The Immortal Dream

Time seemed to pass more quickly for Lyantra as more time passed. Once a single day didn't amount to her entire existence, more days felt ordinary instead of forever. The same phenomenon repeated for weeks, and eventually, for months as well.

Some aspects of her life changed as time passed, and others stayed the same. True to her word, Garnet stopped taking her to the doctors for experiments - they still visited occasionally to measure and question her, but Lyantra could tell they were just interested in observing now, and not in trying to make her change.

Not that observing her was great. She had mostly resigned herself to never again feeling like her body belonged to her, never fully banished the memory of the darkness evaluating her with all those eyes and mouths. And while the doctors didn't criticize her like Makalov had, the surgical precision of their remarks about her made it clear they had nothing good to say, either.

Also, the vast majority of their attention was focused on her stomach, which had never stopped growing.

She tried not to think about it. Trying not to think about it was the best she could manage, and the best advice anyone around her knew how to give. It was hard not to think about it, when it did things like interfering with her natural gait or sometimes moving of its own accord, and listing the reasons it was hard not to think about just made her think about it more. Especially at night, when she had nothing else to do but try to get comfortable and find a position to lay in that wouldn't make her worry about waking up lopsided in the morning. But really, she tried.

She tried and tried, vigorously sticking to her cleaning duties. And as she worked, she discovered one ray of normalcy, a single buoy she could use to keep her thoughts from drifting like a strange, uncharted sea: Garnet's stomach was growing, too.

"Is this really worth it to you?" Garnet asked one day, standing behind her as she brewed a pot of tea.

"You keep asking that," Lyantra reminded her, still thinking of her name as Lyantra even though it had been months since she got permission to find a new name for herself. "And my answer is not gonna change."

Garnet leered at the tea over her shoulder.

"Staying in bed like the doctors want is boring," Lyantra told her, sitting on her haunches as she worked to give her spine a rest. "I tried it and there's nothing to do. And I like having tea with you."

Garnet evaluated her. "Having tea with me is a compelling enough reason to get out of bed when you can barely move."

"You're out of bed," Lyantra pointed out. "Aren't you in the same condition?"

"I know my own reasons," Garnet replied dryly. "I'm interested in yours."

Lyantra didn't know how to explain this to her. Ever since Makalov had disappeared - true to Garnet's word, nobody had bothered her about it - Garnet had become obsessed with her reasons for doing things. Garnet wasn't mean, exactly. She didn't belittle her or focus exclusively on her mistakes. But every little thing she did, the sphinx wanted a reason, and acted incapable of figuring it out for herself.

She wished Garnet could. Lyantra didn't know how else to explain that doing something with herself felt better than doing nothing, even if her back hurt and she was tired all the time. But if Garnet really couldn't understand it, maybe that was why she kept asking.

Soon, Lyantra deemed the tea to be ready, and set about pouring it in a meticulously arranged - also by her - set on Garnet's coffee table. "I think I did pretty good this time," she offered, fishing for praise.

Praise from Garnet was excruciatingly rare. So were criticisms. Garnet seemed to mean what she had told Makalov on the day she killed him: she was an observer, nothing more. But it could happen, on days when Lyantra caught the sphinx with her guard down, and Lyantra had few bigger challenges to throw herself against than trying to win it.

"Hmm," Garnet said, sipping without bothering to wait for it to cool. It should have been scalding, but for some reason, she never seemed bothered by the heat.

Lyantra stared at her, hoping against the odds to prompt a response.

"Have you thought about what you're going to do with your foal?" Garnet asked.

"That's a weird question." Lyantra curled her lip. "All the doctors ever tell me to do is not think about it. But thanks, now I'm thinking about it again."

"Oh?" Garnet raised an eyebrow. "Tell me your thoughts."

Lyantra put a hoof on her stomach, big enough by now that it bumped up against the rim of the table. "Well, it's really heavy. And it's uncomfortable, and it's been getting harder, and I don't think this is how it's supposed to work."

"Your due date is only a month away," Garnet grunted. "My scientists have confirmed you're carrying a filly. A pegasus. Most parents would have settled on a name by now..." Her eyes briefly shadowed. "Or so I've been told. But you call her 'it'. You don't see her as your daughter, do you? Just an inconveniently sized part of your body."

"Uh, yes I do," Lyantra answered, more because Garnet made it sound like a bad thing than because she really understood what her daughter was supposed to mean. She still hadn't properly wrapped her mind around the fact that new ponies supposedly came from inside of fillies and mares. That wasn't where she came from, after all: she had begun her existence strapped to a table in a room with a bunch of doctors.

Of course, her body supposedly existed before that, belonging to the previous Lyantra. But what about the part of her that made her her? The part she hadn't really been able to put back together after Garnet broke it long ago, and now existed only in scraps related to making tea and doing chores around Garnet's suite? Had that grown inside someone, too? What would that part even look like, separated from the rest of her body? It had to be pretty big, based on the size of her stomach. Or maybe she was completely off base. But whenever anyone talked about bringing her foal into the world, the only way she could envision herself doing it was as one of the other ponies in the room, watching as her foal woke up, strapped to a table.

She wished Garnet could do this first, so she could watch and see how it worked. But the doctors had firmly explained to her that these things happened on their own timetable and there was nothing they could do to switch the order around.

"That's not an encouraging look in your eyes," Garnet grunted. "You have no idea what to do with a newborn, do you?"

Lyantra reddened. She could never shake the feeling that this wasn't how it was supposed to work, that everyone's lectures were fundamentally incorrect. And that feeling sat like an inconvenient net in her mind that snarled up any extrapolation about how things really were.

Garnet sighed. "Imagine that your daughter is a week old, and she's crying. What do you do?"

"Ask her what's wrong?" Lyantra guessed.

"She is a week-old foal," Garnet corrected. "She cannot talk. She continues crying. What do you do next?"

Lyantra frowned. "Why can't she talk?"

Garnet gave her a look that was so tired, so weary that she could convincingly say she hadn't slept for a thousand years. "Because she's not old enough to know how yet."

That really didn't sound right. "Doesn't everyone know how to talk?" Lyantra asked, feeling like she had just walked into a minefield. "I did when I was new. How do they do anything if they can't talk?"

"You were assembled," Garnet told her. "Not born. Your body existed for over a decade before I put you together. Do you understand the difference?"

Lyantra nodded. Presumably so. Even if there was an ever-present danger that she was saying yes when the real answer was no.

"Newborns are helpless," Garnet grunted. "They can't do anything except eat, cry, sleep and wave their appendages in useless, meaningless patterns. And soil themselves. Do you understand that much?"

That definitely didn't sound right. "Why?" Lyantra asked. "Are you sure? How do they do anything? Aren't they supposed to come..." She wanted to say like me, but that was probably very incorrect.

"I'm sure," Garnet flatly told her. "They can't learn to walk and talk in a womb. Regardless, your daughter is going to be completely dependent on you for every aspect of her existence. Because you're a child, you are currently dependent on me for most aspects of your existence, including food, shelter and basic information even a three-year-old should know about how the world works. That means I'm probably going to have to provide for her, as well. But there are some responsibilities you will handle yourself, starting with giving her a name."

"If all that's true," Lyantra said, folding her ears with a nervous chuckle, "I don't think I'm going to have any accurate or helpful thoughts until they're born, because I'll have to see it to believe it."

Garnet stared at her tea in thought.

"What about you?" Lyantra asked. "What are you going to do with your foal?"

"Turn him over to the royal nannies," Garnet said stiffly. "His name is already settled; Gordovic wants to call him Gustadolph. I won't have to lift a paw to get him through those early years: no midnight feedings, no diapers, no cleaning up barf. A full trained staff to do everything for me. The highest luxury money can buy."

"You don't sound too happy about that," Lyantra pointed out. "But you also make fun of me for wanting to keep working even when I'm allowed not to. So, do you think I'm right, or not?"

Garnet brushed her off, shaking her head. "You're clearly insane. I don't see the worth in your way. But I don't see it in this way, either. I'm still waiting, still giving them more time before they're judged. Maybe it will be different once Gustadolph is born. Maybe there's something I'm just not seeing... but the most likely answer is that everyone in this country is wrong."

Lyantra's ears fell. "Are you going to turn Gordovic to dust like you did to Makalov?"

"Haven't decided," Garnet grunted. "If I do, it'll be his fault for not giving me any reason not to."

Lyantra looked away. She didn't really like the idea of dying.

"But I'll give him more time," Garnet said. "At least until Gustadolph is born... and maybe longer, depending on what happens next. I'm worried, though, that the rest of this country won't give him the time I need, even if I do."

Lyantra perked up.

"Well?" Garnet raised an eyebrow. "Think you can wrap your mind around a different kind of adult problem for a change?"

"Try me," Lyantra dared, eager to find something that did make more sense to learn.

Garnet took a deep breath. "Geltrich calls himself the Emperor. Gordovic and myself will call ourselves Emperor and Empress once he abdicates, which will be made official in about two months. But the Griffon Empire we 'rule' no longer swears its loyalty to us, now that the goddess and old royal family holding them together are gone. Most of the provinces have become satellite states, outside of a formal system, but with loyalties that can be bullied into alignment by their most powerful neighbors. Do you understand how that works?"

"I know how leadership works," Lyantra told her. "You're up at the top, because you're a sphinx. Then there's a big pyramid down to the bottom, so these satellite states would be groups that are only under you because you keep them there?"

"Close enough," Garnet said, which counted as praise in Lyantra's book. "The other regional power that could oppose Everlaste is Wilderwind. We're the only two provinces left with something resembling armies. And Wilderwind has recently transitioned power away from sphinxes and into the hands and hooves of their military, now that their own royal family has died out. They chose to do this instead of swearing loyalty to the remaining sphinxes in Everlaste."

"So they're not your followers," Lyantra guessed.

Garnet nodded. "The only reason Everlaste thinks they can rule is tradition. I don't trust that reason to consolidate power or preserve the status quo. I need to fix this myself if I want things to last long enough to judge what they've built here... not that I'm an accomplished diplomat either. But I have some tools. So I'm organizing a trip to Wilderwind, and you'll be coming with me."

"I am?" Lyantra perked up.

"Yes," Garnet declared, draining the last of her tea and putting the cup down. "I'll time it so that your foal is born while we're away. Don't worry, you'll still be taken care of. But if practical experience is the only way you can learn what you need to start thinking about the future, then that's what you're going to get."

Lyantra's foal came earlier than Garnet was expecting.

It was too intense for her to remember much of. She awoke in the middle of the night with lightning in her stomach, and she must have stumbled to Garnet's room to wake her up, too. But even the memory of those early cramps was only partially intact, like a reflection in the water torn by the edge of a whirlpool, and the rest was lost in a cacophony of unbearable pressure and pain.

Everything until... until...

When she came to, she couldn't recognize where she was. Nestled into a heap of blankets, there was a lacquered wooden ceiling above her. It was rattling slightly, though the blankets cushioned her... Was she moving? Her body felt worse than she could ever remember: her back and hindquarters, especially, she could barely even shift her thoughts to.

"W-Where...?" Her voice was weak and shaky, so much that the very sound of it haunted her.

"You're awake?" Garnet asked, laying on a bench across from her.

Lyantra turned her head just enough to look. Was this a carriage? They were the only two occupants, it looked like?

No. Garnet was holding a third. The sphinx was stretched out on her back with her head and shoulders propped up against the side of the carriage, and laying on her rounded stomach was a tiny foal, suckling away.

"Did..." Lyantra's eyes widened. "Did I...?"

"Yours," Garnet grunted. "I can do this part for you because of my own. Figured you needed to sleep."

Lyantra blinked. She had seen pictures, but this was her first time actually seeing a real newborn. Or, for that matter, anyone younger than herself.

They were... kind of ugly, actually. Seeing them made her slightly uncomfortable: with a light blue coat and a purple mane and tail, they looked an awful lot like the form Garnet and the doctors had once wanted to turn her into. And they were a pegasus, with a bit of green in their mane that probably came from Makalov, and some weird, sock-like markings on their legs that ran the gamut between purple and forest green.

Everything that had bounced off her ears when Garnet said it suddenly made sense. In this tiny, scraggly blue blob, she could see the reflections of its parents like a pair of ghosts hovering over it: a sarosian filly that no one could accept was dead, and a stallion Garnet had killed so she wouldn't have to interact with.

In neither of those parents did she see herself.

Was that thing really growing in her stomach all this time? Were all the distractions that had monopolized her thoughts for the whole span of time she had been alive - the bumps, the kicking, the tension, the nausea, the weight, the strain, the cramps, the hardness, the inability to get comfortable, the feeling of not fitting in her own fur... Had it really all been for that? For... for someone else's child?

Her expression must have communicated everything she felt, because somehow, she was certain that Garnet understood.

"Disappointment and disbelief," Garnet said, a small light dying in her eyes. "So. That's what it amounts to for you, too."

Lyantra struggled to form her thoughts into words. "I'm really tired."

"Sleep," Garnet encouraged. "It's a long ride to Wilderwind. I moved up the schedule for you when you went into labor. I worried this might happen."

"Can I have some water first?" Lyantra asked, her thoughts swaddled in exhaustion, unable to look for a deeper meaning in Garnet's words. "I-I..."

Garnet hesitated, unable to get up without disturbing the foal... then grew a unicorn horn with a flicker of green flame. A solid green aura, denser than a normal unicorn's, picked up a bottle and floated it gently to her lips.

Was that a thing sphinxes could do when they had reason not to get up? Lyantra was too tired to question it. She drank gratefully, and soon drifted back into a half-slumber, letting her body repair itself.

Each time Lyantra woke up, she felt a little bit better, until she was finally well enough to gingerly sit up and rearrange her bedding.

That involved getting a proper look at herself. Someone had cleaned her, she realized. There was no... none of the stuff she remembered like a fading nightmare. And her stomach had shrunk. It still looked weird, but no longer felt like iron wrapped in bands of steel.

There could be no questioning it. That ragged little foal, wrapped in cloth and sleeping by Garnet's side, had very recently been inside of her.

Lyantra felt cold. She felt weird. Alien, even, and not because of her physical state. Things really did work like this. Against everything her intuition had said, and still said now that she could see it for herself.

It felt frightening and wrong.

Garnet was awake, leaning sideways against the back of the carriage seat, looking lazily out through a crack in the window curtains. She didn't look frightened. She looked... resigned.

"So," Garnet said, as if she could feel Lyantra's eyes on her. "Feeling proud of yourself?"

"Proud of myself?" Lyantra blinked. "Why?"

"You did it." Garnet shrugged. "Made it through. Brought your daughter into the world. You're a mother now. They say this is supposed to be the good part. Is it?"

Lyantra blinked. She remembered that look in Garnet's eyes from the first time she woke up: that hopeless defeat, resignation to the inevitable. It was still there, albeit masked now.

Garnet wasn't asking that question in good faith. She just wanted Lyantra to confirm what both of them already knew.

And Lyantra was in no position to deny her. "It looks like who I used to be," she whispered, feeling nasty for even voicing her thoughts. "The old Lyantra. And Makalov. I understand what everyone meant now, about foals coming from their parents. But I don't think that's my foal, even if it was in me. It's theirs. I-I..."

She felt herself choking up already, and knew she wouldn't be able to finish her thought. Too many things were pressing in on her from too many directions: she shouldn't be rejecting this foal, but she shouldn't have had it in the first place, and she could still see the ghost of Makalov leering at her, and the name Lyantra tasted wrong on her tongue when she used it, less hers than usual. All of it was guilt. Why was she pushing it away? Why hadn't she found a new name for herself yet? If she had embraced figuring out who she was instead of wearing old words like rags, would that foal have looked different? And why was she still caught up on thinking it wasn't supposed to work this way? She was dodging her own questions. She couldn't face the foal, and she couldn't face Garnet, either.

"So the foal you just delivered looks like somebody else's child," Garnet grunted. "Ironic."

"Ironic?" Lyantra asked, hiding her broken body in the blankets.

"Oh, just talking to myself." Garnet shook her head. "But you're right. This child is Lyantra's and, presumably, Makalov's. You aren't Lyantra. All I did to 'fix' you was take a new person and put them into an old body that changes appearance based on your self-image."

Lyantra's ears pressed back.

"Are you going to name her?" Garnet asked.

Lyantra winced. "I can't even name myself. What should I call it?"

Garnet looked down at the sleeping foal. "She's a her, not an it. A person who might grow up to live a meaningless life and die a meaningless death, who might bring about more pain than she'll ever relieve. Looking at you now, she's already caused a lot. But she hasn't had a chance to feel that pain for herself yet. She's... a blank slate. And you get to make the first mark on her, in either direction. Or you can leave it for someone else."

A weight of responsibility even heavier than her stomach used to be hovered near Lyantra, not yet crushing her but making its presence known. "What do I do?" she asked, worried. "I-I don't know what to do with that. How do I name her? What does she need?"

Garnet frowned in thought... and then started brushing the foal's wispy mane and tail. Using her feathers like clips, she separated and fixed the stray strands, freshly dried from however they had gotten wet before. Her tongue snaked over the foal's coat in a rhythmic fashion, erasing all the snaggles and tufts where its fur had dried in clumps, resetting its coat to go with the natural grain.

Eventually, she finished, looking down at her handiwork in thought. The foal did look better now that it had been washed and groomed, Lyantra had to admit. More like a really tiny pony and less like a sodden blue hairball.

"Anything you wish someone had been there to do for you, I suppose," Garnet mused. "Perhaps only the downtrodden can know."

"Your Majesty," a griffon protested, standing near the carriage door as the caravan prepared to resume their travels. They had just stopped for dinner, pitched their camp in a protective circle and let Lyantra out to stretch her legs. The grass and the fields provided a baffling contrast to the familiar stone and dust of Everlaste, and her body was still too wobbly to confidently get around on her own, but she had enjoyed getting something other to think about than her foal.

Now they were breaking camp, and there was trouble.

"Lyantra and her child stay with me," Garnet told him, her wrath sitting at her side like a sword in a sheath. "She's my wingmaid. Not yours, griffon."

The griffon gave her a patronizing look. "Yes, that isn't in question. But you have servants for a reason. It's not the place of royalty to have to deal with newborns. You don't deserve the stress on your shoulders, and the propriety-"

"Burdens and stress," Garnet interrupted. "Do you have a family? A wife? Children?"

"Three children, plus the wife." The griffon didn't flinch from her gaze. "I understand that you're still adjusting to life in a more civilized province, but in Everlaste, we don't expect our leaders to get their paws dirty."

"I see." Garnet nodded, her own gaze like a hoof pinning his tail to the ground that he refused to acknowledge. "And how are your children? Burdens? Stressful? Or do they bring joy and fulfillment to your life?"

The griffon was putting up a valiant and stubborn front. "I find them to be exuberant and wonderful," he reported, "because my wife is a homemaker and handles the messier side of raising them so that I don't have to. I'm lucky to have her, just as you are lucky to have us. Please take advantage of it so you can focus on diplomacy instead of caring for your maid's child."

Garnet nodded along, her demeanor suggesting she was in full control of what was happening here. "Am I not a wife as well?"

The griffon bowed slightly, his patience visibly chipped. "My lady, you are the princess. Soon to be queen."

"And your wife isn't?" Garnet raised an eyebrow.

Now the griffon just looked befuddled. "No, I'm... a member of your staff. Not royalty. Did you assume otherwise?"

"I have some advice for you," Garnet said, leaning back into the carriage and preparing to shut the door in his face. "Always treat your wife like a queen."

"What-?" the griffon sputtered. "Are you implying I-"

"I despise false lovers." Garnet gazed imperiously at him. "As your queen, it is my right to receive the best treatment in the land. But I'm not alone in this right. Think about what you offer as proof of your love, how much it counts for, whether your marriage is worth it. You're supposed to be the best part of each other's lives, aren't you? If there's anything you would do for me that you wouldn't do for her, go ask yourself why the one you love doesn't deserve better."

And then she did shut the door, locking herself and Lyantra inside with the foal.

For a moment, the air crackled with tension. Finally, Garnet shuddered, and then she sighed.

"That was kind of mean," Lyantra pointed out. "I think he was trying to help."

"He deserved it," Garnet said bitterly.

"Why don't you want them to help take care of my foal?" Lyantra asked. "I really could use the help. And you don't look like you enjoy doing it yourself that much. Especially the, um, you know..."

Garnet looked at her. "I need to see what you decide. Not whether someone else pronounces you incapable of caring for her and takes her from you. Is this foal worth it? Does she bring you joy? I won't have anyone interfering with your answer."

"Why not?" Lyantra pressed. "I need help. You're already giving it. Shouldn't we accept more?"

Even though she was really just repeating what she had already said, this gave Garnet pause.

"I don't know what to do with the foal," Lyantra told her, folding her ears. "I could learn how to feed her, and how to change her, and how to make her stop crying, but what else do I do? What do I tell her once she learns to talk? Maybe it's because I don't know what to do with myself. These meadows look so weird, I don't think I know anything about the world at all. If you leave her up to me, I don't think I can be good enough!"

Garnet watched her, thinking.

"Didn't you say the staff would raise your foal?" Lyantra asked, pointing at Garnet's own stomach. "Gustadolph? What's the difference?"

"The difference," Garnet said, distant. "The difference is that I am following the rules. Accepting the conventional wisdom. Seeing how this system will work if I don't resist or change a thing. This is the treatment other rulers have installed for themselves, and I'll see its merits by whatever means necessary. If that means relinquishing what is mine into the hooves of others, so be it. A small price to pay if any of this works."

She turned her gaze to the unnamed foal. "You, on the other side, are still my experiment. You've born the wrong child, a foal at odds with your expectations. The father abandoned you because he never loved you. Your miserable life hasn't afforded you the resources to know how to care for them, and the sight of them might even make you sick. Don't deny it. I saw that look in your eyes."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Lyantra whispered, unable to deny it even though she felt like she should.

"I want to see what happens if no one tries to take her from you." Garnet shrugged. "How things could play out if that one factor was changed. Could it change the course of your lives? Or will you agree with everyone who says you aren't fit for her, don't deserve her, and give her away of your own free will? They're all right, of course. You can't even take care of yourself without help. But you can still choose to defy them. I'm simply buying you the time to think things through before making that choice. And when you do, I'll ensure that it is respected."

"What do you mean, give her away?" Lyantra asked, her chest tight. "You're not talking about letting the staff help care for her?"

"Perhaps I am." Garnet raised an eyebrow. "If you let her out of your sight, what guarantee do you have that you'll ever see her again? But then, perhaps that's what you want. It's your choice-"

The foal began to screech and wail.

Garnet sighed, resigned to the interruption. "Get over here. You need experience figuring out what this means."

The problem was eventually solved when Garnet showed Lyantra how to nurse the foal. It felt pretty bizarre.

"You've done this before," Lyantra guessed, once the foal was suckling away.

"No," Garnet grunted. "I haven't."

"Really?" Lyantra tilted her head. "You... seem to know what you're doing."

Garnet frowned. "I have the song to guide me. An unsurprising number of dying regrets involve children. Mothers who bled out in the days after their births. Fathers who went off to war, and never saw their families again. Siblings who tried and simply couldn't. Those memories are useful enough, sometimes."

The song. Garnet had talked about that before killing Makalov. There were other times she mentioned it too, but they were vague and passing, and pressing for details always resulted in changing the subject. But Lyantra was curious, so she had to try again.

"What is this song you talk about?" she asked.

"The wails of the departed," Garnet grunted. "Be glad you can't hear them. They're loud enough that I must have less of a sense of self than you do."

Lyantra blinked. "A sense of self?"

"The thing I destroyed so that you could transform?" Garnet raised an eyebrow... and then, with a flicker of green flame, transformed into an older version of Lyantra. A heartbeat later, she shifted back.

Lyantra's eyes widened. "You...?"

"I told you this when we were first experimenting," Garnet sighed. "I've been able to do it to myself for a while. That's why I thought it might be possible to do it remotely, to you. You helped me learn more about this power. I can even shift ages now, if I have to. If I'd kept Makalov's soul, that would have been fun to torment it with."

"Does that mean..." Lyantra fumbled, searching for the perfect words. "You have an image of yourself in your head too, and it's also broken, and you don't really see it as yourself?"

"I know what I am," Garnet answered dryly. "I simply don't like it."

Lyantra tilted her head.

"Everything about me is an inconvenience," Garnet said, speaking like a grumpy lecturer or a scientist. "My personality does nothing but get in the way of my goals. If I didn't hate the nobility so much, I'd have an easier time joining them to measure their answer. They make it so easy to get distracted... I can't even tell if I'm humoring you and your child this much because it's a legitimate path to an answer, or for my own personal issues. It would be so much easier if I could just cut away all the parts I don't need..."

Lyantra shuddered. "You hate all of them? Not just Makalov?"

"Maybe," Garnet said. "Or maybe it's the song. We hate everything. Powerlessness. Abandonment. Guilt. Oppressors. Bystanders. Pity. False love. And so much more..." She rubbed a paw over her face. "But it's all just a distraction. If any part of that held the answer, then none of this would have happened."

"What about me?" Lyantra whispered.

"Don't ask questions that have no answers," Garnet snapped. "And take better care of yourself. You don't want to know my mind."

The caravan marched for days on end. Lyantra's filly stayed with her in Garnet's carriage, and before too long she had a workable grasp of the basics: what to do with a diaper, how to hold them and nurse them, and a few things to try when guessing why they were crying.

She spent a lot of that time sitting up and staring out the window, especially once she recovered enough that her body no longer hurt to freely move. It was interesting, seeing the ways she could sit now that she could freely arrange her haunches without a massive sphere getting in the way, but it was downright fascinating to see the land's geography.

Trees, grass, plants... All of these felt like things she had never seen before. Not like the familiar, comforting stone of Everlaste Castle. Garnet didn't like explaining what the various types of greenery were, but a staff griffon had bought her a book in a town they passed through, and Lyantra had even started pointing the different trees out to her foal as they passed, trying to teach while she was learning.

That felt weird. Some instinct told her it was proper, that this was an activity that was wholesome and good to do with her foal. She didn't question that feeling; if she needed to learn what trees were, her foal probably would, too. But an equally powerful instinct told her that this was somebody else's foal, and it wasn't her place to do this.

She did it anyway. But it also felt wrong.

Eventually, the terrain grew rockier, and the trees less common. It was hilly, and the hills were grassy, but with random white stone boulders strewn throughout them, mostly laying at the bottom of valleys where they had rolled. Lyantra asked how it had got that way and who put the rocks there, but Garnet wasn't interested in answering.

Soon enough, the grass grew sparse as well, and long after it died out, the hills stopped as well. They passed over a low, narrow mountain range that seemed to neatly divide the hills from the flat land beyond, and when they all stepped outside to eat lunch, Lyantra could see their destination in the distance: a long, much grander chain of mountains loomed low, like teeth, elevating the horizon to the north and northeast. They were far enough away to be little more than blue silhouettes against the strange blue sky, but some distance in front of them there rose a tower. And there, they told her, was the seat of Wilderwind's power.