While Sun Strider flew over the canyons of the Dragonlands, River Breeze counted her bits at the market. While the orange-red Pegasus crossed jungles and forests, the turquoise Earth Pony cared for her garden. Sun Strider lived for adventure, so full of twists and turns. River Breeze lived for her garden and the flowers and watermelons she sold, so full of colours and scents.
River Breeze often looked up at the sky in her little village of Viridian, heart jumping at every bird and Pegasi that flew overhead, only to sigh and return to her dusting or gardening, scolding herself for getting her hopes up. When the sunny coat of Sun Strider finally blazed across the sky to land in the middle of Viridian, she was always the first galloping to welcome her with a tackled hug.
River Breeze’s heart sank lower and lower as the days progressed. An entire season had passed without sight of the blazing-red Pegasus in the tranquil skies of Viridian. Sun Strider spent so much time exploring rarely-trod valleys and far-out lands. Had she encountered something dangerous? So many monsters had surfaced recently, the possibility was real. She always went far, too far for River Breeze to hope to follow.
So many of the townsfolk had given up on the Pegasus. They said she would never come back this time, or that she would never stay. River Breeze never gave up hope. She had had plans to turn the guest room Sun Strider usually stayed in when she visited into a greenhouse, but couldn’t bear to do it. Before the Pegasus' first travel, River Breeze had promised her she would always have a bed waiting for her. Even in the darkest of days, seeing that room decorated with Sun Strider’s things made her remember her friend’s own promise: she would be back.
It was one of those days, with worry in her heart and arranging a bouquet of flameheart tulips, that River Breeze lifted her eyes up to the sky and let out a strangled gasp. True to her name, like a shooting star rising on Equestria, Sun Strider appeared against the azure of the sky. She angled her wings for a descent and landed with a cloud of dust and a thunderclap. Before the Pegasus could shake her yellow mane free of the dust that settled around her, River Breeze had her hooves wrapped around her.
“Heya, River,” Sun Strider said with a grin, returning the hug. “Missed me?”
River Breeze didn’t answer, and only hugged her harder. Slight pain shot in her chest as she pressed against something hard and metallic in her friend’s travel bag that had come to rest in front of her. Sun Strider patted her head and laughed. “River, people are watching.”
River Breeze let go of her friend, face flushed in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry! It’s just, I haven’t seen you in so long!”
“Well, why don’t we catch up at the Bakers’ like always?” The Pegasus pointed to a small establishment in the periphery of Viridian’s square.
River Breeze nodded with a grin. “I can’t wait to hear everything about your adventures! Beside, the Bakers have a new recipe for their pastries and coffee, and it is out of this world! I can’t wait for you to taste it.”
As they walked to the bakery, River Breeze glanced at Sun Strider’s saddlebag. “What’s in that bag anyway?”
“Just a little statue I picked up from an abandoned temple.” She said it like it was no big deal and with a cocky smile. “I have a meeting with an appraiser in Canterlot to see how much it’s worth.”
The Bakers’ Bakery smelled of sweets and puff pastries, and radiated a charming heat in the cooling air of fall. River Breeze and Sun Strider sat around a little round glass table that cast shimmering lights on the floor where the sun hit it. Low shelves of muffins and cupcakes of all sorts lined the wall, both painted bright yellow. The Bakers weren’t known for their fashion sense.
“The last time you were here felt like it was ages ago,” River Breeze said while they waited for their coffee and their croissants to arrive. “You must have seen some incredible things during that time!”
Sun Strider chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve seen a few new places. Forgotten temples, unknown tribes. Almost got an arrow through my wings and been captured by a cannibal tribe a few moons ago. How’s it been going in Viridian?”
River Breeze blinked. “In Viridian? We had a visit from the Princess of Friendship! She said she wanted to see all the small villages in Equestria, so she was on a sort of tour.”
“Oh—” Sun Strider was about to say ‘I saw her too, I even helped her clear part of the Dragonlands of cragwurms’, but decided to keep that for herself. “That’s amazing!”
River Breeze paused, trying to come up with something interesting. She talked about the flower contest she had participated in, the small gossips, and how Tulip and Rose Garden started small fights everywhere they went because of their rivalry in the flower contest, but those events soon seemed mundane to her, pointless compared to what Sun Strider must have seen. Even her spotting of a golden eagle last week, a species so rare most researchers would never see one in their life seemed dull.
“And that’s about it.” River Breeze smiled a small smile. “You know, not much ever happens here. I mean, we had the Solstice Festival while you were gone, but…” She lowered her eyes to the table. “And that’s all.”
Sun Strider winced a little. She had promised herself she would be back in Viridian to celebrate the Solstice like she did every year, but she had been so caught up travelling through Deadthirst Canyon to get to Blackheart Gulch she hadn’t realized the festival had come and went. And when she realized, she had been so ashamed she hadn’t gone back right away. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, you were busy.” River Breeze’s eyes lit up as their coffee and croissants arrived. “Oh, you’re not ready for this!”
Sun Strider eyed the steaming croissant and cup with interest, her tongue giving her lips a quick lick. It had been a long time since she had had the Bakers’ creations, and even though she had travelled to Prance, the homeland of the uncontested masters of pastries, she couldn’t deny the nostalgic endearment the Bakers’ had on her. “Allow me!”
She bit on the croissant, and her excitement simmered down. It was good, without a doubt, but compared to some of what she had tasted, it was a bit on the dry side, a bit harder, without that extreme fluffiness that had made the Prench croissants so good. But as River Breeze was grinning at her, she turned her smile up. Granted, it wasn’t hard: the croissant had been delicious, especially given how empty her stomach felt. “Wow, that is pretty good.”
“I know! I couldn’t stop eating them for a whole week. I think I put on a couple of pounds from them.”
Sun Strider looked up at her friend and back at the half-finished snack. Was it really so much better than what River Breeze was used to? Viridian wasn’t the most exciting of villages, nor the most prolific or well-known for its food, but had the food been so bland that an above-average croissant counted as heavenly for the townsfolk?
No, it wasn’t that they were used to bland. It was her. Despite her living most of her time in the jungles or forests of faraway lands, she had seen so much and tasted such exotic and expertly-made delicacies it dampened everything else. And the atmosphere of the coffee shop, relaxed and composed, was alien to her, a far cry from the bustle of the big cities and her heated pursuits of lost artifacts in the desert.
River Breeze’s eyes alternated between looking at the coffee cup and looking at Sun Strider with an assured smile. The Pegasus understood the silent message and brought the cup to her lips. Bitter, and vaguely papery.
“So? It’s their special blend, I helped them come up with it!”
“I like it.” Sun Strider put her cup back on the table, a feeling of longing washing over her. Once, there had been a time where this kind of activity, relaxing in a coffee shop with her best friend, would have been something she had been looking forward to all day. Now, an odd anxiety crept over her, and she wanted nothing more than to get out, shut River Breeze out of her mind and go back to losing herself in exploring her temples.
She tried to focus on her friend’s tale, get involved in the retelling of her mundane life. She found herself drifting on the soft tones of her voice, flowing like her namesake. Her big blue eyes showed as much ardour and investment as she’d ever seen in any explorer’s all the while she was talking about garden care and bird viewing.
There was a strange feeling in her chest, but she couldn’t quite tell what it was.
River Breeze and Sun Strider talked well into the afternoon, although the Earth Pony couldn’t help but notice her friend fidgeting and looking generally ready to go at any moment. Granted, she had had nothing to say. She could gush about how well her garden was doing — very well, and the flowers looked even prettier than last year and the vegetables were delicious — and all the details of the hard work and care that went into growing all of her exotic plants. But Sun Strider wasn’t a fan of flowers. They were too immobile and unchanging for her tastes. That was why River Breeze loved them so much. It was the same with the birds she watched. They were free to go wherever they wanted to, but they often just stayed in one place with their family.
But they weren’t afraid of change like she was. They just didn’t bother.
River Breeze had waited for Sun Strider to come back for moons, and now that she was there, she couldn’t hope to measure up to what the Pegasus had seen during her travels.
“And you,” the Earth Pony asked, “do you want to talk about what you saw?”
Sun Strider’s eyes lit up and a grin illuminated her face. “You won’t believe your ears when you hear about all the places I visited.”
She had been right. With every new temple, deserted valley, ghost town, and altar to old gods Sun Strider talked about, River Breeze’s eyes widened further in surprise and disbelief. Sun Strider spoke of the stone-cold corridors and sun-specked forests like an artist painting a canvas, making the Earth Pony’s heart race at each and every twist and turn in her adventures. They used to read stories like these when they were still little fillies full of imagination, the adventures of Daring Do, the daredevil Pegasus who uncovered secrets and conspiracies from all over the world and who thrust herself between the bad guys and their goal of world domination and destruction. Sun Strider had taken the first chance she could to make her dream a reality and live these kinds of adventure for herself. From how passionately she talked about them, it must have been something special.
She even went to visit Manehattan, a place they’d promised themselves they would visit together one day. However, as luck would have it, they never got the chance, River Breeze being too caught up in her own life and unwilling to go away from home. Besides, she didn’t have that much money to spare.
And so she was stuck in Viridian. Earth Ponies never really went far from their home, and they liked it that way. She had her garden, and that was enough. At 7 flat, she gave her flowers water and made sure they were well and ready for the day. When she finished, she enjoyed a walk through the market to pick up the best vegetables she could find at the best price. Her relations with other vendors was such that with a couple of well-placed words, or a look in a direction or another, she would get fresher, cheaper veggies, and often a little extra to go with. It reminded her of a game the foals liked to play these times around, a board game of complex political relationships. As much as she delighted in imagining herself to secretly pull the strings of the marketplace, she was still playing a game more to distract herself than anything else. She went back to her home, and, after caring for her garden for hours, meticulously tending for each and every flower individually, read her book of the week for a while, made herself dinner, ate, and went to bed.
River Breeze envied her friend. Sun Strider’s schedule was ever-changing depending on the desert storms or bandit attacks. The rare moments of respite she enjoyed in the bigger cities were spent seeing the most wonderful places in the world. The kind of places River Breeze could only dream of one day catching a glimpse of on a postcard. She couldn’t help the comfortable heat of friendship that had bathed her when Sun Strider had arrived turn nasty with jealousy. Just because she had wings, did that make her so much better than her? Sun Strider lived such a wonderful life while River Breeze rotted away in a boring little seaside town.
River Breeze scolded herself inwardly for thinking such horrible things. Sun Strider was a wonderful mare, and she didn’t deserve such jealousy. Sun Strider hadn’t chosen to stay and busy herself with a garden for a living. River Breeze had done that herself. She couldn’t be mad at her, even when her travels carried her much too far for an Earth Pony to follow.
But River Breeze had stopped smiling — really smiling — halfway through Sun Strider’s stories. Dejection had crept over the wonder and amazement when she had realized how her life would never even look like a spark next to the blazing flame of Sun Strider. When her friend would leave again, what awaited her? A life of little tasks and peaceful non-happenings, and a new wait for the blaze of the Pegasus. Her life only seemed to take meaning at the moment she was at her side, talking with her, laughing with her. She sighed inwardly and smiled, intent on enjoying as much of her presence as she could before she went away.
The air was heavy on Sun Strider. The village around her went along to its gentle rhythm, its citizens taking their time, enjoying life. Her coffee, too bitter and artificial, went cold. Shadows stretched as the afternoon turned to evening and the faraway mountains eclipsed the lowering Sun like the jagged teeth of a beast closing on the world. When she and River Breeze were younger, they loved making up stories of great beasts devouring the sun when they saw those mountains in the evening. She yawned. Silly stories for silly fillies.
The evening wind caught in River Breeze’s mane. The soft strands of white hair swayed and flowed in the current, gleaming from their owner’s careful care. Sun Strider couldn’t help but feel the weight of her own ratty mane, the knotted hair, the dirt encrusted inside. She didn’t mind being dirty, especially during her forest runs and when flying through danger-laden temples — she didn’t have time to worry about that — but a part of her remembered the days when she lived her life a clean and well-groomed filly with fondness. She remembered the beds, soft and so, so inviting, wrapped up in blankets, lulled to sleep by nothing but their own wishes, without having to worry about the times predators were awake, or — in the case of her pursuits — skipping over that comfort for days at a time, staying awake under the moonlight, charging ahead in hope of catching her prey.
“Sun Strider, are you all right?”
The Pegasus started at her friend’s words. By Celestia, the lowering sun was weighing down on her fatigue, threatening to tip her over to the world of sleep. “I’m all right, just a bit tired.”
River Breeze smiled. A warm smile, like an inviting blanket or a cup of tea. The world seemed brighter when she smiled, like the shadows turned away from her. “You can have my guest room. I didn’t have the courage to turn it into a greenhouse like I said I would.”
Sun Strider considered it for a moment. Her limbs ached from her travels, and her eyes were already closing by themselves. She had to admit, the prospect of crashing on River Breeze’s bed and letting the night wash over her was tempting.
But a weight on her side brought her back to reality. “I’d love to, but my meeting with the appraiser is tomorrow. If I miss it, I’ll have to wait Celestia knows how long to get another one. Then, it’s off to the Crystal Empire with me to join up with an exploration team up there. Sorry, River Breeze, but…”
She quickly wiped the nascent tears from one of her eyes and turned to her friend with a smile. “I think this is goodbye for now.”
“What? Already?” River Breeze’s face was frozen in shock. “But you just got here.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Sun Strider said, closing on her paralysed friend to pull her in a hug. “Oh, I’m so sorry, River Breeze, I wish I could stay longer.”
“No, it’s all right.” River Breeze patted her on the back. It didn’t feel sincere. “You have places to go. I’ll just be here, watering my watermelons, when you get back.”
Sun Strider broke the hug and forced her biggest smile at the Earth Pony, trying her best not to break down in front of her crestfallen friend. “Hey, I’ll make sure I’m back within a month, all right?”
River Breeze nodded.
The Earth Pony, and Viridian itself became smaller as Sun Strider went farther and farther away. The weight on her side felt like an iron shackle.
She glided in the night’s air for the better part of an hour before coming to a rest on the peak of a nearby mountain shrouded in mist. She only had to look for a few minutes to spot the wooden chair she had left behind the last time she had been there. Mistfall Ridge. The mountain chain rose from the earth like a giant had slashed at the crust from below, leaving a jagged, uneven half-circle behind. She had spent how long again in this desolate place searching for nothing, and finding about as much? Two, three weeks?
And she couldn’t even spare a day to relax, to spend with a friend.
She took out the statue from her bag. In the shape of a bird in flight, its gold was tarnished from years spent in a musty temple. Soon, it would spend the rest of its life in a private collection, having only served to weight her pockets with bits.
She rose her eyes to the horizon. The mist thickened around her by the second. Soon, she wouldn’t be able to see a metre in front of her. She had to leave.
She replaced the statue in her bag and kicked the mountains behind her, taking flight, and soaring higher.
At 2 in the morning, a knock at the door jolted River Breeze awake. She dragged herself downstairs and fumbled with the lock in a half-asleep stupor, only to jump at the sight of the blazing-red Pegasus standing in the doorway.
“Sun Strider?”
“Good morning,” the Pegasus said with a grin. “I hope you’ve prepared the spare bed for me.”
“I — no.” River Breeze blinked, trying to chase away the illusion she was sure stood there. “You said you needed to go.”
Sun Strider shrugged. “I sold the statue to a museum in Manehattan. I thought it’d fit much more there than in the private room of some bigwig collecting dust.” She took out a small pouch and jingled it in front of River Breeze with a grin. “They gave me twenty thousand bits for it, plus two tickets for their ancient civilizations exhibit that’s opening soon!”
“That’s great,” River Breeze said, coming accept the fact that Sun Strider had indeed flown back all the way from the big city to Viridian in less than the night, “but that pouch seems a bit small to carry twenty thousand bits.”
“Well, between the ten thousand I deposited in my bank account and the eight thousand I already spent, it doesn’t weight much now,” Sun Strider said with a smug face.
“You already spent eight thousand like that?” River Breeze considered her friend, unsure if she was joking or if she had blown her money on something ridiculous. “How?”
“For our trip, of course!”
River Breeze stayed stunned for a moment. “What?”
“Our trip!” Sun Strider took the Earth Pony by the shoulders with a big grin. “We’re going to Manehattan together for a month, all expenses covered!”
River Breeze slapped herself. The sound resounded in the quiet night, leaving only an astonished Sun Strider and the Earth Pony now sporting a reddened cheek.
“I’m not dreaming,” she mumbled. “I’m not dreaming. Are you serious?”
“As serious as I’ll ever be.” Sun Strider stared into River Breeze’s eyes. “I can’t be away from you anymore, River. You’ve been my best friend since I was just a little filly. You never let me down. But for four years, all I’ve done is leave you alone while I ran away on grand adventures.”
She undid the buckle of her bag and took out a copy of the very first Daring Do book she had borrowed from River, and pushed it into the Earth Pony’s hooves. “This is what inspired me to do what I do. But that’s not the life I really want. I like adventure, I like seeing unexplored valleys and temples, but I can’t continue to live like this. Not if you’re not in my life.”
“Sun Strider…”
Sun Strider finished wiping her eyes and shoved a hoof over River Breeze’s mouth. “Shush. I’m not done. I’m never here because I didn’t want to admit that I needed you. I thought that if I went away, I would stop feeling so alone. But I can’t. I won’t. I want to stay here, and maybe, yeah, sometimes go out for a few days. But I want to stop running away.”
“So you’ll stay here?”
Sun Strider nodded.
River Breeze smiled. “Well, my home is your home. And if you want to visit places, I would love to try to accompany you. Just… maybe not temples and the like.”
“I think I’m done with temples. I’m not Daring Do. I liked it while it lasted, but there’s no point in doing stuff like that if I’m far from everyone. I’m here to stay, and,” she added, yawning, “right now, to sleep.”
River Breeze took Sun Strider by the shoulders and guided her gently inside her house. “Welcome home, Sun Strider.”
