A mare must do what a mare must do.
I hadn't thought a one-night job transporting an old unicorn across Baltimare from The Woodberry to Dockside might be any big deal. I should have known better when the white-maned puce gentlecolt's bodyguards let him stumble up to my pony cart—then didn't help him when a coughing fit brought him to his knees, or when he could barely jump into the cart. His breath formed thin little clouds in the late autumn cold.
I had trained one of his bodyguards myself in the months before Carne Asada had become too stupid to live. There were five, total: three pegasi with slingshots, an earth pony as big and as red as a brick wall, and Citron. Citron had filled into a stout stallion. His healed burns showed as pink criss-crosses against his yellow fur. His scars were from the years-past gang war we'd fought with Force spells against the Hooflyn constabulary and a portal heist we'd blundered into and foiled.
The streets two hours before dawn were dark, but for occasional street lamps. Very quiet. Our hoof falls on the cobbles echoed back from the warehouses and factory fronts. It felt spooky, but that was a given. I'd picked our route for the least possible traffic and the fewest incidental witnesses.
I preferred being together alone.
"BCF!" shouted a voice from the shadows. Baltimare Constable Force. "Rumps down! You're under arrest!"
I'd hit full gallop before she'd finished her "rumps down!", the steel rims of the wheels throwing sparks as I pulled the pony cart sharply around a corner at risk of breaking the traces. I cast the Shield spell I had at the top of my quick draw queue—and a blue-green nebulous bell jar flared around me and the cart, deflecting a force bolt meant to set my tail afire.
Citron shot back, his amber aura and the bolt illuminating the brick buildings and reflecting in shop windows. Our pegasus air cover slung bits of cement that whistled through the air. The missiles banged and shattered, scattering debris that skittered across the street, forcing me to hop over them.
More yells, more bolts.
I spun up a queued Teleport, but the weight of the full pony cart together with having to maintain Shield at the same time prevented the spell math from balancing. I braked. The old fellow slid into the dashboard with a grunt. I pulled the harness release with my teeth, dropped Shield because I had to, and magically heaved my passenger across my back like a sack of beans. He wheezed as my knees bent under double my weight. He seemed unconscious.
Running again, I teleported.
We passed in-between. In...
...then out of total darkness and absolute cold.
Appearing mid-gallop at the next corner, I reused the same spell vectors, rotated them 90º, then teleported again.
Appearing before Black Rock's Coaling Station, skidding to a halt. I noticed the empty cash register lit by a flickering blue-white lamp in the window. My out-teleport pop echoed back to me. I looked swiftly the other direction. Yes! Red Sauce's red-painted House of Spaghetti sign wasn't illuminated, but I remembered it correctly from when I lived near-by. The "romantic hideaway" restaurant that sold garlic-y pasta leased the terrace atop the five story building and I saw the yellow awnings flapping lazily in a breeze silhouetted by a gibbous moon.
The old fellow groaned and whispered, "Don't use magic. Please don't."
"As if I had a choice," I shot back, calculating with my horn as I prepped the spell. When I glanced back, I saw him struggling to breathe. Frost from in-between steamed off both our hides. I realigned him so he didn't have pressure on his belly and lay from my flank to my head. His forehooves clacked together as grasped my neck.
His crystal blue eyes implored me as he wheezed, "Don't."
I failed to realize that he requested it for my own sake, not his.
A constable's whistle went twee!
"No choice!"
I teleported up to the restaurant. Hours after close, I still smelled the garlic. From there, I spotted a chimney sweep platform four blocks away. I shivered as the in-between cold bit at my bones. I took a deep breath as magic over-exertion weighed my body down more than the stallion did. It took seconds to firm up the vectors and I was away...
An hour and a half later, the night sky blushed deep purple, showing glimmers of orange to the east. I heard the squawks of early-waking gulls and the lap of river water against the docks. I spun down my Don't Look, Don't See, Don't Hear spell as I rapped out the special knock I'd been instructed on the tin door of the shipping company. The door had been open, and two goons had stood just inside, but I didn't want to startle them more than was inevitable as I became visible.
"I've got your delivery."
Both the blue and the puce earth pony whinnied and jumped, but then their eyes alit on my burden. They rapidly backed away with wide eyes. Despite the stacks of crates, thanks to the light reflected from the end of the large room, I could see the blue stallion's eyes were magenta. They had gone very wide.
I huffed as I trotted in. The high-level lieutenants, or whomever ran the syndicate with their founder was gone, stood from their seats beside a rusty green table as half a dozen bodyguards drew together to block my view and any attack I might launch.
I said, "And here I thought you'd be glad to see me—considering the BCF came down on the team like a Crystal Mountains avalanche!"
I couldn't recognize any of the VIPs from the glance afforded me beyond the wall of muscle, though I did recognize the style of the dark business suits and white frilly cravats the CA Syndicate upper echelon typically wore. The muscle all wore typical gangland bouffants, so I deduced I dealt with the right ponies.
One quavering voice stated, "You're... carrying the Boss?"
"When the shooting started, I had to teleport out, repeatedly. Which reminds me: my delivery fee just went up by the price of one pony cart, my personal pony cart, that I had to abandon. You understand, don't you?"
They did understand. I'd gone by many names, Gelding being one of them—and it was a verb, not a noun. Grimoire, Princess Grim, and Princess Glitter were others; they may have heard of Starlight Glimmer, and what she had done to save Sunset Shimmer. All my names came with the reputation for getting the job done...
And for having no good sense of humor. Oh, right— And everypony knew I was the highest level unicorn in the room, probably in the city. I'd even outwitted (probably, likely, by luck) Princess Celestia, though I'd told only my diary that.
One dun earth pony moved off to the right as I watched, then pushed a velvet fainting couch into the middle of the room. As he stepped rapidly back, he said, "P-please put the boss here."
Maybe I had too much of a reputation! I smiled.
At least two ponies gasped as I levitated the old fellow from my back to gently rest on the sofa.
"Okay," I said, "What's going on here? The dramatic gasps, the standoffishness—"
"Gelding," said a mare from behind the wall of muscle.
Ponies stepped aside enough that I could view a middle-aged roan earth pony with a short powder-blue mane. Her amber eyes caught my attention. "You really are the pony for the job."
She reached down and cinched a coin purse with her teeth, then, with a flex of her neck, sent it arcing over her guards right into my magic, where it made a satisfying jangling sound.
Never shy, I drew out the coins into a vertically spinning ring of gold and silver bits. The spell math let me count them. I could still only carry twelve discreet items, but juggling I could lift plenty more. Had the count been odd, I might have dropped one.
She said, "I added three gold for your expenses."
"So I see," I said. Siphoning the clinking metal into the purse, I tucked it away. "Because I lost my cart, and my clothing, I'd really appreciate a cloak so the BCF doesn't ID me while I do my shopping on my way out of—"
Before I could say town, a pony stepped forward and threw me his taupe mackintosh. I knew I could be intimidating, but really? I knew they knew my actions with Carne Asada (the late CA who had founded the CA Syndicate) had saved the gangs of Manehatten, Fillydelphia, and Baltimare from a massacre, but it wasn't like I'd carried on any of the fight myself. I didn't hurt ponies unless they tried to hurt me or mine first. These ponies' actions demonstrated that I had made the right decision to leave the profession at the right time. I was no leader. I'd become caught up in the gangs having already run away from being trained as another sort of leader. I'd been drafted then. I wasn't going to be drafted again. What I did now was to make it so ponies could deal with their life. If I'd stayed, ponies might have seen me as the syndicate's new strong mare...
Don't go down that route of thinking!
I spun my mane into a braid. I'd had to hide the green stripe enough times that the motions had become reflex. With the floor-length coat, I had a perfectly spy-style winter giddy-up that hid my tail and made a great contextual disguise. I waved as I left.
Outside, I found a rubbish bin in an alley with a discarded hay burger wrapper. Ketchup side out, I scrubbed away my makeup cutie mark then with a blip of Force, ignited the evidence, keeping it aloft until black cinders drifted away on the dawn breeze.
The blue magenta-eyed earth pony door guard slid to a halt at the end of the alley in which I stood. He had let down his gang-uniform bouffant and that left him with a somewhat feminine long limp black mane. That gave him a late-teen tomboy aspect that his smaller-than-average stallion frame accentuated. You could glance toward his rear and see you were mistaken, but it worked for a passing impression.
Rather than being exhilarated from all the magic and adventure of the morning, I felt too tired to cast another long range teleport. I prepped a Levitate Push, and queued other Levitates. I'd learned how to fight one-on-one, and had been most devastating against earth ponies; it provided me the moxie to step up to him.
I asked, "You want, what exactly?"
He backed away, keeping his distance while displaying a friendly smile.
As if I could judge friendly! I was transactional with everypony, even those I helped. Sunburst had taught me I had to protect myself from frail emotional instincts, which, with the evil influence of cutie marks, lead ponies astray from true happiness.
I judged what I saw as not-a-threat and let him trail behind. He picked a safe distance, like a trained hoof-pony. That brought up bad associations from my aristocratic preteens and tweens, causing my mood to sour further.
I asked, "Do you plan to answer me?"
"I don't want anything. Or to help you, for that matter, but I've been ordered to do so—"
"A good soldier. Great! I'm not trying to be patronizing, but I don't need protecting."
"I'm not here to protect you."
I stopped and looked back down the still empty industrial street near the docks. Far down, a fore-pony unlocked a factory door and further, I saw workers unload a lorry. His big white teeth sparkled in the first rays of sunlight as he grinned from where he had stopped five pony-lengths behind me. I jerked up the collar on my mack and headed east along the quay.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
I sighed. "Low Cost Wagon at Light and E. Baltimare. Still there?"
"I think so. May I suggest Three Mares Used Wagons instead. They serve the trade and open early."
"Are they closer?"
"'bout the same."
"Does Used mean possibly stolen at some point?"
"No. The syndicate has mostly transitioned to legit businesses these days!" He sounded legitimately put off by the question.
Which, of course, explained why the Baltimare Constabulary Force ambushed us? Legit? Riiight.
"And you would know this— how?"
"I saw your last fight where you shot out the lights and tricked Shadow Strike into smashing into a pole. K.O.'d, for the championship. I joined up about a year later."
I felt perspiration condense under my coat, so I stopped and looked at him. "Did you fight in the war?"
"No. My boss told me I was too young. Seventeen. I lost Sea Bream in it, a good friend. You're some kind of a hero—"
"I was fifteen." I thought, Stop, now! When he gasped, I added, "I made myself look older."
"Yeah. And. Wow."
"Did I influence you to join?"
"When I heard rumors of you being Carne Asada's bodyguard, yeah. But—my point is—after the war, things changed. New management worked to conflict less with the coppers. Princess Celestia found her sister Luna and law enforcement became all about friendship, about ponies being able to reform, about forming herds and getting along—"
Princesses again! I really hated royalty. The nobility were worse than cutie marks. "And all that mumbo-jumbo?"
"Working ponies started to quote Herd unquote together to speak up for better wages and working conditions. The syndicate realized they could get in on the Herds thing and get 10% dues from everypony for providing needed organization and necessary muscle—our forte—when the factory owners and guildsman started intimidating ponies and locking them out. The top started investing in legit businesses. With the legit flow of bits, things got a whole lot safer."
"With an infamous name like boss Carne Asada on it, ponies still joined your 'Herd?'"
He laughed. "Boss Shea Butter named a division of it the Teamsters, a drovers reference, appropriate because the wagon-pullers were first to herd together. It's on the up and up."
"Mostly?"
"Mostly. Where it counts. Wages and working conditions improved for the stevedores, shipwrights, wagon-pullers, and retail clerks. A few greased hooves, for sure, to convince overzealous coppers and to get the city aldermares to recognize how we'd reformed and promoted friendship like the princesses want, but that's as much as I know."
I looked right and left, then said, "Okay. Which way to Three Mares?"
As we walked, he had me describe my old pony cart. "—Hip-height wheels with metal rims that won't get stuck in small mud puddles. Good for overland travel. I'm going to buy a four wheeler trailer, also. I've got a lot of supplies to buy and haul home this time, and I've got the bits. We use the pony cart a lot and don't need the extra weight when we use it, thus the trailer."
"I see," he said as we stopped in front of another brick building. There was a black cabriolet parked by the red barn-sized garage doors. The silhouette of two nose-to-nose mares in black graced a pine sign. "Wait here while I get that."
"I don't—"
He stepped back, still skittish. "It would be better if you let me do this."
I frowned and glanced at his cutie mark. Two hooves touching frog to frog. Was he named Helping Hoof? My studies of cutie mark iconography led me to often guess pony's names correctly. "Okay. Fine."
"Thank you." He bowed his head and trotted inside.
I sat. In my mackintosh, nopony thought to approach and be friendly. I felt my exhaustion creeping in as I waited long minutes.
He pushed the garage door farther and trotted out pulling almost exactly what I'd specified. The wheels looked recently wire-brushed to remove rust. Other than a few scratches and discoloration in the pine wood, which really only meant it was well broken in, the rig fit my needs. I was pleased enough to smile and to refrain from approaching the harness with him in to inspect it more closely. It was good enough and he was skittish.
"How much do I owe you?"
"CAS paid for it."
I held my bit purse up for a surprised instant, then swept it away. "A bonus?"
"Maybe? You look dead tired."
I involuntarily yawned.
"Get in the trailer and give me a list of what you need. I'll pull you." Sotto Voce, he added. "Laying in the lathe bed, nopony will recognize you."
The crisscross wood slats acted as camouflage; I could keep watch and not be seen. Once in, I gave him my list and refined it...
Until I fell asleep. So much for being watchful.
"...Princess?"
I startled and rolled into a canister, which went shish like an infant rattle. I blinked at the blue and red label and the white-manned pony with the tricorn hat. Oats. As I periscoped my neck, my mackintosh slipped off in between the bags of bran and lentils. I spotted a blue pony face with a limp black mane.
Right! I knew where I was. Rude of him to use the P-word with me, but I guessed he'd figured something out about me. Glancing at the prodigious supplies piled around me and on a pushcart next to him, I asked, "Your name wouldn't be Helping Hoof, would it?"
"It's Hoof Bump."
"Your parents really named you that?"
"Did yours really name you Gelding?"
"That would be grim." I snorted. "As would have been Princess Grim, my fight name, for that matter." Or Grimoire to name another.
"Great name and so obviously fabricated. Princess Grim must have a great origin story associated with it."
"Not so much. Very few ponies that could cause me harm know my real name." Princess Celestia did and probably held a grudge, but so far hasn't hunted me down. Sunburst could hurt me only emotionally. At least my father, only recently back from the presumed dead, kept my obligations from harming me. "I understand if you'd rather not say where you got your name..."
"Mom named me that. Even as an infant, I always seemed to want to help out."
"And you earned that cutie mark?" I tried not to sneer. He was being nice. Other than calling me the P-word.
"Yes, I did."
Did personality choose the mark? Or did the evil seeds of the magical organ manipulate the eventual bearer? Empirically, so far, it seemed that no pony missed their mark once removed. Of course, my tests had all been on ponies who had been ailing because of their mark.
A cleared throat made me pay attention. Pegasi had gathered copious clouds above, but the sun still poked through here and there.
"Just past noon," Hoof Bump said helpfully. "And there's your lunch." A red-checker cloth tied into a stuffed picnic sack lay by my rear hoof. "And Rolling Rock here has the last items on your list. The only space left is under you."
As I jumped out, he stepped back. The other pony, a palomino with grey whiskers and a red pork-pie hat, kept his distance by his push cart. The unicorn didn't wait. He stacked muslin bags of dried corn, flour, and cans of vegetable stock, beside a load of dried apples.
Before I could open my mouth, Hoof Bump added, "It's all paid for."
We were off to one side of the parking lot of a warehouse store where plenty of other ponies shopped. Some looked. Feeling naked, my true cutie mark exposed—twin anonymous auroras above one big magical star—I whisked back on my mackintosh. "It's chilly out," I added.
The store clerk left the moment I grabbed the coat.
As I stepped toward the harness, Hoof Bump said, "Nah-uh. I'm helping you up to the provincial line."
I looked at him. He blinked his friendly magenta eyes at me, waiting.
I sighed and shrugged, then trotted ahead of him.
I left Hoof Bump behind two hours later, where the turnpike changed to an uneven country road, just beyond the provincial line. The trot out of town had been mostly an uphill grade, and even though I had only had to walk, I felt increasingly tired and increasingly grateful. I hypothesized his helping cutie mark left him content cause he only nodded to my thank you and trotted away.
I quickly left civilization behind, passing through unclaimed royal lands, where the road abruptly ended in knee-high grass. I pulled through mixed woodland and badlands that nopony had wanted for lack of streams or too many rocks in the soil or hostile wild neighbors. I could hear an occasional screech of a hawk or the skittering of a rabbit, but nothing more than the wind. Nopony ever saw deer or moose, or had lived to report it. I'd seen only their distinctive cloven hoof marks in trampled fields.
Eventually, I tried using my magic to help me pull. Motivate was simple transform of levitate that most unicorns in the retail and carriage trades learned. It was a reciprocating spell that applied radial motion to an object. For whatever reason, maybe my snooty upbringing, it generally broke me.
This time, I couldn't even get it to work for even a few seconds. My magic just kept sputtering out.
Ahead I saw the white peaks of the snowy Lesser Andiron Mountains, and just before them lay a gray haze floating over a hidden flat bottom valley. Mostly a miles-wide sink with a seasonal lake in early spring, it provided dry farming the rest of the year with the aid of wells and carted-in barrels of artesian water.
I'd founded Our Town there. Hot in summer and cold in winter—being isolated really counted as its only redeeming quality, though free homesteading was its other. I stopped at a high cliff. The sun had set an hour ago and the sky looked dark blue. I saw the silhouette of the four cottages and the main house I lived in. Nopony waited outside and no light shone from any window. We were a poor little village; candles were too much of a luxury to use frivolously.
"Let's be about it!" I told myself, and lit up my horn to unbuckle myself from the harness. Surprisingly, I found myself fumbling with the release. The buckle came apart with a clatter just as I reached in exasperation with my lips to pull it open.
I sat down hard on the dry grass in between the traces, huffing. My head felt stuffed with cotton. I reached for my canteen and dropped it at my hooves. It splashed inside.
I stared at it.
I'd dropped it?
Why did my head feel so thick? Was that a headache coming on? I reflexively touched the back of a fetlock to my forehead. It felt warm, but not as hot as my horn felt—like I'd held steel in a forge.
That made no sense! I reached for the canteen, and as I swung it to my mouth it slipped again out of my magic. Annoyingly, it bounded toward the cliff. I lunged for it and my hoof clunked atop it, pinning it before it could roll over the side.
I sat, this time hard on bare granite. Holding the magically shaped gourd between my hooves, I twisted off the cap with my teeth and drank like an earth pony. The weird thought that I was losing my magic made me drop the gourd and try to levitate a barrel from the pony cart. I had planned to magically ferry parcels down to the base of the cliff, followed by the empty wagons. The vehicles were just within my lift limit.
My magic sputtered, crackling like a hot coal snapping sparks in a fireplace. My aura splashed the barrel of molasses, grew holes like bubble cheese before the the bubbles popped and the magic dissipated in a swirl of sparkles.
I blinked and noticed my nose itched. My sneeze broke the evening silence.
If I couldn't ferry the load, I'd have to take the trail to the upper side of the valley, then circle around and pull all the way back to the village. It would take hours.
I felt so tired.
I got up, tried my magic again and failed. I had no choice, and I couldn't think what else to do. After a half-dozen tries, I got hitched up.
And went the wrong direction before berating myself and turning around.
I trudged for about an hour before the mush between my ears thought to re-examine the events of the day. Going backwards: Hoof Bump insisted on pulling for me so I could leave town quicker. He helped me shop, even paying for me, so I could leave town quicker. I delivered my passenger safely and everypony looked surprised I'd physically brought him, keeping their distance. Everypony kept their distance, from me. Kept their distance from whom I presumed was their boss, maybe Shea Butter himself. The mackintosh I still wore... immediately hoofed over when I asked.
My cargo... My passenger... He had asked me not to use magic.
Had begged me, actually, when I really took a moment to replay the events in my head.
Horn Reaper.
The boss, a unicorn, had the Horn Reaper.
Nothing else could explain it better. They had needed to get him to a physician, probably by a boat, and had hired a patsy to ensure he got there. Yes, they had arranged it so I had needn't have touched him. The BCF had bolluxed that.
I'd touched him. Had no choice.
And I'd used magic to do so.
Horn Reaper was another of those magical monsters that afflicted Equestria more and more often these days. This "flu" had a magical component that allowed it to be transmitted by magic use. Improperly treated, it could spread through a population. Unicorns were most at risk. They could lose their horn, and that killed a high percentage. Pegasi occasionally lost the ability to fly, and earth ponies could go lame or even become paralyzed, if the flu symptoms didn't kill them.
All the pony tribes had magic. I'd discovered that myself, after I'd been inadvertently tutored by Celestia's Royal physician and had figured out how to look for magic flows. I'd watched a pegasus as she flew, pulling me in her pony cart through the sky. Then I had really looked. Pegasus and earth pony magic just manifested differently, through their wings and muscles.
If I didn't get the village their supplies— As soon as the winter set in, they'd be stuck in the valley. Everypony would starve.
My hoof slipped. Reflex sent me flat on my chest, pushed through the dirt on my belly as the inertia of the pony cart shoved my fore quarters off the side of the cliff. I grunted and dug in my rear hooves, scrabbling back until I pushed myself back onto the sketchy road. I spat out a mouthful of acrid grit and cleaned my tongue on my foreleg.
"Pay attention!" I yelled at myself, then coughed.
Away from city, in the wilderness, the evening gloom sucked my voice away without an echo. I tried to cast Illuminate, but each time my horn only flashed momentarily. It lit a few bushes and scrub. I moved on, having to try again and again so I didn't go astray. Once or twice I saw reflective eyes appraising me in the dark. Probably deer, which from our experience was worse than wolves.
I couldn't bring the disease to the village, but I had to bring the supplies!
No choice. No choice. Couldn't abandon the food or the deer and moose we shared the land with would surely eat it.
If I arrived early enough, before dawn, before anypony awoke... I could lock myself in my house, quarantine myself, ride out the illness.
No contact meant no contagion.
I trudged on...
I tripped and slid face-first through cold dew-wettened soil, burrowing in nose-first thanks the inertia of my cart. I lay there for a while. So tired. Time had lost meaning between one hoof step and the next. It seemed like another pony had walked and I had looked on. Now, I saw the dinner plate-sized frost-wilted leaves of late season squash wave above my head. It surprised me that I could see. I looked up. The spray of nebulae across the center of the sky, that I'd stared at time to time through the night, had faded to just the bright stars. The sky looked deep blue, not black. Ahead, I made out the silhouette rooftops of the village.
I'd walked all night.
Wretched Celestia, who sometimes slept in and sometimes woke early, could raise her sun any moment! I pushed up, but then found I shook and shuddered. My nose dripped. It wasn't dew.
I sneezed.
I was breathing in hard, in gusts—almost as if I'd run the Baltimare Celestial Race once again—not as if I just stood up. I aimed my body for the main house, my house, then more precisely, toward the cart shed behind it. The harness dug into my ribs. The trailer jerked me back when the hitch clanked and connected between the wagons. I gasped, then grunted and dug in.
One hoof. Next hoof. Then the next.
I had to use my mouth and hooves to pull open the door. I backed the rig into the narrow space because I would never have had the energy to climb over had I pulled it in. The gravel floor crunched under the wheels and slid, repeatedly, making the wheels lock. I had to push. I sweat buckets—only part of that was due to my fever. Even with a dual hitch trailer, it refused to backup straight. It clacked and creaked and kept jamming into the wall. Until...
It fit in, totally. I collapsed to the floor and cracked my chin on the stones. My hoof came back red. My eyes began to burn.
The princess took pity on me. No sunrise, yet, but the morning twilight brightened. I forced myself to fight out of the harness, to drag my tired bones outside. My luck would not last, not if it depended on anything royal or noble.
The shed door.
I shut it despite the bottom dragging in the dirt and now the whitewashed wood glistened. The twilight lightened until the sky was starting to look blue. I glanced back. Nopony outside. I would have heard a shout of greetings.
The shed door.
I'd left lines of slime, like giant snail tracks, where I'd pushed holding my face and nose against the wood. Snot—let me use that word because it looked gross—dripped from a wooden handle that now bore my tooth marks.
Was Horn Reaper contagious by touch? I'd had to study animal husbandry and the basics of veterinary science as, in my former life, I'd been expected to eventually oversee farms—yes, plural. I'd run away during an intern journey through the western part of the earldom. What I hadn't learned was pony medicine. Not proper for a young lady. All I knew was you quarantined the sick livestock and consulted the vet for the correct medicine.
I looked at the dripping mucus, which became easier to see by the moment. Heat sterilization of veterinary instruments came to mind.
My magic. Could I?
I had to do something. Somepony might touch and I'd fail protecting everypony.
I sat and stirred the slush inside my head, fighting to calculate a Force spell. I kept on getting to the end of the number chain to address the wish predicate only to have the first numbers fade and I'd have to start over.
I'd ended up teaching a student once. Sunset had insisted on shapes instead of maths to cast a spell. I didn't know the "shape" of Force, but I imagined a marquise-cut diamond as a placeholder anyway.
That got magic flowing to my horn! Ponderously, though. Like molasses in winter. I kept focused on the diamond shape, but feared a congestion analogous to the one stuffing up my nose might affect my horn.
If I could only sneeze...
Could I?
I snuffled and inhaled, scrunching my nose, trying to get a tickle, keeping the diamond in my mind's eye, trying...
I sneezed.
The spell triggered simultaneously. Force is a cylindrical cyclonic levitation of air that causes friction creating a plasma. A gout of blue-green magic-boosted steam erupted against the door with a whoosh before rolling upward in a vaguely mushroom-shaped cloud.
A pulse of wet heat scooted me back in the dirt, singing my nose, and causing the hairs on my muzzle to curl.
Bits of peeling white paint on the door burned briefly, while the rest of the whitewash turned yellow and bubbled. A few green sparks spontaneously fizzled like a sorry firework from my horn in a downward arc.
"Well then," I whispered. When I tried to stand, I vomited.
At least I had no worries anypony would touch that bilious green sick in the dirt. I buried it anyway, then scrubbed my hooves in clean soil to be safe before I stumbled to the house. The quadrangle between the cottages remained empty and I saw no lights in the windows.
My door opened to my touch. I kept it unlocked as we knew each other well, but I did have a turn bolt and I glanced at it, before looking for paper. It took me seconds to understand that I looked at the piece of brass. Blinking in dismay, I did find my yellow pad. A spark from my horn burnt pinholes in the paper as I thoughtlessly tried to levitate a quill—before the feather burst into a stinking cloud of smoke and ashes.
A minute later, I wrote with a pencil in my mouth.
Because I had last mouth-written as foal, and had had no cause to practice beyond the age of five, I was forced to print in blocky foalish letters.
I am ill with HORN REAPER and contagious.
Do not enter.
Supplies in shed.
Do not touch for three days.
"That should do it," I mumbled, then nearly skewered myself as I momentarily blanked out and my head dropped forward. I spat the pencil out, the pain in the back of my throat having focused my awareness.
Now to attach the note.
How?
I glared at my useless hammer that required magic to wield, then swept it off my workbench.
My hoof skidded against edge of my masking tape, unable to free the stuck end.
When my teeth and hooves couldn't open it, I smashed the bottle of paste on the floor. I tore off the note (hopefully intact because my eyes were now blurring), and pushed it into the white glop mixed with bits of glass.
I crawled to the door.
Now all I had to do was...
I pushed the sign, trailing a line of paste up the door. The stuff worked as a lubricant, which was good because the paper weighed a Celestial ton at this point.
"There!"
It wobbled in the breeze as if attached with elastic, but stuck at half a pony height.
Just get inside, turn the latch...
Unconsciousness is weird. Do you remember the moment you fall asleep? Do you know what makes you fall asleep the instant you think it? I'm convinced it's an off switch, never in reach when you need it. Tink. Off. Then, save for a dream that might interrupt, suddenly tink you're awake again.
I thought it a dream, that floating sensation. The sound of water lapping gently against something unseen. I felt like lead... yet, buoyant like a ship. Hot. Achy. In increasing increments, miserable.
I heard a splash.
Water dripped, then touched my forehead. It trickled from the base of my horn between my eyes before the rivulet chose right and streamed off my muzzle to pitter into the water my chin lay in.
Another splash. More water trickling. It felt hot.
Water lapped against my chest, my back. I was propped against something wooden. My rear quarters were submerged, but all four of my hooves were up?
"Wha—" I tried to say, but a loud moan escaped instead to fill a compact enclosed echoey space. The vocalizing, a honk really, made me realize my nose was stuffed and not wet just from water. That got me thinking. My forelegs struck a wood edge on both sides with a bang. I worked to open my eyes.
"Relax, Starlight."
A large hoof against my sternum pushed me back and troubled water made waves. I fought. Long ago now, a monster had forced me against my will and I reacted reflexively.
"Starlight— Please. Let me take care of you."
Shocked by recognition, I hit the back of my head pushing back. Water splashed into my ears.
One, I'd requested quarantine. Two... "Double Diamond!?"
"A pony can only bear so much burden, Starlight. I am your friend, let me—"
"What I am is sick." I coughed, and coughed, emphasizing the point. I struggled to see, but as I levered my eyes open, bluish light smeared across my vision around a blurred silhouette.
His hoof pressed against my chest again. "I know, Starlight."
"I thought you could read." I blinked furiously, breathing hard because even trying to move my legs was more effort than I could put out. I heard a crackle, but my swiveling ears couldn't locate the source.
"Now is not the time to be mean, Starlight. Of course I read your note, but you had left your door open a crack and I could see you sprawled unconscious on the floor, your horn glowing in a way that didn't look right. I would never abandon you."
Like my friend Sunburst? "Don't make promises you won't keep."
When I could pick up the thread again, I found Double Diamond filling a tea cup with water from the tub and spilling it along my horn. My "bath" room, which everypony shared when they needed it, featured a wooden slipper tub the dozen of us had built with adz, axe, pine tar, and magic last spring. I realized that the water wasn't warm. He had taken it from the rain barrel reserve in my cellar and it was as a result arguably cold, but I couldn't tell. My lack of energy and jittery muscles confirmed that my fever had conquered me and he was trying to lower it.
Sun beamed down through the window. Noon. I'd been out for hours.
When I focused on the former athlete, I noticed his big blue eyes, his fuzzy chin, and his shaggy white faintly blue bangs. His frown transformed into a wide smile. He filled the tea cup again.
"Starlight—"
I managed to block the cup with a hoof. My horn took that instant to fizzle loudly. The aura around it guttered like a candle flame, threatening to go out. My already pounding heart fluttered faster as a couple of sparks arced down to sizzle out in the water. "It's not too late! Go. You're an earth pony. You might not be infected, yet. Save your—"
The dropped tea cup plinked into the water and bounced off my hip.
He reached up for my horn, pressing it with the pink frog of his hoof while he craned his neck forward. His lips meet mine in a kiss that both surprised me and took what little breath remaining-me away. My body relaxed my jaw on its own volition. He held my horn and the kiss—for what felt like a second going on a minute—then let his hoof slip beyond my horn down to my back. He brought my weakened body up so he could cradle it against his. He let go of the deep kiss to hug me more fully, though that put him part way in the tub.
In his very patient slow voice, he said, "You need to understand what friendship means to me, Starlight. You found a ski bum in the Lesser Andirons as he galloped off a cliff edge. He had sabotaged competitors' equipment and had cheated on the race course, been found out, and been banned from the sport for three years. An eternity to him. He had made a cairn of the ski equipment that had tortured him—a memorial. He plummeted into a deep snow valley when you caught him in your magic.
"You know this Starlight."
I did, but I gasped anyway, no strength left to push myself out of his gasp.
"You taught me that my Cutie Mark had made me insane when I lacked the talent to win the biggest prize. You used Meadowbrook's staff. You cured me. Come the end of winter, you'll have given me an additional two years of life I was never destined to live. Saving you is how I wish to spend it.
"No regrets, Starlight. None. You were dying. Can you understand that much?"
I was crying, but my face was wet already and my nose was running; his embrace saved me from embarrassment of noticeably sniveling. I whispered, "I did not ask."
He could not avoid infection now. What a way of making that point!
"You never do, Starlight. And now that you are stronger..."
He lay me gently back into the tub as if I were a large ragdoll. He reached onto the floor and came back with a tea pot held up with a hoof, with the other hooked in the handle. "Party Favor pitched the herbs through the window. It's elderflower, catnip, and white willow. Probably bitter as a griffin's smile, but we really need to get that fever down."
He maneuvered the spout to my lips. The lukewarm tea found my mouth parched and my throat on fire, but it went down. I could not have handled a cup at all or more than a spoonful at a time. Were it bitter, my tastebuds couldn't register it.
"Thank you for not fighting me," he said afterwards as I found myself dozing in the water. The direction of the light had changed again, and the water now did feel cold. I ached more, but didn't feel like I was laboring just to keep my heart beating. I had been babbling, and was aware of him talking to me.
I remembered him asking, "Who's Aurora Midnight?"
The consciousness switch toggled again. Tink.
The next hours or days passed as a pastiche of sensations. I awoke in my bed, and not alone. Gravity had increased by a factor of five and I couldn't move.
A pair of hooves touched my withers, then clamping my right foreleg rubbed along the muscles, kneading gently up to the joint. Then again. And again. Then the lower leg. Repeat. Rear legs... Flank... Back...
It hurt.
All my muscles hurt, so more pain didn't matter much.
I'd been pummeled good and hard by Raging Minotaur when I'd been a prize fighter in Baltimare. I'd won by a K.O., having gotten the brick-red earth pony to trip before landing a kick that threw him down head first. My body aches mirrored that beating.
It surprised me that Double Diamond massaged me, but not that he had thought it therapeutic. He was an athlete and athletes were massaged—a lot. And, once upon a time in Canterlot, I'd massaged my roommate, Sunset, to relieve her nettle-ewe withdrawal symptoms.
I did think it rude and presumptive of him. Not that I had the strength to complain.
After some grumbling and moaning, I relaxed and decided I liked it—then promptly fell asleep.
I remembered him feeding me spoons of porridge like an infant foal, telling me I had lost too much weight. I needed to get my strength up. That big infectious grin of his! I sat propped in bed with crunchy hop pillows. He waved the silver spoon around to get my eyes to follow, to get me to forget about my mouth so it opened.
I dreamed of the onions, wilted borage, and dandelion blooms in the gritty hominy. Sweet butter lingered until I awoke and the flavor stayed in my mind.
I pushed off the covers. All of them, the comforter and the spred, and, as I blinked into the darkness lit by the moon streaming in, the drapes he used a further blankets. They had baked me and I felt golden brown and crusty.
I wasn't alone. I realized a foreleg lay draped over my chest and a rear leg around my hock.
I remembered shivering, teeth chattering, and crying. As the butter flavor of the dream dissipated, I remembered him adding his own warmth to help to the pile of fabric to help with my chills.
I heard him breathing, slowly. My ears swiveled toward him. Something else...
I found I had the strength to turn over. I paused, then lay my face and ear between his forelegs.
Rumbling. I'd heard wheezing.
I noticed the perspiration that slickened my fur. I, on the other hoof, breathed freely. The aches remained, but felt more like a healing bruise. It felt like my flu had broken.
I cast Illuminate and set the ceiling aglow with a marine blue-green color.
I pulled away, but it didn't wake him. I swiftly sat up, brightening the light. One might think that white ponies were pale by nature, but many had dark skins. Double Diamond had pink skin, and when I blew some hairs aside, I saw my first thought was right. He was pale verging on gray.
I felt his forehead.
Fever... Warm like a mug of hot cocoa left sitting ten minutes. Not raging like mine had been. I shook him, but he was so limp, I mostly shook the bed as he moaned. My hackles rose. I shivered with the sense of prophesy come true.
I sighed and hung my head in resignation. I'd warned him. I didn't trust the term friend, but I knew a good pony when I met one. I hoped I would learn something by this experience.
My turn playing nurse.
The scintillating blue-white net of thread engulfed by a thin luminous fog stretched as far as I could see, when I finally noticed it. Like a railroad, it criss-crossed the landscape. And, like for a railroad, I hadn't immediately seen it underneath me. It provided transportation through unknown lands. I had found the pathways of magic through Double Diamond's body.
I'd earned my cutie mark the day I realized how these unique energies connected a cutie mark, an organ composed solely of magic, to the physical pony. I had first used the knowledge to cripple a criminal. I had derived its functioning from the fundamentals of a dangerous healing spell I'd incidentally learned from Celestia's royal physician.
The healing spell was dangerous because it transferred your consciousness inside another pony. I knew fascination could leave an unwary healer stranded inside, were there no pony around to wake him from having been enchanted.
Horn Reaper acted like a pneumonia. The magic-hybrid bug triggered his magically-enhanced earth pony muscles to constrict around the air sacs of his lungs. I spoke softly into the glowing fleshy landscape of spheres and tubes I found myself in. I even sung and cajoled until new pale yellow liquids began to seep around the dense peppering of mauve rhombicosidodecahedral germs his body had previously ignored. I watched them dissolve. I watched it all.
Seeing magic pulse through the body of an earth pony, captured like a sail from an ambient wind of the stuff, was fascinating.
Before making the effort, I'd watched Double Diamond refuse to wake despite my shaking and striking him. I'd noticed muscles lock and shiver, and it hadn't been the paralysis of sleep. His eyes hadn't moved under his eyelids, and his sleep hadn't looked right, regardless. For all Party Favor's hobby knowledge of herbs, he proved he was no healer. No pony I'd shouted to from the second story window had been able to help me.
I had given him 21 months of extra life after he'd thrown his away. He had made a choice to throw his life away, again. For my sake.
It took five minutes of "Should I help?" and "What if I failed?" for me to act.
I forgot all my worries and the danger in the face of Barthemule's transformed spell and pretty sparkly lights. In the final analysis, like Sunburst, I was a magic nerd. I had run away from home to learn magic. Ultimately, it was what I held dear—my cutie mark magic like Sunburst—that betrayed me.
Volcanic pain and electric-blue phosphenes, bouncing around like glowing glass marbles behind my eyes, woke me. I even heard that coconut sound you don't want to hear from the inside. Adrenaline fueled lightning-fast reactions allowed me to catch Double Diamond's stone-white forehoof between my knees before he struck me again in the forehead. An instant later, I rolled out of bed and stood rubbing what would surely purple into a shiner over my left eye and a bruise above eyebrow.
The scent of urine made my nose wrinkle. A day had surely passed with his nurse out of commission. Yet, his chest rose and fell normally. His prancing about in some errant dream had translated into my wake-up call. He jerked as I watched; his eyelids fluttered. That was a fair warning if I decided to sleep with the stallion in the future.
I sat, letting my hooves go to my mouth. I shook my head.
As I worked, I reflected that unicorns made the best nurses because I could lift him, clean him up, change the sheets, and later wash the bed clothes without touching anything noisome. Or waking my patient.
When I had some warm tea swishing in the teapot I floated beside me, and the drapes open to let in the light of a cloudy day, I tried waking him. He remained delirious, but took tea and later broth when I put the spout in his mouth.
The next morning dawned to dark clouds and snow flurries swirling against the windows and melting. Still, he slept. Encouraged by the lowering of his fever overnight, I took the time to cook corn porridge with mashed vegetables for the both of us, and to bring it up and place it on the nightstand.
Double Diamond's stomach made a gurgling sound. He lay on his back...
Looking at me.
He said, "I could smell that from downstairs."
As recently as midnight, he'd been as far away as Tartarus and his disturbed expressions and persistent unconsciousness proved it. Seeing his blue eyes flash at me now and his grin grow wide, I felt oddly as if I were seeing a ghost.
Or that he had been replaced by a changeling.
I jumped up on the bed and looked down into his face, blinking. Changeling? No. I touched his forehead, puzzled, but felt no fever.
I asked, "Are you feeling all right?"
He smiled. "I am a bit hungry. Truthfully, I am very hungry. Thank you for taking care of me, Starlight."
I found myself shaking. It was him. Somewhere, inside, I'd distrusted all that I'd done inside him so thoroughly, I hadn't expected him to recover. Getting literally kicked out of him was an important indicator. Neither a fan of luck nor fate, in his continued non-responsiveness, I'd nonetheless begun to think I'd acted rashly or too late, or that his additional twenty-one months were all he'd been destined.
I had been wrong.
I sat down. On him.
"Um... Starlight."
"Right. Hungry!" I grabbed a spoon of the golden porridge in my magic, but saw it steaming before I could shove it into his surprised open mouth. I huffed on it, filling the air with the steamy smells of corn, squash, and wilted spinach, and butter. And garlic. Party Favor had insisted garlic was good for sweating out colds. "Here!"
"I—" he said, and I pushed the spoon in. "Mumble-Mumble."
Cooling the next spoonful as he chewed, I asked, "Is it good?"
I popped it in the moment he swallowed and opened his mouth, getting more mumbles, nods, and a tiny sense of amusement to wear away at the overwhelming fear that had grown in me.
I liked it when I was in control and hated it when I wasn't, and that was the most of the discomfort. Only he could heal himself. Stuff I couldn't control.
I kept feeding him.
I also liked it when Double Diamond cared about me, and when he had cared for me. Nopony had done that for me after my parents had disappeared, presumed dead, when I was a filly—not really. Even when my Father had returned, he'd rubbed me wrong. He'd treated me like the filly he'd known, not the mare I'd become.
He'd infantilized me.
I had, of course, not told him about the attack by a monster that had taught me I could fight, me becoming a prize fighter, my having to deal with gang stallions in the basest of ways, becoming a bodyguard and later an enforcer, and eventually dissing Princess Celestia so badly that she didn't raise the sun for half a day.
I couldn't tell him.
He was my father, and that did mean something deep in that part of who I was—that part that knew I would disappoint him. Maybe I'd disappointed myself.
On the other hoof, there was Double Diamond. He did care. His actions of the past days, his support during our year plus together, and the pitter-pat of my heart insisted it was so.
I remembered a kiss.
"Empty spoon."
I shook my head, startled. "What?"
A hoof came up. The spoon clicked as he tapped it, floating in a green nebula midair. "Starlight. Your spoon is empty."
I felt my eyes cross as I looked at the utensil as if the corn porridge had teleported silently away. Bowl. Indeed empty. "Oh."
"I'm still hungry."
"Me, too," came from my mouth. To say unbidden would have been a lie.
"I'm really feeling pretty strong—"
"That's good."
"—and I could get up—"
"That'd be real nice."
"—and make my own—"
He moved his hips under mine. Though he obviously meant to encourage me to exit the bed, it pulled the final latch and unfettered my subconscious restraint.
The spoon clattered to the floor as I leaned forward and kissed him.
He paused, but didn't tense. He didn't pull away, but leaned upward into it with wet passion. I felt his forelegs wrap around my withers and pull me in as his body reacted underneath me.
It was fortunate that he was "really feeling pretty strong." Earth pony magic; it's amazing.
There's this romance novel cliché that always finds the amorous couple on floor in a pile of sheets. Once, I'd laughed because I'd read it so many times before.
But here we were, side by side.
In a pile of of sweaty sheets.
On the floor.
Together.
I lay on my back and rubbed a front leg across the yellow wood floor, uneven for the dark knots and hard to wear down growth rings. I remembered working with Double Diamond and the others, using my magic to sand the pine planks split and shaped for me. Together, we'd nailed the floor boards and used egg varnish to preserve them. Hooves and magic had built this house and the cottages.
A sun shined down through the windows in small pools of brightness, past the snow piled up against the window panes. The fire in the stone fireplace had burnt out, but the heat of the coals and that of our own exertions kept the air warm. I couldn't miss his scent. I smelled the lavender soap I'd washed him with. Pony sweat overlaid that, but his was different than mine, unique, nice... it smelled like, hard to touch a hoof to it. Tantalizing. My nostrils widened on their own as I tried to pin it down. Fascinating. I could think about it on and on. Faintly of albumin and maleness. Definitely animal, but in a good way.
I'd never noticed that of my other stallions, especially not my first. The monster I'd vanquished had attacked me in a thunderstorm. All I remembered was the smell of electricity and afterward searching for a healer to learn the magic so I didn't foal. My other encounters were planned to manipulate the manipulators to get what I wanted. It certainly was nothing like what Double Diamond gave. And none had smelled fascinating.
This place I'd helped build felt more like home than the mansion I'd run away from, or the fancy loft apartment I'd bought in the patrician neighborhood of Inner Harbor in Baltimare. Sunset's Canterlot ivory tower had never felt like home.
Maybe home had something to do with who was there with you.
Double Diamond's faint snoring stopped beside me and he snorted awake. He chuckled with his head pointed away from me. "Still here, Starlight?"
I replied, "Still here."
Now he looked at me, blue eyes sparkling in the sunlight still streaming in from the break in the clouds. He smiled, which struck me as much more relaxed than his usual grin. I thought maybe he might kiss me and we'd start all over again, which made my heart race, but he began wiggling and scootching around until his head faced my flank. This gave me a good view of his muscular hindquarters, which was a nice consolation prize in itself, but also his cutie mark root.
The magic organ grew in the hip of a pony as they matured, branching out to manifest itself as a conceptual image on the surface when a certain brain body connection was made. My cutie mark talent was manipulating cutie mark magic, and that's how I figured out I could pull part of the apparition free. That left the root I studied now on Double Diamond's flank. The root presented a contagious-magic affinity for what I called the projection ganglion I kept isolated in a jar. It looked like two bars at a distance, but now that Double Diamond's coat was a hoof-length from my nose, I could see it was composed of two rectangular clusters of coin-like circles that colored his fur a scabby red-brown.
I averted my gaze. I knew that relieving a pony of a cutie mark cured all sort of insanity, like his suicidal thoughts. Its controlling manifestations were the root of all evil. Still, while I knew I had the right of it, it was a new science. I suddenly cared that I might be wrong somewhere in my train of thinking on the subject.
Double Diamond said, "Aurora Midnight." It was a statement, not a question.
I looked toward my rear to see him studying my cutie mark. After a moment, he stuck out a pink tongue and traced the green vertical wisps. I giggled despite myself, and squirmed a bit because the tickling sensation also felt really good. He traced the doubled four-pointed star, too. If my fur were black like my mother's, the twin auroras would "shine" in a midnight sky with the star.
Mom's name had been Midnight. Wanna guess what she named me?
I inhaled deeply when he paused. I had babbled the name when I was in the bathtub, feverish.
"She's some pony from another life. They raised her to care for the ponies of towns and farming villages. They were supposed to teach her to fight with magic for her pony nation as one of the sharp hooves of the nation's princess, to be a hero like her parents, but they never did. Not something you teach a lady, their favorite excuse. Life, and then friendship, betrayed her. Nopony cared a wit for her heart, so she ran away. She doesn't exist anymore."
I was blinking, as if that could distribute the tears so they couldn't drip. I inhaled and held my breath, trying to convince my eyes to stop burning.
I felt Double Diamond's breath against my flank as he contemplated my cutie mark. The warm gusts rustled the short hairs. By stages, the new sensation turned into a feeling of closeness, that somepony was there, there for me. As his breaths continued, they turned to hope and delight. He was alive. I huffed, tears drying up. He was very alive.
I began wondering about the meaning of the word, intimacy.
"Starlight?"
The clouds took that moment to grab away the comforting sunlight, replacing it with a dim blue glow. It grayed the browns, reds, and golds of the round sandstone river plates we'd mortared to form the room's stone walls, and extinguished the sparkle of the quartz in each.
I asked, "Yes?", hopeful it wasn't an omen.
"I talked with Night Glider and Free Mane when you were gone—"
I let out a disappointed nicker straight out of my subconscious, then thought of it as an animal sound. Having once been taught the fundamentals of managing tenant farms, the me that no longer existed had thought her knowledge of breeding livestock applied to ponies, too. My subsequent experiences with stallions had completely confirmed there was nothing more to it other than to wonder why romance stories unanimously expressed a different opinion on the subject. Money, I supposed. I had grown not to care or pursue.
But it was animal, what had happened, and Double Diamond proved it.
As a young mare, I'd spent my time around criminals, wielding my ethics and magic to stay above the worst of it, until the post office and surrounding blocks in Manehatten blazed with fire and, a year later, I'd crushed the princess' desires so thoroughly she'd refused to raise the sun. As a young stallion, Double Diamond had traveled the world, finding winter wherever he went, competing as his cutie mark urged him. As a year-around ski bum, he'd met plenty of ski bunnies. (Animal. Diminutive.) He'd learned what to do, and not in the backdrop of fear and striving I'd dealt with, but with calm and casualness that translated into the intensity of his grin and the passion he poured into building our little village, loving, and saving a unicorn that by rights ought now be dead.
We were not the same.
I felt myself cool as if I sensed a nasty Windigo-fomented storm approaching. Yes. That had been a soul-deep nicker of disappointment.
He wriggled again, sliding closer until the sheets piled up between us at my chest and my cheek lay against his thigh and my nose touched his cutie mark root. I immediately felt his warmth, and the prickliness of his white fur, and his jaw against my flank. He was a bigger pony than I.
He rubbed his cheek against my cutie mark. "It's important."
"Free Mane and...?"
"Night Glider told me about Chamomile, a friend she knows. She is as unhappy with her life as Night Glider had been before you liberated her from her cutie mark."
Night Glider had been talented at soaring, but it wasn't a talent that could get her into the Wonderbolts, especially because she excelled only at night. She had lived with Wind Rider for a time, and he'd at least mentored her for awhile, but in the end he'd left her soured and alone.
"Chamomile. Something to do with tiny daisy-like flowers?"
"Her talent is raising them, and making the 'most excellent teas.'"
"And not much else?"
"Not even other herb teas. She's not good at raising any other plant for that matter. She sorts potatoes in season and does construction when she can get the jobs, but complains her talent leaves her distracted and longing for the scent of something that doesn't bloom just part of the year.
"Between the two mares, I've learned of many ponies who could benefit from what we've built here, Starlight. Cutie marks are a curse. Night Glider has given me an address and said she will write a letter to introduce you. Free Mane, too. Since we've come to an understanding with the deer and moose that share our valley and they don't wreck our crops any more, and our harvest proved pretty good, I think we can attract more ponies here. It's your dream, Starlight. I think we can get fifty by the end of summer, if we try."
It was my dream. But it wasn't what was on my mind at the moment, even if it was on his.
"Starlight?" he said when I didn't respond.
"Yes."
"We talked about your cutie mark."
The green auroras and the purple on white star. He probably had with Night Glider and the other ponies, but he meant the two of us, and we had. "Hmmm?"
"You told me the day you found me that it was curse, even to you. You told me that some day, you'd use the Meadowbrook's Staff of Sameness to remove yours, too." I felt his breath against my legs and thighs as his voice ramped up in fervor. "To make this work. To grow our town so our community of equality can become truly viable, to become equal, you need to remove your cutie mark, Starlight..."
I found myself holding my breath. Don't say it.
He did: "Promise me, Starlight."
"I will," I lied without hesitation.
I'd lied about the staff. I'd found him on the mountain. What he'd attempted had scared him, and with the desolate whistle of the blowing snow in our ears, under the ugly dark clouds that raced overhead, he'd looked ready to bolt when I told him what I could do. I'd had the branch in my cart, and plenty of smaller broken sticks and kindling as firewood. Brandishing an "ancient relic" hallowed what I'd proposed, and I'd added a calming ritual I'd made up on the spot, pulling from a superstitious spooky story I'd read one Nightmare Night as a filly. I'd done it.
I'd done what I'd done the night long ago when I'd earned my cutie mark. I'd arranged with the Canterlot constabulary for them to show up when a crime boss I'd been blackmailed into working for threatened Sunset Shimmer. A sting operation, they called it. But, his talent...! A spilled beer cutie mark. He could drunken any pony and make them do what he suggested. He made the constables fight one-another.
His cutie mark made it possible.
I ripped it from his hide and experienced the revelation of my life.
So, too, had I taken Double Diamond's.
I huffed at the thought. The taking from the crime boss, Running Mead, had knocked him down. Writhing with pain, he'd struck his head against a wall, and left himself addled, allowing the constables to recover their wits.
Double Diamond though...
His pain had shown in gritted teeth transformed to epiphany as he felt his body react to the loss. His pain turned to a grin of realization. It was hard to miss his laughter as I heard one pain drown another—while I dumped my dill pickles in the bed of my wagon to free their screw-top jar.
I'd done the deed. Twice, then, at that time. Twice, each time to eradicate a curse.
And, I had lied.
The forked branch wasn't a magical object. It was tool I had used to pry up rocks and to prop up a canvas for a tent. Considering how cold the winter was proving to be, it would have eventually been tinder for a campfire.
But his words, now. His request, now. They caught me in the lie. It left me with a circular logical paradox. I needed my cutie mark magic to remove my cutie mark, but then I wouldn't be able to sustain the spell and it would reroot itself.
I had never tried. I'd never found the courage to try, even those days after I'd fled Canterlot and the princess' wrath after I'd ripped my first cutie mark free, for an arguably good reason, when my heart had insisted I should perform the deed upon myself.
Regardless.
I knew magic. I felt confident of the result.
Failure.
I couldn't tell him that. Not any of that. Nothing I could say would help.
Well. All friendships... weren't.
Especially if a cutie mark came between. Like between me and Sunburst, and now between Double Diamond and me.
I took a deep breath and said, "I promise."
I was a good enough actress, after all these years hiding my true identity, that the pronouncement that echoed in our shelter from the snowy weather sounded true and happy.
I added, "This spring."
I'd lived for years as a blank flank, during my years as runaway, a grocery clerk, a prize fighter, a bodyguard for the Carne Asada Syndicate, a half-semester at Celestia's school while serving as an enforcer for Running Mead—until I'd earned my own cutie mark at sixteen. Blank flanks looked like fillies, not mares. I'd gotten good at makeup, and afixing the counterfeits I'd created so they didn't flake off or sweat off. Lacquer hairspray worked miracles. I would wear clothes on days that threatened rain.
I now owned a taupe mackintosh.
Sadly, I wouldn't be able to let Double Diamond live with me. We could be together, alone. Sure, darkness did hide many things, but morning always dawned bright and warm. Probably for the best, considering he kicked in his dreams. Sunset, for all her tendency to sometimes whimper in her sleep and her need to be held to quiet her, had been plenty nicer to sleep with.
Another deception.
Another sacrifice to achieve my dreams.
With my cutie mark, I would make the world a better place to live. Without cutie marks, perhaps friendship did exist. It never would for me.
"Starlight?"
"What?"
"I can't tell you, Starlight, how much of a relief hearing you say that is. Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"Really?" he asked. "Welcome, am I?" I could hear the relief in the sudden wheedling playfulness in his voice. I imagined his grin, or maybe his newly presented smile, grow. I felt his chest expand and his warmth on my skin, and felt myself growing warm. My heart beat faster.
He rolled over toward me and my worries vanished again.
Author's Note
Please feel free to comment. No better moment to up vote than now! 
There are more stories in the Enforcerverse. I hope to release a novel prequel to The Enforcer and Her Blackmailers in a few months titled The Runaway Bodyguard. References to her being a prize fighter in Baltimare come from the already completed chapters.
Btw, if you don’t mind reading a stricly R-rated M-tagged story, my other Starlight X Double Diamond story is The Double Diamond Affair. You will have to turn on Settings > View Mature, first. It takes place after Starlight’s reform, when she’s still worried that her former citizenry ~~might hate~~ dislike her.
