace. Luna eyes out the day and waits for the night to return. She tries to use magic to bring night back but nothing happens. The day still unmoving and uncaring. Comatose in a wakeful stare she watches the pair stir at the same time. In a broken mumbling of Cantonese the mother urges Hayden to get up. The mother says good morning to no one in particular and no response is heard.

Hayden shyly passes by Luna asking if she wants breakfast but Luna is inside the borderless expanse of her mind. What wretched things haunt and pin her down there? Terrible feelings formless. Shapeless. Her silence hums in the pinched daylight.

The mother would again check the shotgun and thanks the lord he hasn't given her reason to use it. Loosely she would reach into the truck for stale bread and a six pack of eggs. Two of the eggs are broken so she puts only four eggs into old vegetable oil to be fried on the camping pan. Instead of plates she puts the egg on stale slices of bread, the greasy smell like a warm invitation pencilled into the air.

“You hungry Luna?”
The pony occupies a half wasted frame, seemingly stunted and unhealthy. She turns her head morose and lost. She would just seem confused. Then she would grow even more confused as the pair both knelt down and thanked someone called god. The bipeds would then shuffle their slender fingers and bring food to their mouth. She stares slightly mesmerised. Then Hayden gestures and points to two eggs fried and left on bread. Luna eats it off the ground and feels like an animal.
“Luna we come from somewhere far from here. We we're sent to you. To help you back to your sister."
“My sister probably isn’t fond of this idea”
“We need to keep going in a straight line. That’s all I know to do right now. You're coming with us now. My name is Elle and this is my son Hayden. We're humans Luna”

Luna licks specks of yolk and grease of her lips. The mother hands her a tissue but Luna looks confused once again. Hayden waddles over to her and takes a tissue in his hand. He wipes her mouth gently and smiles at her. The sun pure in streams of gold yellowed into the forest.

“Luna you need to help us carry some stuff okay? The truck is dead. Hayden help mama get the canvas off the back.”

They heave off the sheets of canvas, shrouds of semi blackness tough and waterproof. Rolled and twisted the canvas sheets are transformed into pouches that hold tins, boxes and jars of food and small drums of water. Two sacks of supplies made. Then she would step into the truck and retrieve three backpacks. She’d stuff these bags full of packets of dried food, first aid, water, clothes, shells and bags of flour and salt. Lastly gasoline poured into a flask.

“Hayden you need to strap this onto your shoulders. Here you go.”
“Its heavy ma.”
“I'm sorry. Do you want me take some more stuff?”
“It’s okay ma.”

She then shoulders a bag on to her back and another on to her front. It squashes her breasts too much so she wriggles and rearranges folds of clothing and the weight hung over the front of her.

“Luna hold still a sec okay?”

She drapes the sacks of canvas on either side of Luna forming primitive saddlebags. Without his mother looking Hayden would take some of Luna’s weight from her saddlebags and put it in his pack. Luna looks at the boy as if it’s the first time she’s really seen him. He returns her dazed gaze with a grin of milk teeth. They set out at a slow pace the mother leading with the compass, Hayden in the middle, Luna at the end and self-destructive wants hovering behind the pony.

They travel for six miles. The trees would seem to space out more. They’d become larger. They stop to see strange fruits and nuts left on the ground. All of the items as large as two hands put together. They would stop a while and eat the fleshy fruits. Hayden would root around and bring his mother what he thinks are the best looking fruits. Then the mother would give Luna more than half of them. Luna takes mouthfuls of fruits. Hayden would watch fascinated. The mother stands next to Luna and talks.

“Luna I can see something really big in the distance. The trees are getting massive. What does this mean?”
“I don’t know”
“Say again?”
“I don’t know”
“Okay”

The trees sprout out bigger and bigger. The company stalk past a canopy reaching higher and strangling more and more of the eliminated light. Trees of the forest ancient and indestructible, their roots steeped in age and spread out at thirty feet. More miles would be put behind them, and trees yawn out bigger and greater. The trunks thicker then the skyscrapers the mother would see in Michigan. If you could look upwards the branches are monsters of thick shadow barely unseen and when they make camp underneath a giant root the texture of the bark is coarse like gnarled hardened leather trailed in your hand.

The three of them could never be able to understand how these wooden leviathans came about, and if you ask the mother she'd tell you that this is in all principles the wonder of god as well. Luna wouldn't say it but she has never seen anything splayed out in such an eternity so deathless and old.

They made a fire from pulled strips of bark and a splash of gasoline salvaged from the truck left behind. They eat a supper of cooked soup and the rest of rustic stale bread.

Hayden said he saw giant eyes bobbing down from the branches, and when asked if this was true, Luna would nod slowly still staring out at the darkness, her abject depression forced into curiosity and fear. The mother saw no such thing but switches the safety off and glares at the darkness daring it to move. When something large and bristled moves against the darkness she gets everyone to wake up and gather behind her.

“I think something is out there. It looks dangerous. I’m going to shoot the shotgun.”

A flash and thunder. The shot spindles out hot, the buckshot screaming into darkness. Behind her Luna and Hayden hold each other tightly. In front a large cluster of darkness runs off wailing in a sound indescribable. She pumps the shotgun and loses the spent casing. She loads another shell her fingers sticky and trembling.

“We're moving come on.”
They settle further into the root and start no fires. They shudder around, fear holding them tightly together. Luna tries to generate heat through magic and nothing comes out.

“Mama I'm cold.”
“Come over here then, you too Luna.”

She unzips sleeping bags and spreads it across them like blankets. They hear another wail and the fire they left behind is wiped out. In their fear they are all equals. They would press into each other and the son will wrap his arms around his mother and Luna.

“Luna is your home like this”
“No.”
“Is this far from home?”
“I think this is very far from equestria. Very far from home.”
“Good.”

a cave

Three anonymous shapes obscured in heavy rain. They struggle out the storm and find a cave. A raised roof of dull slated grey, long forgotten stones. The mother didn’t pack towels so for a while they remain soaked and exhausted. Meagre light rationed through the raindrops. Finally they lose showers of water in to the cave. Luna would shake out water, and Hayden would shriek in delight. Luna would smile for a moment then frown.

“Elle?”
“Yes Luna?”
“We need to make a fire”
“You have any ideas?”

Luna stares at her hooves. Elle chuckles and slowly drops her pack.

“Didn’t think so. Luckily you have me. Come on”
“Come on what? What would like us to do?”
“Just be patient. Just do what I say for few minutes. Take off the canvas and hold it in your mouth”

Elle kneels down and takes out a flask. The smell of berries would wisp out. The sides are coloured in its redness. She feels around the sides, feels the dryness. Satisfied she would then take the canvas that Luna holds. Drapes it around herself. The shotgun is held in one hand at the loader. She tries to tidy up Hayden’s hair even if she knows it’s futile. She settles for leaning down and stroking water out of his eyes.

“You stay here with Luna okay?”
“Why mama?”
“I don’t want you getting wet again. You could get sick.
“Really ma?”
“Yeah. You don’t know now, but our bodies are fragile. Especially yours Hayden. You’re young. You need to be warm”

She would lean down again to his height. Her hands would grasp his thin shoulders. Her fingers flaying out in a handful of him. A handful so young and tiny she’s silent for a few seconds.

“Why do you worry so much ma?”
“That’s what mom’s do”
“That means I’m a mom too”
“Really? Why are you a mom Hayden?”
“Because I worry about you. I really worry.”

She would reach over and hug him. she’d whisper to him. Words furrowed into the young ones ears.

“Oh Hayden don’t worry. Don’t worry. Yeah?”
“Okay ma”
“Okay”

When she stands the canvas is rearranged around her. She steps to the mouth of the cave. A torrent outside, water vertical and unchallenged.

“Thank you for looking after him Luna”
“I didn’t agree to this”
“I know. I’ll be back soon”

Another pause. The quartered silence of it.

“I’m going to set the containers outside and fill them up. Okay. See you soon Luna”

Elle steps outside. The curled canvas bouncing raindrops into the drowned world outside the cave.

“When do you think she’s coming back?”
“I don’t know little one”

Hayden seems colder and hardened. A smooth face made in helplessness and frustration. He looks older. Luna remembers his face seen on hers. In equestria she’d hide herself away with that face staring out at a night strangled in moonlight and bruised with shadow. Alone with dangerous thoughts. She remembered trotting through canterlot loathing those slumbering houses. The sky filled with wonders dead and forgotten. She had screamed out at the city and nothing answered.

“Why are you sad little one?”
“I’m not”
“You are. I can see it on your face”
“How do you know?”
“I know”

Luna shuffles over to the boy awkwardly. She puts a wing around him and inspects the cave’s roof. Eyes refuse to see the child. Hayden absently puts an arm around her neck. His eyes follow his mother shrouded by drops of rain. She’s engulfed far-off inside the storm.

“Is it because you’re sad?”
“Pardon?”
“Is that why you put your wing around me? How you knew I was sad? It’s because you’re sad as well right Luna? Right?”
“Hush little one”
“Why?”
“Because”
“Because what?”
“Because”

A silence stretched out. The pair would watch water fall then erupt across the ground. Scratchy earth caved in and soaking. A storm's voice loud and unrepentant. Luna moves to gather the containers. Hayden grips her tighter.

“Don’t leave”

Luna is put off by his weak words. She’s also touched. She can only feel fondness for this ungainly creature. Unkempt hair on a scalp, glowing in stunted light. His fingers curled in her hair trying to grasp more of her. A rush of guardianship and fidelity so sudden it possesses her. Suddenly she wants to protect this young animal. Save it from this world’s travesties because in a way she would be saving herself.

“It’s because I don’t want you to be like me”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to be like me”
“Why Luna?”
“I’m really angry. Really upset. I suppose it’s like sadness but it’s more harmful. It fills you up here. Right here, where you would feel your heart pump”
“Here on my chest Luna?”
“Yes I think so little one. Don’t fill it up with bad things. Don’t be like me”
“Why?”
“Because then you do bad things”

He still grasps her. His fingers would soften from claws into gentleness. She could abandon this child. Leave him lost in the language of storms. Wondering out alone and calling out. She imagined him caged in the falling water, his muscles fading into nothingness. So young. It unfurls a massive responsibility on to her, that she could choose this boy’s life or death. The feeling of this more powerful than any magic in the world.

“I can’t see you being angry and upset. It reminds me of bad happenings. Do you understand little one?”
“I don’t think so”
“Just don’t worry little one”
“Okay Luna”

How old was he? How old was anyone? We’re all too old and too young.

“Luna?”
“Yes little one?”
“What should I fill my heart with?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know”
“Can you guess?”
“No. I can’t guess. Sorry little one”

Hayden lets go of her. She would gather the drums and bottles that carried water. Her limbs tracing lines underneath dark hair and charcoaled flesh. Gathering and dragging. They are all arranged outside the cave mouth to fill with the restless water falling. Drops would spit and foam on the surface of itself.

inside

She would stilt forward. A weight or a burden held behind her, herself wading forward into a forest hollowed out with the rain. The sound of it spilt out, replacing a silence that should’ve stalked the forest. The drops slide off. She adjusts the load carried. The canvas is wrapped around something heavy. The face of her dwindled into a determined smile, tired lines and smile lines fighting for the face. The silhouette trudges heavily. Hands lifted upwards to wipe off sweat and that was that.

She moves in a straight line. A remembered path forged through the storm, a memory of her son and Luna waiting. Thickened air layered on to the greyness she would see. The storm is sheets of water that would steal strength from her, water flowing out from pores washing away thoughts of warmth. The world drags her down in hands of water.
An hour of this.

The world shrivelled into clearer skies. The rain slackens. Only slightly. She would thank god. Maybe he followed her to this world. Maybe he was here all along. Where would god live? God wouldn’t live in the forest or the leaves and the water that pulsed out. He’d occupy the charred space common to all of life, faded and tearing. He was lost somewhere in the meaning of it. What meaning? No one will know. The meaning of thanking someone, maybe the meaning of gratitude. Something shaped like hope or the smell of it. She finds a cave, the mouth littered in containers filled with water. She imagines her son and Luna in the cave. She thanks god again.

Two heads rise. Eating a packaged cake shared between them, they would stare upwards at her. She would move the shotgun in a left-handed grip. She drags the canvas in and the heavy thing nested inside. Dragged in and then there was nothing left to be done. The pair in the cave share worried stares, both have crumbs on their faces, both are silent. Allotments of crumbs formed.

“How did you two start looking the same” she said.
The world drowned in faded packets of light crippled by rain. Words left in the blue silence.
“Are you angry about the cake Elle?”
“Why would I be? I’m just a little amused. For a few seconds you both looked really like each other”
“But I’m not exactly shaped like your son. I mean Hayden. I’m not shaped like Hayden”
“I know. Hayden come here”

He would detach himself from Luna and attach himself to his mother. Wordlessly they’d hold each other. Somewhere soon the sun’s light might reach them. The mother mumbles out in Cantonese and Hayden nods silently. “You’re cold” he’d mutter then stroke her arms. Small arms, pale flesh all of it stretched. When he’d finish the rain clouds would return. Greyness and blackness occupied the outside, rain roaring through air. Falling. Fallen.

Luna unwarps the canvas. A dry length of wood. Luna stares unwilling to believe. She looks all around the cave. Runs a hoof over a surface dry and starved. He hoof would hover. Eyes confused. Blinks. No magic trick here Luna.

“I found a fallen tree. It was leaning on another; I hacked away at the dry part. I managed to find that this had crumpled out. It’s still slightly wet so I put some of the driest parts in my flask. As tinder.”
“Thank you Elle”
“For what?”

Luna remains silent. The mother would divide the length of rotting wood. She’d place tinder in the centre. Adds a splash of gasoline to the damp log. Her lighter flicks open, the sound of metal colliding then pealing outwards. The brevity of the flame.

But the lighter isn’t hers it’s his. She thought of a time spent in winter with him. His smile flashed out on floods and flows of snow. He had coaxed a fire to life in the cold Michigan exposure. The lighter amidst his gloved fingers. She had her arms around him. When he finished he held her hands. A hidden language was between their touch. He leaned into her and told her how to start a fire. She had held him tighter. A breath between coiled bones and her grip. Only love.

The tinder would burn. Her thoughts charred and crisped like the tinder cradled to the ground. Slowly emerging fire from shoves of red or yellow. The end of her waking dream. Dried mass of wood slowly and softly moving to reddened coarseness. Fire engulfing. They crowd closer to the fire. To force dryness into wet bones and wet clothes.

Hayden and Luna whisper. Luna reaches into supplies and takes out another packaged cake. The mother takes it smiling. Fingers would snap out and unfold the packaging. She would enjoy the taste of it next to the frail fire and Hayden would smile again. Luna is content simply to see him smile. But her face is fallen.

“Your son. Hayden”
“Yes. What about Hayden?”
“He’s absolute”
“What?”
“He’s special”
“Yes”
“He’s perfect”
“Sometimes he is. He’s a good boy.”
“He’s too good. Too good for this place. When I was with him in the cave I thought of him as some treasure, a wonder of the world I missed out on. Or left behind. I just can’t believe he’s here. He’s so tiny, so young.”
“You’ve never seen a child”
“I’ve seen them from a distance”
“Why only from a distance?”
“Others hold a dislike towards me. I know so. Only a very few ponies are faithful to me and none of them are children”
“You’re not a mother”
“No. Never had one either”
“I’m sorry”
“Sorry for me?”
“No. Sorry that the world is like this”
“That’s just the way it is”
“Hmm”
“Pardon Elle?”
“It sounds wrong”
“What would sound wrong?”
“What you said about the world being the way it is Luna. It sounds like you’ve given up”
“So?”
“I don’t know”

Elle would finish the cake; wipe out crumbs from her face. The smell of sweat and dirt clings to them. The cave flush in their stench. She strokes down creases made in her top and when she does there isn’t dampness. Her son stares at smoke rising or embers falling. Strange cascades of heated red and choked smog.

“I’m not on the moon am I?”
“No. You’re not there.”

Luna shuffles in her restlessness. Elle would watch as Luna tries to talk. She’d put a hoof through her mane. She’d open her mouth and nothing would come out. She’d let her vision flicker on the water stranded in the air.

“This is wrong”
“Talkative today Luna?”
“I’m sorry but this is wrong”
“What’s wrong?”
“This. All of it”
“Did we do something wrong?”
“No . You need to take Hayden and get away from me”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not safe. Nothing here is safe. Nothing here is good enough. Hayden needs to be away from this”
“He’s strong, he has a good heart”
“But that’s not the point”

Hayden hides behind his mother. Pleading eyes fixed in his face. Luna would smoulder in things unfelt. Memories torn and spat at.

“Why do you think we’re here?”
“I don’t care. You need to take Hayden back.”
“I can’t. I was sent here to help you”
“Un-send yourself. I have no care who or how, but Hayden shouldn’t be here”
“Don’t you think we left for a reason as well? Don’t you think that there is more to this then you? Don’t you think about others?”
“Just go”
“You don’t know why we’ve come here. You don’t know anything”

What is Luna’s voice now? Something tight mouthed and pinched. Sentences hissed out between teeth or clenched jaws. Raspy.

“I don’t know. I don’t know? I know nothing. I don’t know how to think. I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know how to understand others. I can’t paint, I can’t work, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I know this. This world will drag Hayden down. He can’t grow here. He’ll die here Elle. If not in body then in mind.”

“I have to stay with you. I made a promise to take you to your sister and I will. We need to run from the ones chasing us, and this is the price for it. The risk. I’m not following you out of impulse. I do it for a reason Luna. If you can stop feeling sorry for yourself you can see it”

Luna now choking. A voice cracked into hoarseness. Sounds abandoned in the cave then lost out in the rain. So hurt. So serious.

“Tell me why I had to do it then!”

She screams out. In defiance or surrender. Thoughts and ideas stolen then spoken from the secret parts of herself. A voice frayed on the edges of sanity. Distant thuds of rain would move as if giant beasts of umbra.

“Tell me why we can tell ourselves that everything wrong is suddenly right? Can you see a reason? I can’t. Maybe the reason is I’m evil. No excuses. Nothing else just evil. Right to the core or the heart of me. If you could look at me heart you can see I filled it with nothing. Can you see Hayden? There is nothing in my heart and that is a kind of evil in itself. Only I can know these things and do these things”

Hysterical. Pent up and let out. Luna’s failing to speak now. Words trip over themselves. She remembers when she tried talking to anyone about discord. She was always ignored. Even Celestia. She remembered breaking mirrors. Panting with broken hooves cradled. Her sin broke through the surface and she had found herself screaming again. There was only the night and pain to give her company. It was the only company she had to choose. Nothing left to trust.

“What did you do? Luna. Tell me what happened. Tell me.”
“We led him outside the castle”
“And then?”
“We challenged him. He didn’t understand. He just looked confused. He asked why. We told him that too many were suffering. His chaos is killing us. Why couldn’t he listen? Why didn’t he say something? He stood there silent. He turned his back to us and drank his chocolate milk. Can you imagine that? He turned his damned back on us with chocolate milk. Celestia said do it and I did what I was told. That was the last time I used the elements of harmony.”

She’s speaking in a flurry now. Panicked and unrelenting it rushes out. Her face crumpled into regret and then shaking. Slowly and now quickly. She’s shuddering and stammering, staring outwards. Trembling in her flesh, trembling because of things lost. She sounds like a lunatic. Dangerous.

“He vanished and there was nothing left of him. I searched and there was nothing. I killed discord. Can’t you see? I killed him. I killed him. I murdered him and he’s gone. He’s gone. I want to find him. I want to talk. He’s gone though, he’s gone.”

Her voice would never balance out. This is the strange thing, that her voice is lower and lower. Quiet nightmares departed from her mouth. Her head slowly shaking left to right. The body of Luna rocking back and forth. The light is no kindness because in them tears can be seen gliding. Ending on the edge of her face. Falling Silent.

“He was everything and now he’s dead. I was so angry at him. But he’s dead. He’s gone. He’s gone and I need him to forgive me. I need him. It’s bad. It’s bad and I need him. Please. I need you discord. Please. Please. I need to go. I need to. I have to go. I have to see him. I have to. Please let me go. I need to see him. Please. I need to see him. I need him”

These words are said so softly. Made of nothingness then echoing of the walls of this cave. Can you see Luna? I know you can. You can see her weeping now. She would struggle toward the mouth of the cave and the only thing stopping her is streams of light. Her body curled into herself. Her body thundering and shaking, tears bled on the cave's floor. Such silenced anguish. She stays at the mouth and none can see her face. She’s sobbing and there’s nothing we can do.

Elle would move toward Luna. When she reaches Luna her arms slowly rise towards her and hold Luna in place. In-between gulps of air the pony would say no. She resists Elle’s hold. “No” she said. But Luna relents and she falls apart while Elle would hold her. She’s just aching in her arms now. An armful of everything she is.

Feel free to comment. Things will get worse

plains

Two damaged females. One holds the other. The rain would relent then die. Outside is the smell of freshly fallen rain. Dampness and crispness would hold the air. Hayden plunders through the supplies. He would find boxes and take them. The sun squanders its light.

“You okay?”
“No”
“You’re better though”
“Yes. I’m better. I don’t know why, but I’m better. Thank you Elle.”

He would reach them with the box in his hands. Hayden smiles slowly at Luna. The broken pony stares at the box he holds. He would place it in her hooves and hug her as well. Two of them holding the pony. The three of them would stare at the outside. The outside smothered in water.

“He had a good sense of humour”
“What?”
“He likes writing and told only me this. Everyone thinks he can’t read and write but he can. He could never kill, but he tried so hard to for a while. He thought that his conscience was something to fight not to listen to. He had no family and no home, and that explains a lot about most creatures like him. That they are free and freedom is terrifying. He could never admit it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I keep him. He’d hate that but I keep him inside of me. The memory of him. I see him sometimes when I think I’m alone. I’d walk out and I imagine him hiding in light or shadows. I know what he loves and what he hates. I know what he is. If I can remember that then he’s still alive. I’ll tell him this one day.”
“Christ”
“Pardon?”
“You miss him a lot. You miss discord”
“Yes. I miss him”
“You’re a bit of a romanticist aren’t you?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind Luna. Never mind”

Elle would leave Hayden with Luna and tend the fire. A woman hunched over the fire for a few seconds. She takes out a small sack of rice. She would take water from the plastic drums outside. The water would simmer and boil in a pan. The rice cooking.

Hayden stays with Luna, and she stiffly puts a wing around him. The boy examines Luna’s skin. He lifts his head and would glare at the tear tracks down her face. Luna holds a box filled with rattling and tumbling. His voice stitched on to the quiet. His mother can’t hear him.
“I’ve done what you done Luna”
“Pardon Hayden?”
“I’ve shouted at my ma”
“Really?”
“Yes I shouted at my ma. But it was a bad thing I think. I didn’t feel much better but I did it”
“Yes. I understand that little one”
“Luna you need to know. I don’t think you’re evil. Wait. Why are you laughing?”
“Because you made me happy little one. I think you’re the first to say that in a long while”
“It doesn’t sound like good laughter”
“I know. I’m sorry little one. It’s just I need to laugh or I’ll go crazy”
“Yeah”

Luna feels the edges of the box. Coarse surface and coarse colours of brown. She feels her way around intricacies in flaws and tears. The box battered, worn, just like them in a way. The box rattles and when she opens it there are packets of biscuits inside. Hayden would fidget watching her.

“I miss someone as well Luna”
“Really little one?”
“My pa”
“Oh”
“I see him sometimes in my sleep”
“I see discord as well”
“Does it get better?”
“What gets better little one?”
“Does everything get better? My ma says everything will get better, but I think she’s only saying that. I can’t think like my ma. She thinks of everything at the same time. I don’t know what to think”
“I don’t know Hayden. I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry I don’t know. But It’s good you’re asking these questions Hayden”
“I don’t think it’s good. It hurts. Those questions hurt Luna. It’s why I shouted at my ma.”

A tiny boy staring ferociously at the pony. How could he be that Luna? How could he be that small and feel so much? Hayden was quiet and polite. But underneath was a current of feeling. You can see it in colour framed eyes. A quiet kid that needs to talk more. A lot like his mother maybe.

“I told you not to worry little one”
“Okay. But my pa”
“What about him?”
“He walks up to me in my dreams Luna. He talks to me. I know it doesn’t sound it, but it’s really scary”
“I Know Hayden. I know”
“His mouth wasn’t moving. He was talking but his mouth wasn’t moving”

They would both frown in a silence between them. Hayden’s brow would furrow into ridges and grooves. Too old. Too old for his face. Luna would clumsily take a packet of biscuits in her hooves. Already night has approached the dull watery day. She would fumble and tear. When the package opens she gives him the biscuits. Hayden stops frowning and starts eating the biscuits. Halfway through the packet he rummages inside the box then opens another packet for Luna. They sit awhile taking dry crumbled bites.

“You two eating again?”
“Yes ma, but it’s only small. Just biscuits ma”
“Okay you two. I have rice cooking so save room for it”
“Okay ma”

Smoke drags and bites at their eyes. They all congregate closer to the back of the cave. Three bowls of rice served. The mother would open her hands and a small sprinkling of salt is spread on them. They eat with their hands and hooves. Rice licked of hands and Elle chuckling at the rice sticking to everything. Luna would look at a diluted night, rice stuck to her lips. All in all her stare was wasted for there was nothing outside.

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

“You awake Luna?”
“Yes little one. It’s hard to sleep at night”
“Oh. Okay. Did I just wake you up?”
“No. I just can’t sleep at night very well”
“Why Luna?”
“It’s because I used to be ruler of the night. All the skies and all their stars”
“Oh”

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

Dreary and heavy. Elle lifted her hands to the sunlight and it fell through. Streams of paled gold through her fingers. She would take shallow breaths of halted ashen air. She would prise Hayden off her. Her hands wonder to her hair then ties it back. Her hair is short, the kind of style he liked and ran his hand through. Food is running out Elle. Food is always running out.

She takes instant noodles and three teabags. She would stoke the fire with what’s left of the log. Barely a fire made in the corpse of the wood. Water would boil again, steam and smoke rising with the sun. Sunlight would slide on flats of dew and mist in the forest. She takes boiling water to be poured. Teabags brewed in the cup and the sour smell of noodles and all their spice and flavour. The smell of it whispered out and echoing in the stench of fallen rain. Hayden wakes up.

“Morning ma”
“Come over here”

She would wrap an arm around him and kiss the crown of his head. Hayden would murmur and grumble. Luna in a crumple of herself, asleep in an unzipped sleeping bag. When sunlight reaches her she wakes up coughing. The three of them spend the morning slowly eating and slowly drinking. Afterwards Elle would rise to kick the fire out. The shotgun in one hand and the compass in the other. They move from the cave with all they can carry. Moving south.

For days they do this. Sleeping eating then rising. They move like exiles, their collective eyes moving over the land they are banished to. Vanished world’s become harder to remember. Yet Luna still dreams of him. She hoped he would go away but he didn’t. Discord visits her sleep and when he does there is colour and life. She doesn’t trust these dreams. She can’t trust something good. Too good to last and too good to stay with her. If these dreams lasted any longer she wanted to sleep and join them. But she would wake shaking and most times Elle would wake with her.

They would trudge across the forest as the mist died. Overall the days seemed brighter and warmer. They left the forest after the fifth day into a stretch of plains and scatterings of trees among them. A river abounded it all, sawing through the landscape. Water left there to eat through the soft earth and rock. The sun bare. When Elle eyed this land she was reminded of America and its own great plains. Of what America is now and what it should’ve been.

Elle

Altogether they took on the plains. The sky would be moved by the plight of the trio. It’d open another pale expanse of itself to give them light. Plump fat batches of light. Heavy and hot and perched on their chests and backs. The plains opened beyond any opening imagined. Elle would stop and eyeball the endlessly spread landscape. Everything paling away into the blue. Into the clouds.

A glance filled with a compass. Her eyes scraping the horizon. The day shaved itself in to the curls of an afternoon. The blue, crisp blooming afternoon. The three of them all hold their struggles in backpacks and canvas. The weight is unkempt and messy, moving between Luna and Hayden. Unable to express affection normally Luna settled for thieving Hayden’s weight until Hayden would steal it back. Luna would inflate a smile for this sometimes. It’d only stay for a second before she’d lope back. To her distant, listless misery.

Promisingly Hayden was better at luring Luna out of that place. They share the long red dawns, the long red dusks for a week now. Ever since the outburst in the cave Luna was getting a little better at managing her grief. Her guilt.

Elle coped with death differently.

Elle moved and they followed. For a while, if it was possible she followed him. Her husband. Safe in the knowledge that he’s dead she followed him anyway. He would cut across the long grass, singing a pointless song. The legs of denim and his puffed out jacket. The aching un-realness of him caught up. It was another second of him standing there with the beautiful frame of his face. The curve of his neck she liked to kiss. Then he was gone.

The yearning suffering for it. How she despised. How she loved.

She kept walking despite it. A walking wounded heartbreak in the shape of a woman. She would have her face carved forward so no one could see it. Although clear to her now, she knew she’d forget his face. The painting of eye, mouth and cheekbones. His face and smell that was once hers a while ago.

They camped along the side of a river. The bags to one side and her grief on the other. Hayden and Luna were muttering about lunch. The rice was taken out. A can of spam. A tin of fruit for Luna. It would be placed on a canvased part of the ground. She left it to a scramble of hands and hoof. Hayden and Luna stoked a fire from billows of dead grass. The long dead tree from the banks of the river. Patiently the fire grows. The smoke picks itself up and stands. The spluttering spike of smoke. Tall in an infinite flatness.

Elle helped herself to the rice and another memory of him. Not the soft denim kind. But the bloodied kind. His face flat down with the pool of red underneath him. A murderer was slacked over him. A pistol in its hand. Behind him the glass was shattered out. The murderer had a wrapped ski-mask as a face. In the shards the mask reflected a smiling visage.

The sun didn’t help. The blinding ruin that the sun can make. In a far off land Hayden and Luna were still talking. The memory, however, was night. The looming smokiness of night. She remembered how even then the murderer in the ski-mask could cast a shadow. A Fragmented bloodied shadow, from broken glass, from the hanging stench of gunpowder.

The murderer spat out some words.
“I’m sorry.”
It’s smiling eyes revealed that it was all true. A cold cruelty held behind its mask. The murderer in the ski- mask lifted his hand and the pistol followed.

She held her husband’s gun. The Remington with the grinning iron barrel. Loaded with birdshot from when they’d go hunting. The gun kissed the air in a red. The barrel lifted. The bird shot splattered across. It slumped into the murderer and the murderer slumped into the ground. The pistol sat across the room, its’ blind barrel pointing to the splintered window. Smoke moving over.

The silence spread like a scream.

She knelt over her husband. The spluttering remains of him rolled over to his back. Strong enough to hold each other’s hands. It took a long while. His patience. His strength. His beauty. Another spluttering as she held his hands to her face. He tried to stroke away her tears while she crumbled and leaked all around him.

“We shouldn’t have fixed their car”
“No, we shouldn’t have”

She could see it. He could see it. His own personal death was coming to take him. But not yet. His breathing is flattened out. His flesh is dark.

“It was all my fault”
“It never was”

He was held tighter. He was beautiful. He was everything.

"Hayden"
"Yes. Hayden"
"He's outside right now"
"Yes"
"I'm sorry Elle"
"Okay"

Another stillness.

“Elle I’m going. My back’s ripped up.”

He faltered for another second then leaped. Death had picked its way through the shattered window and took the whole of him. He still held the hands of his wife. The murderer was slack. A bad impression of a human being.

The room would be filled with an absence. The filthy dark scratching at the filament bulbs. The start of sobs. More of a great emptying then a weeping. His body lay there unfinished and faded. She had emptied each tear and each sob for him. She wiped her face.

She remembered taking the shotgun. She bought the loader to the counter and took out the bird shot. The unreached shells pumped out in a clunk. She opened a cupboard. She found the box and loaded in the buckshot. A wind pushed its way through the room and rattled the barrel.

When she returned the Murderer in the ski-mask was gone. In a panic she takes a tired boy into the truck. She had enough time to kiss the ring on his finger. Then her lips on the top of his head. She left it there on the top of the head. The kiss the last thing left in the room.

The memory of him lingered. Heaved.

She watched the memory shuck itself into the wind and the fire. Reality reached a fever pitch. It crashed over her, while the campfire had reached a hazed conclusion. The hissing fit of smoke. Risen to the sky. Halted by the blue. No flames left. A boy and a pony pick themselves up. All around them the mess is stowed into the canvas. The bundles heaved on to backs.

All around her the absence of him.

She stood.

She would see him waiting in the south.

She walked.

leaving the forest

They slept unwell and the three of them all share drawn hollow faces. Sunlight is a rumour falling through the insignificant breaks of forest. They break their fast with powdered milk and a single tin of beans shared between them. More than half their water is used so the group travel lighter. The shotgun's safety is stared at. She snaps off the safety.

They step out from underneath the massive root and Hayden would mutter “too tall ma it’s too tall mama. I'm really scared.” She tells him not to be scared, and that she’s here, nothing can get to him. Hayden holds her hand tightly. Luna then extends her wing over Hayden for a few seconds, she murmurs something.
“What did you say Luna?”
“I told you not to be afraid little one. Don’t be afraid.”
“Thanks Luna”

Hayden gives Luna a tight squeeze and her face remains impassive. There is affection and gratitude in his grasp but Luna chooses to ignore it. Luna wonders why she even committed to this small act of kindness. The mother wonders how this pony manages to surprise her.
They step out with the mother first and the smell of burnt gasoline haunts a root sixty feet from them. They walk towards it curious. The fire had crumpled into an ashen complex. Hand or foot prints made in the blackened remains. Frayed wind slips through and takes some of the ash. There is no further sign of intrusion apart from a single spent casing on the ground next to the old campfire. She picks it up then checks the compass for south. She leads and they follow.

The colossal trees are hazed shadows in the distance after three hours of walking. They collapse and the mother and son have smiles on their faces. Luna thinks they’re glad to leave the fear behind but she’s not sure with these two. The sky is a slate of blue, the clouds like stains. The blue and white drips on the company’s skin, a blinding sun hidden behind pale dense clouds.

They take their packs off and then the pair would fuss over what Luna carries. They take it off then all lie down and stare at the sky. The mother breaks out a tin of peaches for each of them, then would open a packet of cream crackers. Hayden saved two of the massive fruits from the slabs of treeline behind them. He would bring them out, split one in half and give Luna a half. They say grace. Luna is neither frowning nor smiling.

“Mama”
“Yeah”
“These clouds are strange. These clouds are different”
“They’re bigger aren’t they?”
“Yeah. They move really fast as well ma. They’re really fluffy as well”
“What you think Luna?”

There is mild amusement and concern merged into the mother’s voice.

“Good”
“Is it like this at you’re home?”
“I suppose it is”
“Is your home nice?”
“It was. I don’t know now”
“Were you scared last night?”
“Yes”
“You don’t talk much do you?”
“No. I don’t talk much”

Luna moves till the mother is centred in her vision. The mother tilts her head, still splayed across the ground. What move you going to play human? The mother doesn’t look surprised but expectant and weary. She’s predicted that this was a long time coming. Hayden stays in the common silence children retreat to when adults argue.

“Is that your problem?”
“I don’t have problems”
“Well. Is that why you’re upset? You don’t like others?”
“Others don’t like me”
“Okay”

Their voices slip out into the abandoned world only heard by a silent child then wrung out in the wind. The mother sits up then would smile meekly. “Okay. Its okay” she said to Luna. A voice firm, unbiased. She talks as if willing a deaf person to speak.

“Has this happened to you before? You ever saw our kind?”
“No. You’re very alien”
“Why aren’t you scared of us? Or interested in us? You’ve never eaten or seen this food, it could’ve killed you. I could’ve killed you. We speak the same language and you’re not even concerned. You don’t even know what I’m holding in my hand”
“Does it matter. Should I say a stick? What should I say, what should I do?”
“It’s a weapon to kill others. It’s a shotgun”
“Well, then it’s a shotgun. What else needs to be said?”
“You’re hurt Luna. I can see it in how you talk and how you don’t want to talk. You’ve been hurt and you’re hurting now. Now you think you’re entitled to not care. I don’t want to weigh in and say things but that’s how it is.”

When Luna moves her head to observe far off things in her mind, the mother is fearful. God knows what those eyes have seen. Hayden spits out fruit seeds into the long grass plain they all lie on.

“We need to hope a little”
“Pardon?”
“Have a little faith that things will get better.”
“It probably won’t”
“But believe it will. This goes for you too Hayden. If you believe it sometimes you don’t need things to get better. Sometimes that’s all we can have. That isn’t a bad thing is it?”
“I don’t know. I know I can live without it.”

The mother takes her cue and stares at the sky. Already grey clouds scrawl themselves together. Hayden remains silent biting chunks out of the fruit. She wonders about Hayden and if he’ll either make the bad choices she or Luna has made. She wonders if he’ll ever understand that were the only choices to make. The frigid sharp smell of grass occupies the small silence they share.

“Thank you for making my son less scared. When you put your wing around him. Thank you”
Then the mother drinks the syrup from the tinned peaches. Luna does the same.

Rain clouds boil somewhere at the horizon, the tortured thud of thunder and the promise of a storm. “Too quick” she said, as the storm tore at the sky. Already the air seems damp or charged with something and the mother keeps staring at the storm willing it not to break over them. Urgent words are thrown from her mouth and it gives them the energy to fumble on what they carry.