There is Nothing Harder than Just Going On

Dusk forced the muscles on his back to shiver roughly, the harness he'd strapped into settling further into place as he shifted from side to side to get them to lay just right. He'd been able to fake some padding with the leftover cloth scraps, but he was running low on the bolt and had skimped a little to stretch the material (a joke he'd been told by Rarity).

He'd created some rope from the fibers of the sativa he'd managed to locate, and with his earth magic had plenty enough to fake an actual harness, though the strands and fibers were far from smooth or comfortable.

It was strong enough to connect him to the cart at least. Using some of the leftover fibers he'd made some... Well, he couldn't call it thread. Some very fine rope? Cord?

Cord.

His ears flicked, and he realized he'd been staring up into the sky, once again lost in thought. He'd wrapped his rope in cord, then used very fine cord and a rock needle to sew the cloth over the entire affair. It wasn't comfortable, but at least it wouldn't rub his hide raw.

Plus it would pull his cart. So, you know, it would do what he'd made it for. That was nice.

He snorted, pawing the ground and looking ahead of himself.

"You're procrastinating," he muttered, staring out. "I know this is a big risk, and possibly could result in a bucking temporal paradox if something goes really, really wrong, but what are the chances of that?"

His mind almost started on the math for that probability, but he shook his head and took a step instead.

"Besides, you're at the stage where you're not only talking to yourself, you're answering back."

He stepped out onto the heavily worn and grassy cobblestones making up the large roadway that used to lead into the castle. Still led across the ravine, at least. He made sure to take heavy, stomping steps, trying to listen for any signs of the bridge giving way underneath his wagon. He'd inspected all sides of the bridge, including the bottom, but he wasn't an architect and had no idea what it was supposed to look like.

There were no cracks in the bottom at least. As he made his way across there weren't any sounds of distress either. No grinding of stone on stone, no falling pebbles clattering off the floor yards below him, nothing.

Only the sound of the wooden wheels clattering over the stone, and the shifting of the baskets in the bed of it.

Still, he sighed in relief once he reached the far side of the chasm, then lifted the ropes off of the pegs he'd made on the fork of the wagon and went back to the far end to lift the fabric sheet. Inside of the four foot by eight bed were several baskets he'd woven from jute, each one full of its own selection of the crops he'd managed to turn out in the month he'd been here.

Over the last two weeks Lily and Clover both had been a constant source of society for him, as well as a pair of students for him to teach the apparently lost art of cloud shaping (a fact he was deeply worried about).

Lily had proved quite competent at the creation and had progressed far enough that she was teaching herself how to create stable curving structures out of cloud.

Clover was, unfortunately for him, terrible at the practice of using the magic of his grip on the clouds. And that was unfortunate for Dusk as well, as Clover proved to actually have quite the developed thaumic fields and could easily gather hoof-fulls of the substance. But instead of being able to gather the clouds, he ended up using so much force that he inadvertently crushed the vapors into little discs.

While exciting at first, Clover quickly lost patience with his inability to create the smooth bricks that Lily was able to at the end of the third day of their practice. Still, he was at least as stubborn as his sister, and within a week of almost constant practice could make a relatively steady wall in a few hours.

Lily had been growing bored with only making bricks, and had pestered 'Onyx' until he showed her how to make a basic bowl with some clay from the river.

While he couldn't actually fire it without a kiln, he did his best with a basic wood oven that had been built into the wall of the kitchen in the castle, and it was more the shaping of the clay that was important for Lily anyways.

"Ah don' think you coul' bake tha cloud, but maybe you coul' just keep compressin' it?" he had said to Lily, who had nodded and done just that. At the end of the project she'd had what was basically a bucket without a handle, but it was light enough for her to lift easily and dense enough to hold water, so they'd called it a success and moved on with Lily's mostly self-teaching.

The past two weeks had largely been the two pegasi practicing while Dusk worked his field, sending his magic down through the earth and into the roots of the plants, where it acted as a fertilizer for the crops. They'd been astonished by the almost visible results of his tending, making many comments about how certain stalks and vines were longer or taller when they were leaving than when they got there.

Dusk had always chuckled and insisted that any earth pony could do it, same as they could with the clouds, but their continued amazement had sown doubt, and he was worried what he'd find once he got to the village in the hills.

Dusk had known that per the history books that no name had been given to the conglomeration, and it had just been known as Canterlot since they had intended to move everypony into the mountain town together, but some sort of intuition had him ask Lily and Clover if the village had its own name.

"Well, tha unicorns had some horse-apple suggestion that they just go along with Canterlot, since tha's what they're calling the new capital," she had told him, "but the ponies in the shadows at the base had their own idea, and call it Haysdale, after their crop."

"An' wha's your flock callin' ya' place again?" he asked, stretching his brain to their conversations. "I thin' I remember you tellin' me it wa' Cloudsdale?"

"Tha's been finalized," Clover said, his tongue licking his top lip before he lowered his head even closer to his project, an attempt at a perfect brick like his sister had made five days ago. "Didn' really have a name for it before that, but I'd heard it called the Nest a couple of times. Ponies thought that was a bit simple though, compared to Haysdale and Canterlot."

"They had a point," Lily murmured, giving her vase a final once-over before nodding and placing it to the side. "I know we got wings n'all, but Tartarus, the Nest?"

Clover shrugged before moving on to his next brick. "Better'n hay town," he said, smoothing over his next piece of cloud to get it ready to be added to his wall. "An' what's Canterlot even supposed to mean, anyhow?"

"Well, the Canter is a dancing style from the older times," Dusk said passively, pulling a long weed from in between furrows of hemp stalks. "And a 'lot' was what the crown called the pieces of land that it either gave to earth ponies to farm on, or what ponies claimed before the crown could and kept ownership of over the years. So it's like, the Dancing Land, or the Place of Dances, depending on which historians you ask."

Dusk worked in silence for a bit, before noting it and looking over at the pegasi gawking at him.

He chuckled once before scratching at his neck, underneath his mane. "Ah learned a bit from my ma an' pa, they had a lot of their own. At one time," he said, flicking his ears back and along his head.

Lily's ear copied his and she turned back to some fresh clouds that were to be her latest project. Clover, though, stared at him a moment longer, his ears remaining perked forward towards Dusk, before turning slowly back to his wall.

Clover had been quiet since, while Lily had increasingly turned out minor artwork after artwork, vases and bowls and sculptures, all made out of cloud. She'd apparently made a name for herself selling her pieces, and had a number of ponies hounding her and asking how she'd managed it.

And it was this talk of sales and markets that finally had Dusk readying his wagon-load of baskets full of food and simple pieces of pottery. Mostly bowls that he'd 'glazed' with super-fine sand and a bit of magic, along with spoons he'd oiled to keep them from soaking up foodstuffs and falling into pulp right away.

Those were the first things he checked on the other side of the chasm actually, making sure the leaves he'd used as packing material were still in place and cushioning the stacks of bowls.

"This is crazy," he muttered to himself, again, before walking back up to the fork of his wagon and hitching himself back in.

He took one last, lingering look at the castle, before sighing and activating the 'alarm' spell he'd set up yesterday to let him know if anyone at all set foot anywhere within the castle walls. It wouldn't make any sound here, but it would let him know with a pinging sound directly in his ear.

He stayed there for a moment, his heart lurching as he looked over the castle he'd become so attached to over the last month, before he forced himself away and down what had been a hard-packed dirt road, and was now a wide grassy lane.

He took slow steps in the beginning, stopping to look at every other weed growing up from the path, straying from the sides that grew tall enough to tickle his belly.

After he made it around four hundred yards away, though, he felt his ears perk up, and a surprising spring flowed naturally into his step as he looked around at the large trees lining the thoroughfare. He watched as a fat red bird flew over his wagon, and he laughed at the feeling welling up within his barrel.

Apparently some sort of fear had been hovering over his mind, some internal thought that if he left the castle the world would break in half with a bolt of fire and lightning that he'd just proven wrong.

He felt free, for one of the first times since he arrived in this time. He was alone, and didn't have to worry about changing the fate of the coming ages by misspeaking or placing the wrong brick in the wrong place in the castle.

He was out in the wilderness, in a forest that would overtake this path. He didn't have to worry about anything!

He heard a branch break somewhere in the forest to his left, and his head whipped to gaze at that side, his ears pointed and trembling as he watched for any movement. After a moment, he sighed before trotting on his way, pulling his wagon quickly down the overgrown ruts of the road.

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

He made it through the forest in roughly an hour and a half, with no more of those sounds or any other traces of something following along, and he'd managed to relax to the point of not having to look all around himself constantly. He rolled up to the break in the lines of trees quicker than he'd expected, and was gazing out along the road that used to lead into the forest before he noticed with a twitch a certain small lake he recognized.

Looking down at the paths that met, he traced the dirt lane that wound in front of the forest and found that it matched nearly perfectly the placement of the train tracks that were supposed to crop up in a few centuries.

There it is, he thought to himself. The lot that springs up Ponyville.

It was with some strange sense of pride that he looked down onto the field, a large flowery meadow that sat in the crook between what was the Everfree and what would become the White Tail Woods and the stream that ran down from the Canterhorn mountain and became the creek that created the Ghastly Gorge.

Turning away from the meadow, he gazed straight down the road, the one leading from where Appleloosa would be and heading towards the mountain.

He sighed, undoing his harness from the fork of his wagon and walking around to pull a bundled tomato sandwich from its bed. Unwrapping it from the large leaves he'd used to keep the bugs off of it, he leaned against his wagon as he stared up at the mountain, idly taking in the tiny spots that would have been pegasi workers flying along the lot being built as he chewed.

Finishing the snack he tossed the leaves aside and strapped back into the cart, settling himself for a long walk before leaning forward into the harness.

As he passed over the road and through the place where Sweet Apple Acres would be, he glanced into the open, gently rolling fields, and let a wave of nostalgia wash over him as he chuckled over the memories of the first time he was harnessed up, to a snow plow instead of a wagon.

"I was so scrawny then," he murmured, his eyes twinkling as he looked along the gentle slopes and figured where exactly he had been stuck in the snow. "I mean, even Rarity had more muscle at the time."

A bird flew over his head, a flitting song here and gone again, and he followed its trail through the air as he found himself at the shallow crossing that didn't yet have a bridge. He followed the flight as he splashed through the ankle-deep waters crossing the silty creek, smiling to himself when he heard a chorus of tiny peeping sounds from the nest the bird landed on.

"Even before she moved onto the lot," he chuckled, gazing ahead again as he pulled the wagon up the slight incline away from the water.

"Even before who what?"

Dusk shrieked (a little) as he jumped and turned his gaze back to the road, now blocked by a trio of ponies.

The leader was smirking down at him, a stocky earth pony with a long straight mane and feathering to match, the long strands nearly covering his hooves completely. He also had a hoof-long braid dangling from his chin, though the rest of his facial fur seemed well-trimmed.

And to Dusk's dismay, the stallion towered over him by more than a couple of hooves, his ears topping out to where Dusk's horn would've tapered to.

Dusk glanced at the other two stallions, a pair of dappled palominos with short manes, one of which had several glass beads woven into a long braid in his mane. With a sinking in his chest, he noted that they had short-shafted spears strapped to their sides, and a glace at the stocky clydesdale revealed a shining pair of metal horseshoes, the thick style favored by hoof-to-hoof fighters.

"Very sorry to startle ya, miss," the lead stallion snickered, the other two watching on hungrily, "wasn't on purpose."

Dusk's ears and legs straightened, pulling him to his full height. "Miss?" he asked thinly.

The stallion's eyes widened, as did his grin. "Ah, well then, just a runt of a stallion," he said with a chuckle. "Makes this easier. You hand over your coin, we both walk off without broken legs. And this close to the forest, you won't be dragging your corpse far."

The two stallions behind him broke their stony expressions to grin wickedly, their teeth gleaming in the sunlight.

"Oh, you just want my gold?" Dusk said, letting out a relieved breath. "Alright, deal."

The clydesdale's grin dipped as Dusk detached himself from the fork of his wagon before spinning around and reaching into the top of the covering. After a moment of shuffling, he turned around and tossed the flat purse over to the stallion, his two coins clinking together as they hit the dirt.

"Unfortunately you caught me heading to market," Dusk said as the stallion picked up the purse and frowned into it. "I don't have anything right now."

The stallion cursed and threw the bag down into the lane, grinding one of his back hooves into the dirt before sighing. "This one's a bust, boys. Haydale knows we ain't merchants, and we can't eat bucking cloth." He cursed again before stomping off of the path, the other two glaring at Dusk before they moved over to comfort the stallion.

Dusk cocked his head, looking at the backs of the stallions and noting with a pang that he could clearly see their spines and the ribs of the bigger one. He bit his lip, before walking around to the back of his wagon and peering under the tarp and counting his baskets.

After moving several of the larger bundles off the back and covering what was left of his cargo, he glanced over at the group and whistled.

"Here," he said, pushing forward one of the three baskets. "Carrots, turnips, and a basket of wheat. You find a mill and pay them out of the coins, I'm sure you could get flour to make enough bread to last you a while."

The lead stallion stared at him for a few moments, before using his hoof to tell the other two to stay where they were.

Walking over, he looked carefully down at the woven baskets and their complementing lids. When he didn't move towards the baskets, Dusk reached over and slowly opened one. The stallion flinched away as though he expected it to explode, before looking down at the full container of carrots.

Reaching out he grabbed the other lid and tilted it open, glancing at the sheaves of wheat stalks held together by jute twine, before he looked over at Dusk.

"Why?" he asked, his eyes steely but confused.

Dusk glanced between the three of them, before slowly saying, "I can see you're starving. I don't need the coin these would get me more than you three obviously need food."

The clydesdale looked down at the basket again, before glancing back up at Dusk, his eyes watery and slit beneath wrinkled eyebrows.

"But we tried to rob you," he said softly.

"You did rob me," Dusk pointed out, smiling before he gently reached out and laid a hoof on the stallion's shoulder. "Sometimes when they're put in a bad place, ponies do bad things. That doesn't make them villains, though. It just makes them desperate ponies. And why shouldn't one pony help out another?"

The stallion gazed down at Dusk, utterly speechless before the first tears splatted the ground beneath his muzzle and he grabbed Dusk around the withers, pulling the surprised stallion into a bone-creaking hug.

Dusk let out a little 'oomph' before returning the hug, glancing over the stallion's shoulder and gesturing for the other two to come up.

As they looked into the baskets, each one took out a large carrot apiece and started scarfing them down, taking massive bites and barely chewing before swallowing.

"Hey, slowly," Dusk said, patting the stallion on the back with one hoof while waving the other at the two palominos. "If you eat too much too quickly, you'll just throw it up," he said, patting the stallion's shoulder with the second hoof.

The clydesdale sniffled heavily before leaning back, swiping at his nose before nodding. "Oi, you two, he's right. Slow down or it'll come back up as quickly as it went down."

The two looked at each other before taking another twin bites out of their food, being sure to slowly and completely chew up the chunks of vegetables before swallowing and taking more bites.

The clydesdale chuckled before turning back to Dusk, straightening his spine and swiping at his eyes with a hoof.

"Thank you," he said, looking down at the trio of baskets. "It's been... at least four days since we saw food. We've been grazing, but the grass doesn't have anything beyond empty calories, ya know?" He glanced down at the meadow beside them. "We were starving with food all around us."

"Hey, it's no big deal," Dusk said, patting the stallion's shoulder. "If you want, I got some cookware and spices in the wagon, I could make you guys some stew before I head on along?"

Both of the palominos shared a look before slowly reaching up to their shoulders, and the short spears holstered there.

Glancing back when Dusk sighed, the large stallion frowned before stomping a hoof.

"No," he said strongly. "I would not repay a kindness with a sword. That's a unicorn thing to do, and I will not lower myself so."

Dusk's ear twitched, but he kept his silence.

The stallion sighed as the other two nodded and turned back to the carrots, before he himself turned back to Dusk. "Sorry, they're just hungry," he said, holding a hoof out. "I'm Iron Heart, and those two are Flicker," the one with the beads in his mane waved, "and Flynt," he said as the other one nodded his head. "Tell you what, you make us your meal, and I'll make sure you and your wagon make it to the dale in return."

"Oh, thank you," Dusk said in surprise before he turned to his wagon and started fetching out several wooden ladles and bowls before pulling out his pride, a bronze cauldron he'd pulled from minerals down in the crevasse around the castle. He'd planned on seeing if the town had similar objects before trying to sell it, but he figured he could pull some information from these stallions about such things while they ate and walked.

Iron Heart chuckled as he picked up the cauldron and looked it over while Dusk pulled out some small packets of spices wrapped in vegetable leaves.

"Ain't seen a cauldron like this since my gran's," he said, glancing over at Flicker and Flynt. "Campfire, boys, if you would," he said before walking down to the stream and filling the pot with water.

Dusk pulled out a stone knife and cut a few of the carrots out of the basket into one of the wooden bowls, before doing the same with a few turnips. While he diced everything the others busied themselves with getting a fire going beside the road, Iron plopping the cauldron onto the fire and using a ladle to stir the clear water as it boiled.

Once the water was boiling Dusk added the veggies, letting them stew until tender and ready to go before he tossed in the spices and served up the dark stew to the other ponies.

The three of them hesitated until Dusk started taking heavy spoonfuls of the food and shoveling them into his mouth before they each took several bites, looking around at each other with strange expressions.

"What'd you spice this with?" Flynt asked, his voice quiet and coarse.

"Uhm," Dusk said, trying to remember the spices he'd packed. "Coriander, cumin, allspice, ginger, some black peppercorn. Why, is it bad?"

"It's..." Flicker started to say, even his voice similar to Flynt's, "It's strange. I don't think I've ever tasted anything like this before."

"Reminds me of the foods down along the badlands," Iron Heart said, before taking another bite off of his spoon. "Warm, sort of harsh, and inviting until you've gone too far into it and it burns you."

Dusk glanced at the stallion worriedly as he gazed down into his broth.

"That sounds heavy," he said, startling Iron out of his reverie.

The stallion chuckled before draining his broth and settling the bowl in front of him. "I was stationed down there during my conscription."

"Conscription?" Dusk said, setting his bowl down and frowning. "Was there an emergency?"

"Nah, my enlistment was pretty quiet actually," Iron said, reaching out and getting another ladle of soup. "Flicker and Flynt were sent up north by the horned bastards though, they saw some skirmishes with the Griffons over near Hollow Shades while posted up near there. Unicorns keep pushing the borders, even if we don't have the stallion-power to keep the land, ya know?"

Dusk kept his expression blank as he worked through the nuances of what he'd just been told.

"Anyhow, I think we've finished your soup," Iron said, scraping the belly of the cauldron and glancing into it. "We should be on the way soon if we're walking to the dale before nightfall."

"Ah, yeah, yeah," Dusk said, shaking his head before grabbing the cutlery and wandering down to the stream to run the wet silt through the bowls.

He glanced over at Iron as the stallion brought the cauldron down and began rinsing it.

"Flicker and Flynt are taking care of the fire," he said while he rinsed out the cauldron in the stream. He glanced meaningfully over at Dusk. "You're not a deserter, are you?" he almost whispered.

"No, no," Dusk said, shaking his head. "I guess my sire's homestead was hidden away well enough, but I never was called to draft, nor my da'."

Iron nodded with a sigh. "Alright. We can deal with a dodger, that's far different from a stallion leaving his friends to fend for themselves," he said, turning the cauldron over to drip into the clean grass. "The brothers had a deserter almost kill their company after leading a group of griffons back to their location, and they still hold the grudge. Used to be three of them, aye?"

Dusk sighed heavily, his ears folding back as he nodded. "No, no, I didn't abandon anypony, I just never served."

"Alright," Iron said with another nod. "I'll get this back in your wagon then."

Dusk watched the stallion pick up the cauldron and walk back up the hill with it, his heart going out to the brothers and wondering what brought the three of them together.

"I need to figure out what's going on around here," he said, before putting the bowls and spoons on his back and making his way back up to the wagon, where he helped the other three reload his wagon and get it ready to go.

As he latched himself into the fork and started pulling the wagon forward, he cocked his head to look over at Iron. “So, scrawny runt, huh?”

He heard the brothers chuckling from their places on either side of the wagon as Iron Heart’s ears folded back.

“Well…” he said, trailing off when the other three started laughing outright, joining in after a moment.

After the laughter died down, he nudged Dusk with an elbow. “You are scrawny, though.”

"Says the mountain," Dusk grumbled.

He expected the three of them to laugh again, but they only looked at each other before Flynt said, "Iron's not that big, son. He's, well, average height."

"Wait, really?" Dusk said, looking up at Iron's muzzle. "Huh, I thought I was," he stopped himself from saying 'big' and finished, "uh, average. Must be the different climates thing, I come from the, uh, south."

Iron shrugged. "Not a unicorn, not interested in a pedigree, am I right?" he said, the other two nodding. "But, yeah, you're a small one."

Sighing, Dusk nodded. "I'll keep that in mind," he mumbled, looking down the road. "So, where do you guys come from?"

The rest of the walk was quick, as time spent in conversation tended to be. After cresting a hill, an hour and a half after their meeting, the trio paused and glanced at each other before Dusk caught up, turning to look over his shoulder.

"We probably shouldn't come with ya into the city," Iron Heart muttered, scratching the back of his head. "We've got a bit of a reputation, and I'd hate to attach you to it."

Dusk wanted to argue, but he also felt the weight of the goods he'd been carting across the country. "Are you sure?" he asked, sighing when they nodded. "Alright. Where are you living, then? I'll take your baskets there and drop them off."

Iron looked at Flynt, then Flicker, both of which nodded slowly to him. "You ain't gotta do that," he started, before Dusk stomped the earth with a grunt.

"You three kept me safe and gave me company on the road," he said, snorting, "that alone is worth the weight of the baskets. Now, are you gonna take them here, or am I gonna deliver them somewhere for you?"

Iron Heart slowly smiled, chuckling. "A'right, a'right," he said, "you can take my share to my dam's house, on the 'skirt of the town." He described the place before Flynt and Flicker described their own dwelling.

"You give Iron's dam as much as she'll take first though," Flicker said. "He's got a little brother, and he'll need the food more than us two bags of bone."

"I gotcha," Dusk said, nodding. "Well, see you around?"

"Yeah," Iron said with a smirk, offering out a hoof that Dusk met.

The three of them walked into the forest, Dusk presuming to walk around and enter town from a different direction. Sighing, he turned his head and walked the rest of the way up the hill.

"Oh my Celestia," he said quietly, looking down on the village in the dale.