Chapter 4

Moving again

I hate everything. The huge pain in my head was a sign that I was still alive so at least I had that going for me. I froze, trying to clear my head and concentrate.

It was the second hangover in two days, I really should be more careful, to not make it a habit. Well, at least I’m about to move again soon, and there’s no time for drinking on the job. Speaking of, I should probably finish all my plans before moving out. Who knows when I’ll be back next time?

Once I felt good enough to move again I made an attempt to get off the bed. The headache that I got in response told me that I made a grave mistake. I slowly opened my eyes and carefully turned my head to look around. The jar with what remained of my pickle juice supply had been placed on the table right next to my bed. Thanking Crone in my mind, I levitated it to me and took a long sip. A cold liquid helped me concentrate and made moving my head much less painful. Then the events of the yesterday’s evening hit me like a balefire bomb. What was I thinking? I definitely needed to see Crone before heading out and at least apologize. He didn’t deserve to have me shoving my problems on him like this.

Finally I stood up and walked to a window. Judging by the amount of ponies on the street it was early morning. Which meant I had more than enough time to get ready before the meeting. After spending fifteen minutes trying to hide that stupid white stripe in my mane I gave up and went to check up on supplies. Usually caravans provide some food and healing potions but relying on that is not a good idea.

I was about to head out when I noticed a deck of cards lying on the table. After pondering if I should take it with me or put it with the rest of my collection I levitated it to myself and put it in the pocket. Having some cards with you could be much more beneficial than it seems at first glance.

Not losing any more time, I head out straight to Crone’s place, hoping to get there before he leaves. While it's supposed to be his day off, knowing what happened yesterday he probably will be running all over this dumpsterfire of a town looking for evidence.

“Ohh, Clipsy! Long time no see!” Oh, sweet Celestia, why now? I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around. The viridian earth pony was approaching me with a friendly smile.

“Lily?! Sorry, I didn’t see you, but I really ne…”

“So I’ve heard we’ll be working together? That’s so exciting! We didn’t get a chance to properly get to know each other before.” She giggled, playing with her swirly mane. I hated when I couldn’t understand if ponies were sarcastic or not.

“Yes, I remember Ace mentioning that… uh, sorry I’m in a bit of a hurry right now, how about we’ll meet at the The Bhramin’s pit at noon?” I blurted out trying my best to sound friendly.

“Of course, no worries! I apologize for delaying you. Good luck with your business.” I’ve been around her long enough to know that it was mostly a facade. Lily was not the pony you could take lightly and I hoped to talk more with the real her before we head out. But for now I had more pressing matters to attend.

Finally reaching Crone’s place I heaved a sigh of relief, when I noticed the opened window.

“Hey, Crone!” I called. “Do you have a moment?” After a moment of silence the door opened and my friend rushed to me looking worried.

“Midnight? What happened? Are you alright?” He was scanning the area around, his muscles tense, and wings half opened.

I smiled and carefully put my hoof on his back. “Nothing happened, I just wanted to talk. Do you want to do it here, or should we come inside?” Crone relaxed, the expression of worry on his face changed to the one of confusion.

“Of course! Sorry, it’s very unusual to see you coming here. Especially just to talk.” He noticeably relaxed and let out a relieved sigh. “Usually I’m the one who's coming to you.” He chuckled, before offering me a soft smile and gesturing towards the door. “I need to be going soon, but I can spare some time for you.”

I entered the small but very tidy room, with a couch near the window. Suddenly I felt a slight pinch of shame remembering my own apartment.

“Wow, it’s pretty nice.” I managed, and sat on a couch. “So, about yesterday…” Crone sat next to me and I felt a hoof gently touching my shoulder.

“Well, for a start you can look at me instead of those lockers.” Damn you crone, why do you always have to make it harder. I sighed and slowly turned my head to him taking a deep breath.

“Right. I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dumped all of it on you like this, it just was bottling up for a while, and I know you have a lot of your own problems already, so…”

“It’s alright.”

“What?”

“You’re going through some rough shit, and need someone to listen. And I am more than happy to do it.” He hugged me with one hoof pulling me slightly closer. “Listen, I know you used to try and look calm and collected, like you have everything under control on your job. But life isn’t your job, you’re allowed to feel upset, and show emotions. Don’t worry about yesterday, it’s alright. I promise. He was looking me in the eyes, smiling. I gently put my hoof on his shoulder and smiled back. The notion of casually sharing feelings with others felt weird to me, but it was worth a shot. Even if it’ll take me a while, to get used to.

“Right, sorry, it’s just a lot that has happened recently, and I… yeah. Thank you for listening to me. It means a lot and I’ll try to be more open in the future.”

“I guess ‘try’ is the key word here.” He chuckled before nodding. “I get you, thanks for coming here today, it was quite a surprise. Sorry if it’s a little messy usually I don’t expect any guests here.” He looked around the room, stopping his gaze at the small envelope laying on the table. Suddenly he stood up and darted to one of the lockers. “However I really need to go, I’m sorry I can’t give you more time, but I can’t be late!”

“Oh, uh… actually I need to go too, we’re moving out today. Thank you for listening, I’ll let you know when I’ll be stopping here next time.” I stood up from the couch and walked to the door.

“Yeah, sure, no worries.” Crone blurted trying to pack his saddlebag. Not wanting to distract him any further I went out of his apartment, and headed straight to The Bhramin’s pit.

***

The place was as crowded as always, today we had Velvet’s coming with a water caravan, which could easily be found by a long line of ponies waiting for their queue and sounds of fighting for the better spot. I looked around, trying to find Lily, noticing her standing slightly left to the entrance talking with somepony. I perked my ears and slowly walked towards them.

“…you again, I am not looking for hire.”

“Come on, I’ll pay a lot of caps, probably more than you can make standing in this dump.” The raspy voice of the short earth pony was giving a rather unsettling feeling.

“For the last time I won’t work as your personal bodyguard, and as I told you I’m already hired.” Hearing the irritation in Lily’s voice I picked up a pace making my way through a dusty street.

“Hi! Need any help?” The stallion almost jumped and quickly turned to me, his muscle tense.

“Hey, go mind your own business.” It was saying something about how noisy this place was, that no pony batted an eye at the shouting stallion.

“We’re working together, so right now I am her business, now please leave us.” The cheerful facade from earlier disappeared completely, as I noticed familiar spark in her eyes.

He gave Lily a long look before growling, “Fine”. And retreated to whatever hole he crawled out of.

“Thanks Midnight, some ponies just can’t take no for an answer.” She sighed then looked at me, smiling. “Anyway now when this is out of the way, I’m happy to work together again.” I returned her smile, with a short nod.

“Same here, and sorry for earlier, I was in a hurry.” She chuckled.

“I figured as much, no worries, I understand. Now what do you think of this job?” Huh? That’s an odd question. I blinked at her a couple times before answering.

“Seems pretty standard to me, we’re keeping them safe on the road to safe harbor, then getting paid on arrival. Why do you ask?” She began slowly walking across the Pit, motioning for me to follow her.

“It does seem to be rather straightforward, doesn’t it. But there is some tension in them. The closer the departure the more it grows.” I looked at her in confusion.

“Isn’t it normal to be worried before getting on the route? Even most experienced caravaneers are nervous when going into the wasteland.” She nodded, navigating through the crowd, before turning to me.

“True, but there’s something different about them compared to your usual road anxiety. Hadn’t you noticed?” I shrugged. She was always much more perceptive about noticing other ponies feelings. Sometimes scarily so. “Well if I had to guess I’d say there’s somepony targeting them specifically and they know about it.”

“Why would anyone target such a small caravan?” Somehow after her explanation I was even more confused than before.

“No idea, and I doubt they’d tell us. Anyway I just wanted to hear your thoughts on the matter, are you ready to move?” I nodded and we moved towards the eastern guard post where Ace with his wife were waiting for us.

Couple minutes later we saw Ace arguing with the captain about something, while his wife and Ray, standing near by the former, looked worried. I shared looks with Lily. Grimm. Just our luck that today we’ll face the crankiest asshat as our departure officer. We rushed to them, but before we can interfere the red earth pony turned to us and barked.

“What the fuck are you doing here? This is the guard's business.”

“Well they are our guards.” Ace was noticeably relieved by our arrival. He looked at us, pleadingly. “Please, those guards refuse to let us out!” Lily arched her brow turning to Grim.

“And would you do that, mister guard captain?” It was scary how quickly she could switch between her usual self and that sugary, bubbly mask. “What those sweet ponies would have possibly done to be denied the right to pass through here?” Even Grimm looked slightly unnerved.

“They refuse to tell us their destination.” He glared at Ace. “And I don’t give a fuck how many…”

“And why would you need to know their destination?” Lily offered, her ears perking up. “And even more so,” She made a step forward. “Why would their refusal being enough of a reason to not let them pass?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking for the past fifteen minutes!” Ace seemed to be very happy to finally have someone on his side. “We just wanted to know why suddenly it is the required information. It never used to be before.”

“We are going to analyze that data, see how we can improve to improve our services for caravans like yours.” He recited in almost mechanical tone. I wonder how long it took to rehearse.

“Well, I would love to hear an explanation how this information will help you to improve anything. As well as what are those ‘services’ that you allegedly provide.” I made a few steps forward, stopping right in front of the Grimm.

“It’s confidential, now tell us your destination or fuck off, and stop wasting our time.” He growled at me.

“So, let me get this straight. You are doing a campaign to help the caravans, but you refuse to tell how to the very caravans you’re claiming to help.” I replied in the most even tone I could muster. “How about this, if you won’t let us pass, then we’ll go away… right to the Bhramin’s pit and tell all the Caravans about this new rule of yours and see if they’ll be happy to hear that they have to disclose their route to a random assholes from the guard.”

“And,” Lily stepped right next to me. “how pleased the citizens will be when they learn that all caravans stopped trading in the protest.” Somehow her sugary tone felt more threatening than Grimms loud barking.

“As if they’d do that.” He spat turning to her.

“You want to test? If there is one thing that unites all the caravans, is that they don’t like being told what to do, so once the news breaks it won’t be hard to convince them, they do have all the leverage after all.”

Grimm’s features tensed even more, as he thought about the possible consequences, clearly not expecting such a resistance to his demands. Finally he replied.

“Fine. It’s your loss, but don’t blame us if it turn out that the roads aren’t as safe anymore.” He turned away and motioned to his squad to let us through.

“Oh thank you!” Ace galloped to us, beaming with excitement. “I thought we would be stuck here for good.”

Me and Lily gave a short nod. “Well, let’s move until they changed their mind.” I said, taking my position at the tail end of the caravan. When everypony was ready we went through the open gates into the wasteland. And while it was always a bit sad leaving safe walls of the city, it felt really good to be moving again.

Author's Note

Well, it took way longer than I wanted it too. As per usual. This time the delay was mostly cause by the fact that I needed to write two more short stories which took the time I usually would devote to writing the next chapter. One of them — "The Phoenix" is already posted here and second one sill be soon. I think around early December. Anyway I'm very happy to finally get the story going, and hopefully next chapters will come out much sooner (and will be more interesting). Hope you enjoyed the read and feel free to let me know if there are any mistakes or inconsistencies.
Huge thanks to Heartshine for helping with fleshing out the story and Kkat for creating this wonderful universe.